Do we speak Gen Z and Gen A?

Firstly, let’s clear the confusion:

Generation A or Gen Alpha are defined as those born from 2010-2024.

Gen Z spans from 1997 to 2012.

Gen Y, or Millennials, were born between 1981 and 1994/6.

And Gen X was born between 1965 and 1979/80.

Now, let’s look at some interactions:

My 13 year old daughter tells me, “Stop standing in the corner like an NPC!”

What is an NPC???

She then has a conversation with me about someone from the army who said something inappropriate.

I said, “Maybe he’s not really an army officer”. She gives me a look and says, “I don’t mean that army”. “I mean the BTS Army”.

My son sees a profile that I am sending to a client, where I mention a lot of my international experience.

He says, “Do you really need to flex so much?”

My son gets a job offer, which is then rescinded unexpectedly. He bluntly tells the HR about how unprofessional they are. When I tell him not to burn bridges with people, he says, “I don’t care about that. They were unprofessional.”

These interactions tell a story.

Now I’m not just talking about the jargon used by the Gen Z and Gen A crowd.

Yes, many people don’t know what an NPC is. They haven’t heard of the BTS Army, and they don’t know what a ‘flex’ is.

But these interactions also tell us about attitudes.

My daughter is fearless in speaking with me, very different from how I was when I spoke with my dad.

She is quick to identify what she sees, and even quicker to call it out.

My son does not like the idea of overhyping or over marketing oneself.

When I tell my son and daughter about the dangers of online scams, they laugh at me, They know all too well what these people do. Unlike an oldie like me, they won’t get caught so easily by spammers and scammers.

Gen A

Gen A will save the world. A world of pandemics, climate change, AI, a flat world where they can go anywhere and do anything. An uncertain world, one which they are uniquely suited to face.

But they are not there yet. They are currently the preteens with their own YouTube channels, wanting to be social media influencers when they grow up.

Gen Z

Our workplace story currently involves the Gen Z crowd.

The current generation of freshers, Google enabled, tech enabled, always online, social media savvy. They face being managed by the MTV generation of Gen Y and the Doordarshan generation of Gen X.

And therein lie the challenges. I enumerate three challenges below.

Feedback:

Gen Z has grown up in a feedback world. Whether booking a cab, buying stuff online, watching a product unboxing on YouTube, it’s all about feedback, feedback, feedback.

But now that they are in the corporate world, they face their Gen Y and Gen X managers who are not interested in their feedback.

The boss’s attitude is, “First understand the system, then give us all your bright ideas. We paid our dues before we were allowed to speak. Why don’t you do the same?”

Loyalty:

Gen X (the Doordarshan generation) have grown up (and now grown old) with a command and control structure, whether at home with strict parents, or at work with strict bosses. They vaguely understand that things are changing. But they are not not there yet. They see the Gen Z crowd as rebellious, over-smart, and disloyal.

“Vikram, these guys quit their jobs every one or two years.”

Yes, but our dads worked the same job for 25 years. Our parents married for life. Nowadays, relationships might also not last more than a few years.

So, see these one or two years as an opportunity. Convert one year into two years. If a person stays with you for 2 to 3 to 4 years, see that as a victory.

Learning:

Gen Z people learn all the time.

“I learnt how to play the guitar using YouTube.”

“I was listening to this podcast the other day.”

“I paid $200 to register for this course online.”

Learning happens all over the place for them, and quite often is socially driven.

While Gen Z is hungry to learn, do leaders convey what kind of learning the job will entail? And what kind of hard work and struggle will be required to undergo that learning? Is there a learning roadmap which leaders talk about?

In most cases, no.

As a facilitator, I sometimes see Gen Z employees being addressed by their leaders. These leaders sometimes behave like school teachers, the old school types (no pun intended).

That needs to change.

So now what?

Gen X and Y need to have deeper conversations with their Gen Z staff.

They need to capture and respect feedback. They need to talk about learning.

They need to welcome new ideas.

And this requires a cultural change in organisations. This will not come easy.

So here’s to not acting like an NPC, and to making an effort to change our conversations and our climate. The Z and A people will thank us for it.