Gen Z at Work

Day 1 of the 5-Day Leading Multigenerational Teams Challenge

Original artwork from cartoonist Jerry King

Welcome to the Challenge

Welcome to Day 1 of the Leading Multigenerational Teams Challenge!

Over the next five days, we’re going to look at how each generation tends to show up at work – as subordinates, colleagues, and managers – so you can lead across the gaps with more clarity and less guesswork.

Here’s what to expect:

• Day 1: Gen Z at Work (You Are Here)

• Day 2: Millennials at Work

• Day 3: Gen X at Work

• Day 4: Baby Boomers at Work

• Day 5: Navigating Multigenerational Conflict

Before we dive in, a quick word on framing. If you’re skeptical of generational content, good – most of it deserves skepticism. But this series isn’t about character. It’s about context. Generation doesn’t tell you who someone is. It tells you something about the economic, technological, and cultural conditions that were shaping their expectations about work while they were growing up.

Think of it like climate versus weather. A generation’s shared conditions are the climate – the broad patterns. But every individual is their own weather system. Climate doesn’t predict any given day’s forecast, but it helps you understand why certain patterns show up more in one region than another.

That’s the lens we’ll be using all week.

Today, we’re starting with Generation Z – those born between 1997-2012, many of whom are now in their first decade of professional work.

The Conditions That Shaped Generation Z

To understand how Gen Z tends to show up at work, it helps to look at three formative forces.

1. Economic instability as a backdrop

Many Gen Z members were children during the 2008 financial crisis and entered the workforce amid rising housing costs, student debt, and in many cases, the disruption of COVID-19. This may contribute to a pragmatic orientation toward financial security and a skepticism of “pay your dues” narratives – not entitlement, but a rational response to watching the implicit employer-employee contract break in real time.

2. Digital fluency from the start

Gen Z is the first generation for whom smartphones and social media were present during adolescence, not adopted later. Their communication instincts were shaped in environments where asynchronous messaging, rapid information access, and juggling multiple platforms were normal. This often translates into genuine skill – and into higher expectations around transparency, since opaque decision-making can feel unnecessarily restrictive when you’ve grown up able to look anything up instantly.

3. A values-conscious cultural moment

Gen Z came of age during heightened public discourse around social justice, mental health, and institutional accountability. This may contribute to a stronger orientation toward values alignment at work and higher expectations around psychological safety and boundary-setting.

What this adds up to: None of these forces apply to every Gen Z employee. But together, they help explain some common workplace expectations you might notice – a pull toward transparency over hierarchy, flexibility over rigid structure, and meaning alongside compensation.

Next, let’s look at how these formative conditions tend to play out in the three roles people occupy at work – as subordinates, colleagues, and managers.

Gen Z as Subordinates

Many Gen Z employees approach authority with a “respect is earned through competence, not title” orientation. They may be more likely to ask “why” – not to challenge, but to understand. Leaders who explain their reasoning, even briefly, may find these employees more engaged. Those who rely on positional authority alone may encounter resistance that’s actually a request for context.

In terms of what they tend to value from leaders: transparency about decision-making, regular feedback, psychological safety to ask questions and make mistakes, visible growth paths, and flexibility in how work gets done.

The strengths they often bring include adaptability, initiative on learning, directness that can surface problems early, digital problem-solving instincts, and deep engagement when they connect with a mission.

Gen Z as Colleagues

Many Gen Z employees enjoy collaborative work, but that doesn’t always mean being in the same room at the same time. They’re often just as comfortable contributing to a shared document or thread on their own schedule and syncing up later – which can feel disorienting to colleagues who see “real collaboration” as happening live.

The communication differences that matter most aren’t really about platforms. They’re about style. Gen Z’s instincts tend toward brevity, speed, and informality – a three-word Slack message isn’t rude, it’s just efficient. Meanwhile, they may read a more formal email as cold or distant when no coldness was intended. Neither side is wrong. The more a team can recognize these as style differences rather than statements of intent, the smoother things go.

What Gen Z colleagues often bring to the table is comfort with rapid iteration, resourcefulness, willingness to share knowledge, and an openness to working across functions without getting hung up on “that’s not my department.”

Gen Z as Managers

As the oldest members of Gen Z move into their late twenties, more are stepping into management roles – and they’re leading in environments they didn’t design. They’ve inherited team structures, reporting cultures, and performance systems built by previous generations, and they’re figuring out how to lead authentically within that.

Some early patterns: Gen Z managers often lean toward flatter communication, frequent feedback, transparency (including being open about what they don’t know yet), and flexibility around how and when work gets done. These can be real strengths – they tend to create psychological safety, adapt quickly, and set clear expectations. But they can also create friction with team members who were trained to expect something different from a boss.

That friction is sharpest when managing older employees. A Gen Z manager who shares uncertainty may come across as unprepared rather than collaborative. Frequent informal check-ins may feel like micromanagement to someone who’d rather be trusted and left alone. These expectation gaps go both ways, of course. A Gen Z manager who understands what their older reports were trained to expect from a boss is better positioned to bridge that gap without abandoning their own style.

The Bigger Picture

Everything in this article describes conditions and tendencies, not fixed traits. Any individual Gen Z employee may resonate with many of these patterns, a few of them, or none. The goal isn’t a checklist for “managing Gen Z.” It’s enough contextual awareness to ask better questions, make fewer assumptions, and respond to the person in front of you with a bit more understanding of where they might be coming from.

Gen Z itself is far from monolithic. Socioeconomic background, geography, industry, culture, and personality type all create enormous variation within the generation. The generational lens is one layer, not the whole picture.

Tomorrow: We’ll turn the same lens on Millennials – the generation that now makes up the largest share of the workforce and is increasingly shaping organizational culture from the middle and the top.

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Feel free to share this challenge across all generations. This article is free and open for anyone to read.