Hi. This is Paul Zolizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, It helps tremendously. More people will find us and learn how to have a positive impact through a values based business. Thanks so much.

Today, it's time for our monthly solo episode, and it's with me, Paul Zellizer, the founder of this podcast. We're up to, I think, 330 episodes as of today when this launches, and I've been doing this work in one form or another for 17 18 years. And our topic today is harnessing Gen Z in the workplace, strategies for impact leaders. And let me give you 2 stories why this is on my mind, and then we're going to dive into the strategies themselves. So in the past week or 2, I've been in conversation with a number of awesome Gen Z leaders and real rock stars. I'll give you an example. One who's recently left a job at a fast growing startup and to seek a climate job. This person doesn't yet have the job secured.

He's a rock star. I'm not worried about it. He doesn't seem to be worried about it. But, you know, that's not a traditional career move, but I'm seeing things like that happening more and more often, and it's relevant to the rest of the topic today. The second example is last week, I was at an event here in New Mexico at our local business school. It's called Anderson Business School at the University of New Mexico. It was a great event in partnership with the Social Enterprise Alliance. Big shout out to David Gaines and the team at the Social Enterprise Alliance.

David came in and led us through some great conversation, shared about his book, radical business, and awesome organization. But, you know, it was also here were some of the most excited and dynamic impact leaders in New Mexico all in one room. And at that time, UNM leaders announced that they are now, as of as of last week, offering a concentration in the MBA program at Anderson Business School with what they call a business for good focus, an impact or social entrepreneur focused in the largest business school in New Mexico. And part of the reason they're doing that is that social entrepreneurship and impact in business is one of the more robust conversations. It's one of the faster growing majors on college campuses around the world. And who's going to college? Right? So, obviously, you know, you put those together, you get a little slice of why this topic about how Gen z is showing up in the workplace, Some of the tensions that are happening between leaders from other generations, especially in the boomer age, but certainly throughout the age range, you know, gen z is a got different values as every generation does, and and it's creating some turbulence in the workplace. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that, and I think that an impact focus and a lens on making positive change is a big key to understanding how to really engage Gen Z, whether you're the founder, and you're Gen Z yourself, or you are a boomer and you're pretty high up in the organizational chart and you're tearing your hair out, not having an easy time. Being in conversation with the Gen Z members of your team.

So I wanna talk about 5 strategies or topics today. Let me tell you what they are, and then we'll dive into each one. Those topics are number 1, to really understand gen z. Now, obviously, every human is an individual, and we all have our unique differences, but there are some some commonalities. For instance, I'm Gen z. And Gen z, we have some, you know, common themes, and we were raised when certain music was popular and certain issues were in the forefront. There were just there's some cultural norms when you grow up in a cohort. And understanding some of those norms is where we're gonna start today.

Number 2, we're gonna talk about the importance of having a clear purpose and an impact statement. Being able to help Gen z understand what you're working towards and how you're gonna be together while you're working on it will go a tremendous way towards creating a positive work experience when you have significant numbers of gen members on your team. Number 3 is continuous learning and mentoring. Super important. Number 4 is collaboration and inclusion in your culture. And number 5 is a culture of what I call intrepreneurship. And we'll talk more about what that is and how it relates. So let's dive into the first part of this conversation.

Let's talk about understanding gen Z And to do that, I think we need to widen back a little bit and talk about some issues that won't be new to anybody on this podcast, but just think about the differences of what it's like to grow up when let's say climate change or to see the political polarization that has just been rampant across the world. Certainly here in the US, We may be the we're the world leader in a number of things in the US, and political polarization, I we we're up there. It's a pretty strong dynamic in the cultural conversation, and it was not the same when I grew up. Doesn't mean there wasn't turbulence or that Americans disagreed. We didn't disagree around certain things, but it's a very different conversation for my son who's now about to turn 24. So it's important to understand that gen Z is looking at a world on fire, A lot of conflict among leaders and that conflict has a very, you know, disrespect and name calling and willing to, you know, really work to undermine as opposed to, you know, sit at the table and come up with solutions. These things are much more pronounced. And, you know, important organizations saying things like we are at a code red situation as humanity as it relates to climate.

That wasn't happening for many of us in other generations. And Gen Z is like the world's on fire. When I go to work, I need certain things in this context for it to make sense, for me to bring my best energy, to be excited to be here. And if we don't understand the context, and we is however you are as a leader, however, wherever your age demographic is, I'm talking to Gen z startup founders that are, you know, also struggling to engage their Gen z team members, and I'm talking to boomers and everything in between. So understanding this context, just how much dysfunction is so publicly on display and how understanding the psychology of wanting work to be a place of both purpose and impact, but also a sense of, like, there's a team here that goes beyond just a bunch of people collecting a paycheck. That's the psychology of a lot of the folks in gen z that I'm talking to. And I talk to a lot of young people, young professionals, young startup founders who are trying to navigate these dynamics, both their own sense of purpose, but also when they're building teams. This is becoming more and more an area of focus in my work.

So before you try to change anything, mentors of mine have said, let's understand what's going on in these psychological aspects. And I'm not talking about being somebody's therapist, but I am talking about practicing strong empathy, strong desire to understand before you seek to change. That'll get you a very long way and that leaders who try to change things and particularly leaders who try to strong-arm. Here's where we're going, and I don't give a damn what anybody thinks. I'm the leader, and this is what we're gonna do. Goodness. Are you in for trouble with your Gen z team members? It doesn't mean you don't ever set boundaries. It doesn't mean you don't say, hey.

Look. We gotta get some things done here. So while we're working on, you know, clarifying purpose and impact and some of the other strategies that are on this list, I really want us to lean in as best we can. And I give you my word. We'll also can, work on these deeper purpose issues and culture issues. That's okay. But just shut up and go to work. Boy, does that not work with this generation? If that's your main go to as a leader.

Yeah. You're in trouble. Let's talk. So number 2, clear purpose and impact. Again, in that context that we talked about in number 1, the world is really disrupting and things that, you know, maybe in the past had a sense of continuity and a sense of foundation. A lot of that is being disrupted. And that's because from my perspective, we've built a world that's not sustainable in terms of our relationship with nature, how we're growing our food is not sustainable, how we're getting our energy, the fundamental, how we're doing finances is tremendously unequal, and it's getting more unequal, not less. You can look at inequality statistics and do your own research.

Don't just take my word for it. These are not sustainable ways of being over the long haul. There's a ton of research on that, but we don't seem to be letting that information that we have, motivate us to look deeply into how can humans live with the planet and each other in sustainable ways. However, if you have an organization, you have a company, and you are working on 1 or more of these issues, whether you're in regenerative agriculture or you're in renewable energy or you're in a climate solution or you're in a situation of creating a financial startup, that's all about equality or at least working on reducing inequality, you're likely to see a very different response. So being clear what the purpose of the organization is in addition to whatever your financial returns are and being able to explicitly talk about 2 things. Number 1, your core values. So it's not just a vision, but there's also a sense of how we're gonna be together, and together are all the stakeholders, your team, your customers, your suppliers, your investors. Core values are for everybody sitting in the circle, whether it's a close, like you're the CEO or somebody on the sweet seat, or you're, you know, an investor that gets lighter touch or you're a supplier to that company contractor with core values are about how we're gonna be together.

And then the impact statement is about what are we what's the debt we're trying to make in the world? And, again, one of those areas that the UN, the United Nations, 17 sustainable development goals are one e place you might consider looking for some ideas of how to language it. For the most part, when I see an organization, when I see a company that has an impact area and they have core values and it's related to something like one of the UN SDGs, it's, you know, really helpful in terms of gen Z feeling like this workplace is a place I wanna be. It's doing something that matters. And even though there's a lot of challenges in the world, when I get to work, my work matters. We're we're trying. We're doing something important. And when that's baked into the culture in terms of an impact statement and values that we're going to agree to, how we're going to be with each other as we work for that positive impact, game changer in terms of engaging Gen z in the workplace. Number 3, I encourage you to work on a culture of continuous learning and mentoring.

And this doesn't have to always be formal. Let me give you an example. So recently I was working with the CEO of a company and the CEO, when he came into, you know, when he was being mentored, when he was being developed as a leader, it was pre COVID. Let's call it 10 years ago. I don't remember. Was it 9 or 12? But let's call it 10 years ago. Right? And in his industry, there were a number of trainings. It was a product.

It is a product based industry, and he could go to in person trainings about these products and other people who were working in the field. And when there was, new innovation or just an update in how these products were being made or how they were, it's a building product, how they were being installed. There was opportunities to get together and hear from the people who were making the products and be in conversation with the people who are installing the products. And these were incredibly valuable, both in terms of learning about the product itself, but also learning about the industry, building network, and all of that was paid time When there was a industry related conference, the workplace often paid for the conference fee if there was the need to travel or stay in a hotel, you know, traditional conference type environment and agreements with the employees. Over the past 10 years between COVID, which disrupted a lot of, you know, those type of events, and it's gotten more expensive to do everything, the food at a conference and the hotels and you know? So there's much less of them. So we were talking about that, and we came up with an idea of going to an employee who's like right on the cusp of being ready for leadership, but needs a little more, you know, development. And some of that's gonna come with the CEO spending time with this person and being in a mentor role. But one of the things we talked about is how could this person develop a informal learning plan? Maybe that's going with, you know, a rep from one of the companies, from the products and, you know, seeing if they could, you know, do a ride along as the rep was, you know, going to a job site where the product was being installed and talking to key leaders there.

Like, what are some informal ways? And that's just one example that you can create a continuous learning environment in your company. Is there a coaching opportunity? Is there a leadership, you know, call? Is there a book? Is there a series of videos? I'm talking to another team and the CEO supported the person who, in this case, they're launching an adjacent business, doing some marketing for people in their industry. And the person is a young person who's super excited about it, but needs to learn. And this person found online resource with a study guide and a bunch of videos and, you know, q and a call, then it was relatively affordable. And the CEO said, yeah, we'll purchase that for you. Right. So getting creative about a continuous learning and mentoring environment. And if some of the, you know, more older school kinds of learning opportunities aren't there, then let's look at informal or adjacent.

The basic idea is you're important. We see you as an up and coming leader, and we're willing to invest time and other resources to help you reach your potential in this organization. That is a incredible gift to give to your team, and it lands in particularly well in the gen z team members among the companies that I'm working with. So I've got 2 more strategies for you. We're gonna talk about collaboration and inclusion in your culture and a culture of entrepreneurship, which I actually think is the most important one, but it doesn't work if some of these others are in place. But before we get to those, I just wanna take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing 1 or more important decisions in your impact business, and you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living. But you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's gonna cost you many 1,000 of dollars.

You're looking for an affordable, targeted, and time efficient type of support. Through paulzellizer.com, I offer a strategy session package. These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 1 to 3 immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, or refine your pricing structure so it's both inclusive and provides you with a great quality of life. You can find out more by clicking below, and thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back, everybody. Today's topic is harnessing Gen z in the workplace, strategies for impact leaders. And it's our solo episode with me, Paul Zellizer, the founder and host of the AwarePreners podcast. So in the first part of the episode, we talked about 3 strategies that is understand gen z, the psychology of what this generation was raised in.

Number 2, have a clear purpose and impact and be able to articulate these and have some things in place, like your core values and an impact statement that support this kind of conscious culture. Number 3, continuous learning and mentoring. And now we're gonna talk about collaboration and inclusive culture. Now, if you wanna alienate anybody who's under 40, but particularly gen z, you just tell them in kind words, sit down, shut up, and just do your job. And a lot of the, I don't know, complaining, if we wanna call it, about Gen Z in the workplace and that we see out there, you go on LinkedIn or, you know, Instagram reels about, you know, how gen z is whatever word negative word that isn't helpful in the workplace, this is the attitude you approach them with. I'm your boss. You just like, yeah, you're smart, but just, you know, do your job and hang out for 5 or 10 years, and, you know, maybe we'll, like, get to a place of hearing what you have to say. It doesn't work.

Right? Or at least there's more pushback, and it just doesn't land well in the psychology of a generation that's been raised in a time when the world's on fire. And, you know, there's a lot of attitudes and stereotypes about the generation as a whole. But when you can genuinely create collaborative culture and an inclusive culture, I see remarkable engagement, like off the charts. And again, I'm in the impact world, working with climate solutions and gender equity and financial inclusion brands and leaders. So, you know, that might not be everybody's experience. I'm really blessed to be in that world and working with people in these spaces. But what I can say is I I gave this example recently. A very smart young person in a very well known tech company.

Let's say it's Google. Maybe it wasn't Google, but let's just say it was Google, left an incredibly well playing and highly esteemed position in tech and went to work for a climate tech startup. And it meant about, you know, more than a 2 x, not quite a 3 x, but, you know, a very significant salary cut. And this person is talking about on LinkedIn just how much more engaged they are, so they're making less money. But they went to a place where they felt like their ideas mattered, the work mattered and all the things we were talking about before, like a clear purpose and a sense of impact. Plus the culture they were saying is just so much more inclusive and new ideas are welcomed as opposed to like, hey, you're a techie. Do your job. Let the leadership figure it out.

It's not working with gen z. And again, that leads to some of the disengaged behaviors. And when humans are disengaged, we do lots of things. We mutter under our bath. We we complain on a coffee break. That's those are signs of disengagement, not in my mind, signs of a generation. Let me say that again. Those are signs of disengagement, not signs of a generational psychology.

So a lot of what's being complained about is that people in larger corporations and even some smaller ones, oftentimes are not creating cultures of inclusion, cultures of collaboration. And then they're seeing behaviors and those I agree those behaviors are not helpful in a long term way. Matter of fact, they, you know, get in the way of growth in profitability and sales and all these things. But these are engagement problems, not generational problems. And many leaders don't wanna talk about that. Easier to blame the up and comers, you know, who's lower down on the hierarchy. Blame that person and say, you know, there's something about how we set this up that isn't working very well. A lot of leaders don't wanna have that conversation.

And, of course, I'm willing to have hard conversations. So I'm gonna look at you leaders again, however old you are. It's not about the leader's age. It's about who's coming into the workplace, and Gen z is not having it. They're not gonna spend 10 years kinda taking crap from leaders who just, you know, basically want you to sit down and shut up and do your job as it's been prescribed. That's not a very attractive offer in the context of the world is burning, and we've got a lot of things we need to deal with. So creating a genuine culture of collaboration and a genuine culture of inclusion where different ideas are welcome and there's at least opportunity for feedback on what priority should be and how to go about things, even if the things that need to be a priority. You know, leadership sometimes has data and the relationships may be with investors or understand some market trends that not everybody has all the data.

So, you know, sometimes leadership has a need to set some priorities, but even then there can be conversation about how to best work towards those priorities and to also make sure that there's a sense of purpose baked into things as you're working towards some of those more market driven priorities as well. Lots to unpack there. If you want more information or resources, reach out to me. Again, I'm working with more and more leaders on these kind of issues. So lastly, a culture of entrepreneurship. And again, in many ways, this is the most successful strategy I've ever come across in terms of really engaging, like lighting up your Gen z employees in the workforce, your Gen z team members in the workforce. And it doesn't work if some of the other things are not in place. So you need a sense of strong core values and a sense of impact.

What is the organization working on besides just making stuff or selling services? That's not inspiring. You need an inspiring answer to that question. You need some sense of how you're going to develop your team, learning it, having sense of mentorship culture in an organisation. But once you're developed at least some beginning strategies and some of the other strategy and and and some of the other things we talked about, then you can get to a culture of entrepreneurship. And entrepreneurship basically means thinking like an entrepreneur, but being in the context of an existing organization. Whether that organization is a startup with 5 employees, or it's a very large organization, I will put a link, for example, to an episode I did on intrapreneurship. And this was on somebody who at the time was young and up and comer, Art Bell. He was working at HBO back in the day, who, you know, when cable was a relatively new thing, and he was, I think, 26 or 27 when he got there.

He was the young new, you know, person with lots of ideas. And at that point, he was really into comedy. And he was looking around and said, there was no, like, full time 247 place for people who loved comedy to go. There were specials on network TV and beginning to see some specials on some of the cable channels, but he saw an opportunity. It became the comedy channel, and it worked. But he pitched the HBO leadership because HBO, you know, is expensive to start a comedy channel, to start a cable channel and all the infrastructure. It was 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars. And he knew it would take a long time as a young person with no reputation at just getting started in the entertainment world.

He knew it would be a very big lift to get the resources he needed. So he he pitched his boss and then his boss's boss, this idea of a comedy channel and to their credit, they said, yes. So he was still inside the company, but he was working on a startup inside of the infrastructure that holds HBO. And that became the comedy channel. It worked. He wrote a book on it. It's a great episode, and I encourage people to, you know, check it out. I'll put a link in the show notes to the episode.

That's entrepreneurship. And I'm working with more and more companies. Like, once you have something up and running, whether that's in the legal space, whether that's in the event space, there's a bunch of different ways that I'm seeing people innovate and bring new things to market, but the, or, or developing things, but they're using the existing infrastructure of where they're working right now. They're like the art bells of of the 20 twenties. Right? 2024 art pitched his bosses. I can't remember if it was in the late eighties or the nineties. It was it was a long time ago. Right? Cable was the new technology.

Obviously, now we're on to other things. But creating that culture where it's safe for people to pitch new ideas and giving how it's not as easy, You know, getting start up capital, like private investment is down 38% in 2023, I believe, was the data I'm quoting. I'll look that up, but it's way down and it's just harder to get the startup funding that you need. But if you are an organization that's open to new ideas and create culture of welcoming and even cultivating entrepreneurship to use the assets that the relationships, maybe the capital, maybe the, you know, know how the knowledge, your networks to help innovative things get off the ground. And in particular, if you are willing to potentially provide certainly financial incentives, but especially equity. So for example, I'm working with a founder and a team member in a about 16 person company. The company's been around for a while, more than 10 years. They have established relationships.

Things are going, you know, we're working on growing that company, but that company is very stable and is doing well and employing, yeah, 16 people. But there's another idea that's adjacent to this company, and we're working on the terms of the founder of the original company and the employee who's got an exciting idea. This employee has gotten several raises because of bringing innovation and being able to help develop systems and make things smoother and make the company more money. But now it's an entirely different company. So there's in the new company, there's an opportunity for the founder of the original company, plus the employee that's, you know, doing a lot of the work to develop the product and the services for the new company, for them to share equity in the new company. In other words, this person gets all the benefits of being an entrepreneur without having to quit their job and without having to be in a really insecure financial place. This person's getting more money than they were making a year ago, and they're doing a start up. So it's a real win win in the right situation.

That's a little bit about entrepreneurship. And again, I'm doing more and more work with founders and innovators on these kinds of approaches. If you've got more questions, let's talk. Those are 5 strategies for harnessing gen z in the workplace and how impact leaders can be more skillful about it. Again, the fundamental pieces that I would highlight as we start to say goodbye is number 1, gen z grew up in a world that's on fire, and it's only more so with lots of conflict. And, you know, even just trying to the disinformation out there, that's a really hard environment to make sense of. And gen z wants work to be a place where it feels like it matters and it feels like I'm part of something that's bigger than myself. You get that.

It changes what the equation is, what the calculus is of teams that have quite a few gen z employees or team members on them, what it feels like to be on that team, like radically change it. Keep working on developing those folks, listening to them and developing opportunities for their growth and for welcoming their innovative ideas in the form of a culture of intrapreneurship. And then you see engaged gen Z team members instead of disengaged ones and those stereotypes that are going out there where people are, you you know, attributing certain behaviors and ways of being to the generation, you can have an entirely different experience of engaged and enthused and dedicated team members from Gen z. I love working with Gen z folks in the impact space. I love the new ideas. I love the energy. So awesome to be in a room full of, I don't even know how many dozens and dozens of mostly Gen Z folks who are, you know, early in their careers or were in business school right now at that event last week at UNM, the Business For Good event. You know, I was one of the, you know, more gray hair represented folks than most in the room.

And I found it fun, energizing and exciting. I kind of push back on people who complain about gen Z, gen Z. I got your back. The behaviors that anybody who's complaining, I'm often looking through of why is this person or this team disengaged? Not, oh, of course, they're acting this way because they're some generation they're gen Z. So that's what I've got on this topic. I would love to hear your ideas. So feel free to send me an email. You can go or get in touch with me through the Aware Printer's website.

Also, if you have an idea for an episode, we love listeners, suggested topics and guests. You can go to the Awarepreneurs contact page at awarepreneursdot com and hit our contact page. See our 3 simple criteria of what we're looking for, kind of how we vet ideas that we get pitched. We get pitched a lot and I love it and give more weight to pitches that come from regular listen listeners of the show. So if you've got an idea, please do get ahold of me. Lastly, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.