How I Brought Gen Z’s Voice Into a Room of Senior Leaders

When the people you lead aren’t in the room—find a way to bring their voices in anyway.

Recently, I led a session for a room of leaders, and the topic turned to working in an intergenerational and culturally diverse environment.

One of the activities I had prepared for the group was to break them up into small groups and then have them do an activity where they began by identifying stereotypes that came to mind from the different generations ranging from baby boomers to Generation Z. After some time, another layer was added to the exercise where they now had to identify strengths of each of the generations - this focussed the thinking to reflecting more about what each generation brought to the table.

We had one limitation. Within this group of leaders, there were no Generation Zs as these were more senior leaders.

Anticipating this issue, before the session I had asked the organizer to connect me with a group of Gen Z staff so I could interview them before the session. I then used that information to create a 1-page "letter from the next generation: What Gen-Z wants their leaders to know".

At the onset of the exercise, I handed a copy to each group of leaders to read as a group. This one document generated so much buzz, as for many - if was an extremely valuable insight into the minds of the people they lead - insight they may not have had the opportunity to glean in the past.

A few minutes after handing out the letter, one leader approached me and asked where I got this information, initially thinking that it was pulled from the internet. When I told him (and the rest of the room) that it came from their own staff, it hit a powerful chord, as the information became even more valuable and useful for them.

Leading a multigenerational workforce is more important than ever. But if the people you’re talking about aren’t in the room, you need to find ways to bring them in. So, a powerful strategy is to interview staff beforehand and present the findings.