I Demand to be Dumbo the Flying Elephant!

 

There's a lot being written about the challenge of leading Gen Z. 

 

They want more flexibility. More feedback. More purpose. Faster progression. Better work-life balance.  

They're supposedly less tolerant of hierarchy, less impressed by job titles and more prepared to challenge the way things have always been done. 

 

And, if you believe some of the commentary, they'd quite like to be promoted by Thursday at the latest. 

 

My daughter, who's 23, came home from work the other day shouting the odds about "how dare they?!" 

 

What terrible thing had her employers done? 

 

They'd asked her to stay behind after work for 20 minutes. 20 WHOLE minutes! An important email was due to arrive and they needed her to redirect it when it did. 

 

For those of us who started our careers in a rather different world, it can sometimes feel as though the rules have changed and leading Gen Z has become a serious challenge. 

 

Perhaps the rules have changed... 

 

Imagine you're an elephant, delighted that you've just got your first job working at a circus. 

 

(And, for the moment, please put aside the awful way elephants and other animals have been mistreated in circuses around the world.) 

 

You're delighted. Your first proper job as a circus elephant. 

 

Your new bosses might reasonably expect you to walk around a bit on Day One and be photographed. Maybe stand on a box. Wave your trunk around occasionally. Probably get petted by the children. 

 

Nice, easy first day. 

 

But what if your response to the ring master is: 

 

 

That's roughly how some leaders describe the challenge of managing a younger generation whose expectations of work can be very different from their own. 

 

The temptation is to conclude that it's they - the Gen Z workers - who need to change. 

 

Toughen up. Be more patient. Earn their stripes. Accept that not every day at work is necessarily going to be mentally fulfilling, especially at first. 

Understand that progression takes time. 

 

And perhaps there is some truth in some of that thinking. 

 

But there's another side to this. 

 

 

Every generation enters the workplace shaped by a different world. 

 

Someone beginning their career today has grown up with instant access to information, constant communication, social media, rapidly changing technology and an expectation that their voice can - and should - be heard. 

 

They've entered a workplace transformed by hybrid working, AI, economic uncertainty and far less of the traditional executive mentoring that previous generations often benefited from. 

 

Of course they're going to look at work - and life - differently. 

 

 

Because leadership isn't fundamentally about learning one way to lead Baby Boomers, another way to influence Gen Xs, another for Millennials and then developing a whole new approach for Gen Z. 

 

Every generation is different, for sure.  

But, within every generation, every individual is different too. 

 

Which is why trying to understand an individual through a generational label is always going to be a flawed approach. 

 

Trying to learn a different leadership technique for each generation is starting at the wrong end of the problem. 

 

Leadership is about understanding your impact on other human beings. 

Whoever they are. Whatever generation they belong to. 

 

And that starts with self-awareness, and the question ... 

 

 

One of the questions we return to repeatedly at Elephant Leadership Camps is deceptively simple: 

 

 

You may think you're being decisive. 

Someone else experiences you as dismissive. 

 

You think you're giving people freedom. 

They experience a lack of support. 

 

You think you're being direct. 

They hear aggression. 

 

You think you're encouraging someone by constantly checking their progress. 

They feel they're being micromanaged. 

 

And, crucially, you don't get to decide which interpretation is correct. 

 

That's where leadership becomes interesting. 

 

Because the same signal may land very differently with an entry-level graduate, an experienced middle manager and a been-there-done-that-bought-the-T-shirt senior director. 

 

Their experiences, expectations, confidence and attitudes towards authority may all be different.  

 

But trying to learn a separate leadership technique for every demographic becomes impossible when demographic labelling is far too broad a brush. 

 

Everyone is an individual remember. 

 

So there's another approach. 

 

Leadership starts at your end of the conversation 

 

Good leaders learn to recognise the signals they send. 

Their tone. 

Their body language. 

The questions they ask. 

The questions they don't ask. 

How much they listen. 

How and when they interrupt. 

How they react when challenged or disagreed with. 

Whether people feel bigger or smaller after spending time with them. 

 

Great leadership requires judgement and adaptability, and different people need different things at different moments. 

 

But adaptation becomes much easier when you understand your own starting point. 

 

If I know that my natural enthusiasm can overwhelm some people, I can adjust - or at least be conscious of it. 

If I know my directness sometimes lands as impatience, I can adjust - or at least be more aware of it. 

If I know that under pressure I stop listening and start telling, I can recognise it happening and do something about it. 

 

I can control those things. 

 

What I can't control is whether someone was born in 1965, 1985 or 2002, or all the experiences and expectations they bring with them as a result. 

 

If Gen Z isn't a leadership problem, if the challenge isn't: "How do we lead Gen Z?" 

 

Maybe the problem becomes: 

 

That's a much more useful question. 

 

And it applies whether the person opposite you is 22 or 62. 

 

At Elephant Leadership Camps, we don't teach leaders a list of generational characteristics. 

We put them into situations where their own leadership becomes clearly visible to everyone. 

 

They work with strangers of different ages, seniorities, backgrounds and experiences. 

They make decisions. They influence. They communicate. They get things wrong. They try again. 

And, throughout it, other people tell them honestly how they are landing. 

 

Not how they think they're landing. 

How they're actually landing. 

That difference can be uncomfortable. 

It's also where some of the most valuable leadership development happens. 

 

You can spend your time arguing that elephants can't fly. End of. 

 

Or you can become sufficiently self-aware, adaptable and curious to understand what they're really asking and to moderate their expectations if needs be, in a way that lands appropriately. 

 

Because generations change. 

The fundamental challenge of leadership doesn't. 

And get better at leading the human being standing in front of you. 

 

That's what we do at Elephant Leadership Camps. 🐘 

 

But there's one final part to this. 

 

If you have a keen new employee - Gen Z or otherwise - who tells you they think they've got what it takes to become the next Dumbo the Flying Elephant, don't immediately tell them that elephants can't fly. 

 

Encourage them. 

Affirm their ambition. 

Give them room to grow and experiment. Let them test themselves. Let them try to fly. 

And afterwards, talk honestly about what happened.  

What worked? What didn't? What did they learn? What did you learn about them? 

 

Because that's another important part of leadership. 

Sometimes your job isn't to tell an aspiring elephant that it can't fly. 

It's to give it the opportunity to try. 

 

Just make sure, as its leader, you've provided a decent safety net. 🐘 

 

Be a Leader. 

 

Search "Elephant Leadership Camps".