Back to School - How to Lead Gen-Z Without Babysitting

Flip the formula to set purpose, give ownership, and get more done with fewer interruptions.

If you’re like many leaders I speak with, you’ve probably felt the challenge of leading Gen-Z.

You might even find yourself saying:

“I feel like I’m parenting more than leading.”

It’s not just you. The Understanding America Survey completed by The Financial Times shows that in the 16–39 age range, conscientiousness has dropped sharply compared to older generations. Neuroticism is up. Agreeableness and extroversion are both down. Skills like planning, perseverance, and follow-through are weaker, while distractibility, carelessness, and even argument-starting are climbing.

The impact? You might be checking in two or three times a day just to keep projects moving, watching deadlines slip, seeing quality dip below standard, and running into resistance when you give constructive feedback.

And yet, here’s the paradox. Gen-Z describes themselves as ready to learn — 65% say so. They’re ambitious — 70% expect a promotion within 18 months of graduation. And they’re open to difficult conversations — 92% want to be able to discuss mental health with their manager.

So how do you reconcile declining work-readiness with high ambition and strong self-belief?

If you’re leading this group, you’re managing a competence-versus-entitlement problem.

You Need to Flip Your Logic

For decades, leadership training followed the same logic: change the mindset and the behaviour will follow, which will eventually shift the context. Or, change the tactic and you’ll change the outcome. That worked when people arrived in the workplace already operating within a shared set of norms and expectations. You could get them thinking a little differently and they would apply new thinking to old ways of doing things, leading to new results.

That’s not the world you’re in now.

“Throwing people in the deep end” or “go figure it out” used to be seen as an act of trust and belief. It gave us a sense of pride and self-confidence when we prevailed - now it’s seen as an act of indifference or neglect. Harm rather than opportunity.

You could look at all kinds of stats around this, like conscientiousness, neuroticism or perseverance. But, if you simply look at stats around agreeableness and the willingness to argue, you’re going to run into issues. Asking someone who is disagreeable and argumentative to take on a new perspective means you’re fighting the wrong battle.

Even if this isn’t purely a Gen-Z issue, you can do things a better way and get better results by flipping the script.

Great leaders reframe problems to find new solutions.

Leaders of Gen-Z need a reframe.

With Gen-Z, you have to flip the formula. Context comes first. If you want to influence mindset and behaviour, you need to deliberately shape the environment your people are working in. Yes - this means psychological safety - but that doesn’t mean comfortable. If you want a learning environment you need to prepare people to face discomfort with the confidence of purpose and support. 

You need to deliberately shape, with a high degree of clarity, the purpose, expectations, norms, and ownership that shape how people approach a task before they even start. And the most powerful way to do that is by managing the narrative — the boundaries, and the stakes that make responsibility feel natural and meaningful rather than forced.

You need to focus not just on telling people what to do, but on setting the tone, stakes, and meaning before the work begins.

Why Framing Matters More Than Ever

Framing is the way you set the stage for work so your people understand not just what they’re doing, but why it matters, how success will be measured, and where they fit in the bigger picture. It’s the intentional narrative you use to connect a task to purpose, clarify expectations, and make responsibility feel like an opportunity rather than a demand.

Great leaders do this naturally. But most skip it — or do it far less than they should.

Yes — you’re probably not doing this as much as you think. And even if you are, more or better framing won’t hurt.

When it comes to leading Gen-Z, framing is critical in part because an entire generation — maybe two — was sold the idea that meaning and passion would be handed to them by the right job or the right manager. The promise was that if they found the perfect fit, meaning would magically appear. 

Just like the old ”follow your passion” sales pitch… 

It’s a beautiful idea, but it doesn’t hold up.

Meaning isn’t something you find. It’s something you create. And the raw material for creating it isn’t passion — it’s responsibility.

Previous generations knew this intuitively. Millennials and Gen-X were sold the wrong information, so now you need to go back if you want to lead forward.

When you frame work through the lens of outcomes, shared purpose, and personal ownership, you’re not just motivating. You’re building the conditions for meaning to grow. That’s the shift that changes everything.

Framing in Practice

Framing isn’t a quick preamble before handing out a task. It’s the process of shaping how people interpret a situation by defining the shared assumptions, beliefs, and priorities before the work begins.

It’s the act of making work make sense. It’s where you anchor a project to a purpose, define what success and failure look like, and make clear where support is available and where you expect your people to navigate on their own. You connect individual effort to the team’s progress and position responsibility not as a burden, but as a privilege, an opportunity of its own.

Here’s how that sounds in real life:

“You need to deliver the report by Friday and make it easy to act on. The goal is to make a decision in Monday’s meeting, so everyone needs the details required for that decision. I’m available Tuesday for questions. Make sure you’re identifying the key details and how they need to be displayed to help the team. If you get stuck, first check the brief, then ask Jamie, then me — and keep in mind what others will need for the Monday meeting so they can share and discuss different perspectives. If you hit a roadblock you can’t clear by Thursday noon, tell me immediately. Our planning depends on this being well delivered, so I want to give you the opportunity to produce the best possible outcome. We can stay on schedule and you’ll have set us on a good track right from the start. If it slips, we lose a week and miss the client window. There’s support, and everything you need is available — but this is yours to own.”

Notice how you start with the outcome, set boundaries for support, make the stakes clear, and hand over real ownership without micromanaging.

Don’t check-in when you’ve said you won't. But, make the most of it when you do.

Closing the Loop

Framing doesn’t end once the work is assigned. The real payoff comes when you connect the dots afterward. You need to highlight what worked, what could be better and acknowledge what efforts led to meaningful outcomes. This isn’t praise - its a full picture of feedback - appreciative and critical feedback are both constructive if they are delivered well.

“That report you delivered last Friday shaved two days off our decision process. That’s why the client signed today. Your summary section made it easy for them to say yes. Here’s one thing to work on — the data sources section took extra time to verify. If you front-load that next time, you’ll cut review time in half. But overall, your work directly moved the deal forward.”

This kind of follow-up ties effort to real value, gives specific feedback without overshadowing the win, and reinforces the connection between responsibility and meaning.

“Good job” is often wasted praise. False praise is even worse. Acknowledgement gives people focus. It helps them understand where they added value and where they can continue to add value moving forward.

With Gen-Z, if you focus on resilience-building activities like independent work, follow-through, and intellectual flexibility, you’ll see more of that.

Action Over Talk

If you want to lead Gen-Z effectively, focus almost entirely on outcomes first: the problem, the responsibility, and the purpose. Without this, you have no way to make it obvious why effort matters. Establish this through great framing first — then move into support and all the other elements necessary for successful leadership.

But remember, you are what you repeatedly do.

Your team will learn you more than what you say.

You need to establish accountability as a path to success rather than a looming threat — by making it part of the support structure rather than the enforcement mechanism. That means anchoring accountability in shared outcomes rather than compliance.

Instead of, “You need to get this done because I said so,” you say, “Here’s the outcome we’re working toward, and here’s how your part moves us closer to it.” This shifts the focus from avoiding failure to actively contributing to success.

Co-create the plan and checkpoints. Involve your people in deciding milestones, deadlines, and what “good” looks like. When they help shape the path, they’re more likely to own it. If you need to negotiate to create a shared solution, that’s fine — you can help them develop discernment and prioritization skills in the process. The focus is buy-in because you want ownership so it actually gets done.

Make progress visible. Use updates to track movement toward the goal, not to “catch” mistakes. Think, “Here’s where we are and what’s left to win” rather than, “Here’s where you slipped.” Avoid the “feedback sandwich” — it’s meaningless, annoying and disingenuous.

Close the loop with connection to impact. After delivery, connect the work to tangible results — who benefited, what moved forward, what was unlocked. This reinforces that accountability leads to contribution, not just scrutiny.

When you make accountability about fulfilling the obligation to the team and the goal — and a commitment they’ve made to themselves and others — you’ll have more success.

Closing the deal

More than 80% of managers check in with Gen-Z staff at least twice a day — often because the work wasn’t framed clearly in the first place. Those extra touchpoints may feel supportive, but without purpose they quickly become wasted time and, worse, can slip into micromanagement.

You can save yourself a massive amount of wasted energy by leaning into early framing conversations that set the stage for better work. If you’re managing Gen-Z, you have a particular challenge that makes practicing this even more important.

Don’t mistake constant presence for effective leadership. If you’re checking in multiple times a day, you’re not managing — you’re firefighting. That’s usually a symptom of poor framing up front.

With Gen-Z, assume meaning doesn’t automatically exist in the work — you have to build it. That starts with context. Make sure they know the purpose, the outcome you’re aiming for, how success will be measured, and why their role matters to others. Define what support looks like and where you expect them to self-navigate.

Give responsibility early and connect it to outcomes, not just tasks. Treat accountability as a shared commitment to success rather than a threat of consequences. And when the work is done, close the loop by showing exactly where their contribution made a difference — and where they can grow.

Perhaps most importantly, lead them in a way that makes action the antidote to anxiety. When they’re in motion with clear direction, they’re less distracted, more engaged, and more likely to deliver without you chasing them every few hours.