And while first-time millennial managers are more likely to be managing other millennials, as their team continues to grow, their team will include Gen Z employees, says Emily Tsitrian, author of Make Me the Boss: Surviving as a Millennial Manager in the Corporate World.
The two generations do share similarities—both grew up digitally native, entered the workforce as industries continue to evolve and change at a rapid pace, and live in an economic climate where the middle class is becoming more and more stratified. But there are things that set them apart.
Many Gen Z workers entered the workforce during the pandemic, and in the aftermath, are going through “a bit of [an] identity crisis,” says Tsitrian. And, as millennials enter positions of power, those differences might translate into conflicts that they’ll have to resolve as a manager.
Below are some of the potential tensions that they might run into—and how they can deal with them:
Definition of success
Like any generation entering the workplace, Gen Z has been labeled by older workers as overly entitled and lazy. But the idea that Gen Z is somehow less ambitious than the previous generation just doesn’t hold true. Gen Z employees are “absolutely very ambitious,” says Tsitrian, and respond to hard work and opportunity.
The difference is that for Gen Z, success is more of a “feeling” than a set of bullet points, she says. It’s less about climbing the corporate ladder, acquiring a specific position, or earning a specific salary. After all, “the types of jobs that exist now will not exist in 10 years,” she says.
Millennial managers can resolve this conflict by understanding their motivations as well as teaching and developing durable soft skills, in addition to hard skills. “We need to adjust our managerial skills to let Gen Z become more adaptable, more resilient—those things that are going to endure in their career.”
Boundary setting
Tsitrian also believes that much of the reason Gen Z has been saddled with a reputation of entitlement is because, overall, younger workers “are just better at boundary setting than other generations. I don’t necessarily see it as a sense of entitlement, I see it as a sense of self and reckoning what work can really be.”
On the other hand, millennial managers—who entered the workplace in the midst of hustle culture—have more of a tendency “to give too much, to the point of exhaustion and burnout.” This is especially common among first-time managers, Tsitrian says, who tend to have a sense of “youthful idealism” around fixing things that they couldn’t as an individual contributor. Tsitrian recommends that millennial managers take a page from Gen Z’s playbook and put their oxygen mask on first.
High expectations
Speaking of first-time-manager mistakes, another common source of conflict is Gen Z’s high expectations of millennial managers. Part of that, Tsitrian believes, is because “work represents so much more to this generation now.”
She goes on to say, “There’s less involvement in things like church life, fraternal organizations, Lions Club. Those sorts of organizations aren’t really a community anymore, so the workplace is filling that community. That’s just the reality, whether it’s good or bad.”
First-time millennial managers need to accept that they’re not necessarily going to be able to meet Gen Z’s expectations all the time. Rather than holding themselves to impossible standards, Tsitrian recommends that they lead by example through learning and growing and being willing to rise to new challenges. When you set those kinds of examples, Tsitrian says, your direct reports are likely to follow.
Communication styles
Gen Z’s expectation of what work represents can also manifest in their communication styles. The “memeification of life” that happened, thanks to social media, has “affected how we communicated in the workplace [including] the way we used memes, emojis, and inside jokes,” says Tsitrian.
“I think that’s good, to some extent,” she continues, “but as millennials, we need to help our Gen Z staff members be inclusive and realize that’s not how everybody communicates.” Millennial managers can use this opportunity to show Gen Z that while there is nothing necessarily wrong with their communication style, “it can be career-limiting not to adopt communication styles for people across different backgrounds.” For example, they can encourage Gen Z to pick up the phone or arrange to meet someone for coffee when they need to have sensitive conversations.
“Those are the things that may not be as intuitive or comfortable for Gen Z—and are frankly not that comfortable for millennials either,” Tsitrian says, “but we’ve had a lot more time and experience to adjust to those expectations.”
