Gen Z is widely discussed in the context of work, yet much of that commentary fails to capture the full picture.
In this piece, Neave Cadenhead, Research Associate at Livingston James, offers a dual perspective shaped by both lived experience and close work with senior leaders across the UK. Writing from this vantage point, she moves beyond generalisations to explore the real drivers of the disconnect between Gen Z and leadership, and what organisations getting this right are doing differently.
There is no shortage of commentary on Generation Z (Gen Z) in the workplace, and most of it misses the point.
As a 22-year-old researcher at Livingston James who identifies and engages senior executive talent across the UK, I occupy an unusual vantage point: I am a member of the generation being debated, in a role that places me close enough to senior leadership conversations to see how the perception gap plays out in practice. Keen not to publish another generalisation, I wanted to add to the conversation by sharing a view on what is actually happening and what leaders who are getting this right are doing differently.
The Expectation Gap
Much of the tension between Gen Z and senior leadership does not stem from laziness or entitlement, it stems from a fundamental mismatch in assumptions about what work is and what it is for.
For many people in leadership roles today, work has historically been the organising principle of adult life. Commitment was demonstrated through visibility and time: arriving early, staying late, paying dues, and trusting that progression would follow. That was the understood contract, and for many it delivered.
Gen Z entered the workforce with a different contract in mind – not a lesser one but a different one. For Gen Z, work is understood as one dimension of life, not its centre. Flexibility is not a reward to be earned over years of service, but a baseline expectation. Output and impact are the relevant measures of contribution, not hours logged or physical presence accumulated.
Research data supports this. Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, which surveyed more than 23,000 respondents across 44 countries, found that work-life balance is consistently the top consideration for Gen Z when choosing an employer (Deloitte, 2025). LinkedIn’s research reinforces the stakes: 72% of Gen Z employees reported having left or considered leaving a job due to an inflexible work policy, a higher proportion than any other generation (LinkedIn, 2023).
This plays out in familiar flashpoints: debates around hybrid working, questions about progression timelines, conversations about four-day week models. In executive conversations, I frequently hear these framed as Gen Z expecting reward without the graft, but consider the question being asked from the other side: why should time served outweigh impact delivered? That question deserves a more considered response than it typically receives.
Neither position is unreasonable. These are two internally coherent worldviews in collision, and resolving the tension requires leaders to engage with both seriously, rather than dismissing one as immaturity.
The Trust Deficit
A perspective that often goes overlooked is that Gen Z’s attitude towards work didn’t emerge in isolation; it was shaped, in large part, by watching what happened to the generation ahead of us.
As research from Stanford highlights, Gen Z came of age in the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis, a period in which people who had done everything expected of them lost jobs, pensions, and financial security regardless (Katz, 2024). The implicit promise of the employment contract, that sustained commitment would be met with sustained stability, was visibly broken before many of us were old enough to enter that contract. As Deloitte’s Chief People Officer Elizabeth Faber noted in the 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, “Gen Zs and millennials began their careers amid a pandemic and financial crisis – events that shaped their values around work-life balance, meaningful work, and financial stability” (Deloitte, 2025).
Then came the Covid-19 pandemic. A significant proportion of Gen Z entered the workforce during or immediately after a period that fundamentally reset assumptions about where, when, and how productive work happens. We observed that offices could close overnight and organisations could continue to function. We saw flexibility, long positioned as a discretionary benefit, prove operationally viable at scale. And then, as conditions stabilised, we watched many of those same organisations move to reverse what had been demonstrated as possible.
What reads as entitlement is, in many cases, something more rational: a generation that witnessed the old employment deal fracture in real time and is therefore unwilling to accept it uncritically. That is not a character flaw, it is a reasonable response to available evidence.
The Irony Leaders Need to Hear
In my role, I spend a significant amount of time helping organisations articulate what they want in a leader. One phrase comes up consistently – they want someone who will challenge the status quo. Someone who asks the uncomfortable question and does not simply accept the way things have always been done.
It is, genuinely, one of the most sought-after qualities in senior talent, which makes the contrast at the junior level all the more apparent.
When a 24-year-old asks why the current operating model has remained unchanged for over a decade, or makes an evidence-based case for a different way of working, or declines to accept a rigid working-hours policy without understanding its rationale, that same quality is rarely celebrated. It is managed, quietly discouraged and filed under attitude rather than potential.
I am not suggesting that every challenge is valid, or that experience and institutional knowledge do not carry real value; they do, but organisations cannot hold intellectual courage as a leadership virtue and a junior liability simultaneously. The best young talent figures that out quickly. Once they have, the decision about whether to stay rarely goes the way the organisation would hope. LinkedIn’s research makes the scale of this visible: 87% of Gen Z professionals say they would leave their current employer for one whose values were more closely aligned, a higher proportion than any other generation in the workforce (LinkedIn, 2023).
What Effective Leadership Looks Like in Practice
The leaders and organisations navigating this well are not capitulating to every demand. They are doing something more deliberate: interrogating their own assumptions about what actually drives the outcomes they care about, rather than defaulting to how things have historically been done.
They are asking whether full-time office presence genuinely delivers the performance benefits they assume, or whether it has become a proxy for trust. They are translating progression criteria into clear, specific milestones rather than leaving ambiguous signals such as ‘you’ll know when you’re ready’ as the primary guidance. They are creating genuine space for challenge, not performative openness, in which a junior employee questioning an established process is treated as useful input rather than a disciplinary matter.
Critically, they are also being transparent with Gen Z about the realities that do not change. That certain things take time, that professional relationships are built across years rather than months, and that there is no substitute for some forms of accumulated experience. The most effective leaders do not pretend these trade-offs do not exist, they explain them directly, and in doing so build the credibility to be heard.
The result is not a frictionless environment, but one in which the friction serves a productive purpose.
A Challenge for Senior Leaders
If you are a senior leader engaging with these questions, the evidence from organisations getting this right points to a clear reframe.
Gen Z is not a transitional workforce phenomenon that will self-correct once people have financial commitments and broader responsibilities. McKinsey’s research projects that Gen Z will represent approximately 30% of the global workforce by 2030 (McKinsey & Company, 2023). The values, expectations, and questions this generation is bringing to the workplace are not temporary and the organisations treating them as such are already losing ground in the competition for early-career talent.
The leaders who are building high-performance cultures that work across generations have stopped asking ‘how do we get Gen Z to fit the system?’ and started asking ‘which parts of the system are genuinely worth defending, and which were never as effective as we assumed?’
That second question is more demanding: it requires leaders to examine long-held assumptions with the same intellectual rigour they apply to strategic and commercial decisions. But from my position, sitting at the intersection of early-career experience and senior leadership dialogue, it is the only question that leads somewhere productive.
The organisations willing to ask it are the ones building environments where the best talent, at every level, chooses to stay.
If you are reflecting on how these themes are playing out in your own organisation, or considering your next step in your career, we are always open to a confidential conversation.
Our team at Livingston James works closely with organisations and individuals across the UK to support with executive search leadership advisory services. Whether you are shaping a team or considering your next move, contact our team: [email protected] | Contact our Consultants.
References
Deloitte (2025) Gen Z and Millennial Survey. Available at: https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/issues/work/content/genz-millennialsurvey.html (Accessed: June 2026).
Katz, R. (2024) ‘Eight things to expect from Gen Z coworkers’, Stanford Report, February. Available at: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/02/8-things-expect-gen-z-coworker (Accessed: June 2026).
LinkedIn (2023) ‘Majority of Gen Z would quit their jobs over company values’, CNBC, April. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/20/majority-of-gen-z-would-quit-their-jobs-over-company-values-linkedin.html (Accessed: June 2026).
McKinsey & Company (2023) Gen Z and the Future of Work. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/gen-z-and-the-future-of-work (Accessed: June 2026).
Rethinking the Gen Z Debate: What Leaders Are Missing
Gen Z is widely discussed in the context of work, yet much of that commentary fails to capture the full picture.
In this piece, Neave Cadenhead, Research Associate at Livingston James, offers a dual perspective shaped by both lived experience and close work with senior leaders across the UK. Writing from this vantage point, she moves beyond generalisations to explore the real drivers of the disconnect between Gen Z and leadership, and what organisations getting this right are doing differently.
There is no shortage of commentary on Generation Z (Gen Z) in the workplace, and most of it misses the point.
As a 22-year-old researcher at Livingston James who identifies and engages senior executive talent across the UK, I occupy an unusual vantage point: I am a member of the generation being debated, in a role that places me close enough to senior leadership conversations to see how the perception gap plays out in practice. Keen not to publish another generalisation, I wanted to add to the conversation by sharing a view on what is actually happening and what leaders who are getting this right are doing differently.
The Expectation Gap
Much of the tension between Gen Z and senior leadership does not stem from laziness or entitlement, it stems from a fundamental mismatch in assumptions about what work is and what it is for.
For many people in leadership roles today, work has historically been the organising principle of adult life. Commitment was demonstrated through visibility and time: arriving early, staying late, paying dues, and trusting that progression would follow. That was the understood contract, and for many it delivered.
Gen Z entered the workforce with a different contract in mind – not a lesser one but a different one. For Gen Z, work is understood as one dimension of life, not its centre. Flexibility is not a reward to be earned over years of service, but a baseline expectation. Output and impact are the relevant measures of contribution, not hours logged or physical presence accumulated.
Research data supports this. Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, which surveyed more than 23,000 respondents across 44 countries, found that work-life balance is consistently the top consideration for Gen Z when choosing an employer (Deloitte, 2025). LinkedIn’s research reinforces the stakes: 72% of Gen Z employees reported having left or considered leaving a job due to an inflexible work policy, a higher proportion than any other generation (LinkedIn, 2023).
This plays out in familiar flashpoints: debates around hybrid working, questions about progression timelines, conversations about four-day week models. In executive conversations, I frequently hear these framed as Gen Z expecting reward without the graft, but consider the question being asked from the other side: why should time served outweigh impact delivered? That question deserves a more considered response than it typically receives.
Neither position is unreasonable. These are two internally coherent worldviews in collision, and resolving the tension requires leaders to engage with both seriously, rather than dismissing one as immaturity.
The Trust Deficit
A perspective that often goes overlooked is that Gen Z’s attitude towards work didn’t emerge in isolation; it was shaped, in large part, by watching what happened to the generation ahead of us.
As research from Stanford highlights, Gen Z came of age in the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis, a period in which people who had done everything expected of them lost jobs, pensions, and financial security regardless (Katz, 2024). The implicit promise of the employment contract, that sustained commitment would be met with sustained stability, was visibly broken before many of us were old enough to enter that contract. As Deloitte’s Chief People Officer Elizabeth Faber noted in the 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, “Gen Zs and millennials began their careers amid a pandemic and financial crisis – events that shaped their values around work-life balance, meaningful work, and financial stability” (Deloitte, 2025).
Then came the Covid-19 pandemic. A significant proportion of Gen Z entered the workforce during or immediately after a period that fundamentally reset assumptions about where, when, and how productive work happens. We observed that offices could close overnight and organisations could continue to function. We saw flexibility, long positioned as a discretionary benefit, prove operationally viable at scale. And then, as conditions stabilised, we watched many of those same organisations move to reverse what had been demonstrated as possible.
What reads as entitlement is, in many cases, something more rational: a generation that witnessed the old employment deal fracture in real time and is therefore unwilling to accept it uncritically. That is not a character flaw, it is a reasonable response to available evidence.
The Irony Leaders Need to Hear
In my role, I spend a significant amount of time helping organisations articulate what they want in a leader. One phrase comes up consistently – they want someone who will challenge the status quo. Someone who asks the uncomfortable question and does not simply accept the way things have always been done.
It is, genuinely, one of the most sought-after qualities in senior talent, which makes the contrast at the junior level all the more apparent.
When a 24-year-old asks why the current operating model has remained unchanged for over a decade, or makes an evidence-based case for a different way of working, or declines to accept a rigid working-hours policy without understanding its rationale, that same quality is rarely celebrated. It is managed, quietly discouraged and filed under attitude rather than potential.
I am not suggesting that every challenge is valid, or that experience and institutional knowledge do not carry real value; they do, but organisations cannot hold intellectual courage as a leadership virtue and a junior liability simultaneously. The best young talent figures that out quickly. Once they have, the decision about whether to stay rarely goes the way the organisation would hope. LinkedIn’s research makes the scale of this visible: 87% of Gen Z professionals say they would leave their current employer for one whose values were more closely aligned, a higher proportion than any other generation in the workforce (LinkedIn, 2023).
What Effective Leadership Looks Like in Practice
The leaders and organisations navigating this well are not capitulating to every demand. They are doing something more deliberate: interrogating their own assumptions about what actually drives the outcomes they care about, rather than defaulting to how things have historically been done.
They are asking whether full-time office presence genuinely delivers the performance benefits they assume, or whether it has become a proxy for trust. They are translating progression criteria into clear, specific milestones rather than leaving ambiguous signals such as ‘you’ll know when you’re ready’ as the primary guidance. They are creating genuine space for challenge, not performative openness, in which a junior employee questioning an established process is treated as useful input rather than a disciplinary matter.
Critically, they are also being transparent with Gen Z about the realities that do not change. That certain things take time, that professional relationships are built across years rather than months, and that there is no substitute for some forms of accumulated experience. The most effective leaders do not pretend these trade-offs do not exist, they explain them directly, and in doing so build the credibility to be heard.
The result is not a frictionless environment, but one in which the friction serves a productive purpose.
A Challenge for Senior Leaders
If you are a senior leader engaging with these questions, the evidence from organisations getting this right points to a clear reframe.
Gen Z is not a transitional workforce phenomenon that will self-correct once people have financial commitments and broader responsibilities. McKinsey’s research projects that Gen Z will represent approximately 30% of the global workforce by 2030 (McKinsey & Company, 2023). The values, expectations, and questions this generation is bringing to the workplace are not temporary and the organisations treating them as such are already losing ground in the competition for early-career talent.
The leaders who are building high-performance cultures that work across generations have stopped asking ‘how do we get Gen Z to fit the system?’ and started asking ‘which parts of the system are genuinely worth defending, and which were never as effective as we assumed?’
That second question is more demanding: it requires leaders to examine long-held assumptions with the same intellectual rigour they apply to strategic and commercial decisions. But from my position, sitting at the intersection of early-career experience and senior leadership dialogue, it is the only question that leads somewhere productive.
The organisations willing to ask it are the ones building environments where the best talent, at every level, chooses to stay.
If you are reflecting on how these themes are playing out in your own organisation, or considering your next step in your career, we are always open to a confidential conversation.
Our team at Livingston James works closely with organisations and individuals across the UK to support with executive search leadership advisory services. Whether you are shaping a team or considering your next move, contact our team: [email protected] | Contact our Consultants.
References
Deloitte (2025) Gen Z and Millennial Survey. Available at: https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/issues/work/content/genz-millennialsurvey.html (Accessed: June 2026).
Katz, R. (2024) ‘Eight things to expect from Gen Z coworkers’, Stanford Report, February. Available at: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/02/8-things-expect-gen-z-coworker (Accessed: June 2026).
LinkedIn (2023) ‘Majority of Gen Z would quit their jobs over company values’, CNBC, April. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/20/majority-of-gen-z-would-quit-their-jobs-over-company-values-linkedin.html (Accessed: June 2026).
McKinsey & Company (2023) Gen Z and the Future of Work. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/gen-z-and-the-future-of-work (Accessed: June 2026).
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