Managing Gen Z

[Amy8]

I’m an experienced senior manager who took some time out to work as a consultant – partly to avoid exactly these kinds of situations!

Something happened last week that’s made me question my management style, which I’ve always thought was fair. The CEO asked me (quite urgently) to get something done. I was in a meeting, so I asked a junior team member to help out. It would’ve been easier to just do it myself, but I genuinely needed the support.

He replied that he needed to check with his line manager first because it wasn’t in his work plan (I manage his manager), and then added that he was logging off shortly for a long weekend which had been pre-agreed.

I stayed polite on Teams and explained that sometimes we have to be reactive to senior requests — but honestly, inside I was thinking, just do it! At his age, I’d have just cracked on.

It’s not the first time I’ve had this kind of pushback — others in the team (same age group) have also been quite firm about working from home and not wanting to come in when asked.

I’m genuinely wondering: is this just how the workplace is now — a generational shift and new boundaries — or is it a bit of a disregard for authority and should I be adapting better ?

You should have asked his manager to delegate it to a junior member of staff who had the time to complete the task. You can’t expect people to miss their holidays just because you say so.

The OP has already said it was during working hours.

His manager was on holiday. It was during working hours.

I’m not in a clinical setting and I’d have been just as frustrated at a junior playing jobsworth during working hours in an urgent client situation.

I would be questioning their suitability as well.

I think you are getting a hard time here OP.

Yes, the new generation of workers will be need to be managed a different way, as they have different expectations of both the workplace / employers and their own self worth / capabilities and the perceived level of entitlement at what an employer should do for them / should behave.

We are currently in the middle of a once in a generation workplace shift.

This can make life exceptionally challenging for senior managers whose own life / works experience saw them have to operate a different way in their early careers and who are often being given challenging targets to meet, which means their teams / people have to deliver.

Will this make UK plc more efficient and financially productive in the long term? Who knows … but in the short term, the current UK workplace is a challenging place to me, especially for ‘managers’.

So this was a life or death situation? And you, as a senior manager, do not have quick access to a system that needs to be accessed to save a life? You're either lying in your comments to strengthen your case, which I had already thought was happening in previous comments, or you have a very dangerous system in place.

cancer ward

Lying !?? I did have access, I got it done.

Have reported this as a personal attack

This whole thread is about you pulling rank!

Do you know how work works? Yes, when people are more senior they have the final say. That is how it works. And in this case that included asking someone to do their literal job within work hours because of an urgent need. Someone whose immediate reaction was to say no.

Now, if you are in a situation where there is a good reason for saying no, that is one thing. No one should agree to do something illegal or immoral. But in this case, no reason was but forward which justified him not doing the task. Going off for the weekend in 2 hours time and wanting to talk to his line manager who he must have known was away were not sufficient.

I work in a clinical field, where part of my job is supervising people new to the profession. Most of the time, we have colleagial discussions and explorations about what is going on. But on the occasions where it is appropriate, I have to tell them how to do something and it must be done that way. It is not open to discussion or disagreement - I am the senior clinican and have more experience and insight that they do - in time, they will be in the same situation, and hopefully helping the people coming up behind them.

The Op has already said she was in a meeting and couldn’t access the system directly.

Therefore she pinged one of her own juniors, who manages the system, within working hours with an urgent request. He refused that request.

I’m longing to know where people work that this level of rigidity and jobsworth behaviour is the norm, but it explains a lot about the UK’s chronic productivity problems and the dysfunctionality in the NHS.

Oh finally someone in the same field ! I can’t go into too much specifics as to the meeting I was in and what was happening exactly as I respect the cases we were discussing , but I think that’s come off as I’m drip feeding or worse - lying!

This is true everywhere. I run my practice, I know what is critical and what isn’t, I’m accountable if something goes wrong. If I tell a junior to change task for an urgent situation I expect them to do it, not tell me they will discuss it with my other junior when they return from holiday.

Well 1st of all she said she "couldn't access the system" and the said she "did the task herself" so clearly she did have access. I'm not sure the OP has been entirely truthful with some of her comments and now comes across as a bit vindictive. Maybe if she dropped the "I'm-big-you're-little-and-there's-nothing-you can-do-about-it" tone that (if her posts are anything to go by), she has, then maybe, just maybe, the junior would have been glad to help out.

You, at 0747:

I literally don’t have access to the system as he’s an administrator- it was quicker and it’s his job

You then did have access as you did it yourself. I’ve agreed with a lot of your points on this thread but starting to find you and your love of hierarchy bordering on ‘throwing your weight around’ for the sake of it. As I posted earlier, if I was in the middle of an urgent discussion which required data, I’d have pulled it up so that I could contribute both my expertise and evidence to said discussion.

Sadly it is the nhs but some of us are just trying to make decisions with little or no staff/ resource . It’s not pulling rank but getting the best out of situations that should have better funding - that’s out of my hands as a dr

Yeah I brought up the same contradiction several pages ago.

I didn’t have access in the meeting - I had to leave it to get the data which was informing the discussion based on an urgent case that had just come in

You’ve made a lot of effort in discrediting me and trying to find inconsistency - just don’t get that level of vindictiveness as I’m not trying to argue with you, It was all about whether this is the norm and what’s to be expected now of Gen z

Hardly any effort, thanks to the ‘read all’ facility and the facts that I’ve been a regular contributor to your thread all morning, and I have a memory.

You do grasp that its possible to have access to a system but not all the time? eg when in a meeting (which is the situation the OP describes). In which case you pass an urgent request to someone who is sat behind their screen during working hours and able to complete the task.

You’re doing it again. You’ve been told multiple times that you’re handling this wrong, and you’re just arguing about why you’re right because you said so.

You might be “senior”, as you keep telling everyone, but you are wrong. Take a look at yourself!

Yes that was the nature of the meeting and circumstances- but apparently as a senior you have to be everywhere all the time

Just to reflect for the hard of thinking. OP is a doctor who works with cancer in a clinical meeting to discuss patient care, who asked someone whose job it is to manage a system to do something which he refused to do because he was going off for the weekend in 2 HOURS TIME. And people are giving her a hard time.

Probably the same people complaining about poor care in the NHS.

What should I have done ?

Am I allowed to use my seniority to demand urgent data within working hours from someone in my team
I am not his “line”
manager but I am his boss - ultimately the buck stops with me as to his role and tasks , he wasn’t doing anything more important

I was doing the most important thing that afternoon