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 ?

But presumably you were not promoted as a result of refusing tasks within your working hours and job description which came in as a high priority from the department.

Nobody was being asked to do overtime or work outside of their role. They were being asked to prioritise a particular task by the head of department, responsible for department performance.

Weren't OP and the CEO in the meeting and in order to complete the meeting successfully CEO needed info NOW NOW NOW, and OP (junior to CEO, but senior to everyone else relevant) left the meeting very briefly to get an admin person to do admin in working hours. Before having to do it themselves due to entitled Gen Z being lazy or skiving, thus resulting in a less productive meeting on a life and death matter.

Everything in your thread suggests that you’re an appalling manager of people.

genuine question, having spent a fair amount of time around hospitals, why do they effectively become the Marie Celeste from 17.00 Friday to 08.00 Monday? wouldn't it be better for everyone just to keep on going all the time.

And you assume he had no other urgent tasks to do in his last working hour of the week? It's unlikely he had a clear desk and was just twiddling his thumbs.

And was there no one else at his level with the access you needed? Seems like a system that relies on one junior admin for urgent access to life-or-death data needs rethinking. If this issue had come up two hours later he would have gone - who wiuld you have messaged then?

I would imagine most Drs. would be bad managers, with no disrespect to them, it's not in their skillset, and frankly, as a taxpayer funding the NHS I want the clinical staff treating patients, not managing people.

Lol, yes.

Anyway I would definitely be doing something as a result of this.

From the outside it looks like either there is a minor procedure issue which could presumably be easily resolved by clarifying lines of command to anyone who is confused about what a hierarchy is and why it's important (more people than you might think if this thread is anything to go by).

Or this guy has some serious explaining to do. He may have misunderstood the request or have been snowed under already with even more urgent requests. In which case he should have made that clear.

Or he's unprofessional and perhaps a piss taker.

My bet is that he had already left for the weekend.

Well I’m a retired Gen X ‘senior leadership’ / C suite type, since titles and hierarchy seems to be important, and knowing that timeline I have a degree of sympathy with the employee.

Put yourself in their shoes…they have agreement from their manager to leave at 16:00, but presumably still have a relatively normal workload to deal with. I’m guessing the agreement to leave at 16:00 was earlier than their normal end time, though it doesn’t actually make any difference. With an hour and a half to go an additional task which you say was 15 minutes but, let’s face it, could have been been more, comes along which in their judgement they didn’t have time to complete.

If it really was 15 minutes and nothing else they had to do was time critical then yes, their approach was inflexible. But if dropping something they did have to do to achieve what you wanted was going to have knock on consequences on other tasks and people, causing more hassle to sort out then I understand his reticence.

It seem to me that your failure as a leader was that you didn’t effectively communicate why you needed what you needed in the timeframe you needed it, or to establish what problems the request was going to cause him or others, and to subsequently to find a solution to those so that your task could be completed.

If you’d bothered to find out what he was working on for his manager and found a solution to that…along the lines of “ah that bit can wait until next week, I’ll clear it with ‘managers name’ “ then you would probably have got what you wanted.

Indeed, and if the poor chap didn't get his work done he might have got into trouble.

The OP was able to get the data herself, so clearly the clinicians, as you would expect have access themselves.

This is a case of a (probably very busy) Dr failing to get the information she needed for her meeting ahead of time, and for whatever reason not being able to access it in real time during the meeting.

then added that he was logging off shortly for a long weekend which had been pre-agreed

Most people would be quite pissed off if they were asked to do an urgent task within an hour of them leaving for their weekend.

You've drip-fed a lot of key facts since your original post, which is why so many people have had a go at you.

Nevertheless, maybe you should have just told your boss that it can wait until you're out of your meeting (and really, you shouldn't be picking up messages anyway as you're in a meeting). Unless it's something life-saving or to do with national infrastructure, very few urgent things are actually urgent, although every CEO or senior manager likes to think their requests are. I'm wondering how often this sort of thing happens within your organisation.

@Amy8 you're making yourself look really bad with these sort of comments.

If this is genuinely about your development, then I'd recommend that firstly you accept that younger staff will often push back and question you in a way older staff might not. Because of the difference in upbringing and norms I commented on earlier in the thread.
After that, I think you need to become very clear about the extent of your right to insist and how far the law supports your staff if you do and they refuse or complain.
You need to have a good understanding of their contracts and your policies, and their employment rights.
Had you insisted here, your staff member may have had grounds for a grievance against you, as he had already had his time off agreed.
Should you pull him up on his push back, he would be within his rights to complain about conflicting instruction from two seniors and that no one told him your instruction overrode his line manager.
In a nutshell, young staff who are assertive and confident with you very often know their rights and are not shy about enforcing them.
So to manage them you need to take your big boots off and accept you're not all powerful. Learn the extent of your power, and when there's push back, think ahead, if I do this, am i 'safe' or will they have cause for complaint.
In all truth, it makes you a better manager, because then don't just decide you're fair, you're checking yourself.

I’m not in medicine and all my juniors and managers know that sometimes something urgent comes in which needs prioritising over inflight tasks.

The brutal reality is that my time is worth more than theirs, my expertise is greater than theirs and I’m accountable for a geographic unit whilst they get to clock off and go home at the end of the day. I know when something needs to be accelerated and prioritised - juniors don't. That is the nature of work. In years to come, they will be the people with the wider visibility and responsibility best place to make such decisions.

Nobody here is being asked to do overtime or something outside their day job. They are simply being asked by their HoD to do urgent task A instead of less urgent task B.

They are refusing to follow a direct request within their skillset in an urgent situation. The correct answer would have been “I’m doing task B as per Y request, does this take priority?” They then crack on with whichever is more important according to the person who actually knows.

Let's face it. Half of the people responding here either have not read even all of your posts, or they don't understand what you've written.

Some others are so busy pontificating how wonderful they are and how they "won't take no shit", but hey, I'd like a raise to 200K/year. Then you have some going off on how they would never ever ask someone that works for them to do something without a work order in triplicate, an okay from a line manager (who I guess you bother while he is on annual leave) and a pledge of love from the PM.

But, the biggest red flag for me is how many STILL haven't read the posts, understood the posts or outright make up their own scenarios of what happened.

I'm reading all of this fantasy crap coming off some poster's fingers, and I swear I fell down the rabbit hole and I'm about to meet the Cheshire Cat!

WAY too many reality checks have bounced and Abbott and Costello made more sense with their "Who's on First?" routine.

Good luck OP!

I really think he was out!

Why I hate Teams chat for managing work.

There's nothing better than a very expressive silence on a phone call to get your point across.

Try reading the OP’s posts before making up fantasies.

100% agree.

I’m a non clinical senior manager in the NHS and also recognise your pain @Amy8. We have young administrators and also graduate trainees who don’t seem to understand that 99% of our jobs are firefighting and that when we have a crisis - in our case hospitals with patients in the corridor, mental health patients with no psychiatric beds available, stroke and coronary care beds all full, ambulances stacked up at A&E and the inevitable IG crash….then it’s all hands on deck and if I am asking for data relating to something, then I need it now, this minute because I’ll be in a call with the CEOs of all the hospitals in the region trying to find a solution that doesn’t put patients at risk. I therefore want that information now, this minute and not have people negotiate or argue with me or try to get someone else to do it, or whinge that it isn’t their job…..all of which seems to happen on a regular basis these days.

This!!!
Imagine the poor person rushing around trying to get to the airport/get all their stuff in the car, etc, panicking because they stayed late to help out with something that wasn’t their job. It would make the start of their break feel unenjoyable and rushed. Fair enough, if you had the time and you had asked your direct line manager if it was ok to divert from your job list to help out then yeah, I would help out. But gone are the days of kissing someone’s arse because they are more senior than you. Most of the time it doesn’t lead to promotion, it leads to being taken advantage of and burnout. I’ve been there!!

Thank you

I just thought I was the only one ! I have no time for patients anymore - because of all this bs

Lots of additional information available which means I strongly agree with the (senior boss) OP.

The request was for something that was part of the junior staff member's core job. He could complete it quickly and easily before his agreed home time. OP couldn't go through the junior's boss, as they were on holiday.

It's worrying that some young people seem so much less enthusiastic and eager to impress than earlier cohorts. Boundaries at work are sensible, but I would hope for a bit of flexibility and political 'nous' when dealing with someone senior.

As a graduate recruit I was once sent out by a very Senior Manager to choose and bring back a selection of silk ties from the local M&S Men's Department. He'd suffered an unfortunate egg stain, and was due to meet our biggest client. All the ties worn by his junior male colleagues had already been rejected as ugly/inadequate.

I was oddly chuffed to be trusted with something so important by the Big Boss. And delighted when he kept all of the three ties that I'd brought back so he had a choice. Different times!

Well it certainly looks that way.

Or he's weirdly unprofessional / very young and inexperienced.

Even if you are a bit of a slacker you would be mad to refuse an urgent request from the boss on a Friday afternoon when you had requested an earlier finish!

If that were me my weekend would be ruined because I'd be expecting a meeting with HR on Monday to discuss my ability to manage my home working days...

@C8H10N4O2 I tried that a number of times in my last chaotic workplace, where we would get emails mid-week telling us that a task (which is mostly out of our main job scope), was URGENT.

What I got back was fluffy answers and a serious reluctance to actually tell us what we should have been prioritising. Instead, they clearly preferred us to make that decision on their behalf, because they didn't want to be accountable for 'y' not being delivered because the senior leadership URGENTLY wanted 'x' doing by the end of Friday.

This lack of accountability, organisation, and good leadership was widespread was my workplace, sadly, which is part of the reason why I left.

In my working life, I've found that good managers and leaders are rare, and the roles naturally tend to attract very confident people with an over-inflated sense of their own skills, and those who enjoy power-tripping over others.