What Managers Misunderstand About Gen Z at Work

Every generation gets called lazy and entitled by the one that came before it. It was said about Gen Xers. It was said about millennials. Now it's being said about Gen Z — and it's no more true this time than it was the last two.

That's according to Bruce Tulgan, one of the leading voices in generational workplace research and a guest on Season 5, Episode 36 of What's Working with Cam Marston ("Leading Gen Z Expert Tells Us What to Expect from This Next Workforce," Sep. 5, 2022). Tulgan's research points to something more useful than a stereotype: Gen Z isn't lazy or self-entitled, they're reacting rationally to the world they grew up in.

Why Gen Z manages differently than you expect

Gen Z — people born roughly 1997 or later — came of age through 9/11's aftermath, a global financial crisis, and a pandemic that shut down the normal path from school to career. Older generations were taught that hard work and loyalty to an employer would be rewarded over time. Gen Z watched that promise fail to hold for the people around them.

"They look around and think: silly grown-up, don't you see how uncertain the world is? When you start realizing that institutions are not stable and long-term vesting rewards are not secure, then you naturally start thinking more short-term and transactional."

That's not a character flaw. It's a rational response to instability — and it means the leadership style that worked on previous generations often won't work on this one.

What Gen Z employees actually need from a manager

Tulgan's research points to a specific shift: successfully managing Gen Z requires what he calls high-maintenance leadership. Not because they're difficult, but because they've learned early that self-reliance is the safer bet — and if a job doesn't feel like the right fit, they won't hesitate to leave it, or worse, quietly disengage from it while staying.

Five things Tulgan recommends managers actually do:

1. Be patient. Becoming a mature professional takes time — don't expect instant fluency.
2. Be upfront about the downside of the job. Gen Z would rather know the hard parts going in than discover them later and feel misled.
3. Build a real onboarding process. One-on-one meetings with supervisors and colleagues, not a "sink or swim" start.
4. Connect the work to a mission. Gen Z wants to understand why the work matters, not just what to do.
5. Hand them off to an engaged leader. The relationship with their direct manager matters more to retention than almost anything else.

Tulgan's practical bottom line:

"Work is a day-to-day transaction. If you want people to get on board and up to speed quickly, you've got to help them. If you want them to give you discretionary extra performance — you've got to help them."

The takeaway for leaders

The instinct to write off a younger generation as entitled has shown up with every generational handoff in the workplace — and it's been wrong every time. The managers who get the best out of Gen Z aren't the ones who complain about them. They're the ones who adjust their approach: patient onboarding, honest expectations, and a real connection to purpose.

That's the same pattern that shows up across every generational shift I've studied in 25 years of working with organizations on this exact problem — the specifics change, but the fix is almost always leadership adjustment, not employee correction.