Leading Gen Z and Gen Alpha in the Workplace: Rethinking Feedback and Resilience

Younger generations bring creativity and purpose — but they need leaders who adapt their coaching style.

Across businesses, many leaders are quietly asking the same question: why do my younger team members respond so differently to pressure? Gen Z and Gen Alpha bring energy, creativity and a sense of purpose – yet traditional feedback often falls flat. Is this because they’re fragile or entitled? Or are we misreading a mismatch between the leadership styles we learned and the expectations they grew up with?

It’s tempting to lump these cohorts together, but their formative experiences differ. Gen Z grew up during the rise of social media, the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. Gen Alpha is shaped by AI‑powered learning and safety‑conscious parenting. Nearly half of Gen Zs report feeling stressed or anxious most of the time. They’re “algorithm natives” who have been liked, followed and rated since childhood. If we assume they lack resilience, we ignore how different their world has been.

Jonathan Haidt describes a “fragility paradox”: young people may appear confident online yet freeze when challenged face‑to‑face. The very systems designed to protect them – constant supervision, delayed independence, therapeutic overcorrection and screen‑first socialisation – can erode opportunities to build resilience. This isn’t a character flaw. It’s a developmental reality that demands a change in how we coach and lead.

That change starts with acknowledging the “feedback fluency gap”. Younger workers know the language of feelings but may not distinguish discomfort from danger or criticism from attack. Tone, pace and framing matter. Traditional coaching often focuses on what went wrong, delivered quickly and bluntly. Leading Gen Z and Gen Alpha in the workplace means recognising, that effective leadership looks different: set expectations early and normalise feedback, ask if they’re ready before you offer input, frame feedback around curiosity and self‑reflection, share your own learning moments, introduce stretch goals gradually and balance care with challenge.

If we’re honest, leading the next generation is as much about unlearning as learning. It’s about trading bluntness for clarity, fear for trust and outdated hierarchies for genuine connection. It requires emotional intelligence, flexibility and the humility to learn alongside our teams. That doesn’t mean lowering standards. It means raising our leadership game.

We wrote a full white paper to dig deeper into these ideas and share practical frameworks for building resilience and performance in younger teams. If you’re wrestling with these challenges and want to lead differently, we’d love to hear from you.