CEOs, let's reimagine connection in the workplace.

In the last month, I took part in a panel discussion about Quiet quitting during the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. It is a fast-changing world for workers and I am struck that we, as leaders, are engaging in many of the appropriate questions. how to balance the benefits and drawbacks of working remotely as well as the opportunities and risks that are presented with AI as well as the need to build better and more sustainable companies.

But one question is worthy of more attention: if the workforce of our generation is evolving technologically the way we conduct business, post-pandemic behaviours and expectations are changing...don't our leaders have to adapt?

There's an entire Generation of Digital Natives who are entering the work force. They have grown up making and sharing videos instead of making calls or texts or texting, and they think of TikTok or YouTube the best sources for information. When it comes to their private lives, they are hyper-connected as well as extremely active.

Yet in their work lives there's a completely different picture. There are significant reductions in the level of engagement and satisfaction in remote Gen Z and younger millennials. A mere four percent of youngsters who work remotely or in hybrid settings understand what's expected of them when they work, and more than half Gen Z employees are ambivalent or aren't engaged in their workplace. If we view employee engagement as the most important indicator for workforce productivity This has enormous consequences for all businesses and for every company's profit.

What's causing this disconnection? At work, as well as in our lives, we all want to be part of something greater than ourselves. We have an innate need for belonging, to feel an identity that is transparent, unfiltered, and human. However, the more our population becomes digitally distributed and AI-enabled and ad-hoc, the harder it is to feel a genuine connection every day. Particularly when we haven't evolved the way we interact to meet the next generation. It is still common for us to ask employees to digest dense documentation or write lengthy emails as well as attend boring gatherings. We learn about layoffs as well as company priorities through comms so scripted and robotic that they could be created through ChatGPT. Our only insight as executives have is through surveys of engagement that are cookie-cutter and live events that have lower tune-ins and higher drop-off rates, and the occasionally snarky chat or Q&A.

The traditional managerial model is not working for us. We must change the way we as leaders show up and communicate with our employees. Just as we are focused on reskilling our workforce in the face of changes in population size, demographics and technology trends, we also need to upgrade our skills as leaders to better create trust and connections on a scale.

I've tried a lot of this over the last several years . Below are some of the techniques I've been learning and applying and believe will assist us in presenting differently and more efficiently lead:

 1. Realize who you are, and be yourself.

At the start of the epidemic, I participated in an international town hall from my home located in Flint, Michigan -- sleep deprived, wearing my pajamas made of velour, and my son, who is a toddler, and my grandmother shuffled through the background.

Perhaps it was my most successful communication in my life.

Why? because it wasn't scripted chaotic, vulnerable, and messy. It's easy to fall into "us against us versus them" interactions when we work at a company, particularly when we are under stress or the need to overcome. It's simple to imagine "leadership" as an unnamed and faceless machine. Making sure that you are video-first when communicating can be a potent deterrent. It forces you to remove the protection and mask of the written or edited communication. One of the best ways to make it clear is to appear exactly as you do.

In the end, there are definitely examples of leaders being vulnerable and it backfiring...but I suspect in most instances, the issue was that it was too performative. It is important to allow to allow that part of you to make mistakes in front of your team. Our flaws make us humans. And we all want to see our leaders to be courageous. It inspires us to emulate them even more.

 2. Start by asking "why ."

As with many other leaders I've had to take difficult decisions over the course of the year. In the past, I've made executive decisions and laidoffs to re-organizing and shutting down initiatives in order to increase efficiency. My job is to take the tough decisions, which are not popular and implement changes quickly across our organization.

In a growing number of cases, employees are craving transparency behind these choices - not only the "what" but also the "why". This includes a desire to comprehend the larger competition or market context, the trade-offs considered and balanced, as well as the process that was used and at what time.

The conventional comms strategy will say that when you're faced with an issue that requires critical communication with limited time, start by asking the "what" before getting right to the core and the necessary actions. However, I've been more successful in getting people to embrace a difficult decision when I treat my employees as the key participants who need to be aware of the circumstances.

Therefore, starting with "why" is a first principle for all comms at . There will always be constraints to being fully transparent (legal or PR-related, management, risk to the customer), but I've found that most of the time perceived obstacles to transparency can be described as. Perceived. People will not always agree with your decision-making, but I could argue that if they disagree they are not performing your job. They will however appreciate and accept your choices by starting with the reason behind it.

 3. Spend money on in-person meetings to get to know each other better.

Yes, I recognize the irony in the chief executive of a company that produces videos saying this. But one of my biggest experiences over the past few months was that we had were too slow and not intentional enough in bringing the teams we have in the real world.

In the month of January, one week after announcing layoffs, we held a kickoff for our company in NYC. We flew in employees from over twelve nations. We had employees based in Ukraine who took trains or planes to get there. We eschew the usual event party confetti, and went with a low-key vibe on a budget. This was among the most energizing and needed choices I've put into.

The power is enhanced in the event that, as leaders you travel and visit your team wherever they are. I have a fully distributed executive team spread across eight locations that range from Seattle to Switzerland. Most were hired in the past year, so we the team is still in its early stages, and we are just starting to become a cohesive team. To help accelerate this gelling the team, we began hosting offsites for each leader's home city. We hung out with our CFO's mom at her fireplace in Vermont. The Head of Sales donned his apron and made us frittatas for breakfast. The group worked at our Head of Product's dining table.

The epidemic gave us the ability to see into people's home and life. If we can tap into this, and incorporate it into our day-to-day it is possible to form more cohesive and better-performing teams.

 4. Go between "lean back" to "lean forward" experiences.

An essential communication ability will soon be the ability to develop "lean forward" experiences instead of "lean back" broadcasts. We humans have focus spans are shrinking (now less than the eight-second mark which is less than the length of the length of a goldfish!). But we continue to communicate by one-to-many communications, either via an email that you open or an elaborate town hall that you sit and watch.

We can see this burden on engagement appearing in our own data and the amount of time to stop watching a video has decreased over the past couple of years. If we don't change our strategy, the practice of letting people tune out is going to seriously hamper our capability to ensure that our teams are aligned and productive.

The key here is shifting our thinking and openness to different things. The new generation is that is entering the workforce and have a head start on us with their ability to create and capture rich and authentic data. They're ahead of us because they're free from the restrictions that we experienced for decades in traditional working environments.

The truth is that employees don't leave jobs; they let managers go. Well, CEOs are the best managers. And as per an survey of over 113,000 leaders, the number one factor for effective leader is the trust of their employees. We as leaders must show ourselves how to show up in more authentic, interesting and reliable ways. I'm betting that CEOs who embrace this brave new world will be more effective in leading the future generation of employees. They'll be better informed and involve teams distributed across the globe as well as align employees to achieve better outcomes and build long-lasting relationships that produce outstanding work. They'll cease communicating and communicate more effectively.