#470 Leading Generation Z: Why Credibility, Purpose and Psychological Safety Define Modern Leadership - article by Niels Brabandt
Leading Generation Z: Why Credibility, Purpose and Psychological Safety Define Modern Leadership
By Niels Brabandt
In boardrooms and executive committees across Europe and North America, one sentence is heard with increasing frequency: “Leading Generation Z is difficult.” The statement is usually followed by anecdotes about declining work ethic, rising expectations and a supposed lack of resilience. Yet when examined through the lens of evidence, organisational psychology and labour market realities, a different picture emerges. The real challenge is not a generation that has changed. It is leadership that has not.
The public debate was recently fuelled by a senior executive who declared that Generation Z wanted to “change the world, but not work after 5 p.m.” Such claims, as Niels Brabandt analyses in his latest Leadership Podcast and Videocast, are not only unsupported by research. They also reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of how authority, motivation and trust function in contemporary organisations
Who Generation Z Actually Is
Generation Z comprises those born between 1997 and 2012. In today’s organisations, this means both early career entrants and professionals approaching their thirties, already taking on specialist and leadership responsibilities. To reduce this diverse cohort to a single behavioural stereotype is analytically flawed and strategically dangerous.
For business decision makers, the first imperative is therefore precision. Leadership cannot be built on vague notions of “young people today”. It must be grounded in a clear understanding of demographic realities, career stages and socio economic context.
The End of Authority by Position
One of the most significant shifts identified by Niels Brabandt is the erosion of unquestioned positional authority. In previous decades, hierarchy alone was often sufficient to secure compliance. Today, particularly among Generation Z, authority must be earned through competence, coherence and integrity.
This becomes highly visible in recruiting processes. When organisations rely on pseudo scientific personality tests or arbitrary methods to assess “cultural fit”, they do not merely risk legal or reputational damage. They undermine their own credibility. Well qualified candidates in high demand fields such as technology, engineering or data science simply walk away and often make their experience public. In a transparent labour market, employer branding is no longer controlled by corporate communication departments. It is shaped by the everyday behaviour of leaders and HR professionals.
As Brabandt argues, credibility now outweighs formal power. A title no longer compensates for a lack of methodological rigour, technological literacy or ethical consistency. Leaders who demand excellence but operate with unscientific tools and anecdotal reasoning lose legitimacy in the eyes of a generation trained to question sources and verify claims.
Purpose Beyond Pay
Another defining feature of Generation Z is the centrality of meaning. This is often misinterpreted as idealism or entitlement. In reality, it is a rational response to structural change.
Previous generations entered labour markets characterised by high unemployment and relative economic stability. Work, even if unfulfilling, promised gradual material progress. Property ownership and long term security appeared attainable through effort and loyalty. Today, in many metropolitan regions, housing costs rise faster than incomes, and traditional life milestones are increasingly out of reach. Against this backdrop, the transactional model of work loses its persuasive power.
Generation Z therefore asks a question that leadership must be able to answer: What is the purpose of this organisation beyond profit. What values guide its decisions. How does individual contribution connect to a broader societal or technological mission. Where leaders fail to articulate and embody such meaning, motivation erodes, regardless of salary levels.
Psychological Safety as a Strategic Asset
Perhaps the most underestimated factor in leading Generation Z is psychological safety. In Brabandt’s analysis, this is not a soft issue, but a core performance driver. Psychological safety means that individuals can speak up, challenge assumptions and admit uncertainty without fear of humiliation or retaliation.
Generalising entire age groups as “lazy” or “unwilling to work” violates this principle at its core. It signals that dissent will be met with ridicule and that power is exercised through labelling rather than dialogue. In such environments, talent does not stay. Innovation does not flourish. Risks are hidden instead of managed.
For business decision makers, the implication is clear. Psychological safety is not a cultural luxury. It is a prerequisite for learning, adaptability and sustainable performance in volatile markets.
Situational Awareness and Economic Reality
Effective leadership of Generation Z also requires situational awareness. The promise that “hard work will automatically lead to a better life” no longer holds universally. Rising living costs, volatile career paths and global uncertainty shape expectations and risk assessments.
Ignoring these realities and appealing to narratives from a different economic era creates a credibility gap. Leaders who demonstrate an understanding of these structural conditions, and who address them through transparent communication, fair policies and realistic career development, are far more likely to gain commitment.
Diversity as Competitive Advantage
Finally, the debate around Generation Z is inseparable from the broader question of diversity. Organisations that exclude or marginalise younger cohorts cut themselves off from future markets, technologies and customer expectations. Marketing, sales and product development become increasingly disconnected from societal trends.
Intergenerational diversity is therefore not a matter of political correctness. It is a strategic necessity. It enables organisations to translate experience into relevance and innovation into sustainable growth.
Leadership Reconsidered
The conclusion drawn by Niels Brabandt is both demanding and optimistic. Leading Generation Z is not about lowering standards or abandoning performance orientation. It is about redefining leadership around three pillars: credibility instead of mere authority, purpose instead of pure transaction, and psychological safety instead of fear based control.
For board members, executives and senior leaders, this represents a call to self reflection. The question is no longer whether a new generation is willing to adapt to old leadership models. The question is whether leadership is willing to evolve to remain legitimate in a knowledge based, transparent and highly competitive world.
Those who do will not only succeed in leading Generation Z. They will future proof their organisations. Those who do not may continue to complain about a “difficult generation”, while the most capable talent quietly chooses to work elsewhere
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
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Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
Leading Generation Z. And when you now think, "Oh, yeah, it's a bit painful, isn't it?" Well, is it? You probably have Generation Z in your organization. Most likely you have. And this episode today is based on what we recently experienced on LinkedIn. Someone who owns a company who is on C-level—he's not the owner, he's a C-level executive there—posted, and I quote, "Gen Z wants to change the world, but no work after 5 p.m. or 5:30 p.m."
Niels Brabandt
That was, of course, immediately one of these typical rage bait postings, which, of course, is far away from scientific evidence, is far away from reality, and of course has nothing else in mind than simply being controversial. However, I then texted the person who created this posting and said, "I think your agency who is dealing with your LinkedIn profile is not doing too well with posting this because it's harming your employer brand. Or are you actually doing this by yourself?" And then he posted, "No, I'm dealing with this by myself. I did this by myself, and this is my deepest of my deepest belief that Gen Z doesn't work anymore. They do not want to work anymore." And then they told me, "I should go by simple observation rather than science."
Niels Brabandt
Well, if I go by simple observation, I need to tell that leader, "You're definitely not—you're definitely not acting in the right way towards younger people, and they are obviously not safe in your circumstances." And I don't know if this is the picture you wanted to convey here. However, we have quite a number of people out there who say generalizations such as Generation X, Y, Z, Alpha, whatever, do not want to work anymore. And we need to talk about how to lead them properly because the problem, surprise surprise, often—not always, but often—is not with that generation. So now we have to talk about how to lead Generation Z.
Niels Brabandt
When we talk about leading Generation Z, the main issue, of course, here is that often people say, "Well, these people are younger, but I don't exactly know where they are born, when they were born. I just know they are younger." And of course, when you tell about—talk about Gen X, Y, Z, you need to know what you're talking about. So Generation Z is the generation that is born between 1997 and 2012. So yes, well, so oh, 2012, that means, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.
Niels Brabandt
These are the people who very soon will decide, "Where do I want to work in the future? Maybe I want to go to university. Maybe I want to do vocational training." And then I will look at which is the generation where I actually want to work. And quite quickly they will realize, "Maybe I do not want to work where someone from C-level executive suite is yelling on LinkedIn about how young people do not want to work anymore." With no surprise. And by the way, if you now say, "Well, even if we take the in high commas, all the ones born in 1997, even they are now probably at the second or third career step, considering, do I actually want to stay here? Do I actually want to do this for the rest of my life? Do I actually think I have chances to develop properly? And is this an environment where I actually like to stay? What is it that I want to do in life to probably have a certain direction, which I now have to find, and then thrive on that path?"
Niels Brabandt
However, quite often this is widely ignored. And I give you—I give you two examples, which I—I witnessed both of them. So the first one went viral. Someone from Generation Z on Reddit posted an email that they received from HR, and it was about a personality test. They applied as an IT specialist, as someone who works in development, so in high demand, obviously. And then the HR said, "Oh, you have to fill out this personality test because then we can see if the jobs are fit." And this personality test, which I'm not going to discuss here, four letters, many of you will know that personality tests, these personality tests often either four letters, four categories, or you are categorized such as, "Oh, you are the collector, you are the hunter, you are the farmer," or, "You are the monkey, you are the elephant, you are the duck, you are the eagle." All of that anti-science or pseudoscientific nonsense is still around there. And when he said, "I'm not going to fill this out. We can have an interview," they said, "Well, you have to. If you don't fill this out, we're not going to consider you." And what he said was, "Thank you very much." Took the email, published it on all of his social media channels, and walked away. And by the way, three weeks later, he had a job at a different company. And by the way, a better paying job, a higher paying job.
Niels Brabandt
So here we are. So when you still stick to anti-science stuff just because you did it back in the past, and then you can't handle criticism, but you always take anything as a personal attack, then you're probably not doing too well with Generation Z.
Niels Brabandt
And by the way, in my circle of friends, it happened that someone applied for a job, and then they said, "Well, we now have to see if you're a fit culture-wise, if you're open enough for our organization." By the way, that's perfectly fine. Checking for that, for the cultural fit, is very good and very important. And then they—and then, of course, the big curiosity now is, how will you check that? And they said, "Oh, we're going to play a game of taboo." And he then asked, "Is taboo some sort of test, scientific procedure? And the T stands for, and A stands for something else?" And no, no, no, no, it's taboo the card game. And then he asked, "Do you mean the card game of we have one term which I have to describe, and then there are five other words I can't use when describing it?" And they said, "Yeah, yeah, that's exactly the one." And he said, "That's not a scientific approach to finding out if someone is a fit for your organization." And then they said, "Oh, yeah, it is. We made good experiences."
Niels Brabandt
And here I'm quoting Professor Cunning again from the University of Osnabrück. Professor Cunning always says, "When you refer to your own work and you say, 'We made good experiences,' well, you're judging your own work. You're not going to say, 'Well, looking back at my work the last five years, pile of nonsense.' You're not going to get to that conclusion, will you?" So recruiting procedures need to be scientific. Personality tests, there are scientifically proven personality tests, but the ones they used were not scientific. When you use personality tests which are unscientific, you have to expect that people question that, walk away, and make it public, including Glassdoor and Kununu review. And by the way, you can't hold this against them by no means. You are in the wrong, not they are. They are in the right, you are in the wrong. Full stop.
Niels Brabandt
So the recruiting procedures need to be up to date, and they need to be a fit for what really can be proven as something as a scientific approach to find something out. It can't be, "Oh, my personal experience and my taste as we play a round of taboo, and then I can actually judge you if you're a cultural fit," because you can't. Absolutely not. So the question now, how can we improve these kind of issues?
Niels Brabandt
And the first aspect you have to improve is when people go for a job, you have to answer the question, "What happens in this job besides simply making money? What is the purpose of this? What is the values that drive your business?" And when you simply say, "Well, you know, it's well paid, and you do your work here, and there is no purpose and values," then people will walk away pretty quickly. And the reason for that, by the way, because often people now yell very quickly, especially the in high commas, older generations, they say, "Oh, we didn't have that back in the days." Correct. You didn't.
Niels Brabandt
I entered the job market full-time at the end of the '90s. High unemployment. Anyone was happy to have work. By the way, as a pupil in that school, I already entered the job market at the beginning of the '90s, and it was exactly the same. You were happy about any piece of work. You needed to get some money together. You didn't ask why. You simply did the work. If you didn't like it, you didn't care. You simply pulled through it. Why don't people have to do this any further? Why don't they have to do this today? It's quite simple. Look at the job market, then look at the talent market, and you will very quickly realize, hmm, less people available, less talent available. So now people can suddenly choose.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, you might now say, "Well, at the moment, it's just changing." In certain industries, it is, even for leaders now. However, when you are well qualified, especially in the tech sector, then it is not too difficult to actually get people on board because, sorry, then it's not too difficult to actually be in a situation where you can choose between which company you actually want to work for, especially when you're in the tech field. There's still a massive talent gap, and it's not insight that this is going to change anytime soon.
Niels Brabandt
So purpose and values need to be not only seen but lived by. When your first values are pseudoscientific ego, I say you obey, people will say, "Look, this is not the place I want to work." And then, by the way, it's your fault. Again, you're on the wrong, not they are. On top of that, you have to lead by showing them that you are actually worth your salt even when you're in the business for a long time. Credibility beats authority.
Niels Brabandt
When you say, "Look, look, I'm in the industry for 30 years now. I know how to do sales here. I'm here for a long time, so you better just listen." And also, "I'm an executive. You know my title, Senior Vice President of Global Operations. You are new here. My title gives me more authority even over you." And they probably say, "I couldn't care less because credibility beats authority." When people say you expect them to do great sales, but you can't do any sales, they will say you're not credible. When you say, "Oh, you need to be open for tech change," while at the same time you don't deal with any tech change, you simply hire an assistant who does the work for you, you are not credible.
Niels Brabandt
When you say you need to know your stuff, but at the same time you have unscientific and non-scientific recruiting procedures which are arbitrary at best, then you're not credible. Credibility beats authority. You cannot simply say, "I'm a leader on paper, so you have to obey." These times are over, and hint, they are not coming back. And on top of that, when you simply say you have to obey my non-scientific and unscientific commands, you violate the rules of psychological safety.
Niels Brabandt
Just to give you my background here, my background here is I did my full qualification at the Johns Hopkins University, probably not the worst university in the world, in psychological first aid, PFA method. I'm not a psychologist, but I'm also not clueless on the matter. Psychological safety is not negotiable. When you have executives yelling on LinkedIn who say, "Oh, none of these people want to work anymore," you are violating psychological safety completely. Why? Because you generalize. It is never the whole generation is X, Y, Z. The whole generation is lazy. The whole generation doesn't want to work anymore. That's definitely wrong. So be aware of this fact.
Niels Brabandt
And by the way, psychological safety also means that you stick to valid methods. When you say, and I quote a newspaper article where an executive said, "Oh, they have a really good recruiting procedure. They always go for lunch with people. And when they put pepper or salt on their food before they tasted it, then they're not hiring them because these people have prejudices." Welcome to the world of unscientific nonsense. When someone goes for lunch with you and they put pepper on their dish, on their food, maybe it's because they found out in the last 10 years of their life that they like the taste of pepper a lot, and they like more pepper on their food than any reasonable person on earth would ever put. And that's why they learned based on their experience, they always need more pepper than anyone else. And that's learning based on experience. That's actually good. It's not bad.
Niels Brabandt
So psychological safety is not up for negotiation. When you think just because you're a leader on paper, you have the formal authority, you can behave in any way, and they have to obey any kind of behavior, then you are violating not only the rules of purpose and values and the idea of credibility over authority, you're also violating the basic principle of psychological safety. Be aware of that. The question is now, how do you implement all of this?
Niels Brabandt
And the first aspect you need to understand, you must have a situational awareness. I give you a very simple example for situational awareness. Why did people back in the days work hard? Because there was a certain promise. And the promise was, when you work hard, tomorrow is better than today. A tiny, tiny bit, but it is a tiny bit better. When you work hard, and of course, there was massive discrimination, the work hard here applies if you're not female because then we don't promote you up to over a certain level. And probably when you're white also, then we promote you more than others. So when you work hard, it doesn't apply to all groups, unfortunately, when you look into history books. And even today, by the way, there is still massive discrimination going on.
Niels Brabandt
But situational awareness means back in the days, you could say, when you work hard, you can buy a flat in your city. When you work hard, you can buy a tiny piece of land. When you work hard, you can build your tiny small house on that piece of land only by one income and by work that you do with your own hands or your brain, preferably both. And today, that's not the case. Just look when someone lives in London, Paris, Brussels, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, Zurich, Vienna, Barcelona. And when you say work hard and you can buy your flat, they say, "No, I can't. At least not within reasonable means. When I want to have any kind of life, I am not able to buy a property. I will not be able to do certain things you could. I can do other things that you couldn't. However, the promise of work hard and life will be better is not always there anymore."
Niels Brabandt
Some people say, "I work harder and harder, but the cost of living and the rent are more on the rise than my income. So I work harder and I have less every day." And that, of course, drives down motivation. And you have to deal with it as a leader, whether you like it or not. You need to have the situational awareness. If you do not have that, please do not be surprised that people say, "I'm not motivated to work for you." And especially people in Generation Z, when they are well qualified, they say, "I probably work somewhere else where I don't have to listen to these anecdotal work hard evidences." Pseudo evidence, by the way.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, there's now another issue. When you say, "Hey, Gen Z is too difficult for me," you need the diversity, whether you like it or not. When you say, "I'm not hiring anyone from Gen Z or younger because no one wants to work anymore," then very quickly, your marketing isn't going to work because you don't know how to approach communicatively these people. Then your sales isn't going to work because people say your sales approach is outdated, and then your whole company goes down. Marketing not working, sales not working, communication not working, product not aligned to new demands. People will quickly say, "Look, I have no idea what you're producing here, but I don't want it. I simply don't want it." So be aware that the diversity is absolutely crucial.
Niels Brabandt
And on top of that, you need to be able to deliver your experience and everything connected with it. When you have experience, then always share it with others. But share it doesn't mean that you say, "I did it this way," so you have to do it the exact same way. Share your experience, listen to what they have to say, and then find the best solution. Then the expertise you have. Can you transfer knowledge, or do people actually have to find it by themselves because then they don't see any value in you? Excellent means that you can deliver on the experience and expertise matters. If you're unable to do so, people will say, "Bad leader and a place where I do not want to stay." However, when you do it the right way, as we just discussed, then leading Gen Z will also work great within your organization, and I wish you all the best doing so.
Niels Brabandt
And when you now say, "Hmm, I think there's quite something to discuss," very happy to do that. Feel free to contact me anytime. Of course, when you now watch me on YouTube, feel free to leave a like here, subscribe to my channel, comment on this channel, of course. Leave a review at Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Recommend my podcast and video cast on social media amongst your friends, colleagues, anywhere you like. And of course, also you can go to my website, nb-networks.biz. That's what you can see, what I do for a living. And I'm, of course, also available for any kind of topics regarding leading Generation Z.
Niels Brabandt
When you now have something to discuss, and that's what most people do still, they say, "I have something to discuss, but it's about my general, it's not about my organization. I am maybe in charge. I need someone who can help us here. Drop me an email. nb@nb-networks.com." Very important here. If you need something very specific, when you say, "I need a trainer, speaker, coach, consultant, mentor, project interim manager, or host for events or whoever else, an MC, master of ceremonies to compare," then drop me a line. When you say, "No, I'd just like to answer a bit of my questions or have a discussion," feel free to do that as well. There's absolutely, I'm open for absolutely anything. I'm looking forward to hearing from you there.
Niels Brabandt
Very important is if you want to see our live sessions, because we have live sessions, the next one is approaching quite soon. When you go to expert.nb-networks.com, when you fill in your email address there, you receive only one email every Wednesday morning, full access to all the podcasts, all the video casts, all the articles in the English and German language, more than 400 online so far. So feel free to connect with me on there, and then you can get access to all the, and of course, in this leadership letter, you also see the date and the time and the access link for the next live session. We only communicate this via the leadership letter, so feel free to join us at any time.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, you can connect with me on social media, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't do the follow thing, connect properly. Then you can follow me on Instagram, you can like me on Facebook, and you can, of course, subscribe to my YouTube channel. Then you always stay tuned about anything I produce in the future. And by the way, when you reach out to me, no worries, I answer every single message within 24 hours or less, so I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Niels Brabandt
The most important thing, however, always happens at the end of my episode. Apply, apply, apply what you heard in this podcast, because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive aspects that you obviously want to see in your organization. I wish you all the best doing so. Feel free to contact me anytime, answering any message within 24 hours or less. And at the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this video cast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Thank you very much for your time.