How to Effectively Bridge the Gap With Next-Gen Talent

Jon Lokhorst, CPA, CSP, PCC Leadership Coach, Your Best Leadership LLC
Enhancing Your Ability to Lead

To some degree, organizational leaders have always faced challenges in navigating generational differences in the workforce. For instance, leaders from the baby boomer generation, many now retired or nearing retirement, scratched their heads as Gen X stepped into the work world of the 1980s and 1990s. Together, these two generations often struggled to lead millennials who began to flood the workforce in the early 2000s.

Today, early-career workers represent Gen Z, roughly defined as those born between 1997 and 2012. Like past generations, this cohort brings its own way of thinking, working, and leading into the workplace, creating complex and novel challenges to those who lead them.

A global research report by workplace analytics firm Marlee, “Unlocking Gen Z at Work: A Generational Impact Study 2024,” provides a data-driven perspective on the key differences between Gen Z and its predecessors. With data collected from 90,000 individuals in the United States and 400,000 worldwide across a 23-year period, Marlee’s research offers powerful insights into how this generation is reshaping the ways organizations engage, develop, and retain employees.

COMMUNICATION

According to Marlee’s study, Gen Z shows a 44% increase in preference for written communication and a 45% decrease in motivation for verbal communication, compared to earlier generations. Raised in a world of texts, instant messaging, and email, this younger generation is more comfortable processing information through reading and reflection than spontaneous dialogue. Marlee also found a 120% increase in Gen Z’s desire for detail orientation and a 45% drop in their comfort level with ambiguity, indicating that they want more explicit step-by-step guidance for their work.

These factors emphasize the need to provide early-career workers with clearer, more specific communication in written or digital form. Here are some suggestions for doing so:

• Provide supplement verbal instructions with written checklists or an artificial intelligence-generated summary from Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
• Optimize workflow management software with documented steps for performing accounting, auditing, and tax work.
• Include well-defined milestones, time budgets, and deadlines.
• Include younger workers in in-person meetings and telephone conversations to develop a greater comfort level with verbal communication.

MOTIVATION

Marlee found that Gen Z employees are much less motivated by big-picture, visionary goals than workers from previous generations. Instead, 58% of Gen Zers are more energized by having an impact in solving real-world problems. They want to know how their work makes a difference or contributes to something bigger than themselves. This is consistent with Deloitte’s “2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey,” which found that 89% of Gen Zers connected a sense of purpose with job satisfaction and well-being.

As Marlee’s founder and CEO, Michelle Duval, shared in a webinar presentation on the firm’s findings, “Significant Generational Changes Shaping the Future of Work in 2025 and 2026,” vision and goals are still important, but leaders need to connect the dots between big-picture and more pragmatic, impactful outcomes. For instance, leaders should help young professionals connect their performance of routine accounting functions and financial reporting to how they help teams and clients make better decisions that benefit their stakeholders and communities. It’s about emphasizing impact and value, not just task completion and meeting budgets and deadlines.

LEADERSHIP

One of the more striking findings in Marlee’s study is that only 31% of Gen Z workers scored high in taking initiative, an early marker of leadership potential. They’re more inclined to pause and wait before acting—in many cases because they lack confidence to take the next step without a defined plan. They’re also less motivated by achievement and competition than previous generations, which often results in a lower drive or desire to pursue leadership. In fact, in Deloitte’s study, only 6% of Gen Zers said their primary career goal was to be promoted to a leadership position.

Similarly, Marlee found that Gen Z workers are more responsive to affiliative or relationship-based leadership than to competitive, results-driven leadership. For this generation, leadership based on a title, position, power, or authority doesn’t work. Instead, Gen Z workers desire a personal connection and a sense of belonging from their leaders, with the ability to show up to work as their true selves. They also appreciate consistent feedback, coaching, and mentoring to further their career growth and learning.

These insights offer a unique opportunity for organizations to alleviate a potential leadership gap in the years ahead. As you continue to coach or mentor Gen Z workers, consider:

• Using coaching-based leadership that prioritizes individual growth and development.
• Shifting from traditional performance reviews to ongoing coaching conversations that frame feedback as growth opportunities.
• Implementing regular one-on-one check-in meetings that invite Gen Z employees to share their own observations and needs beyond simple task completion.

THE BRIDGING CONVERSATION

While it’s helpful to learn these generational trends, it’s far more important to get to know your early-career workers as individuals where you can discover their unique style, preferences, and motivations. To do so, consider engaging with each of them through what I call a “bridging conversation.” These conversations provide a focused opportunity for you as a leader to learn from them. Find a comfortable spot, preferably away from the office, where you create dialogue with thought-provoking questions like:

• What motivated you to pursue a career in accounting? How often do you get to fulfill that motivation in your work here?
• What parts of your job do you enjoy most? What parts are most frustrating?
• Have you ever considered leaving the accounting profession? If you left, what would be your reason for leaving?
• What could we change to improve your work experience, even if those changes took a while to implement?
• What opportunities for growth and development would excite you?
• What ideas do you have for helping our organization thrive and grow in the future?

In order for these conversations to be effective, it’s important that you approach them with curiosity and an openness to learn. After all, Gen Z holds the answers to many of the challenges our profession is facing, and your support might encourage them to seek future leadership positions in your organization.

While it’s tempting to overgeneralize the characteristics of an entire generation, it’s essential for accounting and finance leaders to recognize these workplace trends if they want to build businesses that’ll thrive and grow in a rapidly changing marketplace. At the same time, it’s crucial to view the problematic aspects of these trends as opportunities to train, coach, and mentor early-career workers for greater effectiveness and impact in the profession.

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• Build Your Leadership on a Strong Personal Foundation: Your capacity for growth as a leader requires a strong foundation—start building it by answering these four questions.