Business Coach, College Professor, and Author Nicole Gallucci

 Hardlines Assistant Editor Geoff McLarney and Senior Editor, Steve Payne, interview Author Nicole Gallucci about the characteristics of Generation Z and how leaders and employers can help Gen Z be successful in the workplace.

Listen in for generational wisdom and thoughtful advice.

 

Key Takeaways:

 

[:20] Geoff McLarney and Steve Payne welcome Business Coach Nicole Gallucci to What’s in Store to discuss the HR aspects of hiring Gen Z. Each generation has nuances and things that are more important to them, as they transition through life.

 

[1:16] Gen Z faces a lot of challenges. As we come out of COVID-19, we have wars and economic challenges. Gen Z is looking at what older generations have done and asking themselves what is the right path for them.

 

[2:10] Gen Z is graduating, feeling financial pressure, and wondering what they want to do for their job for the next 30 years. They do not believe that the world is their oyster.

 

[2:37] Gen Z faces the challenge of deciding whether to work from home or in an office. Do they want freedom and latitude? The older generations didn’t have that question. Seeing people on social media traveling and working all over the world is a challenge for Gen Z.

 

[3:46] Can they sustain themselves and provide a degree of professional focus so they feel they have purpose and are contributing? At the same time, more than any other generation, they want to live. They’re living spontaneously, for the moment.

 

[4:07] The older generations are hiring them, and the challenges of Gen Z can be confusing for Boomers and Gen X. Gen Z doesn’t have the same connection to their job as Boomers. Gen Z is going to rewrite the rules for how we work but it’s not going to be an easy rewrite.

 

[4:54] Nicole contrasts Millennials and Gen Z. Millennials have been good at establishing boundaries appropriately in the workplace. That came as we transitioned from desktop computers to laptop computers and now to cell phones. We can always be on, all the time, as employees or entrepreneurs. Millennials called time-out for a work-life balance.

 

[5:47] Nicole finds that some Millennials are frustrated by Gen Zs. Millennials have had the benefit of daily in-office coaching and problem-solving. Gen Z, on Teams. Slack and text, aren’t being coached to solve work problems. Learning by osmosis doesn’t happen as easily now.

 

[6:57] There’s some angst between the two groups as they experience different work-life challenges and work arrangements. 

 

[7:22] Nicole wrote Life Blueprint: A Step-by-Step Guide for Creating an Extraordinary Life for two reasons. The first was to help herself. She faced hard challenges and needed plans. She wrote it to duplicate systems from the work world for strategic planning, annual planning, quarterly reporting, and monthly reporting. These systems are not present in people’s lives.

 

[8:10] Nicole cobbled together a strategy to get control of her life and make the things happen that she had intended for her children. In doing so, she started to achieve her goals. People around her noticed her surfacing from personal chaos to personal success. Her personal and professional lives were aligning.

 

[8:45] This led to many conversations with people struggling to figure out life. Nicole was teaching and coaching this methodology and offering it in workshops. People asked her for it. The second reason she wrote the book was to respond to those who needed the process as she had and make it more available to people.

 

[9:42] About Jeld-Wen’s JWC8500 Series Windows.

 

[10:11] Two years ago, Nicole was not teaching AI. Now Nicole is teaching it and learning it along with her students. It’s growing and changing at a rapid rate. Nicole compares a carpenter using tools to frame a home and businesses using AI to create things spontaneously from data.

 

[11:30] AI provides good fuel for thought, provokes interesting conversations, and helps us get through our work more quickly. That being said, it’s not a finished product. It doesn’t have a personality. It’s not you, although you can start to train it to speak more like you and to have some of those tones. We have to decide how much authenticity is important to us.

 

[12:12] We’re going to have to figure out where our values lie and how we want to go forward with it. Nicole and her students use it as a tool to leapfrog and see the viability of ideas. They still pick a focus and execute it using their minds and talents. No one knows the future of AI but it’s here and Nicole would feel foolish not teaching it to her students.

 

[13:01] In the late 1980s and early 1990s, banks started launching banking machines. Banks reduced their hours and issued bank cards. People were afraid “they” were trying to control our money. Now, we use e-wallets on our phones. Back in the ’90s, people were freaking out. We thought people were going to lose jobs. It was part of an evolution.

 

[13:41] A few years later came the .com evolution. AI is a piece of that. In the short term, there is going to be pain and angst. It’s new and unknown. Let’s have this conversation ten years from now! We’ll say we had no idea! There’s going to be good and bad that comes out of it. It’s going to fall upon all of us to choose how we want to use it.

 

[14:34] There is so much anxiety in Gen Z in 2024. Customer service is very difficult for Gen Z. They are used to playing games alone on their phones, not talking to customers. Technology has isolated them. During COVID-19 they were locked up for a couple of years. They missed socialization, prom, graduation, and other highlights and milestones.

 

[16:08] Now we are telling them to be sociable. They haven’t learned those social skills. A lot of the teaching Nicole does at George Brown and Loyalists is presentations, conversations, and breakouts so they are interacting with each other. They need to see how to work together and communicate both between colleagues and with customers.

 

[16:57] Another thing important to Gen Z is that they need to know why. “Why does this matter? Why do I have to go up and talk to that person? I don’t care if they found what they wanted. What relevance is that to me?” Talk to Gen Z about why the company is here and why we want to help that person. Teach them how the vision, mission, and values impact them.

 

[17:38] Nicole lists some reasons this generation needs help. It’s not one thing. We do have to help this generation. They are extremely anxious from a work perspective. Nicole was on the phone that morning with a top student, well-spoken, who couldn’t get a co-op position. Times are challenging. The economy is challenging.

 

[18:21] Everyone is on pins and needles, more than ever before, trying to figure out how to stabilize and move ahead. We all have to be nicer to each other and hold hands a little more. As leaders, we’ve all got to go a little easier on each other and have better conversations to reduce anxiety.

 

[18:50] We’re talking about mental health and wellness and anxiety more than we ever have before. That’s a positive.

 

[18:58] Geoff thanks Nicole Gallucci, Business Coach and Author of Life Blueprint: A Step-by-Step Guide for Creating an Extraordinary Life, for joining us from London, England on What’s In Store to unpack some of these big questions.

 

About Us: 

What’s in Store is a podcast series of the Hardlines Information Network. Today’s episode is brought to you by Jeld-Wen.

Resources:

Hardlines.ca

Geoff McLarney

Steve Payne

Guest: Nicole Gallucci

Life Blueprint: A Step-by-Step Guide for Creating an Extraordinary Life

Sponsor: Jeld-Wen

 

Quotes:

Gen Z is going to rewrite some of the rules and regs for how we work but I don’t think it’s going to be an easy rewrite. — Nicole Gallucci

 

AI provides good fuel for thought, for provoking interesting conversations, and for helping us get through our work more quickly. That said, it doesn’t serve up a fait accompli. It’s not a finished product. — Nicole Gallucci

 

I don’t know what the future is going to hold for AI. None of us do. I would feel foolish not teaching it to my students because it’s here. — Nicole Gallucci

 

We all have to be nicer to each other and hold hands a little more. As leaders, we’ve all got to go a little easier on each other and then have better conversations to reduce anxiety. — Nicole Gallucci