Alastair welcomes Zoe Thompson, a leadership consultant and coach who works with senior leaders and organisations across the UK and EMEA, helping them navigate fast paced, high stakes environments while building more intentional leadership and higher performing teams. Zoe joined the police service at 18, in uniform on the front desk of her local station with no Google, no training course and no call centre. She went on to spend two decades in police leadership before moving into coaching full time.
In this episode Zoe argues that the single biggest generational fault line at work is not technology or work-life balance, it is disagreement about what professional looks like. She talks about walking into rooms where the most casually dressed person is the most senior, about her own experience of being misread as a junior colleague, and about why leaders who are struggling right now are mostly struggling with the loss of being the most knowledgeable person in the room. She also sets out what she tells emerging leaders about winning over sceptical bosses.
Zoe Thompson Takeaways:
- The biggest generational gap in the workplace is not values, it is differing expectations of what professional looks and sounds like
- Gen X and older millennials tend to adjust how they speak to seniority. Younger millennials and Gen Z communicate the same way with everyone, and a good leader can flex across both
- Leadership is no longer signalled by age, dress code or job title, which makes assumptions and unconscious bias more costly, not less
- Self-determination theory still holds where people need competence, autonomy and relatedness, and hybrid working makes relatedness the hardest of the three to deliver
- People need to know that their work is valued, that they as individuals are valued, and where they are going. Engagement drops when those conversations do not happen
- Behind most resistance from senior colleagues is fear, usually fear of judgement or of no longer being the most experienced person in the room. Ask what their concerns are rather than pushing harder
- Leadership skills are a different skillset from being a high performer, which is why more people are being promoted earlier and with less experience than before
- A leader's job is to balance the needs of the individuals in the team with the needs of the business, and to keep rebalancing as both change
Zoe Thompson Links:
Generationally Speaking Links: