Alastair Greener Generationally Speaking

Alastair is in conversation with Emily Stone, a senior analyst in Deloitte's consulting business and three years into the firm's BrightStart degree apprenticeship. Emily came straight from sixth form at a grammar school geared almost entirely towards university, and chose instead a route that has given her a fully funded degree, a chartered managership and three years of client work by the time her peers were graduating.

In this episode Emily shares the findings of her own workplace research, in which she surveyed and interviewed colleagues from junior to senior about what they expect from work and whether Deloitte delivers on it. Her conclusion is that generations largely value the same things, and that the useful question is not what someone values but why. She talks about recognition as the most underused engagement tool in any organisation, about the phrase humanised communication and where it came from, and about reverse mentoring as a practical answer to generational clustering.

Emily Stone Takeaways:

• Generations value strikingly similar things. What differs is why, and a leader's job is to understand the why rather than reach for the generational label
• Recognition matters at every level, not just the most junior. The public pat on the back is one of the most underused engagement tools in the workplace
• A degree apprenticeship is not a lesser route. Learning the theory while doing the work makes you a better student because you can see it in your reality
• Humanised communication is what people actually ask for, even from a generation stereotyped as preferring text. Everyone wants to feel seen, acknowledged and recognised
• Reverse mentoring works. It helps senior colleagues understand Gen Z's strengths and directly tackles generational clustering
• Every generation gets assigned the same negative labels on arrival. Millennials got me, me, me. The pattern says more about life stage than about the cohort
• Focus on what generations share rather than how they differ, then get specific about the individual, because two Gen Z colleagues can want completely different things

Emily Stone Links:

Emily on LinkedIn

Generationally Speaking Links:

Generationally Speaking Website

Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn

Generationally Speaking on YouTube

Generationally Speaking On Instagram

Alastair on LinkedIn

Alastair is joined by David Duffett, an award-winning speaker, chartered engineer and author of “Be The Nerd That's Heard”, who helps technical experts raise what he calls their human bandwidth so that their knowledge and ideas are not lost through ineffective communication. David's own path ran through pirate radio transmitters he built himself, the Civil Aviation Authority's telecoms engineering college at Bletchley Park, and a spell as worldwide community director for the Asterisk open source project.

In this episode David explains why the IASM in his job title is capitalised, why the old model of the deep technical expert in the back room has been flipped on its head by AI, and what happened to a cohort of Bloomberg engineers who became managers without ever having given face to face feedback. He pushes back firmly on the stereotype that engineers are simply introverts who dislike public speaking, and offers a set of practical protocol matching tips for communicating across the generational gap in technical teams.

David Duffett Takeaways:

• Knowing your stuff isn’t enough. The skill that matters now is communicating just the relevant part of your stuff to the audience in front of you
• Engineers are not afraid of speaking in public. They are afraid of looking ill-prepared in front of their peers, and that is a fixable problem
• Communication is a muscle. Technical people have spent years building the technical one and ignoring the communication one, so the imbalance is trainable
• Encode the message in the audience's own language. Talking to engineers about rapport gets scepticism. Talking about the bandwidth of your human connection channel starts a conversation
• Younger engineers arrive ready to broadcast, having grown up sharing online, but they are not always set up for two-way communication. Human bandwidth must be open in both directions
• A generation of engineers came through university and into work during lockdowns and reached management having never given feedback face to face. That gap needs deliberately filling
• Protocol matching runs both ways. Senior engineers can learn some of the younger register, and younger engineers can offer more detail to senior colleagues
• The art of the unsolicited presentation: spot something two teams misunderstand about each other, offer a lunch and learn, and you demonstrate your value without self-promotion

David Duffett Links:

Let the Geek Speak

David on LinkedIn

David on X

Generationally Speaking Links:

Generationally Speaking Website

Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn

Generationally Speaking on YouTube

Generationally Speaking On Instagram

Alastair on LinkedIn

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:

Zoe Thompson Website

Zoe Thompson Links Hub

Zoe on LinkedIn

Intentional Leadership on YouTube

Zoe on TikTok

Zoe on Instagram

Generationally Speaking Links:

Generationally Speaking Website

Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn

Generationally Speaking on YouTube

Generationally Speaking On Instagram

Alastair on LinkedIn

In this episode, Alastair talks to James Stallabrass, a student who is just entering his second year reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Durham University. During the holidays James works in his local pub, and it gives him an unusually broad view of student life, work and the generations he serves across the bar.

James pushes back hard on the idea that there is such a thing as a typical Gen Z student. He talks about what has genuinely changed since his parents were at university in the nineties, from pre-drinking and the scramble to sign accommodation before Christmas to the sense that students are now consumers holding institutions to account for their £9,500 fees. He is candid about where the real resentment sits, why his peers are pessimistic about the graduate job market, and what he would say to a new Prime Minister about young people.

James Stallabrass Takeaways:

• There is no normal Gen Z student. Trying to put a whole cohort into one box doesn’t survive contact with an actual campus
• The sharpest resentment about tuition fees comes from first generation students, and it is aimed at the system rather than at peers who pay less
• Students now behave like consumers of university, scrutinising contact hours and value for money in a way their parents never did, and that habit is likely to follow them into the workplace
• Almost everyone James knows works over the summer. The picture of a generation on permanent gap years does not match what he sees
• Pessimism about graduate jobs is the prevailing mood, and he links the drop in graduate roles to the arrival of generative AI
• His advice to school leavers: only go if you want the learning, not just the experience. Check the contact hours and be honest about why you are going
• Intergenerational resentment is real and specific. It is about the triple lock and winter fuel allowance, and the suspicion that no equivalent guarantee will exist by the time this generation retires

Generationally Speaking Links:

Generationally Speaking Website

Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn

Generationally Speaking on YouTube

Generationally Speaking On Instagram

Alastair on LinkedIn

Alastair is joined by Karen Krawczyk, an author, facilitator and retirement coach who spent much of her career as a speech and language therapist working with adults in hospitals and community settings in the NHS. Karen left at 60, invested in new skills and built a portfolio life combining work, volunteering, personal interests with a renewed sense of purpose. Having lost both her parents before she finished university, she never saw a parental role model as she moved into later life. It was that absence that is part of what drew her to write about retirement and to run the workshops she does today.

In this episode Karen makes the case that retirement is no longer a single, orderly event but an open-ended transition that many people reach without a plan or a vocabulary for it. She talks about why she dislikes the word 'retire', what the Blue Zones are, what the Japanese idea of ikigai tells us about purpose and longevity, and why the most valuable thing her workshops offer is simply a space to have the conversation. She also reflects on what she saw change in the NHS workforce across her career, and why she thinks curiosity and listening matter more than hierarchy.

Karen Krawczyk Takeaways:

• Retirement is a major life transition, not an event, and how you handled previous transitions is a good predictor of how you will handle this one
• Start being deliberate about it a couple of years out, and set expectations with the people around you, because it is their transition too
• The word 'retire' carries baggage. There is no equivalent word in Japanese, and in Spanish it translates closer to jubilation. Reconnect, redirect and refire are all worth considering instead
• Resist jumping straight into the next thing. The messy middle is uncomfortable but reflecting there produces a far more rewarding second act
• The Blue Zones point to the same two things again and again: community and a reason to get up in the morning
• Say yes. Try it once, and if it is not for you, you never have to do it again
• If someone close to you is approaching retirement, ask open questions about their expectations rather than assuming they will suddenly have time on their hands

Karen Krawczyk Links

https://www.karenkrawczyk.org.uk/

inkedin.com/in/karen-krawczyk-6037795b/

Generationally Speaking Links:

Generationally Speaking Website

Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn

Alastair on LinkedIn

Alastair is joined by Emily Haslam-Jones, a consultant, therapist, yoga teacher, and specialist in co-regulation and neurodivergence. Emily works with children, parents, carers, and businesses in crisis. She helps them rebuild trust, connection, and emotional regulation using evidence-based tools. Her background spans humanitarian crisis intervention, specialist education, and the therapy room, giving her a uniquely cross-generational lens on the challenges families and workplaces face today.

In this episode, Emily explores what really drives the anxiety crisis in Gen Alpha and younger Gen Z, why the loss of unsupervised free play matters more than most people realise. She talks about co-regulation which is the science of nervous systems attuning to one another, and how it is the missing piece in both parenting and leadership. She also makes a powerful case for 'connection-seeking' as a better frame than 'attention-seeking', and shares her most practical, immediately usable tools for parents and managers alike.

Emily Haslam-Jones Takeaways:

• 'Attention-seeking' is better understood as 'connection-seeking' — reframing it reduces parental reactivity and improves outcomes
• 10–15 minutes of daily, fully focused, uninterrupted connection time with a child is more powerful than hours of half-present attention
• Catch desired behaviour within 5 seconds and praise it — most parenting interventions focus on the unwanted behaviour and miss this window entirely
• Self-care is not selfish: parents (and leaders) must regulate their own nervous systems first before they can co-regulate anyone else
• Organisations bringing in wellbeing and behaviour training must also work with the managers and leaders — not just the presenting problem
• Neurodivergent children (ADHD, autism, demand avoidance/PDA) need boundaries AND low-demand flexibility — the 'garden fence' metaphor captures this balance
• Co-regulation principles translate directly into leadership: a dysregulated manager cannot create a regulated team

Emily Haslam-Jones Links

https://www.psychologytoday.com/profile/1412870

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-haslam-jones-the-trust-builder-1b9ba73/

Generationally Speaking Links:

Generationally Speaking Website

Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn

Alastair on LinkedIn

Alastair sits down with Robbie Westacott, a millennial writer, marketing consultant, and founder of Seaforth Creative Group, who has spent his career helping events and media companies get more from their content, communities, and data. A master's graduate in creative writing and a lifelong storyteller, Robbie is currently ghostwriting a business book, crafting his own fiction, and building an online global community for fiction writers.

In this episode, Robbie and Alastair explore the changing relationship between writing and AI, making an impassioned case for why outsourcing your writing to a machine before you have developed the skill yourself is one of the most damaging professional shortcuts a young person can take. They also dig into the fascinating generational differences in how and why people write, from Boomers finally telling their life stories to Gen Z boldly publishing before they are 25, and the power of genuine human authenticity in a world increasingly saturated with AI-generated content.

Recorded at Granary Studios and produced by James Jones.

Robbie Westacott Takeaways:

• Writing is a foundational skill applicable across every profession — outsourcing it to AI before mastering it yourself will stunt your development in ways that compound over time
• AI-generated content is becoming a commodity; work that carries authentic human voice, effort, and craft will be increasingly valuable as a result
• Gen Z digital natives entering marketing may be more skilled in the tools than the people hiring them — a power dynamic shift every manager needs to be aware of
• Different generations approach writing differently: Boomers often arrive at writing later with a life story to tell; Gen Z publishes boldly and early, often alongside multiple other career pursuits
• For fiction: write the story you genuinely want to tell and fall in love with the process — chasing fame or money makes the craft miserable
• For business writing: empathy and audience-centricity are everything — tailor your message to who you are trying to reach and why
• Community accelerates creative growth: shared accountability with fellow writers, across all age groups, creates consistency that solo practice rarely sustains

Robbie Westacott Links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbie-westacott-16aa8b54/

Substack: https://substack.com/@robbiewestacott

Generationally Speaking Links:

Generationally Speaking Website

Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn

Alastair on LinkedIn

Alastair welcomes Farzana Parkar, an HR consultant at face2face HR and who describes herself as an Xennial with 15 years’ experience in HR. 

In this episode, Farzana and Alastair explore what working in HR really looks like in 2026, from Gen Z’s reluctance to “play the game” and the importance of robust onboarding, to the disconnect between what companies promise during recruitment and what employees actually experience when they arrive. 

As the first HR guest on the podcast, Farzana works with businesses of all shapes and sizes, helping them navigate the increasingly complex world of people management, workplace culture and employment law.

The discussion also looks at why culture must start at the top, how poor management drives disengagement, why communication needs to be personal and omnichannel. Farzana also talks about how AI may be changing recruitment, while making the human touch more important than ever.

Farzana Parkar Takeaways:

• Generational conflict often comes not from personality clashes, but from different assumptions about office presence, response times, communication and what respect looks like
• Good onboarding matters more than ever: younger employees often expect organisations to be explicit about how things work rather than relying on unspoken rules and subtext
• Culture cannot be delegated to HR — leaders must “walk the talk” and model the behaviour and values they expect from everyone else
• Employee engagement should be a continuous conversation, not a performative annual survey; regular touchpoints help organisations spot issues before people quietly disengage
• Don’t confuse different with wrong: a preference for WhatsApp, voice notes or another communication channel is not laziness — it is simply a different communication style
• Job applicants should research the organisation and personalise their applications rather than relying too heavily on AI; the human voice is what helps people stand out
• HR has evolved from an administrative function into a strategic business partner, but however much technology changes the workplace, the human element remains irreplaceable

Farzana Parkar Links

http://www.linkedin.com/in/fparkarhr 

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555821285235

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555821285235

Generationally Speaking Links:

Generationally Speaking Website

Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn

Alastair on LinkedIn

Alastair sits down with Danny Wang, a 23-year-old Gen Z IT sales professional who transformed himself from a shy, introverted teenager into a national-level public speaking champion in under a year. Danny's story is a compelling one. After leaving school without qualifications and working two jobs, he made a deliberate decision to reinvent himself through communication, networking, and public speaking, and he hasn't looked back since.

Now the President of Reading Speakers (a Toastmasters club), a public speaking mentor, and a driven IT sales professional closing deals and earning company-wide recognition, Danny is living proof that Gen Z can, and does in his case, break every stereotype. In this episode, he shares frank insights on generational bias in sales, why communication skills are the ultimate career superpower, and what it really takes to stand out in a crowded job market.

Danny Wang Takeaways:

• Communication is the skill that flows into every corner of life from confidence and personal brand to sales and relationships
• Self-respect is the foundation of growth. Earning it through hard work and doing difficult things changes everything
• Gen Z can overcome the stereotype of poor communication, and those who do will have a massive competitive edge
• Proactive onboarding wins. Take accountability for your own learning rather than waiting for the organisation to hand you answers
• Generational bias in sales is real but manageable if you let your results do the talking
• Joining a speaking club like Toastmasters is one of the most affordable, high-return investments a young professional can make
• The advice to parents is to push your children out of their comfort zone early. New people, new experiences and new challenges build the resilience and confidence that school alone cannot

Danny Wang Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannywang-sales/?skipRedirect=true
https://eatcogni.com/

Generationally Speaking Links:

Generationally Speaking Website

Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn

Alastair on LinkedIn

Alastair welcomes Victoria Rennoldson, a multi-award-winning global leadership coach, international speaker, bestselling author, and podcast host specialising in strategic communication and cultural intelligence. A cusp Millennial who began her career at Boots before founding her own business, Victoria now works with leaders and organisations worldwide, helping them navigate the communication challenges that arise when different generations, nationalities, and organisational cultures collide.

In this episode, Victoria and Alastair explore what today's multigenerational boardrooms are really grappling with, from the rise of younger leaders in their mid-30s, to the frustration of Gen Z employees who feel flexibility is applied unfairly, to the question of what actually gets people back into the office (hint: it's not pizza Fridays or beanbags). Victoria introduces her Cultural Intelligence framework, explains why curiosity is the essential starting point for any cross-generational relationship, and shares what vulnerable, human leadership truly looks like in practice.

Victoria Rennoldson Takeaways:

• Cultural intelligence (CQ) starts with curiosity — genuinely wanting to understand someone's perspective before drawing conclusions about their generation, culture, or values
• Don't confuse generational labels with individual identity: see the person in front of you, not just the stereotype
• Younger generations expect their leaders to show a human side — vulnerability, including simply saying 'I don't know, but we'll find out together', builds far more trust than projecting certainty
• Hybrid working has become the primary generational flashpoint: flexibility must be applied equitably or it becomes a source of deep resentment
• What genuinely brings people together in the office is authentic cultural exchange (e.g., bring-a-cultural-dish events) — not surface-level perks
  Leadership styles are shifting rapidly: organisations must equip managers to lead in flatter, more transparent, psychologically safe ways, not just promote those who did well under the old model
• Advising young people on careers: focus on passion and transferable skills — the specific jobs that will exist in 10 years are impossible to predict

Victoria Rennoldson Links

https://culturecuppa.com/book
https://linkedin.com/in/victoria-rennoldson
https://culturecuppa.com/podcast/

Generationally Speaking Links:

Generationally Speaking Website

Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn

Alastair on LinkedIn