Managing Gen Z agency employees (and anyone else with less experience than you)

Agency owners frequently lament to Chip and Gini that their employees don’t have a proper sense of urgency and don’t seem to work hard enough.

The co-hosts explore whether this is specific to Gen Z or if it has broader applications.

At the same time, Chip and Gini look at the causes for this concern and potential solutions. (Fair warning: a big piece of the answer lies in the mirror.)

Key takeaways

* Gini Dietrich: “I don’t think it’s Gen Z, I think it’s people. And it’s less about how old or young they are and more about how motivated they are in their jobs.”

* Chip Griffin: “A lot of it comes down to bad recruiting and bad management. And I know most owners who are listening don’t want to hear that.”

* Gini Dietrich: “We’re almost like therapists, parents, bosses, all in one.”

* Chip Griffin: “I’ve seen agencies that try to build all-star teams. All-star teams do not work.”

Recommended

* Getting ready to hire your first agency employee

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And today, I thought in honor of your birthday week when we’re recording this, we’re gonna talk about remembering what it was like when we were young, right after this.

Well, that audio seemed to hiccup there a little bit for me at least, but hey.

Gini Dietrich: Oh, it didn’t on my end. Weird.

Chip Griffin: Oh, okay. Well, listeners, you may have heard it hiccup. You may not have heard it hiccup, but it certainly hiccuped for me. In any case, first of all, happy early birthday.

Gini Dietrich: Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

Chip Griffin: I actually did remember it this year, so I can call it out on the show when usually I forget and realize it after the fact when I start seeing all the flood of happy birthdays in the Spin Sucks community.

Gini Dietrich: Well, and now it’s on your calendar as well.

Chip Griffin: So now, now it is on my calendar, so I will remember, and of course I do have to thank my wife Jen, because she’s the one who prodded me and actually looked at my calendar for later in the week and called it out to me.

So, in any case, we’re not, this topic is not really chosen because of that, but I thought that it, it is appropriate because what we’re gonna talk about today are, well, we’re gonna, our jumping off point is gonna be Gen Z employees and how you manage them effectively. This is a question that came up in the most recent SAGA Community monthly meetup. It’s something that came up in the Spin Sucks Community as well, in the past couple of days. And so, so how do we manage less experienced workers, shall we say? Cause I always try to avoid speaking in terms of age, even when we’re talking young folks, because you don’t want to get yourself into age or discrimination problems.

And it really is more about experience than age in most cases. But I think as we go forward,