Executives, let's redefine connection to work.

This month, I was a participant in a debate on Quiet quitting during the World Economic Forum's annual gathering in Davos. Workforces are changing fast, and it strikes me that we, as leaders, are engaging in many of the right questions: what are the advantages and disadvantages of working remotely The risks and potential that are presented by AI, the need to build an environment that is more welcoming and sustainable.

But one question is worthy of greater attention: If our workforce is changing technologically the way we conduct business, post-pandemic behaviours as well as expectations changing...don't we as leaders need to evolve too?

There is an entire Generation of Digital Natives who are entering the workforce. They grew up creating and sharing videos instead of making calls or texts or texting, and they consider TikTok or YouTube their best source for information. In their personal lives they're connected and also extremely engaged.

However, in their professional lives however, the story is different. We're witnessing dramatic reductions in employee engagement and satisfaction among the remote Gen Z and younger millennials. A mere four percent of youngsters who work remotely or in hybrid settings are aware of what's expected of them at work, and more than half of Gen Z employees are ambivalent or aren't engaged in their work. When we consider employee engagement as a leading indicator for workforce productivity This has enormous implications for every company and for every company's financial performance.

What is causing this disconnect? As in work and in life, we all want to be part of an entity larger than us. It is our natural desire to belong, to feel the sense of belonging that is open, honest, and human. Yet the more our workforce is digitally dispersed and AI-connected as a result, it becomes more challenging it gets to truly feel connection every day. Particularly if we've not redesigned the way we interact to meet the next generation. We still ask our employees to understand a plethora of documents, write lengthy emails, and take part in boring gatherings. We learn about layoffs as well as corporate priorities via communications that are so scripted and robotic that they could be produced by ChatGPT. Our only insight as leaders have on this is via cookie-cutter surveys on engagement or live events with low tune-in and high drop-off rates, and the sometimes snarky chats or Q&A.

The traditional managerial model is not working for us. We must change the way we , as leaders, behave and interact with our staff. In the same way that we're focused on improving the skills of our employees with regard to changing population, demographic and technological advancements and trends, we should also improve our leadership skills, so that we can create trust and connections on a the scale.

I've played around with a lot of this during the past several years . Here are the skills I'm learning and embracing which I think will enable us to be more present and more efficiently lead:

 1. Realize who you are, and be yourself.

When the outbreak, I hosted the world's largest town hall at my parents' home at Flint, Michigan -- tired and slumbering in my velour pajamas, with my son, who is a toddler, and my grandmother moving through the background.

This could have been the most effective communication ever.

Why? because it wasn't scripted, vulnerable, and messy. People tend to be drawn to "us against them" dynamics when we work within a business, particularly during times of stress and challenges. It's easy to think of "leadership" as a nameless, faceless machine. Video-first and visually oriented when communicating is an effective way to combat this. It makes you remove the mask and protection of written and edited comms. The most effective way to get past this is to appear just as you really are.

By the way, there is a lot of instances of leaders being vulnerable and it backfiring...but I would guess that in the majority of these instances, the issue was that the leader was performing too much. It is important to allow to allow that part of yourself to fall short in front of your group. Flaws are what makes us humans. Everyone wants to see our leaders to be bold. This only encourages us to emulate them even more.

 2. Beginning by asking the "why ."

Like many leaders, I've made difficult decisions over the course of the year. From layoffs and executive changes to the reorganization and shutdown of initiatives in order to increase efficiency. My job is to make the hard decisions, which are not popular and implement swiftly across the company.

In a growing number of cases, employees are craving transparency behind these decision-making processes, not just the "what" but also the "why". It is a need to know the larger market or competitive context as well as the way in which trade-offs are considered and balanced, as well as the details of who was in the loop as well as when.

The conventional comms strategy would say that when there is an important communication issue with limited time, start with the "what" and get to the point and needed steps. However, I've been more successful getting people to accept a tough decision when I treat my team as key stakeholders who deserve to understand the circumstances.

Therefore, starting with "why" is a first principle for all comms at . Of course there are always limitations to fully transparency (legal, PR, governance, customer risk) however I've observed that, in the majority of cases, that the obstacles can be described as. Perceived. The public may not always be with your choices, but you could say that if they do, you probably aren't doing your job. But they will appreciate and accept your choices when you start with the reasons behind them.

 3. Invest in in-person, and get personal.

Yes, I recognize that it's ironic to hear the CEO of a video-related company saying that. One of the biggest experiences over the past few months was that we had were too slow and not conscious enough about bringing the teams we have in real life.

In the month of January, one week after announcing layoffs, we held a kickoff for our company in NYC. We flew in employees from more than a dozen nations. Our employees were based in Ukraine who traveled by train, planes, and cars to get there. We ditched the typical event confetti and opted for the more casual look and a low-cost budget. It was one of the most stimulating and necessary investment decisions I've ever put into.

This is made even more effective in the event that, as leaders you get on a plane and meet your team where they are. I am a geographically dispersed executive team, spread over eight different locations starting from Seattle up to Switzerland. Most were hired in the last year and are still new, and just beginning to gel as a team. To speed up this process of gelling We started offsites for each leader's home city. We hung out with our CFO's mom around her fire pit in Vermont. The Head of Sales donned his apron. He made us frittatas for breakfast. Our working sessions were held at our Chef of Product's table.

The epidemic gave us a literal window into each others' homes and personal life. If we take advantage of that and integrate the idea into our daily lives and work, we can have the chance to build stronger, more connected and more efficient teams.

 4. Change from "lean back" to "lean forward" experiences.

An essential communication ability is the capability to design "lean forward" experiences instead of "lean back" broadcasts. As humans, our attention spans are getting shorter (now lower than eight seconds which is less than the length of a goldfish!). Yet we still communicate primarily through one-to-many messages, whether through an email you read or an elaborate town hall you sit back and enjoy.

At we see this tax on engagement being reflected in our own data, where the average time to end a session of watching videos has been declining in the last few years. If we don't change our strategy, the practice of letting people tune out will seriously hinder our capacity to keep our teams aligned and productive.

It is crucial shifting our thinking and openness to different things. We have a new generation entering the workforce who are ahead of us in their ability to design as well as capture authentic, rich information. They're ahead due to the fact that they are free of the constraints our generation experienced for decades in traditional communication modes at work.

It is said that employees do not leave jobs; they quit managers. In reality, CEOs are the most effective managers and as per the findings of a survey of over 113,000 executives most important key to effective leadership is confidence. Leaders must train ourselves how to show up in more authentic, fascinating, and trustworthy methods. I'm betting on the CEOs who embrace this brave new world will be far better at managing the next generation of workers. They'll be better informed and involve teams distributed across the globe as well as align employees to achieve greater productivity, and develop solid relationships that result in exceptional results. They'll stop communicating, and instead, communicate more effectively.