In recent years, there has been an increasing number of leaders, from small-team leaders to C-suite executives, who have reached out to me to request assistance seeking the Holy recipe on how to manage their teams for success. As it turns out, the emerging issue for them is how to manage Gen-Zers and more specifically how to keep them happy, how to blend them with the millennials and get the most of them, how to avoid early turnover or quiet quitting. 

Their immediate response in 90% of the cases is the following: why don’t we structure a competitive bonus scheme or a retention plan that will tie performance and rewards in a 4–5-year run?  Should we give them titles and promotions or provide them with flexible/remote work options to entice them to stay? Etc, etc. 

My question to them is whether they believe that this will last; and I conducted a quick poll regarding the duration of the impact this may have. 75% admitted that the whole retention miracle will last for a maximum of one year, which is short, right? And when I shared the results with them, they acknowledged that it is rather costly and time-sensitive to restructure the architecture of their company or team, while risking demotivating other employees. 

The other set of questions I ask is how do you lead these teams, what is your decision-making process, and how do you involve them in these decisions?  Whether they adopt transactional or relational models of leadership, the desired result is rarely achieved. 

Something important seems to be missing in the latter models.  As I am a football and basketball fan, and triggered by the examples of Carlo Ancelotti, who recently won his 5th Champions League title, and Phil Jackson, the head coach of the multi-champion Chicago Bulls team and winner of 6 NBA Championships, I researched their leadership style to find out what makes them highly successful.

This is how they behave:

 As Ancelotti himself puts it, "I like to take care of the people above all. Aim to inspire greater performance in the moment and focus on showing that you really care about them as people and their professional growth.”

Phil Jackson also wrote that, "… creating a successful team … is essentially a spiritual act. It requires the individuals involved to surrender their self-interest for the greater good so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts.”

 As the challenges ahead are many, there should be a fast, radical shift in the way we think about leading new generations. Empathy, trusting the process, and providing autonomy are just a few hints to take away from this leadership paradigm. First and foremost, it is imperative to identify how you act as a leader and how the team conceives this.