What the Future of Work Looks Like Depends on the Employee You're Ignoring.
The most important person in the room I was speaking in last week wasn’t a CEO. It wasn’t the planner who booked me. It wasn’t even the other planner in the back who could book me next. It was a 10-year-old girl named Josie.
I was speaking on leadership and workplace culture to a room full of family-run businesses. Not exactly kid material. But there she sat… eyes locked in, hand shooting up, shouting out answers before the executives around her could.
And when I asked the whole room stand and claim it, Josie stood up and yelled “I’m a Bar Raiser™” louder than anyone. (She stole the show that day, and I loved every minute of it.)
A little Bar Raiser™ in the making, one day, Josie will take over her father’s company. The skills I was teaching in that room are the exact skills she’ll need to lead her future team from a place of purpose over a paycheck. Her dad understood that. So he brought her in to develop her early.
So let me ask you a valuable question… who’s your Josie?
The 22-Year-Old You’re About to Lose
You have one. They’re on your team right now. They’re the “green” hire you keep describing as someone who “knows nothing yet, and probably won’t even stick around long enough to learn the entire job.”
And the
National Workplace Trends Study (NWTS) backs that up, showing that 42% of Gen Z workers plan to look for a new job in the next 12 months. But why?
We love to explain that away. It’s not due to entitlement. It’s not because they’re a softer generation. The majority of the time, they aren’t leaving because they’re spoiled. They’re leaving because no one is developing them. According to the
NWTS, 81% of employees believe the most successful companies to work for are the ones that prioritize learning and development.
They’re not asking for a handout trophy. They’re asking to grow. If you treat them like a warm seat instead of like a future leader, they’ll feel it, and then they'll update their resume.
Two Ways to See a Young Employee
A Tolerator views a 22-year-old and sees them as someone to manage until they’re “ready.
A Bar Raiser™ looks at the same person and sees a future leader to cultivate now.
Same employee. Two completely different futures for your company. The lens you choose today decides who’s running your teams in five years.
Leaders: Stop Making Them “Earn It” First
Too many leaders develop on a delay. Prove yourself for a few years, then we’ll invest.
Gen Z prioritizes regular, helpful coaching more than any older generation. Withhold it, and you quietly train your highest-potential young people to go find a manager who won’t. Coach early, not eventually.
Teams: Give Them Something Real to Own
People don’t grow by watching. They grow by carrying weight.
64% of employees say a clear career path with real milestones boosts their motivation and commitment. Ownership is a milestone. Let a young high-potential lead a meeting, run point on a project, or own an outcome. Hand them the ball before you think they’re ready. That’s how they get ready.
Culture: Make Development the Norm, Not the Reward
In a Resignation Workplace, growth is a prize only a select few earn. In a Destination Workplace®, growth is simply how things are done. When cultivating young talent is baked into how you operate, your best people stop leaving to find it somewhere else. That’s the whole game we build inside our Leadership Mastery program.
Build What We Call a…‘Committed Cultivator’
The Committed Cultivator is the 12th trait in the Bar Raisers™ DNA. Simply put…they are leaders who develop other leaders. At any level. At any age. You can build Committed Cultivators in three moves:
- Identify your high-potential people, yes, even the young ones. Watch for the signs. Tolerators wait to be told what to do. Bar Raisers™ take initiative. Tolerators focus on improving themselves. Bar Raisers™ focus on improving the team. Tolerators reject feedback. Bar Raisers™ use it to get better.
2. Mentor them. Take them under your wing, delegate real tasks, and ask what skills they actually
want to build.
3. Let them own it. Give them the chance to flex a new skill in front of people who matter.
And remember this… the moment someone stops being coachable is the moment they stop being promotable. Your job is to spot the coachable ones early and pour into them.
Tomorrow’s move
Pick one young person on your team with leadership potential. Hand them one real thing to own this month. Then tell them why you picked them. That one sentence can set the trajectory of an entire career… and help them become the future of your company.
You never know who you’re impacting when you raise the bar on someone early. So raise the bar on your young ones now. Because they
are the future of work.
And keep raising the bar on yourself! 💪
Ready to build a room full of Bar Raisers™? Bring Betsy to your next event.
betsyallenmanning.com/contact
About Betsy: Betsy Allen-Manning is the wake-up call you didn’t know you needed. She’s a high-energy leadership keynote speaker and creator of the Bar Raisers™ Movement: a proprietary system redefining how organizations are approaching performance, leadership, and culture. Featured on FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC, and TEDx, Betsy works with organizations across corporate, franchise, association, nonprofit, and government sectors. She’s the lead researcher behind the National Workplace Trends Study, and delivers programs around her Bar Raisers™ and Leadership Mastery frameworks. She is the founder of Destination Workplace®, an award-winning leadership development firm in Dallas, Texas.
