Working with Gen Z

A Handbook to Recruit, Retain, and Reimagine the Future Workforce After COVID-19

De: Santor Nishizaki, James DellaNeve

Narrado por: Santor Nishizaki

Foreword by Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com.

“An indispensable guide to unlocking the potential of the new generation.” (Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and CEO, Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM)

A decade ago, Millennials came of age, and many workplaces were not prepared to integrate a new generation that thought and worked differently. As a result, some organizations lost out on the best in young talent or were paralyzed by generational infighting.

Gen Zers, born between 1995 and 2012, have had their lives and relationships with work shaped by massive instability—first as a result of the Great Recession and again by a global pandemic that changed everything.

This new generation holds the promise of the future and is coming soon—if it hasn’t already—to an office, inbox, Zoom, and Slack channel near you. To unlock that potential, employers and colleagues must understand them. Are you prepared?

In Working with Gen Z, leadership experts Santor Nishizaki and James DellaNeve provide a deeply researched picture of Gen Zers and their colleagues as they begin to contend with the difficulties of navigating the working world. Their findings include:

• What Gen Zers really want out of work
• What motivates them to do great work
• How you can keep them happy and engaged
• How to help them peacefully coexist with older generations

This book provides the tools, tips, and data to get ahead of the curve in understanding, recruiting, and retaining the top talent of the future.

©2023 Santor Nishizaki & James DellaNeve (P)2023 Santor Nishizaki & James DellaNeve

The Gen Z playbook every modern leader should be listening to.

As someone who spends his days helping leaders find their voice, tell better stories, and connect with people across generations, Working With Gen Z by Paul Allen felt immediately useful.

This is not a book built on clichés or lazy stereotypes. It is a grounded, practical guide to how the next generation of talent actually thinks, works, and decides who they will give their energy to. Listening to this on Audible, I kept catching myself nodding along and thinking, “Yes, that is exactly what I am seeing inside teams right now.”

What Allen does especially well is bridge the gap between empathy and performance. He does not ask leaders to lower the bar. He shows how to raise it in a way Gen Z actually responds to. That combination is rare, and it is what makes this book feel like a leadership manual rather than a sociology lecture.

The narration is crisp, engaging, and easy to follow. It made complex ideas feel accessible, which is exactly what you want from an audiobook. I listened while walking and driving, and I found myself replaying sections just to let certain insights sink in.

What stayed with me most is how this book reframes leadership itself. If you want loyalty, initiative, and accountability from younger employees, you have to communicate differently. You have to lead with clarity, purpose, and trust. This audiobook gives you a blueprint for how to do that without sacrificing results.

If you are building a company, running a team, or trying to future-proof your leadership, this is one of those listens that quietly upgrades how you think. I finished it with sharper perspective and better language for the conversations I now have with clients and teams every day.

Highly recommended.

Better to read

Uneven delivery. Poor cadence. Info was ok. Would be better to read than listen. Feels rushed.