Apprentice to Analyst: What Gen Z Actually Wants at Work
Alastair is in conversation with Emily Stone, a senior analyst in Deloitte's consulting business and three years into the firm's BrightStart degree apprenticeship. Emily came straight from sixth form at a grammar school geared almost entirely towards university, and chose instead a route that has given her a fully funded degree, a chartered managership and three years of client work by the time her peers were graduating.
In this episode Emily shares the findings of her own workplace research, in which she surveyed and interviewed colleagues from junior to senior about what they expect from work and whether Deloitte delivers on it. Her conclusion is that generations largely value the same things, and that the useful question is not what someone values but why. She talks about recognition as the most underused engagement tool in any organisation, about the phrase humanised communication and where it came from, and about reverse mentoring as a practical answer to generational clustering.
Emily Stone Takeaways:
Generations value strikingly similar things. What differs is why, and a leader's job is to understand the why rather than reach for the generational label
Recognition matters at every level, not just the most junior. The public pat on the back is one of the most underused engagement tools in the workplace
A degree apprenticeship is not a lesser route. Learning the theory while doing the work makes you a better student because you can see it in your reality
Humanised communication is what people actually ask for, even from a generation stereotyped as preferring text. Everyone wants to feel seen, acknowledged and recognised
Reverse mentoring works. It helps senior colleagues understand Gen Z's strengths and directly tackles generational clustering
Every generation gets assigned the same negative labels on arrival. Millennials got me, me, me. The pattern says more about life stage than about the cohort
Focus on what generations share rather than how they differ, then get specific about the individual, because two Gen Z colleagues can want completely different things
Emily Stone Links:
Emily on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-stone-382200263/)
Generationally Speaking Links:
Generationally Speaking Website (https://generationallyspeaking.co.uk/)
Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/generationally-speaking-uk/)
Generationally Speaking on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@GenerationallySpeaking)
Generationally Speaking On Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/ag.generationallyspeaking/)
Alastair on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alastairgreener/)
29 Sept 2026
Human Bandwidth and Why Knowing Your Stuff Is Not Enough
Alastair is joined by David Duffett, an award-winning speaker, chartered engineer and author of “Be The Nerd That's Heard”, who helps technical experts raise what he calls their human bandwidth so that their knowledge and ideas are not lost through ineffective communication. David's own path ran through pirate radio transmitters he built himself, the Civil Aviation Authority's telecoms engineering college at Bletchley Park, and a spell as worldwide community director for the Asterisk open source project.
In this episode David explains why the IASM in his job title is capitalised, why the old model of the deep technical expert in the back room has been flipped on its head by AI, and what happened to a cohort of Bloomberg engineers who became managers without ever having given face to face feedback. He pushes back firmly on the stereotype that engineers are simply introverts who dislike public speaking, and offers a set of practical protocol matching tips for communicating across the generational gap in technical teams.
David Duffett Takeaways:
Knowing your stuff isn’t enough. The skill that matters now is communicating just the relevant part of your stuff to the audience in front of you
Engineers are not afraid of speaking in public. They are afraid of looking ill-prepared in front of their peers, and that is a fixable problem
Communication is a muscle. Technical people have spent years building the technical one and ignoring the communication one, so the imbalance is trainable
Encode the message in the audience's own language. Talking to engineers about rapport gets scepticism. Talking about the bandwidth of your human connection channel starts a conversation
Younger engineers arrive ready to broadcast, having grown up sharing online, but they are not always set up for two-way communication. Human bandwidth must be open in both directions
A generation of engineers came through university and into work during lockdowns and reached management having never given feedback face to face. That gap needs deliberately filling
Protocol matching runs both ways. Senior engineers can learn some of the younger register, and younger engineers can offer more detail to senior colleagues
The art of the unsolicited presentation: spot something two teams misunderstand about each other, offer a lunch and learn, and you demonstrate your value without self-promotion
David Duffett Links:
Let the Geek Speak (https://geekspeakhq.com)
David on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidduffett)
David on X (https://x.com/dduffett)
Generationally Speaking Links:
Generationally Speaking Website (https://generationallyspeaking.co.uk/)
Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/generationally-speaking-uk/)
Generationally Speaking on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@GenerationallySpeaking)
Generationally Speaking On Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/ag.generationallyspeaking/)
Alastair on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alastairgreener/)
15 Sept 2026
What Professional Looks Like Now: Leadership Across the Generations
Alastair welcomes Zoe Thompson, a leadership consultant and coach who works with senior leaders and organisations across the UK and EMEA, helping them navigate fast paced, high stakes environments while building more intentional leadership and higher performing teams. Zoe joined the police service at 18, in uniform on the front desk of her local station with no Google, no training course and no call centre. She went on to spend two decades in police leadership before moving into coaching full time.
In this episode Zoe argues that the single biggest generational fault line at work is not technology or work-life balance, it is disagreement about what professional looks like. She talks about walking into rooms where the most casually dressed person is the most senior, about her own experience of being misread as a junior colleague, and about why leaders who are struggling right now are mostly struggling with the loss of being the most knowledgeable person in the room. She also sets out what she tells emerging leaders about winning over sceptical bosses.
Zoe Thompson Takeaways:
The biggest generational gap in the workplace is not values, it is differing expectations of what professional looks and sounds like
Gen X and older millennials tend to adjust how they speak to seniority. Younger millennials and Gen Z communicate the same way with everyone, and a good leader can flex across both
Leadership is no longer signalled by age, dress code or job title, which makes assumptions and unconscious bias more costly, not less
Self-determination theory still holds where people need competence, autonomy and relatedness, and hybrid working makes relatedness the hardest of the three to deliver
People need to know that their work is valued, that they as individuals are valued, and where they are going. Engagement drops when those conversations do not happen
Behind most resistance from senior colleagues is fear, usually fear of judgement or of no longer being the most experienced person in the room. Ask what their concerns are rather than pushing harder
Leadership skills are a different skillset from being a high performer, which is why more people are being promoted earlier and with less experience than before
A leader's job is to balance the needs of the individuals in the team with the needs of the business, and to keep rebalancing as both change
Zoe Thompson Links:
Zoe Thompson Website (https://zoethompson.uk)
Zoe Thompson Links Hub (https://zoethompson.uk/quick-links)
Zoe on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoe-thompson-uk)
Intentional Leadership on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@IntentionalLeadershipZoe)
Zoe on TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@zoethompsonuk)
Zoe on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/zoethompson.uk/)
Generationally Speaking Links:
Generationally Speaking Website (https://generationallyspeaking.co.uk/)
Generationally Speaking on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/generationally-speaking-uk/)
Generationally Speaking on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@GenerationallySpeaking)
Generationally Speaking On Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/ag.generationallyspeaking/)
Alastair on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alastairgreener/)
Who has been a guest on Alastair Greener Generationally Speaking
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Lise Kaye-Bell
Paul Hargreaves
Maurice Collins
Kim Seeling Smith
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