Executives, let's redefine connection in the workplace.

This month, I was a participant in a discussion on Quiet the Quiet at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos. It is a fast-changing world for workers, and it strikes me that leaders, like us engage in a lot of the appropriate questions. how to balance the benefits and drawbacks of remote working, the risks and opportunities offered with AI, the need to develop an environment that is more welcoming and sustainable.

But one question is worthy of more attention: if the workforce of our generation is evolving, technology is changing as well as post-pandemic behavior and standards are changing...don't our leaders have to change too?

There is an entire new generation of natives who are digital making their way into the work force. They have grown up making and sharing videos instead of messaging or calling or texting, and they are able to consider TikTok or YouTube the best sources of data. When it comes to their private lives they're connected and equally hyper-engaged.

Yet in their work lives however, the story is different. We're witnessing substantial decreases in engagement and employee satisfaction in remote Gen Z and younger millennials. A mere four percent of youngsters who work remotely or in hybrid settings are aware of what's required of them in the workplace, 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 major consequences for all businesses and for every company's bottom line.

What is causing this disconnect? In work as in life it is common for us to want to belong to some bigger picture than we are. We have an innate need to belong, to feel the sense of belonging which is unambiguous, transparent, and real. However, the more our population becomes digitally distributed and AI-enabled, the more difficult it is to feel a genuine connections every single day. Particularly, if we've not changed how we work to meet the needs of the future generation. It is still common for us to ask employees to understand a plethora of documents or write lengthy emails and attend unproductive meeting. We learn about layoffs as well as the company's priorities from communications so scripted and robotic that they could be generated through ChatGPT. And the only pulse we as managers have is via cookie-cutter surveys on engagement, live events with very low turn-in rate, as well as the sometimes snarky chats or Q&A.

The traditional managerial model is ineffective. It's time to change how our leaders present themselves and interact with our staff. In the same way that we're focused on reskilling our workforce to meet the evolving demographic, population and technology trends as well, we must reskill ourselves as leaders, to better build trust and connection at scale.

I've played around with a lot of this in the past few years at . These are the things I've been learning and applying and believe will enable us to be more present and lead more effectively:

 1. Realize who you are, and be yourself.

At the start of the pandemic, I ran a global town hall from my parents' home located in Flint, Michigan -- exhausted, in my velour pajamas, with both my toddler son and my grandmother moving in and out of the background.

It might have been my most effective communication ever.

Why? because it wasn't scripted, vulnerable, and messy. It's easy to fall into "us versus them" dynamics when we work at a company, particularly in times of stress and challenge. It's very simple to imagine "leadership" as an unnamed machines that have no face. Being video-first and visual when communicating can be a potent deterrent. This forces you to shed the mask and protection of the written or edited communication. The most effective way to break through is to present yourself just as you really are.

In the end, there are definitely examples of leaders becoming vulnerable and backfiring...but I think that in the vast majority instances, the issue was that they were performing to the point of failure. It is important to allow for that raw version of yourself to fail when you are in front of your team. We all have flaws that make us human. Everyone wants to see our leaders be courageous. It encourages us to follow them more.

 2. Begin with the "why ."

Much like many managers, I've made difficult decisions over the course of the year. In the past, I've made executive decisions and laidoffs to restructuring and closing down projects in the name of efficiency. My job is to make those difficult call, not-popular decisions and implement changes quickly across our organization.

More often, I observe employees seeking transparency in these decisions-- not just the "what" but also the "why". This includes a desire to know the larger market or competitive context, the trade-offs considered and balanced, as well as the procedure of who was involved as well as when.

The conventional comms strategy would say that when you have an issue that requires critical communication that requires your attention to be a little strained, start with the "what" before getting to the point and needed steps. Yet I've found myself far more successful in getting people to embrace a difficult choice when I view my employees as the key people who are entitled to know the situation.

In the end, starting with "why" is a first rule for any communication . Of course there are always restrictions to fully being transparent (legal, PR, management, risk to the customer), but I've found that most of the time that the obstacles are simply that. Perceived. People will not always agree with your decisions, and it is possible to argue that if they do it, then you're probably not doing your job. They will however accept and respect your decisions when you start with the reason behind it.

 3. Make the investment to meet in person or in-person meetings, and make it personal.

Sure, I see the irony in the CEO of a video-related company telling that. But one of my biggest experiences over the past few months is that we waited too long and weren't conscious enough about bringing the teams we have on a daily basis.

In January, just a few days after conducting layoffs, we held a kickoff for our company in NYC. We flew in employees from over 12 countries. We had employees based in Ukraine who took trains as well as planes and automobiles to get there. We eschew the usual event celebration confetti and chose to go with a low-key vibe and a low-cost budget. It was one of the most energizing and needed investment decisions I've ever done.

This is made even more effective when, as leaders, you get on a plane and visit your team wherever they are. I am a distributed executive team spread across eight locations starting from Seattle from Seattle to Switzerland. The majority of them were recruited in the past year, so we the team is still in its early stages, and just beginning to gel as a team. To speed up this process of gelling, we started hosting offsites for each leader's home city. Our CFO's mother gathered us at her fireplace in Vermont. Our Head of Sales wore his apron. He made us frittatas to eat breakfast. We held working sessions in the Chef of Product's table.

The epidemic gave us the ability to see into other's homes and private lives . If we can tap into this, and integrate the idea into our daily lives, we have the potential to create better connected and more efficient teams.

 4. Go from "lean back" to "lean forward" experience.

A critical communication skill is the capability to develop "lean forward" experiences instead of "lean back" broadcasts. Human focus spans are shrinking (now less than eight seconds which is less than the length of the time it takes to catch a goldfish!). However, we communicate through one-to-many messages, whether by email, which you can read or an elaborate town hall that you sit and observe.

We can see this burden on engagement surfacing in our own data, where the average time to stop watching a video is decreasing in the last few years. If we do not change the way we approach it, tuning out can seriously impact our ability to keep our teams in sync and productive.

The key here is changing our perspective and openness to new things. We have a new generation entering the workforce who is ahead of us in their ability to design and capture rich and authentic information. They are ahead because they're not subject to the constraints our generation experienced over the years in conventional working environments.

The truth is that employees don't quit their jobs, they just let managers go. Well, CEOs are the most effective managers and in the findings of a study of more than 113,000 managers most important factor for efficient management is the trust of their employees. We as leaders must show our employees how to present themselves in more authentic, fascinating and authentic methods. I'm betting on the executives who are open to this new world will be far more successful in overseeing the next generation of workers. They'll better educate and involve teams distributed across the globe and align them to more productive outcomes, and develop long-lasting relationships that produce exceptional work. They'll stop communicating and make connections more effectively.