Dan Negroni argues that workplace-of-the-future conversations ignore workers themselves, pointing to stagnant employee engagement over a decade. He offers three fixes: flip leadership to ask "Who's it about?", give younger workers meaningful purpose, and reskill people in emotional intelligence. Bridging age gaps creates magic.
Innovation, invention, disruption. All this talk about the workplace of the future. There's so many people opining to what it will be, what it will look like, how it will feel. And what we believe is they forgot one single most important person, and that is the worker of the future. 50% of millennials think they're gonna have a new job next year because they're quitting their bosses. We all want the same thing: to share, to learn best practices, to grow. Let's start a real discussion about how we're gonna communicate to connect the generations.
Let me tell you what, we are experiencing the biggest intergenerational wealth shift in the history of this country. Look at how authoritative I sound. You do. Because all this stuff came from Dan.
I know. The most important issue is this: the multi-generational workforce. So it's yes, we got to figure out what the young want, but we have to bridge the gap between the 70-year-olds that are still there. And you know I've said this before on this very show, that where youth and experience meet is where magic happens. Why is there such a big disconnect between employers and employees? Engagement hasn't gone up for the past 10 years. In the workplace. But what I know about this group is here you showed up to figure out what do we need to do to create an environment for the worker of the future to thrive. And here are the 3 simple hacks. Turn your perspective upside down. Every single day I get the opportunity to coach about 5 people, and in those coaching sessions I get to say this very question: Who's that about? Diane calls me up one day from a big multinational company and says, "I am giving a seminar to all of my senior leaders. I'm calling you to ask you how I do it." I said, "Diane, what do your people want from you?" "What I want them to do is this, Danny." That wasn't the question I asked you. I asked you what they want from you. That is about turning your organization or your perspective upside down. What do my people need from me? Because actually I work for them. We must provide meaningful work. Every workplace can do it because meaningful work to Millennials or Gen Zs is training them on their own meaning and how they can connect and create value. Because people want what? To matter. We're afraid of being irrelevant and we want to do something that matters, that makes a difference. If you don't create meaning through what you do, they're gonna go find meaning in and create it for themselves, they're gonna leave you. Hack number 3, reskilling from the inside out. We know emotional intelligence is the skill that you need to create connection currency. Today we're at the Honor Foundation, my favorite place, because what they do here is teach Navy SEALs and Special Forces to move from deployment to employment. What we do is teach 'em about themselves to connect their inside dot to the outside world in a way that the commercial world will understand it.
Their mind is in the area of literal skill sets that they had in the military and what translates. Where it starts is where you actually take us, is with the individual with the heart.
They learn their values, their skills, they learn their passions, and ultimately they figure out what their story is so they can go out and connect themselves to their purpose, themselves to the job. Executives, they'll say that's their number one challenge is how do I create a succession plan? How do I make sure the people that come through the door are happy? Because if they're not happy and they're not engaged, my customers aren't happy.
Working with Dan is really inspiring. It is probably one of the most important topics out there right now. What is going to happen next and how do I best integrate with my job and connect and really find meaning in it?
If you give to them, they will give back to you, and it will be amazing. When you have diverse opinions, you get better decisions.
He has cracked the code on what it takes to up your game, be a leader, and manage people.
If we teach them, the results and performance goes through the roof. It's shocking. It's that simple. We can do something that matters. We can create a coaching and mentoring system And that is how the worker of the future will crush performance in your organizations.
