#108: Gen Z at Work: Silence Is the Signal

Gen Z gets called quiet, disengaged, even entitled. Generational Strategist Benoît Vancauwenberghe thinks that read is simply wrong. In this episode, Benoît makes the case that silence at work isn’t the absence of a message, but rather the message itself. He walks us through why Gen Z operates on what he calls a different “operating system,” shaped by a communication shift that began with the smartphone, and what that means for how this generation expresses disagreement, discomfort, or distrust without ever raising their voice. That silence becomes harder to ignore once you understand what Benoît calls the three selves (private, professional, and social) all of which now show up at work, and all of which make trust something to be earned, not assumed. It’s also why someone leaving a company can look sudden to a manager, when in fact the signals were there all along, just not in a form leaders were trained to recognize. The conversation also turns to AI, and a surprising claim: Gen Z isn’t afraid of the technology itself, but has a sharp instinct for spotting what’s authentic and what isn’t. We close on something more personal: what Benoît has learned, after years of co-living and working alongside young people, about where the real insight actually comes from. A conversation for anyone who manages people and wants to understand what they might be missing. Our Guest: Benoît Vancauwenberghe   Benoît Vancauwenberghe is a European keynote speaker and leadership auditor. After nearly two decades working with major brands as co-founder of the Brussels-based agency 20something, he found himself facing a paradox: the more he “understood” younger generations, the less his own organization worked. What he first saw as a generational problem turned out to be something else entirely, a structural failure in how companies are designed and led. Today, he works directly with executive teams across Europe to audit and redesign leadership models that have become economically incoherent. The Gen Z Shift is the result of this fieldwork. References: Benoît Vancauwenberghe LinkedIn profile https://www.20something.be/ Get the book: The Gen Z Shift Listen to the next Episode All Podcast Episodes