How Challenging Opportunities Can Shape Your Career

Sabine Gedeon, CEO & Founder of Gedeon Enterprises, discusses the differences between men and women in approaching their careers, highlighting issues such as the wage gap and the rate of advancement for women in leadership positions. She introduces the concept of 'dots,' which refers to development opportunities that may be challenging or undesirable but can help individuals stand out and gain recognition. Sabine also shares her personal journey and the lessons she's learned in corporate environments, including the importance of building relationships and seeking mentorship.

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📌TALKING POINTS

00:42 - Gender Differences in Approaching Careers

02:22 - The Concept of 'Dots'

06:16 - The Importance of Communicating Your Work

08:01 - The Challenges of Being a Manager

11:29 - Supporting Your Manager as an Employee

16:13 - Sabine's Background and Experience

20:48 - The Power of Skip Level Meetings

28:45 - The Potential of Gen Z in Shaping Workforce Culture

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• Website: https://sabinegedeon.com/ 
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Tom Finn (00:01.322)

Welcome, welcome into the show, my friends. Today we have Sabine Gedeon. Welcome, welcome. We are so happy you're on with us.

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Sabine Gedeon (00:09.45)

Thank you, Tom. I'm excited to be here with you today.

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Tom Finn (00:13.502)

Sabine is the founder of SheLeads Network and the host of SheLeads Now, a podcast focused on women in leadership and business. With nearly 20 years experience, she has helped clients in startups and Fortune 500 companies grow and develop by breaking through their own mental limits, elevating their confidants, influence and impact as leaders and change agents. All right, let's start right there. How are women and men different in the way they approach their careers?

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Sabine Gedeon (00:44.558)

Ooh, okay, all right. So loaded question, as you know, right? And we're gonna be generalizing here. But you know, there are a couple things, right? We know that there are things that exist right now, which are the wage gap, as well as the rate at which women are advancing up the corporate ladder or up leadership positions. But one of the key things that I have found, and I experienced this when I was in corporate, is this idea that we specifically as women have. And of course there are some societal limitations that add to that, but this focus on, let me put my head down, let me get the work done, and someone's gonna notice my good deeds, right? And so you take on all the dots. And for those of you who've never heard of dots, it's development opportunities that suck. So like more often than not, we're taking on all the dots and we're the ones that are, you know, balancing everything, but not moving up at the same rate. And so one of the key pieces that, you know, you're starting to see the conversation shift around, you know, not just mentorship being a key piece of that, because men are very good at socializing, at building relationships, but also sponsorship. What does that look like to be proactive in getting people to, you know, open doors for you? So this whole notion of helping women build their social capital. That is the piece that I think has been missing from a career perspective in terms of helping us advance and at the rates of our male counterparts.

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Tom Finn (02:22.594)

So let's go back to this idea of the dots. Help us understand what the dots are.

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Sabine Gedeon (02:30.638)

Yeah, so development opportunities that suck. When I first started in corporate back in like 2005, I had a HR leader. She was an old school HR leader, but I loved her. And one of the couple of things that she told me that was very critical for me. So I'm first generation everything. I'm an immigrant from Haiti. So being in corporate, I'm the first one to have a corporate job from my household so I knew nothing. I just knew, you know, work hard, work hard, work hard, and you know, you'll get there one day. Luckily, she set me aside. She told me two things that have been critical for me or were critical for me during my corporate career. She told me to never stay in a job for more than two years because at that two year mark, you may have not mastered everything but you've learned enough about the job where now it's time for you to look at, okay, what other skills do I need to build to get to the next level? Then she advised me to take on as many dots as possible because the dots would be the things that get the attention of other people. So dots, development opportunities that suck, right? Those are the projects that no one wants to take on, or those are the projects that, you know, because of capacity they just keep getting pushed to the side, but they're important, but just no one has taken them on. So I learned from her, look for problems, look for issues that others know exist, but may not have the capacity to do anything with, or that people just feel like they're too busy, but it has a greater impact on the outcome for the department or the team or whatever the case may be.So I grew my career on dots for the most part. And yes, some of them did suck.

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Tom Finn (04:25.258)

Yeah, I love that. So when you're thinking about this as an employee early stage, what I think I'm hearing you say is you got to take on some dots because that's going to get you noticed above the rest of the crowd in your peer group. And if you get noticed above the rest of the crowd within your peer group, then ultimately, if you're taking on development that sucks and some work that is heavy lifting or takes extra hours or extra travel or whatever it is. If you can do that, you're actually going to get noticed.

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Sabine Gedeon (04:58.29)

Yeah, yeah, I will add a caveat here because you know, we don't want people being taken advantage of, right. And that's another there's a fine line of how many dots you take on to the point that there it's a diminishing return that you're not getting the ROI of being noticed. It's really, you know, thinking through from a strategic standpoint, not just Oh, I'm going to take on all this work to take on all this work. But what is the value add of taking on this work in the long term? And then how am I going to leverage or how am I going to articulate that to my leadership so that as I'm taking on these dots, I am keeping them informed of the dots, I am keeping them informed of the progress and the eventual ROI, right? So it's two-fold, not just looking or three-fold, looking for the problems or the things that could be the value add, taking them on and then making sure that you're advocating or at least articulating and getting that sponsorship, if you will, along the way so that when you are done with this dots, it's not just something that you can just say, oh, okay, yeah, I got this done. It's something that the key decision makers know that you took on, that you kept them abreast on, and now they can see the end result.

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Tom Finn (06:16.238)

This is so critically important because if you're doing the work and not communicating it, you might as well have not done the work. If nobody knows that you did it and you hide it and you're just really quiet about it because you're so humble and you don't want to offend anybody, like that doesn't work. What you got to do is say, look, these are the tasks I took on that were outside of my roles and responsibilities or at an elevated level. And this is how they came out. This is how I performed. Put that in your performance review if you have such a thing in your organization, as well as communicate it constantly with your manager. Is that kind of the way you're feeling about this?

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Sabine Gedeon (06:56.79)

Absolutely, absolutely. I think we underestimate or maybe we overestimate our managers or our leadership's investment in us. And I don't say that to say that they're not invested in us. But you think about it, if a manager or a leader in any capacity has five, 10 direct reports and they have their work to get done and they have their stakeholders to answer to the likeliness that they are, you know, staying up at night, thinking about the project that you're working on, or the progress that you've made is very slim. So the oneness and the accountability is on the employer-employee to say, Hey, this is what I'm doing. And also, this is where I might need your support. I think, you know, we have managers of different capacities and different skill sets. But most managers, they want to help they want to be able to support you but they may not have the capacity to be so ingrained or so involved with what each individual employee is working on.

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Tom Finn (08:01.182)

I think that's fair. Most managers have their own workload, like you mentioned, that can be all consuming. And so getting to all 10 direct reports is not always the easiest thing. Or understanding what the skills are of each direct report. Going a little deeper with each person isn't always a skill set of managers. I think what I struggle with the most, to be honest, is that managers do not go to manager school. Most people are created in their early careers, and then they just sort of get into management, maybe because they did take on some development opportunities that were difficult and challenging. And now they're managing and nobody ever taught them how to manage. So how do you pull that one off when you don't know how to manage?

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Sabine Gedeon (08:42.057)

Yeah, no, that's a really great point. I think the percentage is somewhere around like 72 or 76% of managers, especially now in this time where, you know, the numbers of burnout is like ridiculous. It's over 80%, but 70 something percent will tell you that they got zero training. They were a great individual contributor. They performed or they outperformed their peers. They were put in this position and it was sink or swim.

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And that's why I have this, I have a soft spot in my heart for managers because I've seen it on both sides that this expectation that they should know or they'll figure things out or they'll do all that stuff that's not fair to them. And then there are also, there's this piece where as they're transitioning the identity from doer to delegator or from individual contributor to manager, obviously got into that role because they were top performers. So you take someone who prides themselves in their performance and their ability to get stuff done and to figure things out. And now they're in a space where they don't know the answer. Oftentimes, and especially if it's a, if it's a toxic environment or it doesn't even have to be a toxic, if it's one of these environments where, you know, mistakes are reprimanded, they, you know, they will fake it till they make it. And that has negative repercussions, not just for them, but for the people who are expecting them to be their support.

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Tom Finn (10:17.23)

So right on. I mean, the challenge with this though is that idea, that culture of you don't have the freedom to fail as a manager, you don't have the freedom to make mistakes, just shuts people down and then they make the mistakes, they just do it quietly and then they drive people out of the organization, right? Especially the most talented people get driven out of the organization because the manager is keeping everything sort of closed in. How do you deal with a manager that...doesn't know how to manage. What are some pro tips on how to change that for yourself if you're one of 10 direct reports?

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Sabine Gedeon (10:53.446)

Yeah, great. So you're at, let me just clarify, you're asking how does the individual employee support their manager and becoming better? Or if you're a manager for the first time, or maybe you've been at it for a while and you know your skill set needs some improvement, how do you grow that?

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Tom Finn (11:09.642)

Let's go with the first one first, because I think that's where the majority of people live, is my manager isn't great, and I could use more from my manager, and I don't know how to communicate that up, so that I don't offend, I don't want to be disrespectful, but I do need more from my manager. How do we get that out of our manager?

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Sabine Gedeon (11:29.938)

Yeah, so it's a two pronged approach, right? First and foremost, we assume positive intent. Unless the manager has proven to be like an absolute jerk or a bully or anything like that, we assume positive intent and we go into the conversation or we look at it as a relationship as this is a human being who has responsibilities, what's on their plate? One of the things that I used to always do in my one-on-ones with my managers is to ask the questions, like, what do you have going on? Like, what are you working on? And it wasn't because I wanted to take anything off their plate, I just wanted to understand what is the bigger picture here, right? There's what I have going on, but what are you doing? Right, really understand what they have going on. The second piece to that is going back to what we shared before, keeping them informed of what you have going on. Again, if it's a manager who might be overwhelmed or in over their head because they're trying to do their work and they're trying to manage this team and they're not quite, they don't know what to do. You know, you take the onus of preparation, right? So when you have your one-on-ones, you create the agenda. This is what's going on. This is what I need from you. This is what we need next, right? And so that is that skill of managing up where one, you identify what are their pain points or what is it that they have work going on. And then how do you make sure that they are consistently kept abreast of what you have going on and where you need their support? In cases where I can give you a perfect example. I have a client that I was working with and she was that type A, get stuff done, expected to be recognized. And then they did a 360 on her and it came back where, you know, we'd like to see you speaking up a little bit more. We'd like to see you making better decisions, right? And so what I coached her through was, okay. And she was doing it, but she was doing it behind the scenes or she was doing it after the fact. So she wasn't the type to speak up in meetings. If she shared an idea and got shot down for whatever reason, you know, she'd just stay quiet. So the way that we worked that out is, okay, if you're in a meeting and you get asked a question or they're having conversation and you need time to process before the meeting ends, say in that moment, you know what, this is a really great discussion.

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I have some ideas stirring. Would it be OK if I reach back out once I've had a chance to process? So that in that meeting, your manager, whoever they see, OK, yes, you are an active participant in this, that you're not just this wallflower. Second piece to that was for her to be a little bit more proactive with letting her manager know, this is what I want to do. This is my ideal growth trajectory.

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And these are the places that I know I might need some development. Um, these are the areas that I might need your support. And the third piece to that was in the cases where she knew her manager could not support her because she was in a technical role, ask your manager, who do you think, who do you think like who else on the organization or who else on the team do you think might be able to support me in this that way you're not telling your manager outright, like you don't have the skillset to help me or you can't do it but you're engaging them to say, I would love to work on this particular skill or whatever this competency, who do you think I should reach out to help support me with that?

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Tom Finn (15:06.494)

I love the way you're thinking about this. And by the way, I completely agree with you. The whole idea of helping your manager by understanding what they have on their plate is the most important skill in managing up that you can have. Come prepared to your one-on-ones, build the agenda for your manager, have everything ready to go, and then ultimately say, what are you up to? What's going on in your world? How are you doing? And if you start to kind of give a damn about your manager, then all of a sudden, they will start to reciprocate. Even if they're a tough nut to crack, and there are plenty of those out there, even if they're difficult to work with, it really doesn't matter what the landscape looks like. If you go in there proactively assuming good intent and you build the process for them, support them, and ask how they're doing, oh, good things are coming. Good things are coming for you.

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Sabine Gedeon (15:59.294)

Absolutely, I totally agree.

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Tom Finn (16:03.031)

I wonder as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking there's a lot of wisdom that you're sharing here. How did you start out and what's your story?

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Sabine Gedeon (16:13.11)

It was a lot of hard won wisdom that's coming through here. So as I mentioned, immigrant, first generation, everything, I had to learn the unwritten rules of corporate the hard way. And I started in financial services at that. So very structured, bureaucratic. I came up with Baby Boomers who they had a certain way in which, you know, corporate operated, you left your feelings at the door. It was very command and control. And so I learned from that genre, if you will. And there are points where, you know, I was just like, oh yeah, this is not, this is not me. Like I didn't see me modeled in my immediate relationship or how, or leadership or how I wanted to model my leadership. So I was very proactive in finding mentors. So whether the organization had a formal mentorship program or I was part of a lot of the affinity groups. So the African-American network, the women's network, I was even part of the Hispanic network. I was part of everything because I knew that there was a ceiling to where I could go if I only kept my head down.

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So I built relationships throughout the organization. In the first 10 years of my career, I was in human resources. Well, I was in human resources the entire time in corporate, but I was in recruiting. And so because I was in recruiting, it allowed me to gain access to leaders, all throughout the organization, all throughout the country. So I took those relationships and built them as well, not just, you know.

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Okay, I'm recruiting for you and your team. No, no, I'm gonna build a relationship with you. Learn how you operate, see how you lead, take pieces from you and then move forward from that. So I learned very quickly and part of that was me looking at my white male peers. So again, with no contacts, at least from home, I saw oftentimes, they were able to come in.

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And next thing you know, like they're the lead or they're moving forward. And there was a point where I was just like, okay, wait a minute, something's, the math is not mapping here. Something is not adding up. I'm here from eight to seven. I'm doing all the stuff. I'm taking on all the dots. I'm building the relationships. I'm doing this. Well, this is before I started building the relationships. What's missing? What is it about them that, you know, I have not tapped into?

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And once I learned that secret, and I like to call it Bob, right? I refer to, please, if anyone's listening, please do not take offense. It's just the name that I chose to keep the, to protect the identity of those I used to work with. But once I tapped into what Bob was doing, that's why I started emulating Bob. And that's when I saw the shift in my career.

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Tom Finn (19:22.57)

So let's double click on Bob for a second. So Bob is the prototypical baby boomer white male who is connecting across the organization and building relationships and thus being recognized for that and moved up. And I guess maybe unfair to say just baby boomer, maybe all generational across the organization that is building relationships. So what did Bob do that you learned from?

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Sabine Gedeon (19:51.582)

Yeah, so I have the same, what would Bob do, right? So Bob, to me, I never put an age on him, but at the time Bob was Gen X for me, but nonetheless, Bob is your typical person. They get the work done, right? But they just get the work done. They're not the person who's putting in the extra hours, but yet they seem to have this really, really strong network. When I observed Bob, it wasn't just that Bob was doing all the things that we talked about, right? So managing up or being part of the network, Bob had this unique skill where not only his manager understood and knew what his goals were and what he was working on, but he initiated these skip level meetings. Like I didn't even know what a skip level meeting was until like I started observing Bob. And for those of you who are listening, that's when you… start to meet with your manager's manager or maybe, you know, two levels above. And you start to cultivate relationships with senior leaders and you're informing them on the same level. Now it's not anything where, I mean, depending on the environment that you're in, there may not be as many levels, but you're not going in there to tell on your manager. It's really, you're creating a relationship and you're doing that managing up. And because Bob had… created these opportunities for skip level meetings with senior leadership, that created sponsorship opportunities. Now they knew what Bob was working on, they knew what Bob's aspirations were, and sponsorship is different than mentorship. I mean, he probably got some mentors as well, but now they knew so that when they're having these talent reviews and succession planning discussions, Bob is at the top of their mind, why? Because they know Bob, they know what Bob wants to do.

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And so it allowed Bob to advance in ways that, let's just say Susie, who was taking on all the work, doing all that stuff, she wouldn't have been noticed because that senior leader, no Susie, no Susie gets work done, but has no idea what her aspirations are.

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Tom Finn (22:06.89)

That's it, you got it. I mean, that is how you move in corporate environments. That's how you move up. You create meetings with senior leaders where you do nothing but praise your boss. Even if you hate your boss, it doesn't matter. You praise your boss. But if you can't be trusted and you break that sort of leadership accountability model and you sort of dump all over your boss, you're done. So...

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But if you do it right, like you said, Sabine, if you go into these conversations and say, look, this is what I'm working on, my boss is doing great, I wanna make sure that I'm supporting the organization the right way, and you say it to the one level up, how can I support you, how can I support my boss, how can I make sure our team is the most successful team in our business unit, then, oh, all of a sudden, all eyes and all ears are on you. And that can be really powerful, including, oh, by the way, I know I'm here today, but in five years, I want my boss's job, but not because he didn't do a great job, but because he's been promoted, right? Or she's been promoted. And I wanna do this in a really thoughtful way, and I'm here for you and the organization, how can I support you? Those are the conversations that matter when you wanna have a skip level meeting, and you better be prepared. You better be prepared. Know your numbers, know the details, know the players and go unprepared because you won't know everything.

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Sabine Gedeon (23:38.174)

Yeah, and that's a really good point. I should have said that. You're not just going to your manager's manager to shoot the breeze. Although, in some cases, if there's a relationship or some common hobby or something like that, you can start with that. But the purpose of those conversations are to be really, really strategic and to position yourself as someone that one, they wanna care about.

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Two, that they see is playing the game in terms of like they're looking to build success within the organization as well. And someone that they would be willing to put their name on the line to say, you know what? I'm going to back up this particular person because I've observed them. I've had conversations with them. I've even checked in with their managers and other people in the organization.

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Tom Finn (24:32.022)

Yeah, look, the other thing I would do if I'm prepping somebody for a skip level meeting is prepare a one pager. And the way that I used to prepare one pagers when I was in corporate roles was I would put it into four quadrants, upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right. And you, you very simply put in there what you're working on, um, in visual form what projects, some of those things that you're doing outside of your job description, and then where you'd like to be.

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And you can ask the question, how can I be supportive? Or what can I do in different business units? Or what have you? But you better have a plan to give to that leader because they don't know what you want. They have no idea. And they're busy. So put it on one page, leave it as a leave behind. They will throw it out, but they will also remember that you did your homework.

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Sabine Gedeon (25:22.858)

I love that, I love that. Back in my day, we had to have a deck. It was still the death by PowerPoint, but yes, I love the one page idea.

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Tom Finn (25:35.094)

Yeah, I used to laminate a one-pager every time I went for a skip meeting. And if I was in person, I mean, that's the only way to play this game is in person, but I would walk into the meeting and have that one-pager, one for them, one for me. It would drive the conversation. All of the bullet points I want to hit are on there. All of the things that I think need to be taken away are on there. And it's very straightforward. It gives you a playbook for your conversation. So nerves are out the window, right? You don't have to be nervous because it's right in front of you. You're not gonna forget because it's right in front of you. And that bottom right quadrant is always where do I wanna be? What's next for me? And how can I support the organization through this growth strategy or growth plan?

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Sabine Gedeon (26:24.286)

Yeah. And you know, you bring up a really good point that I think, especially during this time, that it's important to speak to, especially with a lot of organizations being remote or being hybrid. Right? Like this is, this is one of those things that, you know, we got the benefit of seeing them or at least passing them in the hallway or in the cafeteria. And while I understand the, you know, the power of flexibility, obviously being an entrepreneur, I couldn't imagine going into an office every day. I get it.

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There is, you know, I feel like people who are in those environments, you have to work almost twice, if not three times as hard to be able to build those relationships. You know, there's this whole proximity bias, right? People are going to remember, people are going to think of the people who are always top of mind, or people who they see. So if you are in a situation where you are a hybrid worker, or you're completely remote, you still have like, the strategy is still the same. The question now becomes how do you incorporate that not being able to be face to face? You know, where are there opportunities for you to tap in? I have a client, he's at a managing consulting company and you know, there are periods where, you know, he'll travel just, you know, based on their region. So they're regional-based.

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And so there are key decision makers who are in other parts of the country who he will never, like he doesn't see. And so we were putting a strategy together with how can you be intentional of creating opportunities to go visit clients or go do some business development, reach out to them as in the senior leadership within the organization while you're there to let them know, hey, I'm gonna be in the area, would love to stop by the office and connect with you while I'm there.

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So for him, it's taking a lot more intention. He has to travel to be able to do that face-to-face. And obviously, there's a business case where he's not just traveling to say, to have these particular meetings, but you have to just be creative and look at it as this is part of the job. This isn't an added thing, right? Or a nice to do. If you're really looking to advance, if you're really looking to grow, building those relationships are so key.

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Tom Finn (28:45.002)

I love the way you're leading us down this path because business travel sometimes gets rejected by some of the younger folks out there. And I think I can say that now because I'm old. I used to be one of the younger folks, but now I'm not. And what I remember though, was I was willing to go anywhere at any time in a middle seat to get into the room. And that still plays by the way, you need to be willing to get into a middle seat on a nine o'clock flight and get to wherever you need to get to so that you can be in the nine a.m. meeting and you're just in the room. Be present if you can. And then of course be prepared and make sure you're shaking the right hands and make sure you're asking questions and make sure you're really involved in the environment. But I would just tell young people get on an airplane. It's okay. Look, I love Zoom, too. Trust me. I love it. I love being able to not have to travel as much. But there are those moments of being where I feel like you just gotta go to the retirement party. You just gotta go to the retirement party. I know you don't care, but go, because everybody's at the retirement party, and now you're having a beverage of choice, and you're shaking some hands, and that is how you emulate the bobs.

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Sabine Gedeon (30:05.674)

Yeah. And, you know, it goes back to that saying of your, your network equals your net worth, right? And again, if you know, I assume most people go to work because they have bills to pay, they want to live comfortably or whatever, right? Like, you know, it could be the difference of you working hard and you getting, you know, whatever the standard 3%, 3.5% versus you doing the work and building the relationships that helps you fast track what might have taken you 10 years to move up incrementally, although I know Gen Z, they're not waiting 10 years in a row for nobody. But what could have taken you 10 years could easily be fast-tracked. And there's just power to that. I think these are the things where coming into corporate, I wasn't taught that.

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And, you know, as you know, right, like once you go through the experience, everyone knows it, right? But not everyone does it and not everyone teaches other people how to do it, which is why, you know, you get to a lot of people get to a point in their career where they're just like, all right, I've given up. I'm just here because I have bills to pay. I have kids to put to college versus seeing your career as something that you are creating, seeing your career as something that, you know, you're proactive with it. You're deciding.

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When you move, how quick you move, and it doesn't necessarily always have to result in hopping to one company to the other because the truth of the matter is, you know, you're the common denominator, right? So if there is something that you're not dealing with at place Y, you're going to see those same characters at place Z. So I just think that, you know, if we could be a little bit more deliberate around what do we want, and how do we identify careers or spaces or cultures that align with that? More people, especially those who are in corporate and maybe even education and other institutions, you know, the career wouldn't be, the career would be a lot more fulfilling. I'll put it that way.

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Tom Finn (32:12.31)

Yeah, I agree. I think if people can start to look at the game a little bit differently, like a game, it's almost like you're climbing the ladder, but you gotta move sideways and laterally and all those different things and connect with different people. The other part of this that we don't really talk about is those relationships that you build can be really educational for us to grow as well. It's not just, hey, I wanna get promoted, hey, I wanna make more money. Those side conversations that you talk to folks about can really help you open your eyes and be more understanding of others and be more inclusive and really understand the business with more complexity. It can make you a better person, a better community leader. It can help with your mental health because it makes you more relaxed that you have more information. So it's not just, I wanna make more money. It's not all about the Benjamins because there is a point where you gotta love what you do. Otherwise life is just a little too painful.

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You gotta love what you do. So my you know part of the growth plan I get it right like people want three things I mean, it's very simple people want more energy more time and more money That's it. We're simple all of us I don't care where you're from. You want more energy more time more money. That's it So if you can just keep that in the back your mind as you're growing your career and build relationships So that everything gets a little easier as you get older. That's really the goal right get get easier as we grow.

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Sabine Gedeon (33:44.274)

Yeah. And I would also add, especially for Gen Z, because they are entering the workforce. I think they're about 5% of the workforce right now. We're starting to see that about 50% of that 5% are electing not to go into your traditional work environments. For those who are stepping into it, you know, they are obviously, especially in the last three years, they are reshaping workforce culture because there are just some things that they're not willing to do, right? They may not be as willing to take on the dots.

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They're not willing to work the 14 hours or just to, gruff it if you will, which I understand and I respect. The thing that I would say to this particular group, especially if people are managing this group, while there's a lot of narrative around that they just don't wanna work or they don't wanna be participatory or they don't wanna be collaborative, if anything, I see this demographic as the ones to really change shift, not just for the sake of employee benefits, but shift how corporate America operates, shift how some of these traditional structures work. And so, you know, I think Gen Z, and I know I'm generalizing here, but from an emotional perspective, from a vulnerability perspective, from an honesty perspective, like they are so open. And I think the opportunity here, as we're looking at, you know, how do we help people grow? It's no longer, it may no longer be about, you know, climbing the ladder. Cause for the most of them, they want to be, you know, they want to live, no, I'm sorry. They want to work to live versus live to work as in the previous generations. So how do you incentivize them to have ownership and accountability in the things that they're doing so that they feel like they're part of the organization? They are not just another number. You know, I think for leaders who especially the last three years they they're a little unsettled by this new generation and their demands. But if you really peel the onion back and what they're asking for I think that we have this space for organizations to really Accelerate their growth accelerate their impact if we just tap into some of the stuff that these Gen Z errs are asking and it's not the it's not the fringe benefits, if you will, that we grew up with. It's the more oriented side, the ownership, the intrinsic stuff that they've attached to the work that they do.

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Tom Finn (36:20.158)

Yeah, I tend to find that young people generation after generation want to find purpose in their work They want to feel like they're doing good in the world. They're doing the right things for community and society and And they want to be developed in a in a way that allows them to grow You know They I think the next generation this disease as you as you speak to they really want to be developed They want to grow they want to do the right things. I think their moral compass is probably more attuned than any other generation that we've seen. And they and then they stand behind it. They're much more European in the way that they look at the world, which I love. Absolutely love the next generation, because I think it's going to challenge some old leadership contexts that should die off for sure.

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Sabine Gedeon (37:09.366)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, the paradigm is definitely shifting. And we know, what is it, 2030, boomers are expected, majority of them are expected to be out of the workforce and they make about 20% now. And we're in 2024. So that's not a long time from now. So we'll see those shifts much sooner rather than later.

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Tom Finn (37:34.178)

Sabine, I love it. You have spent a significant amount of time building your wisdom, and we are grateful for you sharing it with us on the Talent Empowerment Podcast. Where can people find you if they want to track you down?

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Sabine Gedeon (37:49.086)

Yeah, great question and thank you for that. So I have a podcast as well, as you mentioned before, She Leads Now podcast, and we're actually going through a rebrand, but you can still continue to find it on She Leads Now. And then of course you can always connect with me on LinkedIn, my handle is Sabine Gedeon.

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Tom Finn (38:07.982)

Wonderful. Sabine Gedeon on LinkedIn. Sabine, thank you so much for being on the show. It has been an absolute pleasure.

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Sabine Gedeon (38:13.994)

Thank you, Tom. Same here.