Executives, let's redefine connection in the workplace.

Last month I participated in a panel discussion about Quiet quitting at the annual World Economic Forum conference in Davos. The workforce is changing rapidly, and it strikes me that we, as leaders engage in a lot relevant questions, including the pros and cons of working remotely, the risks and opportunities presented by AI as well as the need to develop better and more sustainable companies.

One question, however, is deserving of greater attention: If the workforce of our generation is evolving technologically, and post-pandemic behaviors as well as expectations changing...don't our leaders have to evolve too?

There is an entire Generation of Digital Natives who are entering the work force. They have grown up making and sharing videos instead of messaging or calling as they think of TikTok or YouTube their primary source of information. In their personal lives, they are hyper-connected and equally hyper-engaged.

But in their workplaces however, the story is different. We're witnessing dramatic reductions in the level of engagement and satisfaction in remote Gen Z and younger millennials. Fewer than four in ten younger employees who are remote or hybrid are aware of what's required of them in the workplace, and more than half Gen Z employees are ambivalent or aren't engaged in their work. If we view employee engagement as the most important indicator for workforce productivity and productivity, it has significant consequences for all businesses and for every company's profit.

What is causing this disconnect? At work, as well as in our lives 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 an identity that is transparent, unfiltered and real. Yet the more our workforce is digitally dispersed and AI-connected and ad-hoc, the harder it becomes to experience true connectedness every day. Particularly if we've not redesigned the way we interact to meet the next generation. It is still common for us to ask employees to read through a mountain of documentation or write lengthy emails and take part in unproductive gatherings. Employees learn about layoffs and company priorities through comms so scripted and robotic that they could have been produced through ChatGPT. Our only insight as managers have is via cookie-cutter surveys on engagement and live events that have very low turn-in percentages, as well as sometimes snarky chats or Q&A.

The traditional managerial model is failing us. It's time to change how we as leaders show up and connect with our employees. Just as we are focused to reskilling our workforce to meet the evolving demographic, population and technology trends as well, we must reskill ourselves as leaders, to better establish trust and build connections at the scale.

I've tried a lot of this in the past few years at . These are the things I've been learning and applying, that I believe can enable us to be more present and be more effective in our leadership:

 1. Realize who you are, and be yourself.

In the early days of the epidemic, I participated in a global town hall from my parents' home located in Flint, Michigan -- sleep deprived, wearing my pajamas made of velour, and my son, who is a toddler, and my grandma shuffling between the background.

This could have been the most effective communication ever.

Why? because it was not scripted, vulnerable, and messy. It's easy to fall into "us against us versus them" interactions when we work at a company, particularly in times of stress and challenge. It's easy to think of "leadership" as an unnamed and faceless machine. Making sure that you are video-first in your communication is an effective way to combat this. It forces you to remove the veil and protect yourself from written and edited comms. The best way to get past this is to show up as you are.

By the way, there have been instances of leadership becoming vulnerable and backfiring...but I would guess that in the majority instances, the issue was that the leader was performing too much. It is important to allow for that raw version of you to make mistakes before your team. Flaws are what are human. And we all want to see leaders who are bold. This only inspires us to emulate them even more.

 2. Begin with the "why ."

Much like many managers have had to make difficult choices during the past year. From layoffs and executive changes 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" however, but the "why". The desire is to know the larger environment of competition that is that are balanced and weighted, as well as the details of who was involved and when.

The old comms playbook will say that when you have an important communication issue that requires your attention to be a little strained, start by asking the "what" and get to the point and needed actions. However, I've been more successful in getting people to embrace a difficult choice when I view my employees as the key participants who need to be aware of the situation.

As a result, starting with "why" is a first guideline for communications at all levels . There will always be limitations to fully transparency (legal or PR-related, governance, customer risk), but I've found that, in the majority of cases, that the obstacles are just that. Perceived. Some people may not agree with your decisions, and I could argue that if they do they are not performing the job you're supposed to do. However, they'll respect and embrace those decisions when you start with the reasons behind them.

 3. Spend money on in-person meetings or in-person meetings, and make it personal.

Sure, I see that it's ironic to hear the CEO of a video company declaring this. One of the biggest lessons over the last few months was that we had waited too long and weren't conscious enough about bringing our teams together on a daily basis.

In January, a week following layoffs, the company hosted a company kickoff in NYC. The event brought in employees from over a dozen nations. We had employees based in Ukraine that took trains as well as planes and automobiles to reach us. The event was not a typical one with confetti and opted for a low-key vibe with a tight budget. It was one of the most stimulating and necessary investment decisions I've ever put into.

This is made even more effective for leaders when you travel and meet your team where they are. We have an entirely distributed executive team spread across eight cities starting from Seattle from Seattle to Switzerland. Many were hired during the last year and they are relatively new and are only beginning to become a cohesive team. In order to speed up the process of forming a cohesive team, we started hosting offsites at the homes of each leader's city. We hung out with our CFO's mom at her fireplace in Vermont. Our Head of Sales was wearing his apron and made us frittatas for breakfast. Our working sessions were held around our head of product's table.

The pandemic gave us a literal window into each other's homes and private life. If we can tap into this, and integrate it into our lives day-to-day activities and work, we can have the chance to build stronger, more connected and higher-performing teams.

 4. You can go from "lean back" to "lean forward" encounters.

One of the most important skills in communication is the capability to design "lean forward" experiences, instead of "lean back" broadcasts. We humans have focus spans are shrinking (now lower than the eight-second mark, less than a goldfish!). Yet we still communicate primarily through one-to-many messages, whether through an email you read or an extremely produced town hall you sit back and enjoy.

At we see this tax on engagement appearing within our own records and the amount of time to end a session of watching a video has decreased over the past few years. If we don't alter the way we approach it, tuning out is going to seriously hamper our ability to keep our teams aligned and efficient.

The most important thing is to shift our mindset and be open to trying different things. There is a new generation working in the workforce that are ahead of us in their ability to create and capture rich and authentic information. They're ahead of us because they're free from the constraints our generation experienced throughout the decades of traditional communication modes at work.

The truth is that employees don't leave jobs; they leave managers. The CEOs are, in fact, the ultimate managers, and as per the findings of a survey of over 113,000 leaders, the number one element of effective leader is trust. Leaders must train ourselves how to show up with more genuine, engaging, and trustworthy methods. I'm betting on the executives who are open to this new world will be more successful in overseeing the next generation of workers. They'll be better informed and involve teams distributed across the globe as well as align employees to achieve greater productivity, and build long-lasting relationships that produce exceptional results. They will stop communicating more but instead communicate more effectively.