Somewhere in a glass tower in Gurugram or a WeWork in Powai, a 26-year-old is approving leave requests, running one-on-ones, and asking why everyone still bothers with the weekly status report. Her team calls her The Boss; the security guard occasionally mistakes her for an intern, and she was promoted in record time because the project needed a manager and she was in the line of sight.
Event Context
This 26-year-old’s leadership style? It’s exactly the same as her working style from the previous week. She wants as little to do with the workplace as possible. And creating value for Boomer shareholders at the cost of her peace is giving her the ick. And there are enough like her rising in offers across India that senior management are scratching their heads in confusion.
Player Focus
Gen Z, fresh from a successful national protest, are built different from their predecessors. At Aumni, a Pune talent firm, HR head Charu Rai sees first-time managers in the 26-30-year age group today, against the 30-34 one five years ago. They’re not angling for the corner office. Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey suggests that only 6% of Gen Zs (those between the ages of 14 and 29) list reaching a senior leadership position as their primary career goal. They’re not lazy, they’re just not blinded by workplace advancement. It’s a hard variable to add to the presentation deck.
Junior league
Team Analysis
Some challenges come from within the organisation. Sneha Shivarajan, 28, senior manager at Never Grow Up, a Mumbai work-culture consultancy, had her own manager tell her that her leadership style was “all carrot, no stick”, meaning that her team of four didn’t fear her enough. Shivarajan took it as a compliment. “I don’t need to demand respect,” she says. In her daily catchups with her team, she checks on their bandwidth, hears out concerns and offers guidance, and closes by asking a question a few managers think to ask: Is she the one holding up the task?
Lateral shift
Young people rising up in any generation have a common problem to overcome: How to jump into an established environment, identify what’s not working anymore, and find a way to fix it. For Gen Z especially, that problem has an added twist as start-ups have created parallel modes of success.
Samruddhi Vaidya, 27, a senior PR manager at a communications agency in Mumbai, says in the corporate world, respect and fear are uncomfortably intertwined. “Not voicing your opinion ‘out of respect’ translates to ‘I fear what this would do to my career’.” It’s not a conversation that older organisations tend to be ready for, at their own cost. “On some days, protecting your peace means taking that call, so you aren’t taunted later about it.”
Deloitte’s data shows that most Gen Zs want managers who mentor them, but only 36% say theirs actually do. “Technical skills may earn someone a promotion, but leadership calls for coaching, delegation, conflict resolution, feedback, and building trust,” says Jeel Gandhi, CEO of youth media platform Under25. Many first-time managers think they have to prove they deserve their role, which often leads them to manage tasks instead of people. “The shift happens when they realise that their responsibility is no longer to deliver the best work, but to enable others to do so.”
At Keka HR, an HR-tech platform, the average employee age is 27, and the friction lands on the desk of Abhijit Rao, VP and head of people culture. When a Gen Z manager recently wanted to replace the weekly status report (one that took an hour to make, and which nobody properly read) with a two-line update, there was pushback. The older employee was upset that their experience was being undermined; the Gen Z one was frustrated because an obvious solution was being ignored. They ran both formats for two weeks. The experienced colleague found it easier to give in after the road-test. “The real issue wasn’t the format,” says Rao. “It was trust.”
The kids are all right; it’s the org chart that’s buffering.
From HT Brunch, August 1, 2026
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Match Outlook
“It’s not that Gen Z avoids hard work; it’s that we value purposeful work over the performative type,” says Anjali Chandak, 24, a senior executive at a marketing communication firm in Mumbai. They won’t stay back an hour late to demonstrate commitment; if the work can wait until tomorrow, they will too. They won’t butter up the bosses. But they want clarity and mentorship, which is where the challenge begins.
Mayank Tripathi, 28, founder of Findise Solutions, a digital marketing agency in Mumbai, recalls being 15 minutes late on a call with a prospective client — a manufacturing business owner in his late 40. When he arrived, the man asked, “And will your founder be joining us?” He didn’t expect the young man in a T-shirt, sharing a live screen instead of an elaborate deck, to be in charge. “That call was the day I realised that my age would be questioned in every room, and that the only answer that works is the work itself,” Tripathi says. The older man signed on. But Tripathi is still second-guessed at work.
