Chief executives, let's think about connections in the workplace.

In the last month, I took part in a discussion on Quiet Quitting during the World Economic Forum's annual gathering in Davos. The workforce is changing rapidly, and it strikes me that leaders, like us have been asking a lot of the right questions: the pros and cons of working remotely The risks and potential presented with AI, the need to develop better and more sustainable companies.

One question, however, is deserving of more attention: if the workforce of our generation is evolving and technology is evolving, and post-pandemic behaviors as well as expectations changing...don't us as leaders need to evolve too?

There's a whole Generation of Digital Natives entering the workforce. They were raised creating and sharing video instead of making calls or texts as they are able to consider TikTok or YouTube the best sources of information. When it comes to their private lives they're connected and also extremely engaged.

Yet in their work lives there's a completely different picture. There are significant declines in the level of engagement and satisfaction in employees who work remotely Gen Z and younger millennials. A mere four percent of youngsters who work remotely or in hybrid settings understand what's expected of them when they work as well as more than half Gen Z employees are ambivalent or unengaged at work. If we view employee engagement as a leading indicator of productivity in the workforce and productivity, it has significant impact on every business and for every company's profit.

What's causing this disconnection? As in work and in life, we all want to be part of some bigger picture than we are. There is a deep desire for belonging, to feel an identity that is transparent, unfiltered and authentic. But the more of our workforce becomes digitally distributed and AI-enabled and ad-hoc, the harder it is to feel a genuine connectedness every day. Particularly, if we've not changed the way we interact to meet the needs of the future generation. We still ask our employees to understand a plethora of documents, write lengthy emails, and attend boring meetings. Employees learn about layoffs and company priorities through comms made up of scripts and automated that they could have been generated through ChatGPT. And the only pulse we as leaders have on this comes through cookie-cutter engagement surveys or live events with very low turn-in rates, and the sometimes snarky chats or Q&A.

The old model of management is failing us. It's time to adapt how we , as leaders, behave and connect with our employees. As we focus on reskilling our workforce in the face of changes in population size, demographics and technology trends as well, we must improve our leadership skills, in order to create trust and connections on a the scale.

I've experimented with much of this in the past couple of years . Here are the skills I'm learning and adopting, that I believe can assist us in presenting differently and be more effective in our leadership:

 1. Realize who you are, and be yourself.

In the early days of the outbreak, I hosted an international town hall from my parents' house in Flint, Michigan -- exhausted, in my velvet pajamas with both my toddler son and my grandmother shuffled through the background.

Perhaps it was my most effective communication ever.

Why? Because it was unscripted, vulnerable, and messy. We tend to gravitate to "us versus them" interactions when we work at a company, particularly when we are under stress or challenge. It's very simple to imagine "leadership" as a nameless machines that have no face. Making sure that you are video-first when communicating is a powerful antidote. It makes you remove the veil and protect yourself from writing and editing comms. The best way to make it clear is to show up as you are.

In the end, there are definitely examples of leaders who were vulnerable, and this backfiring...but I think that in the vast majority of those cases, the issue was that it was too performative. The key is to accept for that raw version of you to make mistakes when you are in front of your colleagues. We all have flaws that makes us human. We all wish to see our leaders to be bold. This only inspires us to be more like them.

 2. Begin by asking the "why ."

Like many leaders have had to make difficult choices during the past year. From layoffs and executive changes to re-organizing and shutting down initiatives in order to increase efficiency. My job is to take the tough call, not-popular decisions and implement rapid changes across the organization.

More often, I observe employees wanting to know the reasoning behind their decisions-- not just the "what" but also the "why". The desire is to comprehend the larger market or competitive context that is considered and balanced, as well as the process of who was involved and at what time.

The old communications playbook will say that when you have an important communication issue with limited time, start by asking the "what" and get right to the core and the necessary actions. However, I've been better at getting my team to accept a tough decision when I approach my employees as the key participants who need to be aware of the situation.

In the end, starting with "why" is a first rule for any communication . Of course there are always constraints to being fully transparent (legal or PR-related, management, risk to the customer) however I've observed that, in the majority of cases, perceived obstacles to transparency are simply that. Perceived. People will not always agree with your choices, but I could argue that, if they don't, you probably aren't doing the job you're supposed to do. But they will appreciate and accept your choices by starting with the why.

 3. Invest in in-person or in-person meetings, and make it personal.

Yes, I recognize the irony of the CEO of a video company declaring that. However, one of my most important lessons over the last few months is that we've waited too long and weren't deliberate enough in connecting our teams closer on a daily basis.

In January, a week after conducting layoffs, we organized a corporate kickoff event in NYC. Our employees flew in from over 12 countries. Our employees were based in Ukraine who took trains or planes to get there. We ditched the typical event celebration confetti and chose to go with an unpretentious atmosphere on a budget. It was one of the most energizing and needed choices I've done.

The power is enhanced when, as leaders, you travel and visit your team wherever they are. I am a distributed executive team spread across eight locations that range from Seattle to Switzerland. The majority of them were recruited in the last year and are still new, and are only beginning to gel as a team. To speed up this process of gelling the team, we began hosting offsites at the homes of each leader's city. We met our CFO's mom at her fireplace in Vermont. Our Head of Sales wore his apron. He made us frittatas to eat breakfast. We held working sessions in the Chef of Product's table.

The outbreak provided us with an unintentional glimpse into other's homes and private lives -- if we take advantage of that and incorporate it into our day-to-day and work, we can have the chance to create better connected and higher-performing teams.

 4. Go between "lean back" to "lean forward" experiences.

An essential communication ability will soon be the ability to design "lean forward" events, not "lean back" broadcasts. As humans, our attention spans are becoming shorter (now lower than 8 seconds and less than that of the time it takes to catch a goldfish!). But we continue to communicate by one-to-many communications, either through an email you read or a highly produced town hall where you relax and observe.

As we look at this tax on engagement being reflected in our own statistics, where the average time to end a session of watching a video has decreased over the past couple of years. If we don't change our approach, tune-out is going to seriously hamper our ability to ensure that our teams are aligned and efficient.

The key here is to shift our mindset and openness to new things. The new generation is entering the workforce who are ahead of us in their ability to create and capture rich and authentic information. They are ahead because they're free from the restrictions that we experienced for decades in traditional communications methods at work.

It is said that employees do not quit jobs. They quit managers. In reality, CEOs are the ultimate managers, and as per a research study that included more than 113,000 managers most important element of effective leader is the trust of their employees. We as leaders must show us how to conduct ourselves with more genuine, engaging and authentic methods. I'm betting that executives who are open to this new world will be more successful in leading the next generation of workers. They'll be better informed and engage distributed teams and align them to better outcomes and establish solid relationships that result in outstanding results. They'll stop communicating but instead communicate more effectively.