Chief Change Officer - Millennial Specialty Insurance's Katie Curry: Leading with Humanity to Champion Gen Z as A Rising Force in the Workforce

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

In this engaging episode, we explore the transformative impact of Gen Z in the workplace with Katie Curry, a Gen X leader who bridges the generational divide at home and at work. Katie champions the value of adapting to change, emphasizing a leadership style that pivots to embrace transparency, meritocracy, and agility. Her insights reveal the critical need for companies to evolve in response to the changing expectations of Gen Z employees, thus maintaining a competitive edge in a rapidly shifting corporate landscape. Katie's approach to leadership is deeply rooted in seeing individuals as humans first, advocating for a culture of understanding, simplicity, and humility. She highlights the necessity of leadership that can adapt and change, fostering an environment where solutions are collaboratively discovered and innovation flourishes. For Gen Z on the cusp of their careers, Katie underscores the importance of embracing change with a focus on skill development, community building, and mental resilience. She advises on finding one's strengths, diversifying personal networks, and viewing career pivots with excitement rather than fear, positioning change as an avenue for growth and opportunity rather than a barrier. Through Katie's perspective, we gain a deeper understanding of the dynamic interplay between leadership and the workforce of the future. Her narrative champions change as a fundamental element in nurturing a thriving, inclusive workplace and in guiding Gen Z towards fulfilling career paths amidst the complexities of the modern world. Katie highly recommends these insightful books to our audience, emphasizing their transformative potential for personal and professional growth: Mental Toughness by Damon Zaharadis, a guide to mastering your emotions and facing challenges with resilience. The One Thing by Gary Keller, exploring the profound impact of focus and simplicity in achieving success. Good to Great by Jim Collins, a study on the principles that propel companies from mediocrity to excellence. _________________________ Connect with Us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Katie Curry Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. A Modernist Community for Growth Progressives World's Number One Career Podcast Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI Top 10: GB, FR, SE, DE, TR, IT, ES Top 10: IN, JP, SG, AU  1.3 Million+ Streams 50+ Countries

Hi everyone, welcome to our show again. This is Vince Chan. Last time, I was talking to an old friend from Yale, Katrina Curry, or as many know her as Katie. I grew up in Bulgaria. I grew up in communism and I grew up in a small town. My first big part of my kind of reinvention or transformation was coming to the United States and getting educated. I was traveling on a tour bus in New York City. I was going in downtown in the financial district,

and I said, you know, I would really love to work here one day. She did. And many more things she has achieved since she made that move from Bulgaria to the United States. Like me, and a lot of people with strong finance background, we always talk about risk, the upside risk, downside risk, the risk tolerance, the risk appetite. How can we maximize return, minimize risks? But when it comes to managing your life, your career, changes, direction, the way forward, while the risk factors are

identifiable, a lot of them are not quantifiable. That creates a lot of anxiety, fear, unknown. Hence, some people just, they put, don't change at all. You have to know yourself and know your risk tolerance. And your risk tolerance evolves over time, right? You may have a high risk tolerance early in your career. Maybe your risk tolerance is a bit lower when you're raising your family and then you may be ready for another, you know, exciting move or jump later on. So knowing yourself and, you know, for me, knowing myself and my risk tolerance was very important. The second part is I had spent a lot

of years being very focused on outcomes, being very intense and intent about what I'm doing. And I have now moved into a phase of exploration and looking at the various opportunities and being less focused on a precise planned path, but embracing these opportunities, embracing kind of the fun, the exploration, the curiosity, and even the magic. And that was a major shift for me. I think it happened with experience, with age, where I was able to kind of embrace, like you said, both the hard and logical decision, but also these intuitive, exploratory, pursuing, you know, fun and pursuing, exploring outside of my comfort zone. In this episode, we are switching gear, moving from her own career life and changes onto the changes we're going to see in the work market, in particular about Gen Z. According to World Economic Forum, by year 2025, about a quarter of our workforce

will be Gen Z. So this is a force that we will reckon with. Katie is a mother of two. She got two Gen Z children. At work, she's managing a workforce spending across different generations. So what's her take on working with, leading, and motivating the younger generations at work? She's also going to share a couple of career tips for the younger generation to thrive in this era of change. And later, we'll take a sneak peek into Katie's personal learning habits and her book recommendation. So stick around. Let's get started. Katie, you and I are Gen X.

But this era is a multi-generational workforce era. And you're a mother of two. In raising two young children, what have you learned from this personal experience and applied to working with and managing a younger workforce? That's a good question, Vince. We do know that there's at least four actually generations now in the workforce and of course more coming. I think as a leader, first and foremost, I look at people as humans and I try to see what they, try to understand what their needs are.

How can they be successful in their role? What do they need? Is it learning and upskilling? Is it just support and praise and recognition? Is it tough love that they need? But my kind of a recipe for this is kind of, it's four things that I always think about. What's my focus? Am I clear about what success looks like for this project, for this role, for this particular problem I'm solving? The next one is simplicity. What's the simplest way that we can actually do this and we can solve this problem?

And then the last one is having humility. As a leader, I cannot tell people what to do because a lot of times I don't have the answer. And sometimes I see leaders are afraid to admit that they don't have the answer. The job of a leader is to help emerge the answer from the group, whether it's, you know, emerging the answer from the team, from other teams, from the market,

from best practices in, you know, our function or in our industry. But the role of the leader is to emerge the best solution. How do you like working with Gen Z? In terms of working with different generations, I love working with Gen Z. There's a lot that has been said about Gen Z being entitled and being impatient. And, you know, there's, of course, certainly some of that. But I think as leaders, we need to pivot and evolve and be much more clear, much more transparent. And we need to pick up the pace. Pick up the pace in execution.

Pick up the pace in rewarding Gen Z. Pick up the pace in promoting Gen Z. And understanding that we're moving towards a meritocracy. Gen Z appreciates a true meritocracy rather than a you know a hierarchical culture and companies that especially those long established companies with hundreds of years of history if they're not able to pivot and move into this more authentic more real, more clear, and kind of a faster moving way of leading, they're going to lose a part of their competitive advantage. So I'm watching this. It's an area of interest for me. Like I said, I enjoy working with Gen Z. They give me energy. They teach me a lot

of things. I have reverse mentors and I've had reverse mentors who are Gen Z. They give me energy. They teach me a lot of things. I have reverse mentors and I've had reverse mentors who are Gen Z and they teach me things that I have not known and I haven't experienced. And of course, I look to make it a relationship of reciprocity where I help them and guide them. And hopefully I have a bit of life experience, which has given me some wisdom. And now I can help them. Over the years, I've helped generations X, Y, Z with their different career and life issues sometimes. Like you said, they're all humans,

regardless of age and generations. Each generation, to be honest, has their own challenges and issues. I wouldn't say Gen X, like us, we don't value or appreciate meritocracy, versus Gen Z values more or vice versa. Now, since you have a lot of experience at home and at work, working with and growing up with Gen Z, give them a couple of advice career-wise. Or the flip side of this question, in fact,

would be in light of the rise of this generation in the workforce, where the challenges you see hence your advice to them, how can they make the best out of the whole situation and make the impact they want for people around them, for the world, and for themselves? I certainly see how difficult it is for Gen Z and, you know, for the generation coming after them as well. There's so much pressure for early achievement and knowing what you would do in your career and what major you would have in college.

So I certainly appreciate how anxious they are and how challenging it is for them. And of course, as the workplace becomes more competitive as well. But the pieces of advice I would have for them, one is to gain skills and, you know, think about and be very intentional about gaining skills, understanding what are you good at? What is your superpower? Now, when you're starting out in your career, you may say, well, I haven't got any superpowers. And it's fine because it's a process of actually developing, finding what you're good at and nurturing and growing it and building skills related to that. So that's maybe one piece of advice I would say. Two is surround yourself with a good community.

People from different, with different experiences, different age groups, different generations, different views you would like to have if you're in business. You would like to have friends that are artistic and they see the world differently from you. And surround yourself with people that will expand the options and opportunities before you. I have learned, and it's more recent for me, that I've learned the power of your community and the people that you surround yourself with. It took me a while to really understand, but one, it makes your life a lot more fun and richer and deeper, but it also challenges you to really think way outside of your natural box that you have for yourself. So the second advice would be, be intentional about your community

and have a very diverse community. And then the third one is, learn how to pivot. Gen Z will have, and I think about my kids, that they would have a long and varied career and they would try different things. A key part of that is the ability to pivot, the ability to handle change and not to be, of course, there's a natural kind of nervousness and anxiety about switching roles or change

and switching industries, but building that mental toughness so you can look at change more from the lens of excitement than from the lens of fear. Let me summarize. First of all, superpower. Keep learning. Second of all, humility. Choose the right one for you. Choose to be associated with people you want to be associated with.

Third, the ability to pivot, the ability to handle change. This podcast is called Chief Change Officer. Of course, I believe in change. I myself, as I said, right now, going through the 18th change in my career and life. I believe that everyone, regardless of your age, your gender, your culture, your background, your generation, and wherever you are, whatever you do, you have the ability to change and change for good for yourself, a new job, new career, new direction, for your communities, for the people around you and for the world, whatever you're trying to do for the world.

So yes, change. The ability to change. One thing I'd like to add to this point is some people mistake change as perfect. And I found some people take it so lightly. It becomes a careless act of change as opposed to be a thoughtful strategy of making things better for you

and for the people you care to impact positively. So the word pivot and change, I like to draw the attention of the audience. Pivot is easy. Today you want to do this, next day you want to do that. Technology allows us to do it in a very, very cost-effective manner in whatever we want to pursue. But if you care enough about your life and career direction or the impact you care to make,

you need to be thoughtful about why you do this today and change tomorrow. Why can't you stick around longer? Build up the credential, the track record, the relationship or the network that a lot of people like to say, or the community, before you quite quit. Change takes commitment. Change is more strategic. That brings us to the second point. Katie mentioned about community. For you to be part of a community, when it comes to building relationship, once again, it takes commitment.

Today's technology, we can be connected with anyone, everyone. Send an ad request, people say yes within seconds, but this is not a community, let alone having any kind of friendship or relationship. I care myself so much about community or being associated with people I wanted to be associated with or want to learn from. Hence, more than 20 years ago, I chose to give up two years of my life and went for an MBA degree because I want to be associated with all the smart people, all the energetic people. One of them is Katie. After 20-some years, when I reached out to her for this interview invitation, she said yes right away.

That is not only the power of community on day one. That's the power of community with exponential power to 20 years later. That's the longevity of a community, a relationship, which I think we lack in this era, thanks to social media. So the ability to keep up with your community, to keep up with the relationship, or to make friends, that's not something a social media or any kind of technology can replace and can teach you. Social media is antisocial. So one has to learn how to make friends, how to pick friends, pick the right community that you can evolve within it, that you can keep up with, and they can keep up with you. If the community isn't right for you, how you move on, you don't have to unblock or block someone. This is pretty rude, in fact, because that's an art of building relationship, being immersed in a community,

but being yourself at the same time. And lastly, when it comes to learning, very easy to learn anything these days, any skills very quickly, but a lot of those are technical skills or tool skills. You just learn to use a certain tool. Those skills, I must say, they're commodities. Anyone can do it these days. Being commodity meaning that it has a very low value. AI can do a lot of those now. So when it comes to learning, learn the skills that you can own it, you can evolve with those. And those skills in the good old days, we call those soft skills. But going forward, those will become the premium hard skills, resilience, critical reasoning, analytical skills, and even AI can do a lot of computation faster. But when it comes to you making observation and figure things out with the help of technology,

building relationship, business relationship, and life relationship, career relationships, networking, so to speak, which is an abuse term, is all about the human skills. So focus on the human skills that you can embrace, but also own it to yourself. That would become your own signature, your own brand. In the last part of our interview, I asked Katie about her book recommendation, about her learning habits and her learning process.

She said she got three pillars of learning. What are those three pillars? You may wonder. Well, let's find out. So I am a big fan of Get Abstract. It's a subscription service and it's a service that basically takes a lot of the new books in business technology even creative fields as well and because I don't ever have time to read as much as I want these are summary book summaries that you can listen to or you can read so I have been using get abstract for many years and I love getting just the close notes of the new books that come out. And from there, I pick the books that I actually want to read. Three that I wanted to share with your audience. One is called The Mental Toughness Handbook.

And it's by Damon Zahirades. Maybe you can handle your emotions well when, when you're triggered. The other one, which it's my, my copy is so worn out because I've read it and read it many times is the one thing. And it's by Gary Keller. He's the founder of Keller Williams Real Estate. And this book is about the power of focus. And I believe that focus and simplicity have been so underrated. They're not glamorous, like, you know, some of the new shiny things that we see that come up.

But there's a lot of value in there so that's the next book and then the last one is Jim Collins I am a big fan of his as well many of his books are great but I like good to great and this is about companies and how companies some companies that make the leap to great, other companies deteriorate. So very interesting case studies. And of course, I am always listening to podcasts, a variety of different podcasts. And I like to ask for recommendations from others. And so between my Get Abstract, my books and my podcast, I think those are the three pillars to my learning.

But the most important pillar of my learning is actually reflection time. Sitting down every week and thinking, OK, what do I need to do to get a little better next week? What do I need to learn that I don't know? What do I need to talk to that I'm not talking to? And just having just a short amount of time for reflection and improvement. In a social media era, we tend to talk so much. It's always one-way communication. We type, we share, we post. We never answer, never respond. Then the whole communication cycle becomes worse and worse. It's about

listening that we lack and we miss. Without listening, there won't be communication. Without communication, there won't be relationship building, let alone choosing, building, joining, and enjoying the beauty of being in a community. Going back to one of your points about reflection, I can't agree with you more. That's the ability to consolidate. I call this a solitude moment. I know we talk a lot about epidemic of loneliness. Now, loneliness, when this is overwhelming, is hurtful. But a good degree of being alone, solitude moment, is healthy. I do the same for myself. A lot of times, in fact, I try not to speak. I try not to contact or get contacted by a lot of people. I need the time to reflect on

what's going on now. How can I do it better to learn about myself and to move forward stronger and better. So look, Vince, I am a big believer in needing personal time to just be with yourself. And there's so many pressures in the world at work, with travel, with, you know, friends and families and our charitable work and all the other things we need. I need time in nature and I need time by myself. So those are, for me, key practices that keep me sane. Well, yeah, we cover so much, yet we still have other things.

I definitely love to ask you more. Invite me on another podcast. I will. I will. I will certainly say, once we finish one season, for the next season, I would like to ask you and please come over. In fact, I even already have speakers say, yes, I will come every season. So at least I signed them up for four times already for the whole year. In the future, to have part two, part three, part four about your experience with business process transformation,

the so-called less glamorous, but also very essential part of innovation. Parenting is another angle that we can cover. I would love to cover both of these in the next one. It would be my honor to join you again, Vince. Joining me next time is another good old friend from Yale, Irina Filipov. She speaks five languages, originally from Russia, moving to United States, from U.S transition company to drive and revolutionize a new era of electric transportation. The world of transportation and the world of energy are going through a tremendous transition. All the major automotive, original equipment manufacturers actually voted in favor of electrification of ground transport, which means that they are very busy investing in

battery research, investing in designing and manufacturing new models of electric vehicles from class one to class eight. So from passenger vehicles all the way to the semis and buses. This revolution in transportation is happening. For us, the biggest challenge right now is to help solve this energy and transportation equation in a way that does not create a burden for owners of large fleets. What we're trying to do is offer them the opportunity to focus on their core business and we're going to be an end-to-end provider. We took care of everything. All that you do is you pay us your electric fuel costs the same way that you currently pay your conventional

fuel costs out of your operating you currently pay your conventional fuel costs out of your operating budget. So you don't have to worry about where the electrons are coming from, how they're being delivered to your vehicle, whether it's reliable and how much it costs. Thank you for joining me on this episode. Once again, I'm Vince Chen. I'll see you in the next episode. Stay well and stay tuned.