A single research finding can land like a slap:

Tens of thousands of responses show Gen Z ranking wellbeing, authenticity, and helping others at the top, while hiring managers still reward achievement, nonstop action, and traditional work-first values. Our initial reactions can be sharp judgement, frustration, even disgust but we slow it down and ask the more uncomfortable question: what does this values mismatch reveal about the way we’ve been taught to succeed?

We unpack how the “old model” plays out for high-achieving women, especially women in leadership who have done everything right on paper. When identity and worth get tangled up with external measures like promotions, performance, money, and influence, the bar keeps moving and satisfaction stays out of reach. The costs are real: fatigue, sleep disruption, being less present with family, and the strange irony of reaching seniority while feeling less confident or less excited about work. If you’ve been searching for a sustainable version of ambition, this conversation speaks directly to burnout, work-life balance, and reclaiming a sense of self.

The most charged moment is the trigger: watching younger people clock off, say no, or refuse “the rules” we obeyed for decades. We name the rage and the grief underneath it, and we explore a healthier middle ground where growth doesn’t require self-abandonment. We also talk through the wake-up calls that force change, and how to start rewriting your rules now, without waiting for a crisis or a calendar milestone.

If it hits home, subscribe for more conversations like this, share it with a woman who needs it, and leave a review to help the Ripple Effect reach the people it’s meant for.

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for women who've outgrown the old model of success. The ones who look fine on the outside but know the way they've been living no longer fits. If you're standing in the space between who you were and who you're becoming, this is for you. Honour the space you've created today. Let's dive in. 

I heard about a piece of research recently that I haven't stopped thinking about. It found this extraordinary mismatch between the values younger people are prioritizing, like well-being and authenticity, with what employers still say they want. My first reaction was probably the reaction a lot of us have. What the hell does this say about the younger generation? But then I thought, hang a second. Maybe the more interesting question is what it says about us. They have spent their entire lives watching how we work, and they've seen what our version of success got us and what it cost. And maybe some of the choices they're making now are so triggering for us because they're forcing us to question the rules we've spent our entire careers living by. I'm joined by Coach Jaclyn today.

Oh, this is a juicy one to unpack.

It is so loaded, but it's so good. And I think it will ruffle some feather. But we know this, right?

So this research was looking at values. It was 77,000 survey completions, and there was over 7,500 people of Gen Z. And a separate survey with the same values questions of hiring managers, over 2,000 of them. So substantial piece of research. Now Gen Z's top three values were essentially well-being and leisure, having a voice, so authenticity and self-expression. And then their third top value was helping others. Hiring managers, top three values were achievement, about winning, external success and accomplishment. They're about learning, action, and stimulation, and they're about valuing and wanting to work. Only 2% of Gen Z had all three employer preferred values in their own top five. Now we're not saying Gen Z doesn't want success or the lazy or all those things, but when we look at a values exercise, it's about what wins when values compete. So Jacqueline, looking at that employer list of values, achievement, learning, action work. Just that look very familiar to you.

Yes, I think every single woman who comes into our world holds these values and is starting to question how well they're working at this point in their life. Like they've worked really well until they don't.

So how have we seen those values play out in who those women have become to this point?

 Well, the women who come to us are women who've really climbed the ladder, whether it's corporate or wherever they work in leadership or even as entrepreneurs, they're highly ambitious, driven by many things but doing well, succeeding, right? And getting promoted, continuing to move up in their leadership, goal-driven, and executing it at a really high standard of excellence, barring perfectionism. This absolutely sounds like all of the women we work with. And I'm curious if they were to read this article, how they might feel about the Gen Z. That it's a very interesting place to look.

Yeah. But I guess the question is also we had these values, as you said, promoted, great work ethic, all the things. But what did no one tell us about what these values might cost us if you were to organize decades of your life in service to achievement, work above all else, constant learning? What's the downside?

Oh my gosh. Well, if your identity, like your sense of significance, and I've made it, I've succeeded, is wrapped around external measures, including work outcomes, right? Professional outcomes, how high you rise in that corporate ladder, how much money you make, how much leadership and influence you hold. And it's great to aspire to those things. Like there's nothing wrong with those things. Inherently, what we're speaking to is when your sense of identity and value and worthiness is also entangled with all those parameters, those measurements, it ends up costing you everything. Like it's a big one. I mean, it's everything the women coming to us, their health is impacted, right? Like their body literally is fatigued, not sleeping as well, sleep disruption, not as much presence with their families, which is really painful because they care a lot. These are women who deeply care. And so they're having a hard time being someone who cares so much at being the best in all of their roles that they're finding that it's actually not sustainable to be like the best, at least to the standard that they hold professionally and as a mom, as a wife, and what other roles you hold. And even it ends up ironically impacting your leadership. Because even if you have achieved and you've climbed this ladder, at some point you start to second guess yourself or not look forward to going to work. What haven't I named yet? Just like everywhere.

Everything. Irony though, that we've followed these values that have very much been entrenched into probably an entire cohort or generation of women. And yet from the outside, most of the people coming to us look like they've ticked all the boxes. They've got the financial security, they've got the happy family, they've got the job. But yet when you talk to those women and you say, Do you feel successful? Very few of them ever answer yes, do they?

No, because the bar always moves. And that's the other thing is they lose their sense of self. So it's like, I forget what actually brings me joy. I don't even have time for myself anymore. If I all my time goes to work or my kids, and maybe my bus gets them scrapped, and then forget about me. I'm not even crumbs, right? So much is lost.

So I guess if younger people, whether they're our kids or those that have followed us in the workplace, have seen what the success brought us, but they've also seen what it's taken. Yeah. Is it any surprise that they're like, no, thank you. I am not signing up for this because we're still holding on to this, but you need to achieve, you need to be ambitious. Yeah. And we often forget the stakes and we forget what it's cost us. We just continue to chase the gold stars and this ironic belief that if we achieve more, eventually we'll get there. Maybe one day I'll just finally feel satisfied.

Or like it's enough, like I'm enough. It's this enoughness feeling.

And so, what is it, do you think, that is so triggering for women like us who have these very similar values, to brush up against a generation now entering in the workplace who they're either managing or they're starting to see them filter into their teams that from a surface level look like they have a lack of commitment to work because that work value of work being the center of their life is not there? They're more entitled. We think they don't have a work ethic. They say things that we wouldn't say, they absolutely clock off work. They are not interested in jumping on a call at eight o'clock to Hong Kong because that's how I'd say their hours. What is it about watching someone refuse a rule that you spent decades obeying? What is it about that that makes us so bloody angry?

I mean, I can just feel that in the core of my being, right? It's such a sharp spot. It's so painful. It's like, what the actual fuck? That's what it feels like. Did I have that option? And how did I not know about that option? The disbelief and maybe rage and then grief all at once because it's so intense to devote so much of yourself thinking this is what success is. And in a lot of ways, it does garner you success, right? I mean, there's good things, positive things that come of it. It's able to create a lifestyle that you love, and maybe your work hopefully is meaningful in a lot of ways, and you're making a difference in the world and all these things. So we're not saying to like throw that out. It's just what if I didn't need to be lost in the midst of all that? What if there was still room for me to prioritize myself and my family more than I've given myself permission to, but I didn't know that was actually an option. And so the cost of that, it's can be almost too painful to even look at. So we might stay in that judgment lane. Like, I'll just wrinkle my nose at these young people and their lack of motivation or work ethic or whatever, as opposed to looking at how painful it might be to see that I might have had an option. I just didn't know about it.

A lot of us were brought up a particular way, and we were brought up to be high achievers. And we never considered not doing that because that identity was so entrenched in us that I know the biggest insult that you could either throw at me or that I could think of myself would be something like mediocre. Oh, totally. Unmotivated. Like that's like my soul shrinks if it's like you're not reaching your potential. Like you've got to strive, you've got to push, you've always got to be better. Right. And to, as you said, to have watch somebody go, No, I'm good enough as I am. You're like, what never be good enough as you are?

That's not allowed.

Yeah.

You didn't add up to that rule. It's intense. Look at and it, I think there's a place in the middle. So it's not that if they're good enough as they are, that there's no sense of I want to grow or achieve more or explore my potential. It's just not at the cost of myself. Because that's the irony. It's like growing for what? Great. I could say I I grew a shit ton, but I lost myself in the meantime. Or what if I could grow and keep myself? I think ultimately that's what Gen Z or whoever adopts this perspective. It's really not balking hard work, but balking losing yourself for the sake of work.

Yeah.

And what I think is really interesting timing is I actually had someone say to me recently that she had a whether she was Gen Z or she was in her mid-20s, and she came to her and she said, I've been slogging my guts out for five years. When am I going to get a promotion? When am I going to get to 100K or whatever it was? She turned around and she said to me, Joe, I've been slogging my guts out for 25 years. How dare she only put in five and be asking herself after five years the questions I'm now asking myself after 25? And that took a lot of courage from this woman to go, you know what? The fact that she's doing it after five, I'm also kind of proud of her that she's not. But there's that part of me that's really angry at myself. And now having these people around leave jobs, cultures having to shift, work hours having to shift. It's also as the I use the word loosely older generation, wise ones, let's say, how do we use this trigger, this grief, rage, frustration, all the stuff we have around it? Could we use that as fuel to actually ask ourselves the same questions the 25-year-olds are asking themselves about what matters to me? How do I not lose myself in that process?

Yep. It's never too late, right? It's never too late. And I think it's just a matter of can I give myself the permission to do that? And likely, am I willing to feel some of the grief and the rage from what feels like a loss? Not that it's a total loss, because it also got you to where you are. There's gratitude for what your full-on hard work ethic at my own expense inadvertently. What it did give you truly, and letting all that gratitude, like really feeling that in every cell of your body, but also acknowledging any grief or rage around what you may feel as though you missed out on. But you're gonna miss start now. Never too late.

I think that's probably the most important message of all this is whether or not you needed a survey or an entitled, unmotivated, lazy 20-something year old to slap you in the face and go, I'm not doing this. It is never too late, is it, to ask those questions about where do I belong and where am I in my life? What do we see are the triggers apart from results like this for women finally giving themselves permission to ask those really big questions?

Usually from the women that we see, it's something you just can't avoid anymore, like a health crisis or a work crisis where you're dreading going to work or you're unwell. That's usually the wake-up call for people to start saying what's worked has worked for as long as it has, and I don't think it's working anymore because here I am hating going to work, or I feel terrible. Or I am not present in my kids' lives the way I want to be in is killing me. It's something intense like that that usually wakes people up and has them saying, wait, maybe I can play by different rules. Who made up those rules anyway? Wait a minute. What's the rules? You know, my own rules, and that's what we teach people to do, right?

Make up their rules that actually work for them. I think for them, for now, doesn't mean that the rules they played by were wrong, which can be also part of this process. Like, oh, well, I was playing by the wrong rules, and there's no wrong or right here. It's what rules do you need to create for yourself right now, at this stage? And all I know is, regardless of what survey results say, when a human puts themselves in their own life, it can only be a good thing. Doesn't make you selfish, doesn't make you egotistical, doesn't make you intad or whatever. It's just what humans are meant to do, isn't it?

Totally. And as they say, you can't pour from an empty cup. So if you love pouring into others, then start with yourself. So you only have that much more to give to others. Or if you really love helping others, help yourself first. Because we can only pour into others to the degree that we're resourced. So that's a lot of the work we do with the women who come to us. Getting them truly deeply in their bones resourced physiologically, but also energetically, emotionally, and in their sense of worthiness and value outside of these external measures.

So today, this is your invitation to question the rules by which you're playing to decide what values are going to serve you in this next chapter of your life, which can start today. You don't need to wait for January 1st or a birthday and an opportunity to notice the rules that you didn't realize you were following.