5 Strategies for Leading a Multigenerational Workforce

As an educator and career coach, I often hear about similar scenarios. A talented Gen Z account coordinator reports to four supervisors. She gets a text at 10 p.m. from one manager and, by 8 a.m., conflicting edits from another. She is working 10- to 12-hour days and weekends, already burning out three months in, and quietly updating her résumé and questioning her career choice. 

This is not a story about a bad boss, a bad employee or whether new professionals need to “pay their dues” in our competitive, 24/7 deadline-driven industry. It is a story about a profession that has not yet caught up to how to cultivate the people it depends on.

Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found that global employee engagement has fallen to just 20%, the lowest since 2020, and manager engagement has dropped nine points since 2022. 

In PR, where the work is relationship-driven, reputation-sensitive and relentlessly deadline-focused, a disengaged employee or manager not only underperforms but also creates conditions that push talented people out the door. We train people to manage teams and clients, but we rarely teach them to manage in every direction, including up. In today’s disrupted PR landscape, that skill is no longer optional.

Why this moment is different

Every generation blames the one below it for being less driven or less prepared. That framing has never been less useful than it is today. For the first time in history, five generations are working side by side: Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z. Each brings distinct communication styles, expectations about work-life boundaries, relationships with technology and definitions of professional respect. That alone makes multidirectional leadership complex. 

Layer on a workforce that is now distributed across multiple time zones, hybrid and remote environments, and Slack threads rather than shared office floors, and you have eliminated the informal, incidental mentoring that once happened naturally in hallways. 

Managing up, down and across has always required strong organizational communication skills. Still, now, more than ever, human skills are essential, especially without the historical in-office environmental scaffolding that once supported them.

We are sending an already anxious generation of early-career professionals into the workforce. These are cohorts who are technologically fluent but underdeveloped in interpersonal and critical thinking skills PR work demands. 

That is not a Gen Z insult. It is an outcome of the social media generation and the COVID years, which interrupted the formative experiences that build those muscles. Agency consolidations, an unsteady job market and geopolitical instability have added to the pressure, creating a volatile industry at a crossroads.

The professionals who survive and thrive are those who develop the tools to navigate this complexity intentionally. Here are five practices worth building now:

Build clarity before you need it.

The foundation of managing up is establishing shared expectations early, before a crisis forces the conversation. Ask your manager directly: How do you prefer to communicate? What qualifies as genuinely urgent after hours? How will my success be measured? Then document it. 

Follow up every meeting or call with a brief written summary of what was discussed and what you are doing when and next. This addresses potential misunderstandings before they become problems and signals that you take ownership seriously. A junior staffer who proactively defines response-time expectations for evenings and weekends builds trust immediately and can shift an entire working relationship.

Master the fundamentals, then go beyond them.

Clean media lists. Accurate coverage reports. Polished client-ready materials. These sound basic because they are, but senior leaders consistently elevate the people who get them right without being reminded. AI can draft and research faster than any human, but it cannot replace the judgment that makes a customized pitch ready to go. 

Once you have the fundamentals covered, go deeper. Expanding your knowledge of a client’s business and competitive landscape is the most reliable differentiator between a coordinator who executes tactics and a strategist who gets promoted. Professionals who bring ideas, not just updates, differentiate themselves and earn trust and respect quickly.

Communicate proactively and improve the systems around you.

Silence creates anxiety. Proactive status updates, even midstream ones, are signs of ownership, not insecurity. This is especially important when you are stretched across multiple teams with overlapping deadlines and priorities. Take it further: Every recurring task is an opportunity to improve the process. 

When you identify inefficiencies and fix them without being asked, you reduce your own workload and demonstrate tangible value to your managers. That is the essence of managing up.

Invest in your development as you would in your client work.

Ask to attend client meetings, briefings and events. Volunteer to take notes and own action items. The most valuable learning in PR does not happen in formal training sessions; it happens in spaces where decisions are being made. Find someone whose communication style, composure under pressure and professional judgment you respect, and study how they work. 

And here is something I hear consistently from senior PR leaders: Be coachable. Feedback is not always delivered well. It can be vague, terse or even unfair. The ability to receive it professionally, find what is useful, and adapt quickly is the trait senior leaders I interview most often cite as separating high-potential professionals from those who struggle.

The obligation goes both ways.

The Gen Z coordinator navigating four supervisors is not failing. They are operating in a system not designed for their success. And the supervisors sending late-night and weekend texts are not villains. Most are underprepared, overextended and running on the same depleted reserves that characterize management across the profession.

There is one more layer worth naming. Entry-level PR salaries have remained stagnant for decades. My $22,000 entry-level New York PR salary more than 30 years ago, adjusted for today, shows how little that has changed. After taxes, commuting costs and the professional wardrobe our industry quietly expects, early-career professionals are financially stretched at the very moment they are being asked to absorb the most demanding transition of their lives and deliver higher output than ever before. 

My first year at a PR agency was my most stressful, lonely and financially challenging of my career. Back then, I had to work multiple second jobs after my PR “day” job while trying to secure my place in this fast-paced profession. Leadership needs to understand what it is actually asking and consider ways better to address diverse industry needs in line with market realities. 

For PRSA members in leadership roles, this is both a wake-up call and an obligation. The most effective leaders recognize that while generations approach work differently, they share more common goals than the friction suggests. Cross-generational culture building starts with acknowledging the full picture of what new professionals are navigating, not just the behaviors we observe on a video call.

For those newer to the profession: You cannot control every manager or every environment. You can control how you respond, how you communicate and how you invest in your own development. That agency is real, and it compounds over time.

Those who do this well will not just navigate the pressure. They will become the future leaders this profession needs.