This weekend I had the pure privilege to work with a family group that represented a newer generation in a generational family wealth system. For the uninitiated, wealthy families often create family enterprises, family offices, and foundations in or tied to a successful business (often founded years or decades earlier), and as part of the “family office,” they offer (and sometimes require) opportunities, education, and participation from all the generations with a special focus on that generation coming into adulthood and hopefully getting acquainted with the system. If you want to learn more about family office systems, my dear friend Scott Peppet thinks and writes (and lives) beautifully about the topic.

The goals for a retreat like the one I was hired to facilitate are generally to build connection and community among the members of the generation (siblings and cousins) in the absence of parents and grandparents, introduce concepts that could help them grow personally and professionally (not unlike the work I do with teams), and learn more about where and how they might marry their talents and interests with the opportunities to engage in the family system.

The group I worked with ranged in age from high teens to older 20s. In this case, they were staged from finishing college to those who had completed some early years in the workforce (which they do alongside their family enterprise involvement).

I cannot express how enlivened I was by the experience of being with these young people. They were so self-aware, so game to be vulnerable, so curious and eager to learn, so honest about the fear and excitement they hold as they grow even more fully into adulthood, so clear about a wish to be part of the family and also connected to their truest selves. Most of them had experienced—and were game to talk about—meaningful therapy. I was floored, touched, and inspired. They were open about everything: their professional interests, their deepest fears, their diagnoses, their painful past chapters, their family relationships, their romantic aspirations, their connection (either themselves or through others) to addiction. Everything was on the table from the first moment without even a slight push from me.

A question I often ask a group that has been working together for a longer time—which is of course the case in a family situation—is “what is something that is new about you that you’d like to share with others and that may include a wish that they retire an outdated story about you?” This is an amazing question for young people, who often get a label when they're very young. The label comes from elders, and those stories have staying power, often unjustifiably so.

We talked about 100% responsibility, we talked about feedback, we talked about Zone of Genius and unconscious patterns, we talked about what the generation above theirs might have been motivated by when those people (parents, aunts, uncles) were the ages of these people. And of course, we talked some about how to integrate these unique humans into the existing opportunities for engagement and a wishlist of things this generation has now for how engagement might shift with some of their well-considered opinions and input.

It was magical.

I had one takeaway from the experience. If you want to connect more with Gen Z, try some open-ended questions and listen. Really listen. More than anything else, this group of humans I met with wanted MORE listening from their elders. Not listening to fix, correct, help, or teach. They wanted listening for its own sake. They wanted to be more known and accepted for who they are. And they are very, very special.

Any thoughts, feelings, or blurts? Share them here.