A manager called me recently with a problem. A smart capable new hire told him she would not be checking email on weekends. Not asked. Told. He thought the problem was respect for authority. I thought the problem was something else entirely.
What he reacted to was the tell instead of ask. And that distinction set off a chain reaction in his head that had nothing to do with the actual request. Would he have to say yes to everyone on his team if they all made the same demand? If not, was this fair to the rest of the team? What happened the next time she decided something else needed to change? By the time he called me, he had talked himself into a corner.
He kept coming back to respect for authority. She did not respect the hierarchy. She did not appreciate how things work. I understand why he went there. But I do not think that is the right frame. The real issue is about who has decision rights, and the appropriate way to influence.
The Tell Creates a Problem the Ask Does Not
When an employee makes an announcement instead of a request, the manager loses the ability to manage. A request invites a conversation. A tell forces a binary: yes or no, with no room in between.
Say yes, and you have set a precedent you may not be able to sustain across the whole team. Say no, and you are the person who refused a reasonable boundary. Ask a question, and it can feel like an interrogation. There is no good move. The manager is stuck in a position that the framing of the conversation created for him.
Why Gen Z Thinks This Is Fine
To understand what is happening, it is helpful to know how Gen z was raised and what they learned from it.
Gen Z grew up questioning everything. Information was always one search away. Their parents explained decisions rather than simply issuing them. They were invited into conversations, asked for their opinions, and taught that speaking up directly was a sign of confidence, not disrespect. Research from Roberta Katz at Stanford confirms this: Gen Z does not see elders as automatic authorities. They evaluate credibility. Hierarchy for its own sake does not automatically register for them.
Add to that the fact that this is a generation that watched older workers burn out, sacrifice personal lives for employers who laid them off anyway, and stay silent about needs until they quit. They decided, collectively, that they would do things differently. Setting clear expectations early felt like the smart, honest move.
So when the Gen Z employee said “I am not checking email on weekends,” she is not being defiant. She is being, in her own mind, transparent and professional. She likely did not understand why that landed the way it did.
That is a skill gap, not a character flaw. And it is fixable.
Why the Manager Reads It as a Respect Problem
The manager’s reaction makes complete sense when you consider his own generational input. Many Gen X and older managers were raised by strict disciplinarians, people who expected compliance and rarely offered explanations. You did what you were told. You did not ask why. And you certainly did not volunteer opinions about what you would or would not do.
That upbringing carried directly into work. Most of Gen X would never have told a manager we were not available on weekends. They would have absorbed the expectation, figured out how to manage around it privately if they could, and said nothing. The idea of announcing a personal boundary to a supervisor would have felt not just risky but genuinely presumptuous.
So when a Gen Z employee walks in and declares her availability, what the manager hears is: she does not respect me. She does not understand how this works. She thinks she can do whatever she wants.
That is a reasonable interpretation given his experience. It is also the wrong one in my opinion. She is not failing to respect authority. She is operating from a completely different set of assumptions about how workplace conversations work. The difference in assumptions need to be addressed, but they are not a character indictment on either side. They are a starting point for a conversation.
For Managers: The Conversation
A word on the substance first. Not responding on weekends may be perfectly reasonable depending on the role. But in many jobs there does need to be clarity around true emergencies, client issues, or escalation expectations. That conversation is worth having regardless..
The opportunity here is to name the distinction directly between what is being asked and how the issue it was raised. These are two separate things and conflating them makes the conversation harder than it needs to be.
You might say:
“I am not opposed to boundaries around weekend communication. But we need shared expectations. Let’s talk about what is routine, what is urgent, and what kind of response the role requires.”
Or: “You brought me the conclusion. Before we settle on a conclusion I would like to discuss the issue, the context, the tradeoff, and your recommendation.”
That kind of response reveals the operating rules and it protects the manager’s role in the conversation without turning the conversation into a confrontation about authority.
For Gen Z: A Better Approach
For early career professionals, the instinct to be clear about individual needs is not wrong. Clarity is good. The problem is that a declaration removes the other person from the conversation. A request that shows you understand the work and have thought about the tradeoffs will almost always land better than one that does not.
Instead of: “I will not be checking email on weekends.”
Try: “I want to get clear about my weekend availability so I can plan well. Can you help me understand what the expectation is here, and under what circumstances you might consider it important enough to reach out to me on a weekend?”
The substance is the same. The approach is different. One closes a door. The other opens a conversation.
Who Gets to Decide
Gen Z is not wrong to seek what they want. Sustainable workloads, honest communication, and clear expectations are reasonable things to want at any stage of a career. The research on burnout and on what makes teams perform points to obtaining all these things.
But wanting something and knowing how to get it are different skills. The workplace skill is upward influence: how to advocate for yourself effectively when someone else holds the decision. Scholars have studied this for decades. Their consistent finding is that how you raise an issue matters as much as the issue itself.
Some decisions at work are yours to make. Many belong to the manager. Knowing the difference and knowing how to navigate the ones that are not, is one of the most valuable things an early-career professional can learn.
The manager who called me did not need his authority validated. He needed language to redirect a conversation that went sideways before it started. And his employee did not need a lecture on hierarchy. She needed someone to show her that the way she asked was getting in the way of what she wanted.
Ellen Raim is the founder of People Matter LLC and the author of Play the Game: Insider Strategies to Thrive in Your Early Career. She works with organizations and early-career professionals on navigating the realities of today’s workplace.
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