“Living for the weekend,” “watching the clock tick,” “coming here just for the paycheck.” These are some of the most common phrases in offices across the globe.

With only 21% of employees engaged at work, most say that they don’t find what they do meaningful, don’t think their lives are going well, and don’t feel hopeful about their future.

Luckily for realtor and TikTok user Kristen (@drowningabovewater94), her boss is looking out for her. She realized it after she sent the woman an honest email about feeling undermined, and received a pleasantly surprising response.

In fact, it made her so happy that Kristen even shared it with her followers, praising her superior for acting like a true leader. But after career coach Lizzie Tilia made a duet with it on her own account, the TikTok algorithm did its thing and the message quickly spread to a much larger audience.

Kristen has worked for boomers and Gen X, but now she can’t believe how different her millennial superior is compared to the older bosses

Image source: drowningabovewater94

Everything started when she penned an honest email to the lady, professionally criticizing the way she handled a particular situation

“I have worked for a narcissistic psychotic boomer and I have also worked for a narcissistic psychotic Gen X. I, recently, like, in the end of November, started working for a millennial like me. I’m going to be 29 in April and I think she’ll be like 35 or 36 this year, so she’s not too much older than me. We are still both millennials. She is still my senior.”

Image source: drowningabovewater94

Kristen didn’t know what response she would receive

“I wrote her an email, I’m a realtor, and I wrote an email to her very professionally, very courteously just stating, ‘Hey, while I do appreciate you commenting those things to the client, blah, blah, blah, I do feel that you were undermining me and it could damage my relationship with these clients. I CC’d you on this email as a courtesy, at a professional courtesy but really, I didn’t have to. And you know, like, if you have things to say, I prefer you to say them to me rather than to the client.'”

Image source: drowningabovewater94

So she was over the moon to find out it was an incredibly understanding one

“This is her email in response. I was shaking in my boots. Even though I stand by everything that I said and I stood up for myself, my relationship with my bosses have been with these other generations. This was her response, okay: ‘I see your point and I apologize. I apologize for the way I approached that. I did not mean to undermine you in any way. For future emails that I am CC’d in, I won’t reply unless I’m addressed to or asked a direct question. I apologize for the way that I approached that and I have 100% trust in you in the way that you are handling this file. The clients have been great clients for me and I may be a little too attached because of it. I definitely need to learn to let go and trust. I also appreciate your email and I appreciate you writing to address the way you felt right away, instead of keeping it inside.'”

Image source: drowningabovewater94

“This is a boss. This is how you communicate with your employees. This is how you take accountability. This is how you address professionally… Like, I was gobsmacked at this email. The professional courtesy, the acknowledgement of wrong, the respecting of my boundaries, like, this should be the norm. This should be how work communication goes and it’s not. And it is so refreshing. Work for a millennial. Oh, my god. Gen Z, even better.”

Her TikTok praising the millennial boss quickly went viral

@lizzietilia #duet with @drowningabovewater94 #Stitch ♬ original sound – Kristen

Career coach Lizzie Tilia supports employees and leaders through self-advocacy, burnout recovery, effective boundary setting, self-discovery, and building a nourishing life outside of work. So when she discovered Kristen’s TikTok, it immediately caught her eye.

“I personally have a history of leadership with really fragile stress responses. Especially around receiving feedback,” Tilia told Bored Panda. “The response from my boss was usually being blown up on and being told that I was just being sensitive or a reference back to them having it way worse when they were my age to justify their behavior or lack of leadership skills. It was not lost on me that their response was coming from a place of hypersensitivity.”

“In my career, I did a lot of eggshell walking until I got really clear on the environment that I no longer was willing to work in and I learned how to strategically advocate for myself. I eventually worked in really incredible environments with leaders that were not only leading but mentoring me. Many of which I still have a relationship with today,” she added. “I became a career coach to support people through strategic heart-centered communication in the workplace.”

Tilia believes that the response from Kristen’s superior was textbook nonviolent communication, a form of communication that she herself is certified in. “It is centered around listening to people with the softest parts of your heart and responding from that place as well. This is the way of the servant leader, a very popular leadership archetype created in a 1970 essay ‘The Servant Leader‘ that hit another wave of popularity in 2017.”

And people are really happy for both of them

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Lizzie Tilia thinks that people on TikTok resonated with the video so much because “defensive and/or fragile leaders are, unfortunately, a very common archetype in the workplace.”

However, in her opinion, they’re now being cast away. “We are starting to see stronger and stronger empathetic leaders come into the workforce and rise into leadership positions,” she noted. “Employee churn costs a lot of money; with the rise in remote work over the last few years, people are just leaving because they have access to better jobs fully online. Retention is being prioritized and companies are starting to clearly see that employees don’t leave companies that leave leaders. Strong caring leaders are being called on to rise as the next wave of leadership in the workforce.”

She’s right. The oldest millennials are now well into their 30s, and their role in running companies is growing.

Inc. and their sister publication, Fast Company, partnered with career-development site the Muse to survey 155 millennial bosses to see how they manage, what they value, and how they plan to shape the future of business, and discovered that there are many more leaders like Kristen’s superior.

The top priorities these millennials cited were humanist: creating positive work cultures, forging strong relationships (in person, not through apps), and caring for the whole person, not just the worker. Plus, not only did 61% of millennial leaders say they don’t fear managing older staffers, unlike some boomers and Gen-Xers, but they’re also optimistic about those who will replace them.

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“Millennials have gone to therapy, care about the collective, and don’t just want to be the change,” career coach Lizzie Tilia added. “They are the change.”

“The leadership of the past stood up to their employees and stood up for their leaders. millennials do the exact opposite. Advocating for people, speaking what’s alive in us, taking and giving feedback; these are not things that many millennials shy away from.”

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