Each one is built to be useful in the room, something the people in your audience can apply the next day with their own teams. Each can run as a conference session, an evening chapter event, a lunchtime webinar, or a working workshop.
Session One
When Your Youngest Employees Go Quiet
One of your most capable young employees stops speaking up. Stops contributing. Almost every manager in the building reads it the same way: attitude. It is almost never attitude.
Drawing on more than twenty years of one-on-one work with young adults, Ken shows managers how to read what a young employee's silence is actually asking for, and why the analogue habits that built today's managers land differently on employees who grew up digital. When managers change the conversation, young employees change the response.
Managers leave with one concrete move they can make in Monday's one-on-one, tools they can hand to their own teams the same day, and a practical way to turn a quiet young employee's potential into ownership and results.
Learning Objectives
- Read a young employee's silence accurately instead of defaulting to attitude.
- Run a one-on-one that gives a young employee time to think and a way to answer.
- Turn that first response into a specific, measurable next step the employee owns.
Session Two
Why Your Best Young Employees Leave First
The young employees who leave first are usually the ones you least want to lose. In Ken's experience across two decades of one-on-one work, the relationship with the direct manager, more than pay, decides whether a capable young employee stays or quietly starts looking.
This session looks at what able young employees are actually asking of the person they report to, why the strongest ones disengage earliest and most quietly, and what a manager can change without a budget or a policy rewrite.
Managers leave able to spot the early signals, with a practical approach to turning that potential into ownership and results while there is still time to act.
Learning Objectives
- Identify the earliest and quietest signals that a strong young employee is disengaging.
- Understand the four things that keep young employees: steady one-on-ones, real two-way feedback, real mentorship, and a clear sense of where they are headed.
- Apply one retention move within a week of the session.
Session Three
The Monday Morning Move: Leading Gen Z in 1-on-1s
Most one-on-ones with young employees run on a script that goes nowhere. "Is everything okay?" produces "I'm fine," and both people leave the room with less than they came in with.
This is a working session on the one-on-one itself. Managers learn a repeatable structure that gives a young employee time to think, a way to respond that actually works for them, and a clear direction for what comes next. Ken walks through the specific opening move, what to do with the answer it produces, and how to turn it into a goal the employee owns.
Managers leave with a structure they can run the very next Monday, and a way to turn their young employees' potential into ownership and results over the quarter that follows.
Learning Objectives
- Replace the check-in question that reliably produces "I'm fine."
- Structure a one-on-one a young employee can actually use.
- Close every one-on-one with a specific, measurable, owned next step.
