BRANDING

By: CalBroker Magazine, in conversation with Michael Lattuca, Founder of Gen Gap

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California brokers are standing at a crossroads with younger generations in the workplace and in client organizations. This interview with Michael Lattuca Founder of Gen Gap and California Broker Media offers a candid look at how seasoned professionals can adapt without sacrificing standards or professionalism.

A new kind of generational gap

Michael Lattuca comes at the generational divide from the perspective of someone who works every day with Gen Z and Millennials and with the leaders who are struggling to reach them. His core premise is straightforward. There is nothing wrong with this generation. The real issue is the widening gap in expectations, communication, and time horizon between younger workers and the executives and business owners who manage them.

One of his recurring themes is that seasoned professionals underestimate how different the formative experiences of Gen Z have been. They are digital natives who live in a world of immediate feedback and constant comparison. At the same time, they have been told they can have anything they want without always being shown the process required to get there. For brokers who built their careers on long game relationship building, this can feel like a clash of values rather than a solvable communication problem.

“We challenge the myth of overnight success and the idea that you can skip the grind” – Michael Lattuca, Founder of Gen Gap

Why this matters to California brokers

For California life and health brokers, the stakes are business critical. Every firm now depends on bringing in younger producers, service staff, and account managers, while also selling to a new generation of decision makers and consumers. The old producer profile that was willing to wait five to seven years for a book of business to mature is much harder to find.

Lattuca points out that when leaders label younger people as entitled or not willing to work hard, they shut down curiosity about what actually motivates them. Once that happens, recruiting becomes reactive, and retention turns into a revolving door. Instead, he urges leaders to view Gen Z as a different market segment and to apply the same discipline they already use in benefits consulting. Diagnose, listen, segment, and then design the right value proposition.

“If you keep saying they are the problem, you guarantee nothing changes” – Michael Lattuca, Founder of Gen Gap

Rethinking leadership communication

A major part of Lattuca’s work is helping owners and executives shift from command and control to what he describes as collaborative clarity. Younger employees are not rejecting structure. What they resist is opaque decision making and unexplained directives. When a broker principal simply says “do this because that is how we have always done it,” the likely response from a Gen Z team member is disengagement.

Effective communication with this generation starts with context and outcomes. Instead of giving a script and saying “make these calls,” a leader might walk through why a particular outreach strategy works, how it connects to client needs, and what success looks like in real numbers and timeframes. This way, younger team members are invited to refine the process. They want to be heard, and they want to understand the “why” before they fully commit to the “what.”

“Gen Z is not asking for a voice because they hate authority, they are asking because they want to understand the ‘why’ behind the work” – Michael Lattuca, Founder of Gen Gap

Applying this to sales and service

For brokers who sell in California’s complex regulatory environment, the generational lens can be a powerful sales tool. Younger HR leaders and startup founders often approach benefits decisions differently than legacy clients. They look for transparency, fast options, and a clear story about value. They may not respond to traditional carrier-centric presentations, but they will listen to a broker who can explain tradeoffs in plain language and who is willing to co-create a strategy.

Inside the agency, the same principles apply to training and performance management. Lattuca emphasizes that standards should not be lowered. Instead, they should be translated into milestones that match how Gen Z is accustomed to tracking progress. That can mean shorter ramp periods with clearly defined skills to master at each step and more frequent feedback loops instead of one annual review. When goals are visible and broken into stages, younger producers are more likely to buy into the long-term commission-based model that drives most California brokerages.

“It is not that they cannot do hard things they have just never been shown how to build hard things over time” – Michael Lattuca, Founder of Gen Gap

Culture accountability and the law of the harvest

A phrase Lattuca returns to is the law of the harvest. For brokers, this is familiar. Prospecting networking and client service all compound over the years. The challenge is that many younger workers have been immersed in a short form highlight reel culture where results look instant and the grind is invisible. Part of leadership today is explicitly teaching the cause-and-effect relationship between daily behaviors and future income.

That does not mean tolerating poor performance. Lattuca stresses that accountability and empathy are not opposites. Clear expectations, written standards, and consistent follow through still matter. What changes is how those standards are introduced and reinforced. Leaders who can connect expectations to a compelling future story will see more buy-in than those who rely on fear or guilt about paying dues.

“ Gen Z is not asking for a voice because they hate authority, they are asking because they want to understand the ‘why’ behind the work ” – Michael Lattuca, Founder of Gen Gap

Michael Lattuca is a leadership coach and generational consultant with more than ten years of experience helping organizations understand and motivate Millennial and Gen Z talent. With GenGap, Michael specializes in coaching young professionals to increase executive mindset, have greater buy-in, and envision a career with your company. Before founding GenGap, he became the youngest organizational leader in the world’s largest custom clothing company, overseeing the California offices and a team of twenty-two. Michael’s organization led the company to grow profits during COVID, achieving a 9% increase while the organization declined 38% overall. During his first 20 months he broke a 56-year sales record with more than $1.2M in personal production and was inducted into the company’s Hall of Fame. Known for attracting, training, and retaining young talent in high turnover environments, Michael now brings his generational fluency and proven coaching frameworks to companies that want to unlock the potential of their emerging workforce.

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