Helping leaders retain younger employees, strengthen managers, and get generations working together.
Haydn Shaw’s work combines decades of leadership management development experience with a powerful insight: many workforce challenges attributed to “Gen Z” are actually driven by the rise of Emerging Adulthood.
His work sits at the intersection of four challenges facing nearly every organization today:
For more than 25 years — and more than 5,000 speaking, training, and consulting days — he has helped leaders improve retention, develop manager capability, and lead change that sticks. The Washington Post calls him a “leadership guru.” TIME calls him “an expert on cultural differences at the office.”
What makes his approach different is the insight behind it.
After teaching management and leadership skills to thousands of leaders, Haydn kept hearing the same frustration underneath the questions: why weren’t people in their twenties responding the way earlier generations had at the same age?
Not worse. Different.
The cause wasn’t “Gen Z.” It was a life stage. Researchers call it emerging adulthood — the extended phase between adolescence and settled adulthood. Most management training quietly assumes people will stay for years, pay their dues, and defer reward for a future payoff. For emerging adults, that motivational foundation no longer holds. And when it doesn’t, your best young people leave.
He crystallized the practical stakes in a conversation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
“I’m glad the Air Force selected my book on generations for their supervisors. But what the Armed Forces really need are experts in emerging adulthood. Your workforce is eighty percent emerging adults, and someone has to understand this life stage and how it changes things.”
Haydn spent 30 years with FranklinCovey and was one of only four consultants worldwide to receive the company’s Chairman’s Award for client days delivered. He left to build something he couldn’t find in the marketplace: leadership and management development specifically adapted to the realities of today’s younger workforce.
Organizations don’t merely need another presentation explaining Gen Z. They need practical management approaches that help managers retain talented people, build trust faster, create accountability, and lead effectively across generations.
Generational dynamics remain the foundation of Haydn’s work and the basis of his bestselling book, Sticking Points. Emerging adulthood is where he’s spending the rest of his career — helping leaders understand how it’s reshaping the workplace and what managers can do about it.
His method is consistent, and it’s why it sticks. Start with why, because people won’t sustain what doesn’t make sense to them. Surface the real resistance — the objection managers say on a break, not in the meeting — because that’s what quietly stalls everything else. Then reduce it to essentials simple enough to use under pressure and thorough enough to hold up in a real situation. Oversimplified plays well on a stage and falls apart the first time someone says “well, that didn’t work with this person.”
Haydn has spoken to more than 150,000 people across more than 1,500 organizations — Fortune 500 companies, associations, government agencies, healthcare systems, manufacturers, construction firms, financial services organizations, and nonprofits.
His keynotes help audiences:
- Understand Gen Z and younger Millennials
- Improve retention and motivation
- Reduce friction between generations
- Strengthen manager effectiveness
- Lead change more successfully
They’re funny enough to keep a room engaged and practical enough to change how people lead on Monday morning. Audiences leave with a clear read on what’s driving their workplace tension — and specific moves they can use right away.
Haydn’s leadership development programs have been attended by more than 250,000 people. Thirty years of facilitation gave him a rare read on what actually changes manager behavior versus what just looks good on a program outline.
His workshops focus on the realities managers face every day: accountability, delegation, communication, turnover, motivation, performance, and change. His edge in the room is naming the resistance managers walk in with and working it through live — the objections people raise on a break rather than in the meeting. That’s the difference between a workshop people tolerate and one that changes how they lead the next day.
Beyond keynotes and workshops, Haydn advises leadership teams on the longer organizational development and change work that makes training stick — manager capability, culture, retention, and accountability. He designs plans that create measurable results for managers.
He has coached hundreds of leadership teams and helped organizations build the practical systems that reinforce what managers learn in training. His change management projects have been written up in business-school case studies.
Author of Sticking Points
Haydn is the author of Sticking Points: How to Get 5 Generations Working Together in the 12 Places They Come Apart, with a foreword by Stephen M. R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust. The book has helped thousands of leaders understand why generational tensions emerge and how to move through them productively.
“Generational sticking points are inevitable. Generational problems are avoidable — if you understand why the generations differ and how to move through those differences.”
Find it on Amazon →- 150,000+ keynote attendees
- 250,000+ workshop participants
- 1,500+ organizations served
- 30 years with FranklinCovey — one of four worldwide to win the Chairman’s Award
- Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) — top 15% of professional speakers
- Author of Sticking Points, foreword by Stephen M. R. Covey
Bring Haydn to your organization
Whether you’re looking for a keynote speaker, leadership training, manager development, or consulting support, Haydn would like to hear what you’re working on.
Contact Haydn →haydn.shaw@peopledrivenresults.com · 815.557.4772 · peopledrivenresults.com