A few weeks ago, I came across a post quoting NYU Stern School of Business professor Suzy Welch that caught my eye:
“Do you want to be the author of your life or the editor of your life?”
I snapped a screenshot, knowing I wanted to come back to it. And sure enough, this week, her name popped up again in an op-ed she wrote for The Wall Street Journal titled, “Is Gen Z Unemployable?”
The Most Popular Class at NYU Stern
Welch teaches a class called “Becoming You: Crafting the Authentic Life You Want and Need,” that has become the most popular course among Gen Z b-school students. It centers on the intersection of values, aptitudes, and economically viable interests. To help students identify their values, Welch co-developed the Values Bridge Quiz, which has now been taken by more than 45,000 people.
I decided to take the free version myself. The quiz asked me to answer questions from two perspectives:
- My ideal life.
- My current life.
From there, it highlighted my core values and gave me an authenticity gap score, which is a measure of how closely aligned my current life is with my ideal values.
My score landed me as The Approacher, someone moving toward a life aligned with their values but still facing a noticeable gap. That description felt true and also permanent since one of my core values is scope, which means that I’m constantly looking for new challenges, experiences, and learning opportunities.
The Values Disconnect
But what fascinated me most wasn’t my results. It was the broader picture Welch uncovered in her research.
When comparing Gen Z’s top values to those most desired by employers, the disconnect is striking:
- Gen Z values: pleasure/self-care, individuality, helping others, affluence, and beauty.
- Employers value: achievement, learning/action (scope), and work for work’s sake.
Only 2% of Gen Z scored those employer values in their top five. Welch calls this a generational “values disconnect” that could reshape the future of work.
Why Values Awareness Matters
Whether you’re a Gen Z MBA or mid-career professional, knowing your values matters. Your values shape your choices, your relationships, and ultimately, the story of your life.
That brings me back to Welch’s original question:
Are you the author of your life or the editor?
In my own results, I have core values of familycentrism, belonging, and belovedness, which means I have three core values that are centered on other people. That was sort of surprising to me because typically when I’ve picked from a list of values or created one on my own, I end up with something really different.
However, when I think about it, I have placed my partner, our family, and community as the central pillars in my life. The entire premise of Accountability Works is to put community around your goals, which marries the two core values of belonging and scope.
It’s also given me insights from the authenticity gaps. With relationships being so high in my values, it’s easy to put others’ needs/wants over my own, pushing me into editing over authoring. Good to know!
A Practical Takeaway
If you’re curious, I recommend taking the Values Bridge Quiz (there’s a free version). Look at your authenticity gap score. Ask yourself:
- Where am I most aligned?
- Where am I editing instead of authoring?
- What small, intentional change could I make to move closer to my ideal values?
At AW we have a list of Principles that we follow. There are 5, and they are really simple. One of them is Personal Responsibility, which we define as “I am the author.” That is why this caught my eye. I think being the author of your life is a great gift and a huge responsibility. When I think of it, I always come back to Viktor Frankl when he said,
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
