The new mentorship that Gen Z gets: Micro-feedback, memes, and mental health

New Delhi: Once upon a time, mentorship in marketing was a serious, slow, and slightly intimidating ritual. It happened over coffee in the corner office, involved a lot of nodding, and ended with phrases like “You have potential” or “Keep at it.” If you were lucky, you got a copy of Ogilvy on Advertising handed to you like it was a sacred text. Or How Brands Grow, whichever your favourite tome is. 

But then came Gen Z and with them, a different rhythm. They live in a constant loop of “create–post–get feedback–improve–repeat,” and they expect the same from their workplaces. Annual performance reviews? That’s a punchline. Waiting six months for constructive criticism? That’s career malpractice.

Today, mentorship has gone from a monolithic moment to a micro-dose experience—quick bursts of guidance, peppered into the daily workflow, and yes, sometimes sent as a meme. 

From big conversations to small nudges

If you’ve ever worked on a campaign with a team under 25, you know the pace is different. Ideas are brainstormed in a Google Doc at 11 PM, refined on a Slack thread or a WhatsApp group the next morning, and on ig/YouTube by lunchtime. In this environment, feedback can’t be a once-a-quarter sit-down. It needs to be instant, actionable, and specific.

A creative director at a leading digital agency recently told me, “I used to save up all my feedback for our fortnightly catch-ups. By then, the idea had either died or gone live. Now I give feedback like I’m sending a text - quick, clear, and in context.”

The upside? It keeps projects nimble. The downside? It demands leaders who are present, not just available.

Memes as a mentorship tool

Sounds ridiculous until you see it in action. Without realising it myself, I realised I express my feedback more clearly and succinctly with zero words, and a meme. And the same for my Gen Z team members as well. A Kermit sipping tea meme might mean “This is too safe, push harder.” The “Distracted Boyfriend” template? “You’re ignoring the bigger insight.”

This isn’t just silliness. It's the hieroglyphics of this generation, its culture. Memes create an informal, psychologically safe space where feedback doesn’t feel like a formal critique but part of a shared language. And if you think that’s frivolous, remember: the best mentorship is the kind that meets people where they are.

Mental health isn’t a side conversation anymore

The pandemic forced every workplace to confront what was always true—mental health is inseparable from performance. For Gen Z, it’s not an optional conversation; it’s a baseline expectation. They don’t see burnout as a badge of honour. They see it as poor management.

A CMO at a fast-growing D2C beauty brand told me about an incident where a young social media manager openly asked for a reduced workload during a product launch week because she was feeling overwhelmed. The old-school instinct would’ve been to push through. Instead, the manager reorganised the tasks, brought in extra help, and gave the team two “no-meeting” days. Guess what, the campaign still went live on time, and the employee stayed.

Two things that might not have happened otherwise. Equally, I know far too many people who will choose to go ahead with the launch and risk losing an employee. Because of that old belief, which is so difficult to get rid of: ‘ no one is going to be bigger than the work.’

This is a difficult element of modern mentorship: not just teaching people how to deliver, but how to last. And be with them.

What the headlines are telling us

If you’ve been following career and recruitment news lately, you’ll notice a pattern. Whether it’s LinkedIn’s annual Top Companies to Work For list, Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work, or the much-debated 4-day workweek trials, the message is consistent. Companies that prioritise growth, feedback, and wellbeing attract and retain younger talent.

And yet, the marketing and advertising industry has a blind spot here. We celebrate “creative hustle” but still normalise 2 AM deadlines. We run emotional campaigns about self-care while ignoring it in our own teams. Gen Z sees the gap, and they won’t tolerate it.

Mutuality over hierarchy

The best modern mentorship feels less like a teacher–student dynamic and more like a co-pilot arrangement. I recently worked with a 20-year-old content strategist on a campaign for a brand. She taught me three trending Instagram formats I’d never seen before; I helped her frame the hook so it tied back to the brand narrative. That’s the future. It’s not a one-way transfer of wisdom; it’s an exchange.

As a senior marketer, you might know how to navigate brand positioning through a PR crisis. Your Gen Z team member might know how to defuse a social media backlash, through humour, before it even hits the mainstream. The mentorship is mutual, the respect reciprocal.

The micro-feedback mindset

If I could distil the new mentorship style into one truth, it would be this: you’re not building apprentices, you’re building independent thinkers. And the fastest way to do that is through micro-feedback.

Not “Great job” or “Could be better”. Those are empty calories. But “That headline nails the insight. Keep that tone for the rest of the copy” or “Your reel has great energy, but the first three seconds need a stronger hook.” Specificity builds skill. Speed builds confidence.

And when it’s wrapped in a culture of empathy, where the human behind the work is valued just as much as the work itself, that’s when loyalty forms.

Walking the talk

It’s tempting to think this is just about being more approachable or fun. It’s not. It’s about reshaping how we define leadership in creative industries. We can’t expect young marketers to thrive if the only feedback they get is in a meeting room, six weeks too late, delivered in a tone that belongs in a 1990s boardroom.

The truth is, Gen Z will put up with deadlines, pivots, and even the occasional chaos of a pitch week—if they know they’re learning, if they feel seen, and if they believe you have their back not just as a worker, but as a person.

Because in 2025, mentorship isn’t a calendar invite. It is not about posting on LinkedIn that I mentored someone, or that I got mentored by someone.

It’s a culture. And it’s measured not by how many people follow your advice, but by how many grow beyond needing it.

Great leaders don’t just leave a legacy of campaigns. They leave a legacy of people who are braver, better, and bolder than when they met you.

In the last write-up, Chakrabarty wrote about why traditional leadership playbooks don’t work for today’s marketing teams and what it takes to build real trust with Gen Z talent. Can read the article here.