Leading Millennial Differently: Are Recent Leadership

Theories Still Relevant for Them?

Hery Kustanto

, Anis Eliyana

, and Siti Nurjanah

Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Indonesia

Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia

anis.eliyana@feb.unair.ac.id,siti.nurjanah@unj.ac.id

Abstract. Millennial Generation inevitably will be the biggest amount among the

employees in the near future in the workplace. Practicioners and researchers have

admitted that they have differences from the previous generation. The differences

may vary in many aspects: from how they assume the work until how they bring

personalities and attitude in the work life. This condition logically will affect

leadership in organization. Consequently, leadership theories need to adapt with

this situation in order to maximize resources utilization effectively. In this paper,

we will explore five most welknown leadership theories in relationship with

millennial generation to understand the changes that may lead to reconsider

different approaches in leading them.

Keywords: Millennial ꞏ Generation Gap ꞏ Leadership Theories

1 Introduction

Millennials are those who were born between 1982 and 1999 (Twenge and Campbell,

2008) and they also commonly named as GenY, NGen and GenMe (Twenge, 2010).

Millennials are the largest number in the workforce as of nearly 2015 (Brownstone,

2014). Therefore organization must anticipate the changes in order to be able to utilize

them efficiently and effectively since millennials are different from their attitude and

values (Lyons and Kuron, 2014) organization. Therefore differences among

generations may call for adaptations to our our current leadership theories (Anderson

et al., 2016).

Leadership style can have important impact on variables to employees such as

employee job satisfaction, motivation and team performance (e.g., judge and Picolo,

2004). Furthermore, studies found that employee-supervisor relationship linked to

organizational commitment and decreased intention turn over (e.g., Han and Jekel,

2011).

Moreover for millennial, they are more likely to value working for supervisors they

like than previous generations (Twenge, 2010). By considering the changes of

millennial in many aspects especially the way how they face the leader - follower

relationship in the workplace, therefore it is needed to observe and analise present

leadership theories by reevaluating our ideas about leadership in the context of these

generational differences (Lyons and Kuron, 2014).

Kustanto, H., Eliyana, A. and Nurjanah, S.

Leading Millennial Differently: Are Recent Leadership Theories Still Relevant for Them?.

DOI: 10.5220/0010609400002900

In Proceedings of the 20th Malaysia Indonesia International Conference on Economics, Management and Accounting (MIICEMA 2019), pages 921-928

ISBN: 978-989-758-582-1; ISSN: 2655-9064

921

2 Discussion

2.1 Generation Gap

It is common that each generation has its own value and character in the workplace. It

is also common for people to hold unfavorable perceptions of employees from younger

generation (Deal, Atman and Rogelberg, 2010). The differences may be in the form of

opinion and values. Millennials are treated as more individualistic people (Twenge,

2010). Millennials are less altruistic at work than earlier generations (Lyons, Duxburry

and Higgins, 2005). The way they behave in the workplace is also different. Work

centrality is becoming less and less important. Among three generations, millennials

are being the least (Twenge and Kaser, 2013).

2.2 Leadership Gap

It is already widely known that a successful leadership surely comes from leader who

could lead effectively and efficiently. And in order to lead successfully, managers must

utilize leadership styles and behaviors that match the situation and the needs and

abilities of employees they are trying to influence (e.g. Fiedler and Gracia, 1987;

Hersey and Blancard, 1977; House and Mitchell, 1974; Shamir and Howell, 1999;

Vroom and Yetton, 1973).

The paper explores five (5) major leadership theories, namely : Transformational

Leadership, Ethical Leadership, Authentic Leadership, Leader-Member Exchange,

Information Processing. Each of the theories has its own approach in its application in

an organization. Yet with the differences in personalities, values of millennials in the

workplace may affect leadership styles to approach to them.

In table 1 (Anderson et al., 2016) we herewith highlight the summary of 5 leadership

theories in relationship with generational change.

Table 1. Summary of influences of generational changes by leadership theory.

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2.3 Transformational Leadership

Preposition: Transformational leadership becomes less effective specifically in

achieving organizational goal since millenials tend to like more on achieving individual

goal.

Main character of Tranformaional Leadership is on inspirational leader who

motivate employees through the achievement of group or organiztional goals (Burns,

1978). There are 4 factors how Tranformationa Leadership work ; Idealized Influence,

Inspirational Motivation, Intelectual Stimulation, Individual Consideration (Bass and

Avolio, 1994).

If we take a look at the characteristics of tranformational leadership, It seems that

this theory may be ideal for leading millennial. Researchers also found that millennial

crave personal attention and feedback, and thus are likely to enjoy the personalized

attention that transformational leadership offer (Graen and Schiemman, 2013).

Unfortunately millennials are also more individualistic and less interested in working

together to achieve common goals (Twinge,et al, 2010). They want to stand out as

individuals and achieve their own goals (Twenge, 2010). In this context there is a

contrarary for a leader; in one side millenials like to have feedback that the leaders will

do so as a part of his motivation to achieve the common goals. On the other side

millenials like to show more individual style and pursue more on their own goals (table

1). Although transformatinal leadership may fulfill employees’ desires for personal

development through individual consideration, the model does not expalin how

managers can translate individual employee performance to oragnizational

performance when employees are more concerned with their own interests (Anderson

et al., 2016).

2.4 Ethical Leadership

Proposition: Since today's employees are more individualistic, they likely to see

perceptions of morally intensity in different way, making them to have less care for

guidance to ethical leaders in decision making.

Ethical leadership, comes from an understanding of both ethics and leadership. It

could be a tool to explain how leaders behave ethically and promote moral behavior

amongst their followers (Brown and Treviño, 2006). Ethical leadership was driven

largely by corporate scandals. They highlighted the need to understand not just how

leaders should behave, but also how their behaviors inﬂuence ethical decision making

in organizations (Brown, Treviño, and Harrison, 2005). The establishment of an ethical

organizational culture, which facilitates discussion of ethical topics, highlights the

importance of ethical decisions, and rewards appropriate behavior, can be developed

and perpetuated (Brown et al., 2005; Brown and Treviño, 2006). Yet the challenges of

promoting ethical behavior is that employees are not always aware that they are facing

an ethical dilemma (Trevino and Brown, 2004). When employees become morally

aware, they are more likely to look to their leaders for guidance (Brown and Treviño,

2006). But increased individualism amongst employees especially millennial

generation may lead to less social consensus on ethical norms, causing employees may

have dissimilar perceptions of moral intensity in the same situations. For example, an

Leading Millennial Differently: Are Recent Leadership Theories Still Relevant for Them?

923

older employee may believe that it is unethical of an organization to pay for birth

control but a younger employee may believe that organizations whose insurances do

not cover abortio

birth control

are

violating

basic

human

(Anderson

et al., 2016).

2.5 Authentic Leadership

Proposition: Because millennials are more individualistic, it is hard to achieve the

value congruence needed by authentic leadership.

Authentic leadership emerged from the positive organizational behavior movement

(e.g., Cameron, Dutton, and Quinn, 2003; Nelson and Cooper, 2007) to provide deeper

investigation into the beneficial aspects of organizational life. In the execution,

authentic leadership is similar to Kernis’ concept of authentic functioning (Kernis &

Goldman, 2006) as is based on being true to one’s self and is centered on self awareness

and attitude-behavior congruence. Researchers consider that the development of

authentic leadership to emerge from this idea of self-awareness and internalized moral

compass (Shamir and Eilam, 2005).

According to Avolio and Gardner’s model (2005), authentic leaders inspire

followers to examine their own beliefs and values. When followers hold beliefs that are

congruent with those of their leaders, they will identify with their leaders and will seek

to be like them. This is really an interesting paradox for millennial leaders because this

generation places a high value on individualism (Twenge and Campbell, 2012), they

may not conform to the values of another, even a trusted leader. Consequently

employees who hold high opinions of their own leadership abilities may be less likely

to see the importance of coming together with authentic leader (Judge et al, 2006).

2.6 Leader Member Exchange

Proposition: since work pattern of millennial generation based on individualistic style,

leaders will be difficult to get employee’s engagement in high quality leader member

exchange.

Leader Member Exchange (LMX) is based on social exchange (Blau, 1964), which

suggests that when leaders provide discretionary resources to their followers, the later

will reciprocate in kind. LMX requires mutual effort from both parties (Maslyn and

Uhl-Bien, 2001). These exchange relationships are frequently categorized as either high

quality, such that the employee is placed in the leader’s in-group, or low quality, such

that the employee is placed in the leader’s out-group (Dansereau et el., 1975).

Followers in the in-group receive additional resources, access to information and are

treated in a more collegial manner (Dansereau et el., 1975; Schresheim, Castro, Zhou,

and Yammarino, 2001). Conversely, some employees may be content with a low-

quality relationship or prefer not to extend beyond the required tasks (Maslyn and Uhl-

Bien, 2001). On the contrary millennials are focused on more on individual

accomplishments than employees of previous generation (Twenge and Foster, 2010).

Leaders who have operated with an LMX style are unlikely to reciprocate with more

self-interested employees because these employees are not willing to give anything

MIICEMA 2019 - Malaysia Indonesia International Conference on Economics Management and Accounting

924

back. This will ultimately lead to low-quality LMX relationship which result in less

favorable outcomes to the employee and organization with one excetion – networking

(Granovetter, 2005). One of LMX theory assumptions is that leaders will be able to

engage employees in not only the work at ahand, but also in going beyond the formal

job description to help the leader (Graen and Schiemann, 1978). But today’s employees

are likely to resist this higher level of engagement because it will require them to invest

more time and effort in work. In fact, millennial employees acknowledge that their

perceptions of work life balance differ from their supervisors (Gilley, Waddell, Hall,

Jackson, and Gilley, 2015). Managers who are accustomed to achieving outstanding

performance through high-quality LMX relationship may be disappointed to find that

millennials value maintaining work life balance more than supervisor favor (Anderson

et al., 2016).

2.7 Information Processing

Proposition: Because of millennials’ individualism, they hold different cognition

about leadership from the prior generation.

The basic tenants of an information processing perspective posit that leadership

exists in a social context (Pfeffer, 1977). The information processing perspective has

grown from recognition that the attributions which followers make about their leaders

are an integral part of the phenomenological experience of leadership. Thus, leadership

is conferred only through the perceptions of others, And leadership is not understood

through leader behaviors but rather than through followers’ perceptions of leadership

(House and Aditya, 1997). Information processing models of leadership also indicate

that situational factors influence attributions of leadership (e.g., Lord and Smith, 1983;

Lord, Brown, Harvey, and Hall, 2001). Lord et al, (1984) found that leadership

prototypes vary across environment contexts. This suggest that differences in the ways

individuals perceive their surroundings are also likely to shape the attributions they

make about leaders, Because work is less central to the lives of millennials,

organizational settings are likely to be imbued with less meaning for these employees.

Since today’s employees view places of employment differently, they may also see

leadership attributions differently (Anderson, Griffith, Buckley, 2016). Stated also by

(Hansen and Leuty, 2012; Twenge, 2010) that the work motivations of the millennial

generation are generally more extrinsically focused on material outcomes, such as

compensation, than previous generation. Millennials are likely to be sensitive to the

receipt of these rewards. As a result their attributions of leadership may be highly

dependent upon their perceptions of their leaders’ ability to award raises, promotions,

etc.

3 Recommendation

There are still more potential adaptations of how to apply established leadership theory

in new ways, researchers suggest several ways to adjust practices in order to avoid

leadership pitfalls and leverage the millennial generation potential. Millennial

Leading Millennial Differently: Are Recent Leadership Theories Still Relevant for Them?

925

generations entering the workforce are often still ﬁguring out which job characteristics

are the most appealing to them (Kuron, Lyons, Schweitzer, and Ng, 2015). It is also

important to offer millennials earlier and objective information about compensation and

career paths in the organization as this generation appears to have unrealistic

expectations about how quickly they will move up the corporate leader and earn pay

increases (Ng et al., 2010).

One of the strategies to lead millennials successfully is to make an awareness of the

attributions because they have different backgrounds and values. For example,

managers of previous generations may be tempted to interpret millennials' desire for

more information and feedback as a sign of disrespect (Myers and Sadaghiani, 2010).

Similarly, when millennials show their preference to work to live and not live to work,

managers may mistakenly attribute this attitude to laziness or lack of initiative.

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