It's All About Me: Millennials as Leaders in the 21st Century Workforce

• In Event: Global Leadership Education Across Cultures

Short Description

The millennial leader will soon dominate a global workforce comprising four generations. This paper considers the implications of such a generational shift in leadership and challenges whether the values and ethical orientation of the millennial generation calls into question the prevalent distinction between the constructs of narcissistic leadership and transformational leadership.

Detailed Abstract

This is the millennial age of leadership. There are now four generations in the workforce and millennials currently occupy a significant number of leadership positions, with this number set to increase dramatically over the next ten years.
The impact of such a multi-generational workforce is profound and is receiving considerable attention in the literature (Dwyer, 2009). The generational gap is changing organisations in fundamental ways (Tulgan, 2004) and inter-generational leadership of older generations by millennials is creating a ‘problematic generation gap’ that must be bridged (Zetlin, 1992).
This paper argues that it is both important and timely to develop an understanding of the implications of the millennial age on approaches to leadership.
The millennial generation represent a generational cohort larger than the baby boomer generation. Now established in the 21st century workforce, this generational cohort is re-defining what represents the workplace (Van Meter et al, 2013). Like each generation before it, the millennial generation is defined by its common place in history and its common world view (Mannheim, 2001; Zemke et al, 2000).
Much research has explored the traits, values and world view of the millennial. Their core traits include being especially entitled, being of sheltered upbringing, being confident, being team-oriented, being conventional, feeling pressured, and needing to achieve (Howe & Strauss, 2000; Straus & Howe, 2006). Millennials have also been found to share core values of optimism, confidence, collaboration, and sociability (Alch, 2000; Howe & Strauss, 2000; Zemke et al, 2000).
Their world view predisposes them to expectations of a highly supportive workplace offering achievement and career progression (Cogin, 2012) flexible work conditions (Shaw & Fairhurst, 2008; Treuren & Anderson, 2010) and a healthy work-life balance (Cogin, 2012; Ehhart, Mayer & Ziegert, 2012).
They are a generation that uses the digital technology as a sixth sense and they are highly productive (Martin, 2005).
And yet their digital upbringing and the need for instant gratification (Cogin, 2012; Thompson & Gregory, 2012) is reflected in reported higher than expected levels of continuous (rather than affective or normative) commitment to their workplaces (Patalano, 2008).
The existing published literature suggests that Millennials need a special kind of leadership and there is an emerging consensus that transformational leadership suits the organisational need to nurture, support and reward this generation (Holt, Marque & Way, 2012; Tolbize, 2008).
However, a paucity of research exists on the ethical orientation of millennials, a consideration which may present contradictory evidence concerning the desirability of transformational leadership in the millennial age, both for millennial workers and for millennial leaders.
Like all previous generations, the collective millennial generational experience has informed its ethical ideologies and it is these that have a degree of influence on how millennials behave in the workplace.
Van Meter and colleagues have acknowledged the research on the ethical values of previous generations (Ramsey, 2007; Rawwas & Shighapakdi, 1998; Tulgan, 2004;) and particularly on generation X (Kim & Choi, 2003; Ramsey et al, 2007; Strutton et al, 1997), but recognise that there is too little research on the ethical values of the millennial generation (Van Meter et al, 2013).
Despite this important gap in the literature, we know that their traits, values and world view are very different from generations before. For example, millennials have been found to have higher levels of self-esteem, higher levels of narcissism and a lower need for social approval in the workforce (Twenge & Campbell, 2008). Indeed, Twenge and Campbell found that their millennial research participants were 30% more narcissistic than an average student in 1982.
The question is firstly, whether this narcissistic tendency presents itself in functional or non-functional workplace behaviours, and secondly, just what the implications for leadership are. One study by Van Meter and colleagues reveals high levels of ethical relativism in millennials but also high levels of idealism (Van Meter et al, 2013). The high levels of ethical relativism are of particular concern to specific leadership considerations. They reveal a tendency to eschew universal moral rules, normal ethical guidelines and laws, and indicate a greater tolerance of individual and collaborative ethical violations.
It not yet clear what the further negative effect on millennial behaviour will be, when a millennial’s narcissistic focus on the self at the expense of others (or at least without thinking of others) is combined with other identified millennial characteristics such as their sense of entitlement, their need to achieve and their requirement for instant gratification. This consideration has profound implications for the use and expressed manifestation of transformational leadership in the millennial age.
The implication for the concept and practise of leadership in relation to millennials is that there is a need to gain a clearer understanding of the centrality or otherwise of the moral dimension implicit in the literature on transformational leadership in particular. This may lead to a refinement or re-conceptualisation of the transformational leadership construct.
For millennial leaders, their success in being transformative in nature through productive/constructive behaviours conducive to high level leader effectiveness, whilst exhibiting the trait tendency of narcissism, challenges or at least calls into question the prevalent distinction in the leadership literature between narcissistic leadership and transformational leadership.
At a time when the transformational leadership construct has been subject to major challenges stemming from a lack of definitional precision and contested conceptualisation (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013), it has been argued that ‘productive/constructive’ narcissistic leadership should be regarded as a part of a re-conceptualised transformational leadership construct (Hunt & Fitzgerald, 2014) but with the expressed caveat that one must always be conscious that narcissism operates on a continuum, from ‘productive/constructive’ narcissism at the ‘positive, socialised outcomes’ end of the continuum to ‘non-productive/de-constructive’ narcissism at the ‘negative, personalised’ end of the continuum.
The existence of this continuum has important implications because it carries with it the strong implication that ‘productive/constructive’ narcissists (with mild manifestations of narcissism) still have tendencies to exhibit elements of ‘negative, personalised’ side of narcissism - most notably, in a lack of capacity for empathy.

Participants

• Martin G. Fitzgerald, University of Newcastle

• James B. Hunt, Newcastle Business School, The University of Newcastle