Leading Millennial Differently: Are Recent Leadership
Theories Still Relevant for Them?
Hery Kustanto
1
, Anis Eliyana
2
, and Siti Nurjanah
1
1
Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Indonesia
2
Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia
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
Copyright
c
 2022 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
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
ns or birth control are violating basic human r i g h t s (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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