Challenges for Leadership when Managing GenMe

In this article, which continues from the piece Leading GenMe, I outline a series of challenges for managers and their leadership styles who are faced with a workforce composed predominantly of a GenMe mindset. To accomplish this, I will be tackling five categories of leadership theory:

1. Transformational Leadership
2. Information Processing
3. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
4. Authentic Leadership
5. Ethical Leadership

Transformational Leadership

Transformational Leadership is the process by which a manager seeks to help a team see beyond their immediate self-interest. It attempts to do this by creating a vision, which is used to achieve change through what are known as the 'Four I's':

1. Inspirational Motivation
2. Idealized Influence
3. Intellectual Stimulation
4. Individualized Consideration

While Transformational Leadership is often considered highly effectual, it can be challenged by teams of a GenMe mindset. This is because one of the standout propositions about GenMe is that they are higher in individualism than GenWe. On the surface, this would seem to create opportunities in management that transformational leadership is primed to solve. Yet dig a little deeper and we find several faults.

First, due to the greater individualism of GenMe, employees tend to focus on achieving their own goals, with the needs of the organisation being a by-product of their efforts. This creates a challenge for leaders because, contrary to the Steven Covey approach, a 'win-win' is not always possible in the workplace. A highly topical example is employees demanding a 7% or greater pay increase in an operating environment which prompts organisations to think it more fiscally prudent to offer 4% or less. Because transformational leadership starts with the premise that leaders can create a vision of the future to which employees will subscribe, if the vision is sufficiently motivating, it is assumed the only challenge is to find the 'win-win'. However, among those of a GenMe mindset work is less central to their lives and therefore appeals by transformational leaders are going to be less influential. The upshot is that managers who adopt a transformational approach will often be met with disinterest, cynicism, and apathy.

Second, given the greater emphasis on extrinsic rewards by GenMe, leaders will get less traction with emotional or intrinsic appeals because employees will gravitate toward outcomes that provide the highest personal utility or benefit. Although over a decade old, the data from an extensive survey by Ng et al. in 2010, New Generation, Great Expectations: A Field Study of the Millennial Generation, showed that in a 'national survey of millennial undergraduate university students from across Canada (N = 23,413)':

Millennials also appear to have high expectations when it comes to promotions and pay raises. They have been reported to wonder why they were not getting pay raises and promotions after six months on the job. For example, a recent university graduate working at an investment bank in downtown Toronto reported that he will learn as much as he can and then move on for something bigger and better, because he couldn’t wait two years to get promoted.

Eddy Ng et al, New Generation, Great Expectations

While this study focussed on Millennials and confines its conclusions to more traditional notions of generational divide, the results are nonetheless important for managers who encounter the same traits, but in an older cohort of employees.