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Millennial Leaders Will Change Organisations - Where to Start?


Research into the impact of millennials on organisations carry a hint of anxiety.

 It is up to millennials to work through anxieties by finding points of commonality and building alliances across the generations.  An empathic approach, by a derided 'me generation', will be unexpected. 

Millennials know the financial and psychological effects of boom-and-bust cycles, but what was the impact on boomers and gen Xers?  

It has contributed to significant job dissatisfaction that is having a lasting effect on attitudes about the role of work and its value in employees‘ lives. Into this space millennial credibility for organisational change should be built. 

 Start by understanding the sources of discontents: a decline in lifetime employment prospects, diminishing advancement opportunities, stagnant or lower buying power, erosion of job benefits and the constant changes. There is scant evidence of incumbent leaders' engagement with discontents. Millennials should build identify such leadership voids and build credibility.

 It will require an imaginative leap and an ability to walk in the shoes of older people who experienced the  dot-com bubble burst and the great recession at first hand. 

Use empathy to fully engage with the impact upon their lives: 

  • Listen with an openness to under stand the other person
  • Seek in depth stories about experiences that touch their emotions
  • Always dig deeper and ask why

Monitor the quality of your empathy. Aim for interactions as a genuine as a conversation with a trusted friend.

Through a lens of economic disruptions, observe interactions in your organisation and hypothesise why people act a certain way:
  • What is this person (or persons) doing?
  • How are they doing it? (Body Language, etc.)
  • Why are they behaving this way? 
And start to create a cornerstone to millennials' ability to change organisations.




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