Leading The Millennial Workforce : A study linking empowering leadership and millennial needs

Abstract:  Background: Leadership practices in general are of great interest and today’s workforce mainly consist of people from the millennial generation. As this phenomenon is becoming apparent, management must adapt to the changing needs of employees. Long gone are the times when people stayed at the company for their whole careers since it is not only easier to relocate but they act on their dissatisfaction more frequently. Therefore, it is imperative that leadership evolves to match the new demands set out by millennials to make them less inclined to depart.   Purpose: We set out to explore how leadership can be used to satisfy the needs of millennial employees. Empowering leadership is the style that was found to fit the best so we set out to explore millennials through the lens of empowering leadership. This in turn allowed us to also enrich the leadership theory with added insights based on employee needs.   Method: We conducted a qualitative study with thirteen semi-structured interviews which resulted in rich data. Gaining insights from our interviewees, we were able to critically assess the validity of empowering leadership. We analyzed our data with thematic analysis to categorize it in different themes and further comprehend the findings.   Conclusion: The results show that most empowering leadership practices fit the needs of millennial employees. Based on the findings, we further identified two distinct practices that are to be added to leadership literature and were able to understand what the millennials require in the workplace.