Running head: MILLENNIALS IN THE WORKPLACE

Millennials in the Workplace: Shaping Future Organizations to Success

Robert Guajardo

South Texas College

According to the Pew Research Center (Fry, 2018), millennials are the largest generation

in the U.S. labor force. Millennials, which are currently aged from 18 to 32, make up 35% of all

American labor force participants. It is crucial that these individuals are prevalent in the

workforce due to reshaping the standards of leadership, preparing for future generations, and will

push harder for diversity and inclusion. The CEO of this marketing research company needs to

understand that the target consumers are indeed, millennials. Today, so many young people are

using electronics as part of their everyday lives and are always looking for the newest item to

add to their collection. The company is focused on selling Bluetooth devices, gaming products

and other audio products. With millennials being a part of this company, they can spearhead

meetings and tailor the marketing to these individuals, because they themselves are part of the

consumers. The CEO needs to understand that diversity and inclusion is more powerful than

everyone being the same. It is important for ideas to be bounced around with each other rather

than sticking to the status quo. Millennials can be the driving force of this company and excel the

marketing research firm due to their leadership style, ethics, motivation, culture, and

communication. With this being the foundation of the company, they will then go on to focus on

the roles and behaviors of specific leadership styles such as servant, transformational, and

transactional. Then, they will be able to pinpoint what exactly it takes to be an effective leader.

With these skills, they will be able to discover organizational issues and ways to fix them.

Finally, these young leaders will recognize the social and political environment for leaders and

the impact it will have on the organization.

Millennials focus on the roles that they have at a company through their own specific

leadership style. This can be a great asset to have in this marketing research firm. Servant

leadership allows individuals to focus on their team, rather than themselves. The purpose of
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servant leaders is to serve their team, they are focused on the growth and the well-being of them.

Greenleaf is the one who coined servant leadership and stated, “the servant-leadership shares

power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible”

(Sandling, 2015). This allows the leader to work with their team, and the team sees the leader as

part of a helping hand to solve the issue and focus on the work. Servant leaders focus on

allowing their team to develop and focus on their strengths and allow them to perform

exceedingly. Servant leaders also possess principles that include healing, awareness, and

listening. These three principles are important in an organization that allows issues to be fixed

fast and to create less tension within a team. An individual having awareness and listening skills,

allow them to put the workers first and understand their needs. This also allows the leader to be

approachable when tension has arisen. The leader will be able to assess the issue from all aspects

and then come up with a consensus on how to fix the issue and what the best solution is moving

forward.

Aside from servant leadership, millennials can also possess a style of leadership called

transformational leadership. According to an article, “transformational leadership is defined as a

leadership approach that causes changes in individuals and social systems.” In the end, it creates

valuable and positive change of the followers with the goal of developing the followers into

leaders. With this, it is important to understand where the follower fits in the bigger picture of

the organization. These individuals need to know what their role is and how they can improve

upon it by themselves through teamwork with their peers. Transformational leaders’ focus

should be the mission of the organization and being a role model for other followers. Their

slogan would be, “lead by example.” They will also have their followers take responsibility for

their actions and allow them to take ownership for their work. It is important for this skillset of
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transformational leader to understand the follower’s strengths and weakness to apply as

necessary.

With the skills of servant and transformational leaders, it is showing what exactly it takes

to be an effective leader. They each hold a specific set of assets that are crucial in the workplace,

and if found, will fit perfectly in the CEO’s company for marking research. This will allow these

individuals to thrive off of knowledge and really understand how to grow the company and

market the products in a way that will help produce more income. It is important to understand

the functions of all leadership styles and how they can impact an organization into doing well.

Leaders need to have the specific trait of setting goals. Setting goals allows tasks to get done in a

timely manner and allows the executive board to be confident with decisions that are coming up.

If the goal is not met, it is important to figure out why it was not achieved, and how it can be

achieved in the future. Analyzing the problem, then presenting the problem with visual charts

and graphs will help people understand how to prevent this same thing from happening again.

Leaders also need to have the trait of being organized. Organization is synonymous to

delegation, with assigning workers and followers with specific roles that are tailored to their

strengths. Aligning strengths with roles, will help leaders reach their goals easier.

Leaders also need to have the skills of initiating action and have direction and motivation.

It is important for these individuals to take initiative in all interests of their followers and to be

involved in all projects. At times, it can be difficult to step away from your own work and see

what is going on elsewhere in the workforce, but putting input in can make a break a team

working on a specific task. Floating around ideas and decisions should reflect original thinking

from the followers. Being motivated to come to work is important, because you don’t want your

followers to produce tasks that are sub-par. You would want them to produce their best work and
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be confident in what they have done. Having these skills and traits from leaders built off from the

leadership styles, will allow the marketing research company to figure out what product there is

and how to get it off the ground and into the hands of the consumers. These traits will also allow

these young leaders to help with networking and getting the products into foreign markets, just as

the CEO wanted.

Young leaders also know how to handle organizational issues. It seems with this situation

the main issue is determining if there is a market for these Bluetooth devices and gaming

products. It is important to delegate responsibility and understand where everyone’s place is in

this task at hand. When the responsibility isn’t clear, then it can be misleading with the

possibility of two people doing the same work, and then no one doing the other task. There are

also going to be clashing personalities, and it is up to these young leaders to step in and take

charge. The old workers in the company think they are going to know it all and understand what

consumers want in terms of gaming and Bluetooth devices. What they are wrong about, is that

they are not consumers themselves, and millennials would have a better understand on what to

put out for the market. This will create a tension, but the CEO needs to side with the millennials

because they understand what they play and what their other young friends play, that is the

market. Another organization issue is when there are limited resources. There will be conflict

and fights about who takes priority over these limited resources. Examples of limited resources

can include computers, data from a research project about gaming, articles, working with other

leaders. It is imperative that these resources get split up evenly throughout time. This will allow a

greater function between the problem and those that are addressing the problem. Lastly, lack of

accountability can be a major organizational issue. With young leaders, they are quick to move

onto the next task once they are completed with one. This may seem that these individuals are
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doing all the work, while their counterparts are not. It is important to create productivity sheets

that allow managers to oversee where time is being spent on what task. This can be useful when

delegating who should be working on what and for how long. It is typical for young leaders to

work with their team to finish off a task rather than work by themselves. The reason millennials

can fix organizational issues is due to the skillset they have from the leadership styles they have

learned and grown up to live by. When these organization issues are fixed, these young leaders

can then move on to recognizing how this will impact the organization as a whole.

The full range leadership model includes traits from a transformation leader which is

imperative to recognize social and political environments to create a cultivating experience for a

greater success of an organization. The full range leadership model includes, inspirational

motivation, idealized influence (attributed and behavioral), intellectual stimulation and

individual consideration. For inspirational motivation, it describes leaders who motivate their

followers by allowing them to have meaningful and challenging workload. These are the leaders

that are being optimistic and realizing that a problem can be fixed through thorough processing,

analyzing and retention. These leaders encourage their followers to envision the future of the

organization and how it can be changed based on the work that is done today. They also display

a sense of developing team spirit, and creating a sense of purpose in followers’ lives. The

purpose is the driving force that will designate someone to work at the bare minimum, and to

exceed tasks to the highest potential. Idealized influence includes both attributed and behavioral.

Idealized influence allows an individual to be a leader based on their credentials or job title.

They know they have to act a certain way because of their experiences and education. This will

allow their followers to want to learn from them, hoping one day to be in the same shoes as

them, if not more. Idealized influence behavioral is actually observing the individual in
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becoming a leader, not based on their credentials or who they are. It is this behavior that is the

driving force to allow their followers to want to learn from them and help with troubleshooting

and creating a good environment for the organization. Idealized influence is about earing respect,

earning trust, walking the walk, being a role model, and developing a shared vision. Intellectual

stimulation describes leaders who stimulate their followers. This allows the followers to be

creative and curious to asking questions and wanting to learn more. These are the type of people

who are usually progressive in their work and want to do things an alternative way because it’s

easier, not because it’s always been done that way. These leaders are about coming up with new

ways to do things and with new ideas that will allow them to envision the organization in a new

way for the better. They are usually challenging established wisdom, encouraging innovation,

daring to dream, and encouraging diversity. Lastly, individual consideration allows leaders to

pay attention to their followers needs. This can include what they want to achieve or how they

want to grow throughout the organization. It is up to the leader to act as a coach or a mentor to

guide their followers on the right path. They are always pushing their followers to challenge

themselves and take on more responsibility. It is important for them to create new learning

opportunities and have a supportive climate that will allow their followers to grow. The aspects

include, making interpersonal communication with followers, helping followers to grow, being

empathetic, and picking up followers when they fall. The full range leadership model is

important for young leaders to troubleshoot and fix organizational issues. These types of

characteristics are imperative in this marketing company that will help expand the business into

foreign countries, inventing a new product that is demanding, yet beneficial, and to loosen up the

tension of the CEO to understand how he should take the organization to a new level.
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Understanding these leadership styles and using them in an organization for the better can

only make the marketing company a success, rather than a failure. It is these young millennials

that are learning these leadership styles at an exponential rate and transforming organizations all

across the country. With servant and transformational leadership, it allows them to focus on the

specific roles and behaviors of culture and communication that is effective and exhilarating.

With this strong foundation, they are then able to then be an effective leader and fix

organizational issues. Finally, they can then transform the company to have an impact

throughout all consumers and those at the workplace, by creating a political and environmental

culture which will prioritize solutions to socio-political issues.

References

Alton, L. (2017, December 28). 5 Ways Millennials Will Transform The Workplace In 2018.

Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryalton/2017/12/28/5-ways-millennials-will-

transform-the-workplace-in-2018/#55c7f7b6558d

Fry, R. (2018, April 11). Millennials are largest generation in the U.S. labor force. Retrieved from

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/11/millennials-largest-generation-us-labor-force/

Leadership: Meaning, Characteristics and Functions. (2015, May 15). Retrieved from

http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/leadership/leadership-meaning-characteristics-and-

functions/53325

Sandling, J., SandlingI, J., & Proctor, R. (2015, April 23). Ten Principles of Servant Leadership.

Retrieved from https://jonathansandling.com/ten-principles-servant-leadership/

Tobak, S. (2012, June 12). Workplace conflict is a management problem. Retrieved from

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/workplace-conflict-is-a-management-problem/

Transformational Leadership Becoming an Inspirational Leader. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/transformational-leadership.htm