One of the challenges of leadership today can be found in the intangible – the generation gap. Several years ago I attended a seminar in which the director of the seminar announced that for the first time in history four generations would co-exist in the workplace. The seminar focused on how the organization was going to develop curriculum in light of the difference in values between generations. “Values are important to study in the context of workplace because they lay basic foundations for understanding the attitudes, motivation of human being and more precisely they influence the way we perceive our workplace” (Sumita Rai, Bhandarker, and Jain, 2011).
The millennial generation in particular poses a unique challenge for them as leaders. The Millennial generation, or “Born in the 1980s”, is also called the “Me generation”, the “Affluent generation”, the “Individualistic generation”, or the “Spoiled generation” (Gu, Wang, Sun and Xu, 2010). Essentially, the millennial generation has a sense of entitlement. They believe they deserve something. So, what happens when they ascend the ranks and fill leadership positions?
My experience in the Navy has been that when this generation is initiated into the Chief Petty Officer’s Mess, they believe they are entitled to special privilege. As such, they often focus on how their advancement can help them, not their people. The special privilege they have, in fact, is to serve other people, to use their newfound leadership for the gain of others. However, their values have corrupted their ability to be effective servant leaders. Therefore, leadership must strive to adopt and instill a set of universal values that overcomes the disparity between generations and provides a firm foundation upon which servant leadership can be built.
Dr. sumita rai, Pritam Singh, Prof. Asha Bhandarker, Prof. Ajay K. Jain, (2011) "Relationship between Values and Workplace: An Exploratory Analysis", Facilities, Vol. 29 Iss: 11/12
Qinxuan Gu, Lihong Wang, Judy Y. Sun, Yanni Xu. (2010)."Understanding China's Post-80 employees' work attitudes: an explorative study", Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management, Vol. 1 Iss: 2, pp.74 - 94
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