Leadership styles appropriate for leading millennials in the software industry

Abstract

The world of work as we know it is rapidly changing and leaders are faced with the challenge to either follow suit with the changes to stay relevant or be considered obsolete for the new ways of work. Millennials have entered the world of work with a bang and they are bringing their own values, ways of work, behaviours and completely different approach to the work place. Leaders are constantly facing challenges of how to successfully lead these generations while allowing them to be what they are for the benefit of the organisations. The purpose of this research is to explore the leadership styles that best suited to leading millennials in the software industry. The qualitative study was conducted with 26 in-depth interviews where 14 interviews were with the leaders of the software industry and 12 interviews were with the millennials of the software industries. The exploratory study was conducted to gather enough insights to be able to understand the millennials and leaders’ perspectives in terms of the leadership style effectiveness in making the work environment that is millennials friendly. This was achieved by studying millennial’s needs and approach to work environment through understanding generational differences and millennials’ behaviours exploring millennials’ motivation and the leadership styles currently used in the software industry and the preferred leadership styles for millennials. The findings of the research confirm that while leadership such as situational leadership and transformational leadership are selected as leadership styles most appropriate for leading millennials, the flexibility style of leadership is the key finding. This is because it emphasises the fact that that there is never one-size-fits-all approach to leadership and no one leadership style is best for leading millennials. So, leaders need to be flexible and their leadership style need to be adaptable to fit the situation, which is driven by the ability, willingness, behaviour and motivations of millennials themselves.