The Differences in Leadership Styles Among Generations

Introduction

One of the challenges in the workplaces is managing a diverse team consisting of employees from different generations. The workforce is comprised of four generations, namely Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, X Generation and Y Generation. It is getting more important to understand the unique leadership needs of each generation, since a leader needs to get every generation to accomplish the mission.

The leaders are not being selected only according to their ages. At the present time, a leader may come from any generation. In many companies, it is observed that X Generation is leading Baby Boomer or vice versa, or Y Generation is leading X Generation or vice versa. The age does not necessarily equate to seniority. Because each generation may lead the other as the case may be, cross generation differences become more important to understand whether the leadership styles are affected by the generational differences. Accordingly, the literature is reviewed to find out a relationship between leadership styles and generational cohorts.

The common ground of the literature regarding generations at work is that there are differences amongst the different generations on basic work characteristics such as work related values, expectations and attitudes (Atabay, Penbek, Zaptçioğlu and Ucel, 2013). A leadership style’s effectiveness, productiveness and success are linked by many authors with the work values, ideas, preferences, and expectations that different generations have regarding the leadership (Cennamo and Gardner, 2008; Weston, 2001; Tulgan, 1996). People of different generations with different expectations, preferences and ideas regarding leadership might have different preferences on managing or being managed (Weston, 2001). Joshi et al. (2010) suggest that more research is required for generational phenomena in order to come through the challenges in the organizations. In fact, researches at the literature made different conclusions regarding the generational differences on leadership style and these conclusions are not consistent entirely. Moreover it is detected that in the literature, many research have been done to explore what leadership style is preferred by the employees from different generations and the effect of perceived leadership styles of employees. However, there is a lack of searches in the literature that evaluate the issue from the perspective of leaders.

Accordingly, the primary aim of this study is to understand whether the differences amongst generations have an impact over leadership style and are the leaders taking into account the generations of their subordinates while leading. The main research questions to be answered are:

• (i)

  Are there any differences on leadership style amongst generations?

• (ii)

  Do leaders adapt different leadership styles according to the generations of their subordinates?

For the purposes of answering the research questions above, qualitative research was made by organizing focus groups within a Turkish subsidiary of an international company operating in automobile sector. The study with the method of focus group made it possible by observation of the participants’ interaction to get a result on whether people belonging different generations have different leadership style preferences and whether they take attention to the generations while they lead their teams. In this study generational differences are examined in three groups; Generation X, Generation Y and Generation Baby Boom. As a matter of fact, this classification of the generations is the most common in the literature. The leadership styles identified by Goleman (2000b) have been used, because these styles cover all the behaviours mentioned in the remaining literature.

The focus groups provided awareness on whether there are indeed differences in leadership style amongst generations from leaders’ perspective and on the need of adapting different leadership styles for different generations. When leaders understand that each generation chooses a different type of management, they will be able to take more attention to the generations of their subordinates and their preferred leadership style. This knowledge would enable the leaders to adapt the appropriate leadership style for the relevant generations.

The study is divided into 3 sections. The first section provides information on leadership, leadership styles and generational cohorts. The following section explains the methodology of the study. Final section concludes the study’s outcomes and recommendations by providing a summary of the results.