The growing number of today’s leaders represent millennial leaders who have their specific approach to leadership work. This was a phenomenographical study in which 28 Finnish leaders from Great Places to Work companies were interviewed. The purpose was to define the core of millennial leadership. The leadership dimensions of  social, psychological, and cognitive-operational leadership were distinguished from the millennial leaders’ perceptions. Social leadership comprised elements that highlighted interpersonal relations in leaders’ work. Psychological leadership evidenced leaders’ positive thinking about human growth and well-being. Successful leadership was seen through “human eyeglasses”. The leader’s strong service mentality as well as practice time and work management represented cognitive-operational leadership. The output of this study is a new perspective of millennial leadership. The developed definition of a successful millennial leadership will help to understand young leaders’ ideas about leadership and organizations to support their development in their work.

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The growing number of today's leaders represent millennial leaders who have their specific approach to leadership work. This was a qualitative study in which 28 Finnish leaders from Great Places to Work companies were interviewed. The study had two purposes: the first aim was to understand what kind of leadership-related challenges millennial leaders describe and the second focused on analyzing what kind of resources they identified when dealing with these challenges. The interview data was analyzed with the qualitative content analysis. Two types of challenges from the millennial leaders' perceptions could be distinguished. These were the challenges for the future and challenges related to human activity. When it came to resources, a passion for leadership and a positive and confident attitude toward challenges helped leaders. The findings were also discussed against the elements of Grit (interest, practice, purpose, and hope), which showed that leaders' perceptions when analyzed from this perspective contributed a new theoretical viewpoint to Grit and a practical model for analyzing today's leadership challenges and coping.