How Do Millennial Managers Lead Older Employees? The Philippine Workplace Experience

Abstract

As millennial workers enter and dominate the global workforce by 2025, understanding their leadership styles is vital to bring about higher level of performance and productivity in the workplace. The Millennials, the next generation of leaders, are entering the workforce and assuming leadership positions in a relatively short period. More often, they found themselves leading employees that are older than themselves and yet their leadership traits and styles are not fully understood. The study explores factors affecting leadership styles of millennial managers and how they are manifested and applied in managing and resolving conflict involving older subordinates. Using a qualitative approach, it employs interviews, participant observation, and prolonged engagement with four millennial managers from the National Food Authority in the Philippines as they lead, manage, and interact with their older staff. Data collected were triangulated by document analysis and interview of the millennial managers’ subordinates themselves. The results of the study show that the participants’ leadership competencies are in the early stages of development. The participants consider building good impression and rapport highlighting the importance of soft skills in leadership, strong sense of respect, reverse mentoring, delegation of tasks, and the ability to handle expectations and performance as factors in managing older employees. This study draws the attention to examining the leadership attributes and potentials of Filipino millennial managers in the context of Philippine workplace culture using insights from Public Administration, Social Sciences, and Psychology.

Knowledge sharing in times of a pandemic: An intergenerational learning approach

“…A recent qualitative study by Gabriel et al (2020) elaborated the challenges that leaders encounter when managing employees older than themselves. Gadomska‐Lila (2020) used a qualitative study of five reverse mentoring pairs in five different organizations in Poland to investigate the advantages of reverse mentoring for the individuals.…”

Engagement, inclusion, knowledge sharing, and talent development: is reverse mentoring a panacea to all? Findings from literature review

“…Far fewer number of studies adopted quantitative (13%), mixed-method (7%) and literature review (6%) approaches. The qualitative studies adopted various epistemological methodologies including phenomenology (Breck et al , 2018), ethnography (Raza and Onyesoh, 2020), case studies (Burdett, 2014; Cismaru and Iunius, 2020; Gündüz and Akşit, 2018; Tayşır and Ülgen, 2017; Madison, 2019), reflection (Augustinienė and Čiučiulkienė, 2013), observation (Christie et al , 2005; Gabriel et al , 2020) and individual and group interviews (Alvarez et al , 2005; Chen, 2013; Hays and Swanson, 2012; Gadomska-Lila, 2020; Spradley and Towns, 2016). A number of the articles published on reverse mentoring were not data-driven but were written using an original conceptual idea that provided a framework and opportunity for new research (Baily, 2009; Bolser and Gosciej, 2015; Boysen et al , 2016; Brinzea, 2018; Chaudhuri, 2019; Chaudhuri and Ghosh, 2012; Harvey et al , 2009; Lawrence, 2017; Morris, 2017; Murphy, 2012; Napier, 2006; Sanner-Stiehr and Vandermause, 2017; Zauschner-Studnicka, 2017).…”

“…Moreover, given the novelty of this intervention, many organizations are still exploring how reverse mentoring can be innovatively institutionalized organization wide, the benefits of which can go far beyond technology. A careful perusal of both practitioner and academic literature reveals that reverse mentoring has been successfully used in the area of diversity and inclusion (Madison, 2019; Raza and Onyesoh, 2020; Süss-Stepancik and Permoser, 2017), leadership (Gabriel et al , 2020; Kulseza and Smith, 2013), engagement (Biss and DuFrene, 2006; Boysen et al , 2016; Chaudhuri and Ghosh, 2012), communication (Breck et al , 2018; Gabriel et al , 2020), social media and subject matter advances (Breck et al , 2018; Gabriel et al , 2020; Leedahl et al , 2019) and of course technology (Alvarez et al , 2005; Augustinienė and Čiučiulkienė, 2013). It should also be noted that most of the literature on reverse mentoring is originating from the West and the research is still inconclusive if the intervention would work in the eastern hemisphere, where the concept of role reversal in a reverse mentoring dyad is antithetical to the deeply espoused notion of hierarchy.…”

Moderator role of old and new Y generation differences in the effect of perceptions of self-efficiency on decision-making strategies

“…Studies on the subject show that the Y generation is relatively educated and technologically competent in the history of humanity. Therefore, the Y generation’s values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors in business life differ from the previous generations (Gabriel et al , 2020; Kraus, 2017; Wong et al , 2017). This research aims to investigate how this difference is reflected in the understanding of management.…”

“…The answer to why people make different decisions in the same situation is related to their personality structures (Baiocco et al , 2009; Xu, 2020). Understanding the decision strategies of the Y generation is of great importance in understanding the possible impact of the generation gap on decision-making (Medyanik, 2016; Gabriel et al , 2020). When the literature is examined, it is seen that researchers generally focus on the Y generation.…”