Effect of transformational behavior on millennial job satisfaction

Marc Valldeneu,Elisenda Tarrats,Xavier Ferràs

doi:10.21511/ppm.19(3).2021.34

Abstract

Leaders are responsible for empowering and driving employees to succeed in challenging times or changes and, ultimately, achieve the best results. One of the biggest dilemmas in today’s leaders’ agenda is to understand how to manage a diverse multigenerational workforce in which millennials represent a predominant group by far, being completely different from previous generations due to the technology impact. The aim of the paper is to identify which leadership style and behavior affects most positively millennial job satisfaction in a multinational environment, and to understand the differences between millennials and non-millennials. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, known as the MLQ, was answered by 167 representative employees from various multinational corporations, 125 of whom are millennials. Based on the results, transformational style is strongly correlated with and positively affected by millennial job satisfaction. Moreover, transformational style is a significant predictor of increased millennial satisfaction, and more specifically, idealized attributes and intellectual stimulation are behaviors that have been validated to increase it. On the other hand, individual consideration has been proven to have a productive effect by increasing non-millennial job satisfaction. According to the findings, millennial workforce leaders need to move towards a more transformational style, based on more idealized attributes and an intellectual stimulation approach, if they want to increase their satisfaction and avoid unwanted attrition. Basically, millennials are searching for leaders who trust and embrace innovation, creativity, critical thinking and, most importantly, leaders who also question the status quo.

Highlights

Companies around the world are experiencing an increasingly ‘VUCA’ environment, and they rely on leaders with skillsets to manage personal and emotional challenges (Workley & Jules, 2020)
The study is in line with general previous findings showing that positive transformational leadership behavior leads to the feeling of job fit and ensures high job satisfaction levels (Miao et al, 2011)
Multiple regression analysis indicates that idealized attributes and intellectual stimulation encourage a significantly positive increase in millennial satisfaction, while individual consideration encourages a significantly positive increase in non-millennial job satisfaction

Summary

Introduction

Companies around the world are experiencing an increasingly ‘VUCA’ (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment, and they rely on leaders with skillsets to manage personal and emotional challenges (Workley & Jules, 2020). Leaders need to have the ability to adequately drive and manage multigenerational employees (Smaylind & Miller, 2012), and in the coming decade, all teams will be entirely composed by the millennial generation (Mencl & Lester, 2014). This study intends to understand the millennial generation and aims to explain the relationship between a leader and the millennial workforce by identifying which leadership styles and behaviors could create a higher job satisfaction, and determine the differences across the generations within the studied teams. Millennials have proven to have higher turnover rates than the generation before them (Khalid et al, 2013), and two of the causes for such high turnover rates are low employee satisfaction and wrong leadership behaviors applied. In today’s environment, millennial satisfaction becomes even more relevant for every enterprise and leader in order to keep business growth and team stability for the coming years

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Conclusion