INTHEBLACK October/November 2024 - Magazine - Page 27
Today, millennials make up
most of the global workforce
and have begun stepping into
leadership roles.
Millennials are thought to
be tech savvy, socially
conscious, highly educated
and non-hierarchical.
Such qualities can bolster
millennials' leadership
outlook, but there are also
risks to consider.
Great
expectations
Millennials had leaders scratching their heads when they first entered
the workforce in the late 1990s. As they step into leadership roles,
millennials have the potential to reshape the workplace and redefine
the future of work.
Words Susan Muldowney
Few generations of employees have
been more maligned than the millennials.
The cohort, born between 1980 and 1994,
has long been regarded as the “job hopping”
generation. The focus of countless headlines
and office jokes since they hit the workforce
in the late 1990s, millennials have often been
stereotyped as fickle, self-focused, entitled
and eager for recognition.
While much has been written about
how to manage millennials, less is known
about their own approach to leadership.
That looks set to change, however, with
millennials now entering their 40s and
increasingly stepping into positions of
power and responsibility.
Data from the World Economic Forum
shows there are 1.8 billion millennials around
the world, which is equal to 23 per cent of
the global population. They also represent
most of the global workforce. Over the next
decade, our C-suites and boardrooms are set
to become millennial territory.
WHAT MAKES THEM TICK?
Millennials have faced condescending
assumptions since they first joined the
workforce, but there is much to know about
the generation and the factors that influence
their career outlook.
Social researcher and demographer Mark
McCrindle, founder of McCrindle Research,
describes the millennial generation as tech
savvy, socially conscious, highly educated and
non-hierarchical.
“It is the generation that saw the first
iteration of the digital revolution, being the
internet,” he says. “Then they were pretty
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