Just as the business landscape has transformed, the leadership required to lead through these shifts must continuously evolve. Leaders need to build business and employee resilience to navigate rapidly changing and critical times. From an employee perspective, the demographics of those forming the organisation play a crucial role in building the company’s future culture.

With senior leadership in many leading organisations from Generation X and earlier, but workforces largely comprising Millennials (including its middle managers) and Gen Z, the need for evolving leadership styles has never been more critical.

Each generation of the workforce is influenced by the circumstances of their times, their experiences, and their lifestyles. The command-and-control leadership styles that worked well earlier will not resonate with the newer generation of the workforce, who seek purposeful work, inspiring peer networks, transparency, and collaborative ideation. Hence, the integration of a multigenerational workforce is crucial, as leadership can then bring diversity of thought into their organisation's products and services for sustainable and accelerated growth.

We are living in an age of high-speed, freely available information, hyper-personalisation, and a significant focus on inclusion and sustainability in our personal lives. This makes it imperative that workplaces reflect the same values. This calls for leaders to understand what their employees care about and are motivated by—and evolve their leadership styles accordingly.

Millennials and Gen Z value involvement

Millennials and Gen Z value being involved in the decision-making process and in developing solutions. They seek opportunities to share their ideas and want to understand the rationale behind decisions that impact their work. Therefore, leadership styles need to evolve to be more participative. This can be achieved by actively creating forums where diverse thoughts are encouraged and captured, along with accountability to share the progress and outcomes.

Hybrid work needs new communication modes

In hybrid work environments, communication modes need to transition to new ways of collaborating internally, with continuous listening to enable real-time iteration and improvement. Organisations must empower their managers by investing in the right tools and resources so they, in turn, can provide a personalised experience in terms of team engagement, career development needs, and acting as culture carriers.

Purpose-driven leadership matters

Millennials and Gen Z also want to be associated with organisations that have a strong mission and value the opportunity to contribute to the broader community. Leadership styles must evolve to be more transformative. Leaders need to respond swiftly to external changes and communicate effectively. It is also their responsibility to integrate mental health support and awareness into resilience-building initiatives.

Empowerment builds ownership

By allowing teams the independence and empowerment to define and drive their work, leaders create a powerful sense of meaning and instil ownership and pride.

When leadership styles evolve to be participative and transformational, they can create the multiplier effect needed to build thriving and successful workplaces, organisations, and ecosystems.