A Culture of Voice for Millennials

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A Culture of Voice for Millennials

Millennials are those typically born between 1980 and before 1995. They outnumber the Gen-X and Baby Boomer population in the workplace since 2018.
The Millennial generation value and prioritize job satisfaction, security, quality of life, and opportunity for advancement over traditional financial compensation. Millennials' values shape what they expect from organizations. They want visionary leaders and transparency is essential for them.

A Culture of Voice is most appropriate for the Millennial population. Studies show they expect more interaction with their immediate manager and have a strong desire to contribute in a meaningful way. Leaders must adopt a Learning Mindset that values the views, opinions, and contributions of others versus telling them what to do and how to do it. Culture of Voice can be shaped by encouraging voice and interaction.

Here are a few practices that will most likely encourage voice:
1. Build up ideas and never tear them down, even if they seem half-baked.
2. Strengthen your tolerance for divergent thinking. Look for and encourage different viewpoints at every opportunity.
Organizations and leaders who lead millenials must routinely measure overall organizational culture and specifically test for cultures of voice. Leadership development must be based upon a diverse, collaborative, and inclusive framework. The dividend for this investment is employee commitment and satisfaction and for the Millennial population, job satisfaction equates to relatively low quit rates.
Source: Bogosian R., Rousseau C. 2017. "How and Why Millennials are Shaking Up Organizational Cultures". Rutgers Business Review Vol. 2, No. 3, Fall 2017.

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		1 Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	Millennials Generation: Culture of Voice Thanks for your interesting new topic! When Bogosian and Rousseau talk about "Culture of Voice", do they mean a bottom-up, participative culture and style of leadership? Or is this different? How?

		2 Gandhi Heryanto Management Consultant, Indonesia
	Preferred Leadership and Culture by Millenials You are right. This article talks about leadership and organizational culture. Millenial generations prefer culture of voice with bottom-up or participative leadership. Millenials no longer like the culture of silence as in traditional leadership. As we know, traditional leadership is top-down. It is based on the position in the hierarchy. Millennials prefer participative or bottom up leadership, such as when an employee is welcomed to convince management to adopt a new product idea.

		2 Alisa Coach, China
	Culture of Voice is to be Open to Different Voices and Opinions @Jaap de Jonge: To my view, "Culture of Voice" means to be open to different voices and opinions. This kind of culture is a kind of encouraging culture, it can effectively help millennials seed a feeling of belonging to. They will be more passionate, more willing to devote to team development. From a longer view, it contributes to their stability and loyalty. Culture of Voice is different from a traditional culture. It's a FLASH type from the traditional, a combination of the essence of traditional accumulation and new culture and environment requests rising from the characteristics of millennial population today😉.