Generation Z Employees as Future Leaders?

In today's workplace, traditional criteria no longer define a successful leadership style, as it requires a mixture of soft and professional skills, experience, and education (Duquesnoy, 2011; Davenport & Prusak,1998). Megatrends are forcing younger generational cohorts to pivot and adjust to massive disruptions and paradigm shifts. In the process, their perceptions of leadership are also under scrutiny. For example, How will Generation Z lead? What qualities and characteristics does this generation associate with effective Leadership? Furthermore, what leadership styles will motivate and retain Generation Z employees? (Aquas, 2019). When one translates Generation Z skills into leadership styles, there is a disconnect, as it appears that Generation Z employees lack social, and business skills and, often the lack of motivation to lead a team or an organization (Freedman, 2023; Sinek, 2022). In addition, Generation Z is non-committal to traditional or known leadership styles, even though they value influential,results-driven, service-minded, authentic leadership and "lead by example" (Blumenfeld, 2019; Cullimore,2020; Jain, 2021). This paper investigates how Generation Z employees are preparing to lead themselves, teams, and organizations in the future