Managers in organizations often face challenges in effectively managing and motivating employees of different ages, as they differ in their behavior, beliefs, lifestyles, values, goals, expectations and work attitudes. To this challenge adds the fact that young employees, who belong to a new generation that is in many aspects even more distinctly different from older employees, are constantly entering the organizations. In my master's thesis, I was therefore interested in the preferences of leadership styles of employees belonging to different generations and who are at different stages of their development. Since generations in Slovenia have not yet been defined, I decided to try to define them for my sample. The survey involved 100 employees from a Slovenian organization. To collect data, I used the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and two open-ended questions related to important events in the Slovenian environment, which allowed me to identify generations in Slovenia. As the most important events, the participants listed the death of Josip Broz Tito, Slovenia's independence, Slovenia's accession to the European Union, the changeover from the tolar to the euro and the economic crisis in 2008. The results showed that employees of all Slovenian and American generations and across all development stages wanted a transformational leadership style the most and a Laissez-Faire leadership style the least. The findings of the master thesis provide all organizations, managers and HR employees with insights into the preferences of differently aged employees regarding leadership styles. The findings have added practical value for the organizations in the sample and their managers, who will be able to understand their employees' preferences a little better and, as a result, try to adapt their leadership style accordingly.
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