How to pass knowledge of what button was pressed to a p:dialog - jsf

Question

I'm trying to help users fill in entity Id numbers on a submittal form. I can't use a pulldown because there are 1000's.
In a PF dialog, I'm able to copy a selected value to the main form but I'm hardcoding the actionaListener into the commandLink to tell the popup dialog which h:textInput box on the main form to copy the value to and to render. If I have three h:inputText boxes I would then need to duplicate three p:dialogs.
For example in my p:dialog I would have a column in the datatable as such:
<h:commandLink value="Select This Item" onclick="PF('dlg').hide()">
<f:ajax render=":myForm:text_field_1" event="click"
listener="#{bean.popDownId1(item.id)}" />
</h:commandLink>
How can I pass those variables myForm:text_field_1 (the form name and field) to the p:dialog so that it becomes a more generic popup dialog? Also is there a way to not have to code a listener method for each field (popDownId1, popDownId2, etc...)As a bonus I'd also like to externalize the dialog and include it in every xhtml page instead of cutting and pasting as I'm doing now.
Here is more actual code:
form.xhtml
<h:form id="myForm">
<h:panelGrid columns="3">
<p:outputLabel value="Manager Employee Number: " />
<h:panelGroup>
<p:inputText id="managerId"
title="Type Employee Id or click the ? to search for their Id"
value="#{bean.department.manager}" >
<f:validator validatorId="com.company.app.EmployeeIdValidator" />
</p:inputText>
<p:commandButton title="Click here if you don't know their Employee Number"
id="managerId" value="Lookup Id"
onclick="PF('dlgManager').show();" type="button" >
</p:commandButton>
other fields and submit button
</h:form>
<p:dialog id="popup" modal="false" widgetVar="dlgManager" dynamic="true" >
<f:facet name="header">
<h:outputText value="Employee Number Finder" />
</f:facet>
<p>Search using any keyword.</p>
<h:form>
Keyword: <p:inputText id="search" value="#{employeeSearch.searchString}" />
<p:commandButton value="Search"
action="#{employeeSearch.searchByKeyword}">
<f:ajax execute="#form" render="output" />
</p:commandButton> (Enter keywords separated by spaces)
<p:dataTable id="output" var="employee" value="#{employeeSearch.employees}">
<p:column headerText="Action">
<h:commandLink value="Select" onclick="PF('dlgManager').hide()">
<f:ajax render=":myForm:managerId" event="click"
listener="#{bean.popDownManagerId(employee.id)}" />
</h:commandLink>
</p:column>
other columns(employee name, phone number, etc...)
</p:dialog>
you can see that I'd need to copy the dialog and tweak it a bit for every field on my form where I want to do an employee number lookup.
onclick="PF('dlgManager').show();">
onclick="PF('dlgSupervisor').show();">
onclick="PF('dlgFloorChief').show();">
EDIT
When applying BalusC's answer, if I add a second lookup Id button, the popup dialog to select an employee id has a command link which is tied to only the ManagerId field
action="#{bean.popDownManagerId(employee.id)}"
Also, when the second lookup id button is pressed the previous search results are still listed so the select command link would be referencing the wrong field to update
popup dialog