Leadership Challenges And Styles In A Globalized World

Leadership Challenge 1: Style of Leadership in Times of Technological Change

In most service and knowledge based organisations, technology has replaced certain jobs and employees need to be more skilled than ever before. In this context, how can leaders determine the style of leadership (contingency approaches) that increases the likelihood of leadership success?

This is the era of globalization, Technology advancement and the evolution of Internet, besides the pros associated with all these factors, these factors also account for plethora of hardship which has to be faced by the employees working in the business organization. Technology and automation in various industries are taking away the jobs of lower class of people, which worsens their situation. The need of the hour is to focus on the skill enhancement, as it is only the way, which would make the employees stay competent in the future. The leadership most definitely has a strong role to play in this case, as it is the responsibly of the leadership to ensure work for all, at all costs and not let the tech revolution harm them in any way(Wadongo & Abdel-Kader, 2014).

Contingency theory or approach of leadership is based on the management theory which states that management effectiveness is contingent and is a function of many situation parameters. This call for leadership to be highly flexible in its approach, and be proactive to not let the organization and its employees suffer due to the changing times. It has been proven many a times that there is no one best style of leadership, and the leaders have to be highly flexible while tackling the situation at hand, however, the contingency theory of leadership can definitely ensure the success of the leaders in the given situation. The leader in such a situation has to get into a critical decision making mode, focus on the possible ramification of his decision on the staff and the organization, and accordingly make a call (McAdam, Miller & McSorley, 2016). The best approach of contingency approach which can be used by the leader here is:

Fielder Contingency Model

Extra-ordinary times call for extra ordinary efforts, and this is where the leadership has an important role to play in the organization. This contingency approach starts with understanding the behaviour of the leader. The leader has to rank the employees working under or with him, according to his preference of working with them it is also called as Least Preferred Co-worker approach. 

Based on this approach, by understanding of the behaviour of the leadership akin to the employees, leaders have to decide its leadership style. For instance, a score of 57 or below is seen as a low LPC score and the leader has to be task oriented.  Score between 58 and 63 are considered as middle LPC and implies that the leader can pick either of task oriented approach or the relationship oriented approach. Lastly, a score over 64 is seen as a high LPC score and the leader here has to be relationship oriented in its approach (Fiedler, 2015).

Leadership Challenge 2: Retaining Employees and Improving Employee Engagement

The implication here is that leader is able to identify his leadership style in a scientific manner in accordance to the score determined by least preferred co-worker approach. This systematic evaluation gives an assurance to the leader about his most preferred leadership style, acting on which he is able to curtail the situation in the business organization.

Challenge 2

Research indicates that many employees have quit jobs at some point because of their bosses. There appears to be a clear correlation between an employee’s engagement (motivation and effort to achieve organisational goals) and his or her relationship with the boss. How can an understanding of leaders and followers help managers retain good employees and improve employee engagement?

This is a blatant truth that employees do not leave the jobs, but they leave their bosses. The statement is absolutely true, and this situation has to be managed effectively in the business organization. For instance, many people left the company Amazon, when Jeff Bezos the CEO wasn’t engaging with the employees, not motivating and empowering them. This significantly demotivated the employees, and they started switching jobs, it was after few years that Jeff Bezos changed his leadership style to better accommodate the employees in the organization.

It is the duty of the leadership to understand their responsibility towards the organization and its employees, they have to work towards providing a positive working environment where employees are engaged, motivated, empowered and work with enhanced productivity. Some of the ways by which this can be ensured are:

• The first and foremost thing which impacts the employee is ineffective communication. The employees definitely have the right to know what is happening in the organization, especially if it concerns them and will impact them. This problem can be tackled by ensuring transparency in communication in the organization, and to ensure a seamless flow of communication at all levels namely, top down, bottom up and lateral (Northouse, 2018).
• Employees have to be empowered in the organization, this can be done by engaging them in decision making in the organization. Employees are the people who are facing the challenges on the floor, thus it is highly advisable to address their grievances and concerns, and involve them in decision making. Requesting the employees to give feedback on any situation in office will help in empowering the employees, which in turn will become a factor of motivation for them (Mone & London, 2018).
• One of the best ways to retain the employees is to motivate and engage them within the organization. Leaders at times due to their busy schedules ignore the employees and are more focused on achieving the specific objectives of the business organization. Thus, leaders in such a case have to create a line of middleman and bring decentralization in the organization; this will ensure that the managers will take care of the employees in the absence of the senior leadership. These managers will thus act as dummy for the leaders and ensure the motivation and productivity of the employees.
• Every employee more or less in his organizational journey is always looking up for a new change. It is the duty of the managers or the leaders to remove the mundane work from their lives and fill it with challenges and complex work. This would also keep the employees focussed. The three pillars which will ensure the employees do not leave the organization for the longest possible time are, consistent learning, sustained growth and overall development of the employee(Daft & Marcic, 2016).

Thus, if all these conditions and criteria are met the employees will be motivated, engaged, empowered and willing to contribute towards the success of the business organization.

Challenge 3

Entrepreneurial leadership is of great concern in today’s turbulent environment. What traits and behaviours do entrepreneurial leaders display? Can these traits be developed? Are these traits important to leaders of today?

The present business organizational day is under a lot of turbulence due to tech innovation, globalization and the growing euphoria around the start- up culture. The present day entrepreneurial leadership is pretty tensed and have to accommodate plenty of strategies to make the best out of the situation. The earlier theories of leadership were mostly focussed on the fact that leaders are born, and are not made; the Great Man Theory states that it is destined to be born as a leader for an individual. But the further development in the leadership theory stated that there are traits and behaviour which are displayed by the modern day entrepreneurs. Some of the traits displayed by them are:

• Openness in communication-Effective communication is extremely important in the present day, thus today’s leaders use and follows engaging tools of communication for its employees. For instance, Jeff Bezos created Chime which is a business communication tool to engage with the employees effectively (Freeman, 2016).
• Flexibility in approach-Learning from the past mistakes of leadership, the leaders has come to realize that they have to be really flexible if they have to take advantage of the current situation. The flexilbitly in their leadership approach is also seen in the organization, in terms of working hours, diversity in the organization, changing leadership style and many more.
• People centred- In the earlier days, the leaders were mostly focussed on growing their business, which provided for least amount of interest towards the needs of the employees or other people. But, today’s world requires leaders to be certainly caring about its people; this requires them to focus large part of their attention towards the well- being of its people (Holbeche, 2015).
• Creativity and Innovation-Present day entrepreneurs are focussing heavily on infusing creativity and innovation in its business process and practices. The aim of the entrepreneurs here is to leverage the current trends in technology and create something sustainable for the future. For instance, Elon Musk is the present day entrepreneur who is working towards environmental sustainability, and in order to achieve the goal he is infusing high level of creativity and innovation. Thus, creativity and innovation is one focus area which leads to the overall development of the organization as well its employees (Storey, 2016).

The traits of the characteristics mentioned above can be easily gained by exposing the person to such simulating conditions. One way can be to enrol a person in the leadership development programme and expose him to all the contemporary things required in a great and effective leader. Training and development of the individual will help in giving the right conditioning, thus helping him in the journey of becoming an effective leader.

For instance, Jeff Bezos is a transformational leader, who is focussed on creativity and innovation in the organization. Jeff Bezos in his initial days was not so creative and was doing a mundane office job. It was later in life when he realized he is meant to do something better, he founded Amazon. After undergoing various lessons on leadership he learnt the true art of leadership, and thus is a highly effective leader. And yes, all these traits are contemporary in its times, thus extremely important.

References

Daft, R. L., & Marcic, D. (2016). Understanding management. Nelson Education.

Fiedler, Fred. (2015). Contingency theory of leadership. Organizational Behavior 1: Essential Theories of Motivation and Leadership, 232, 01-2015.

Freeman, R. E. (2016). Ethical leadership and creating value for stakeholders. In Business ethics: New challenges for business schools and corporate leaders (pp. 94-109). Routledge.

Holbeche, L. (2015). The Agile Organization: How to build an innovative, sustainable and resilient business. Kogan Page Publishers.

McAdam, R., Miller, K., & McSorley, C. (2016). Towards a contingency theory perspective of quality management in enabling strategic alignment. International Journal of Production Economics.

Mone, E. M., & London, M. (2018). Employee engagement through effective performance management: A practical guide for managers. Routledge.

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.

Storey, J. (2016). Changing theories of leadership and leadership development. In Leadership in Organizations (pp. 33-58). Routledge.

Wadongo, B., & Abdel-Kader, M. (2014). Contingency theory, performance management and organisational effectiveness in the third sector: A theoretical framework. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 63(6), 680-703.