Leadership Strategies For A Changing World

Why is ‘leadership’ such a major issue in modern workplaces?

Describe about the Leadership Strategies for a Changing World.

Leadership has become the priority factor that drives organizations and its success (Aaker 2012). Organizations utilize and enforce efficient style of leadership, in order to increase productivity and efficiency of their employees. Though organizations entrust various dynamic responsibilities on their leaders with the task of managing and controlling their employees, but leaders often face complex problems within the organizational structure. Though leaders devise various strategies and policies in order to overcome these challenges but continue to deal with the high pressure situation leading to lower productivity and efficiency that hampers reaching of organizational goals.

Leaders make extensive use of organizational behavioral theories and techniques such as to increase the amount of employee efficiency and effectively (Szabla 2007). They motivate them, communicate shareholders strategies and policies and takes control effectively over the various functions of the organization. The role of a leader is to effectively manage and take control over organizational activity. He is the medium for communication between the management and employees. The essay is regarding evaluating the statement, ‘Leadership is argued to be one the most important aspects in modern day organizations’ and in discussing the difficulties leaders face in organizations and suggesting some theories or models of leadership that can be applied to address these difficulties’.An efficient and effective leader applied by the organization can lead to organizational success, whereas an efficient leader can lead to organizational failure in the future. Organizations in order to develop sustainable strategies and policies need to assign tasks to effective leaders. There are many forms of leadership that are adapted and practiced across organizations (Bass 2006). However, sometimes implementing an incorrect leader leads to organizational failure and lack of employee motivation. The initial part of the essay identifies some of the broad challenges faced by modern organizations, whereas the later part of the essay discusses a wide range of theories and models that leaders apply to overcome the same.

Organizations apply various style of leadership according to the needs and organizational culture. The modern challenges faced by organizational leaders found by studies conducted by various researches are in developing managerial effectiveness, in inspiring or motivating employees and co-workers, developing an organizational culture as well as stable employee base, leading a team, incorporating in a change within the organization, management of internal stakeholders and policies (Piccolo 2006).

Change management : Though leadership is not an issue by itself in the workplace, the leadership style possess an issue that becomes difficult to handle sometimes (Birnbaum 2012). Mismatch of ideologies and leadership values leads to clash of interests. As organizations transform and evolve over time, they tend to change their current style of leadership and then develop newer strategies and techniques to manage employee base. An organization that follows traditional leadership approach such as transactional leadership, and wants to bring about modernized techniques into their systems as well as processes will generally adopt a transformational style of leadership. But the employees of the organizations that are accustomed to the traditional methods might not be at all confortable in applying transformational leadership style (Schaubroeck 2007). This in turn can affect employee job satisfaction levels highly, leading to unproductivity and under productivity. Due to growing dissatisfaction amongst employees, in the transition phase employees can decide to leave the organization as well.           

What factors are contributing to the challenges of ‘leadership’?

Organizational Culture : Often it is extremely difficult for leaders to implement the necessary organizational culture. The organization culture within organizations needs to be adapted and implemented by all employees such that the organization functions smoothly and its goals are reached. An organization where its employees fail to adopt suitable organizational culture often fails in attaining and achieving the desired goals (Sarros 2008). The new employee tries and adopts organizational culture, but often faces resistance from older employees of the organization. Older employees in their trifle with the leader try to avoid policies and hinder the development of practiced organizational culture (Lambrou 2010). Often the older employee union is so strong that it leads to newer employee following the same without any dispute. Leaders play an ardent role in change management by motivating employees towards the new and changed procedures. In a change process employees are generally reluctant to change but leaders enable and create an ambience for the change processes to take place effectively, but sometimes due to lack of communication or employee past experience leaders are unable to apply the changed style (Rickards 2006).

Inspiring or motivating employees: Leaders are often in-effective in inspiring or motivating their employees to attain a set of goals. This leads to a major challenge within the organization as a leader’s primary aim is to get task done by employees. Clash of interests amongst employee’s intention to do a tasks and the leader’s methodology to do the same hinders the progress. Leaders have immense roles in job definition and creating attractiveness for the job such that employees are able to take up new challenges and conduct the job more enthusiastically (DiLiello 2006). Often due to management objectives or employee union’s leaders face challenges to implement successful motivational strategies (Chesterman 2016).

Leading a team:  Leaders are exposed to challenges of leading a team in modern organization. Lack of employee attitude to work in a team and deliver results not only hampers leaders effectiveness but also hampers the overall performance of the organization. The primary role of a leader is to set objectives define goals for its employees such that they are able to lead a team. A leader’s vision and ideologies is given to the employees and targets are set and designed for followers (Aarons 2006). An effective leader is able to do so instantly without much effort but often a leader faces immense trouble due to organizational existing culture to do so.  

How can a manager use theories/ models to inform their ‘leadership’ in a modern organization?

Managing internal stakeholder policies and practices: Leaders play an important role in communicating amongst the various internal stakeholders of the organization (Hay 2010). On one hand he decides with the shareholders and senior management of the organization regarding the various policies and procedures and on the other hand he communicates the same to the employees and members of the team. He is an influential person who incorporates the various employee grievances and policies to communicate the same to upper level management (Avolio 2013). For far as employees are concerned he communicates the various objectives and strategies that has been decided by the management to the employees for approval and application. But often a leader takes a side either of the shareholders or of the employees, which leads to biasness. When a leader is biased towards any side then he is bound to face criticism from the other side. The other side is bound to develop some ill-feelings towards the leader (Samuel 2009).

The various challenges that leaders face in modern organizations can be overcome by the Meme theories of leadership. The theory applies a range of approaches according to organization specific needs in order that leadership to be successful. There are various famous theories of leadership that have been developed and applied in organizations for effectiveness of leaders and overcoming the challenges faced. Some of the popular theories of leadership are Great Man theory, which emphasizes that leaders are born and not made (Caligiuri 2006). But the concept of this theory is traditional in approach and not adopted in modern organizations. Modern organizations train and develop leader with a conscious level to get positive impact on the job role. Behavioral theories of leadership, the role theory and the managerial grid are some of the most popular amongst traditional theories practices in organizations to overcome employee motivation.

In Participative leadership styles there are two famous theories one proposed by Lewin’s leadership style and Liker’s leadership style (S 2012). These style of leadership are relatively newer styles of leadership that focuses on participative form of management. Both these styles of leadership have immense emphasis on the leader working within the team along with other employees.

Another popular style of leadership is Situational Leadership which has been proposed by multiple researchers. The most famous amongst them are Hershey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership, Vroom and Yetton’s Normative Model and House’s Path-Goal Theory of Leadership (Anne Loewenberger 2014). All these styles of leadership focuses on the leader’s ability and capability to act on a particular or given situation. These theories suggests a more dynamic nature of leadership compared to other theories and are highly effective in overcoming challenges that are faced in modern organizations.

Modern theories of leadership also include the contingency theories of Fiedler’s Least Preferred Co-Worker (LPC) theory, Cognitive resonance theory and strategic contingency theory. These theories are very popular and have gained immense importance in the recent years due to their style of management reflected in these theories.

The Meme theory acts as an influential tool in spreading behaviors and styles from person within a cultural framework. The Meme carries as small units to carry cultural ideas through various forms of speech, gestures, rules, rituals and so on. The Meme leadership have been given various colors according to the organizational culture they follow (DiLiello 2006). Orange, black, green, red and so on, each color is associated with a particular style of behavior. Each type of leadership style is selected according to the needs and requirements of the organization. These theories are an extension of the traditional theories of leadership, like contingency theories and others (Dawlabani 2013).

The transactional leadership theory of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory is highly practiced in developed nations and has yield tremendous results. Earlier organizations implemented transactional, servant and other leadership styles in order to get performance from employees. Transactional leaders were mostly involved with leaders motivating their employees with certain incentives, performance bonuses and other types of rewards. Employees are motivated to a certain extent with this performance style leadership as they get rewarded and recognized for their endeavors (Schein 2010). This often leads to employee motivation and employee empowerment. Lesser amount of employees leaves the organization leading to lowering of employee turnover. But this style of leadership is often criticized to assume the side of the management and ignoring employee voices in totality.

Servant style of leadership leads to high job satisfaction amongst employees, as the leader indulges in a number of activities himself in order to demonstrate. Servant style of leadership is known to create a high level of satisfaction amongst employees and high level of trust as well. A servant style leader is highly associated with his employees and engages in formal work with them, sharing their loads and so on. But servant style of leadership is also multiple times criticized to be ignoring the management aspect in work motivation (House 2013).

The transformational leadership theories of Bass’ transformational leadership theories, Burns’ transformational leadership theory and Kouzes and Posner’s leadership participation Inventory. Transformational leaders are employed by organizations when an organization is a change phase. Transformational leaders are effective in change management procedure and helps employees with the various stress associated with change process (Sachau 2007). He communicates the management’s ideologies for changes to the employees and takes employee feedback to the management. Thus this style of leadership is highly accepted in today’s organizations as they are dynamic in nature.

An organization in order to motivate its employees also adopts various theories and strategies. The motivational theories that are adopted in modern organizations is Hetzberg Two factor theory, Maslow’s need hierarchy theory and Alderfer’s ERG model (Lundberg 2009). In each of the theory there is tremendous importance on the role of the organization implying the leader in motivating employees. The interface of the organization with its employees is through its leader, hence a leader can overcome the barrier of demotivation by stimulating and inspiring employees for fulfillment of a particular role (Brown 2006).   

All the various theories discussed helps the organization in tacking their complex situations and in their overcoming of various challenges. Though each type of challenge have their own fallout and benefits, organization’s adopt the ones that are most beneficial to them. As human resource forms the most important type of resource for the organization and they have to get productivity from them, leaders and leadership styles needs to be carefully selected such that organizational goals can be effectively defined and efficiently applied. Practical evaluation of situation with prompt development and application of strategy helps yield organizational objectives. Leadership has a very crucial role in managing stakeholders interests and their needs, the balancing them accordingly. An effective leader is able to quickly resolve issues and step ahead with the solution and impact changes in the organizations. Leaders are not only part of the management but employees envision them as their representative to the management to attend grievances, challenges and various other issues for them to perform.

Conclusion

Leadership has an effective and important role to play in organizations; hence organizations need to apply correct styles to get maximum productivity from its leadership. An effective leadership can be a high resource for the organization and lead to it achieving success and sustenance in its path to achieve goals. There are however, various challenges faced in leadership styles and forms due to which leaders are sometimes rendered ineffective. The various challenges can be overcome and proper leadership styles can be gained by applying appropriate leadership styles that help in employee empowerment and job satisfaction. Though there are various styles of leadership are present but leaders evaluate situations and challenges in order to adopt and implement a proper change and solution to a challenge. A leaders intrinsic characteristics and deep-embed motivation helps him to overcome the diversified and intricate solutions so as to become a role model and a leader in all aspect.

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