Description of Leadership
Leadership is one of the most important areas of concern for businesses and organizations. The success or failure of a business is greatly dependent on the qualities of leadership that it possess. The report aims at describing the leadership competencies of the 21st century and its differences from previous approaches. It deals with the types of leadership principles and the ones that are required to succeed in the VUCA world.
Leadership is the quality and ability of a person or a group of people to influence and guide other people in an organization for good or bad (Ayman and Korabik, 2010). A good leader is always capable of making sound and difficult decisions. Good leadership qualities refer to establishing achievable goals, creating, and providing clear vision to followers on how to achieve these goals. They possess a vision to grow along with the growth of other team members and not by overstepping them (Zhang and Bartol, 2010). A person develops into a good leader if he or she has certain characteristics. Strong self- confidence, good communication skills, good management skills that help to tackle crises efficiently are some of them. Creative and innovative thinking is another major characteristic of a good leader. A person who is willing to take risks and can tackle difficult situations and failures with the cool head and has a strong will to overcome these situations are capable of being good leaders (Van Wart, 2013). A person achieves leadership qualities. It does not require teaching.
VUCA is an acronym, which stands for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. American military use this acronym for describing the extreme conditions that prevail in Afghanistan and Iraq. This term is now gaining popularity worldwide (Rodriguez and Rodriguez, 2015). CEOs of companies use this to refer to the difficult and constantly changing challenges faced by businesses. Political, economical, social and environmental conditions are the causes of these challenges. Leadership in a VUCA world refers to progressing by constantly changing and engaging with the uncertain situations (Lemoine et al. 2017). It contradicts with the past policies of reducing uncertainties for growth. There are principles which have to be followed to successfully lead is a VUCA world. A person should have a clear vision about the decisions he takes and changes in response to a rapidly changing situation. The members working under the leader should always have clear and updated information of continuously changing strategies (Bennett and Lemoine, 2014). Leaders need to be transparent in communication and new and updated modes should be used when required. Excess time wasting in inventing strategies for anticipated risks is not a good practice. New solutions need to be invented for, ever changing situations instead of blindly relying on past strategies. Intuition based decisions are as important as decisions made on analysis (Bunker et al. 2012). Hence, leaders should always give importance o their intuition before taking any vital step. It is the duty of the leader to use the right person at the right time and at the right place. A good leader is always confident about its human resource management and hence has greater ability to tackle complexities by dividing the problem into smaller units and transferring them to the relevant person for a solution. Curiosity about situations and inventing steps for problem-solving from beforehand is the sign of good leadership. Employee engagement should always be encouraged. Providing right direction to employees and giving them freedom for innovation brings out their productive best. People who can enjoy the roller coaster ride, leaving behind their comfort zone and the outdated strategies by constantly inventing new ones are bound to be great leaders (El-Sakty and Osama, 2016).
VUCA
There are four types of leadership theories namely transformational leadership, servant leadership, authentic leadership and responsible leadership. According to normative leadership theories, all four are important for successful leadership. Recent leadership literature is now focusing on the responsible leadership theory for being successful in the VUCA world.
Description of the leadership theories
Transformational Leadership: It depends on the level of understanding between the leaders and the followers. The better the understanding between these two groups the greater is the success rate for the leaders. This theory is mainly leader-centric. The followers look upon leaders as a source of inspiration. The charismatic character of the leaders makes the followers always lean towards them. The leader here is responsible for bringing about changes in the organization with full support from its followers (Hibbert and Cunliffe, 2015).
Servant Leadership: It is a contrast to the transformational theory. This theory mainly focuses on the followers. If the followers succeed, the leaders also succeed. The main responsibility of the leader is to empower the followers through transparent communication and engagement techniques (Lindgreen and Swaen, 2010).
Authentic Leadership: Moral principles are the fundamentals of authentic leadership. An authentic leader always knows the strengths and weaknesses of the base. A leader following this principle always considers other’s perspectives on a particular decision even if it contradicts with the leader’s view. The decisions taken by an authentic leader are always based on moral values. A genuine authentic leader always communicates sincerely by sharing the actual information with its followers (Ladkin and Taylor, 2010).
Responsible leadership: The combined qualities of the transformational, servant and authentic leadership theories are the basis of responsible leadership. The main motto of this leadership is to develop an intimate bond with the followers by developing a transparent trusted relationship with them. It completely discards the traditional form of superior-subordinate form of leadership (Mayer et al. 2012). As per the transformational leadership point of view, responsible leaders encourage innovation and freedom of expression among followers. They also encourage teamwork by setting high-performance standards. With the servant leadership approach, the responsible leaders always keep the interests of the subordinates first over their own interest. This leads to the empowerment of followers, which is one of the basic criteria for increasing productivity and maintaining sustainability within an organization. All these help an organization to survive in this VUCA world. The authenticity of a responsible leader prevents fraud in an organization. An authentically responsible leader takes decisions by focusing on the diverse opinions of the followers. From the famous fraud of Ramalinga Raju of Satyam computers in 2009 and much more, it is clear that to sustain the success of organizations ethical integrity is of utmost importance. As responsible leadership includes the characteristics of all other leadership theories, it seamlessly simplifies the management of this continuously changing environment (Dinh et al. 2014).
Responsible leadership is still at its initial stages of research and development. However, for addressing the issues of the VUCA world responsible leadership is the best approach, since it works by valuing the opinions of others
Type of leadership needed to be successful in VUCA world
Current leadership techniques need a drastic change keeping in mind the modern issues faced by the world. The challenges faced by the 21st-century leaders are the economic crisis, poverty, environmental issues and so on. The list is endless. In this century of globalization, when the social, economic and technical conditions are changing rapidly, a leader with the mindset of the 20th century Industrial age is very outdated (Caligiuri and Tarique, 2012). For a 21st century leader, there is certain core competencies required for an effective leadership.
First of all, a proper vision and strategy need to be developed. According to the principles of transformational leadership, a clear vision on the goal of the organization needs to be developed. These leaders must communicate their vision to the leadership followers clearly. This inspires people to creatively participate in the initiative and thus increase the productivity of the organization. One of the popular sayings of today’s business world is “Done is better than perfect” (Ashkenas et al. 2014). Keeping this vision in mind leaders of the 21st century needs to focus on the speed of execution since this is one of the key factors for success in business. Leaders of the modern age are always keen on results and finishing the work as fast as possible. For the 21st century leaders, one of the key competencies is to find out and hire diverse talents. It is the responsibility of the leader to find out what is the area of expertise of each member of the team and giving each member proper freedom to creatively work and grow in that particular area. A leader becomes successful only when he accurately does the investigation about the competency area of team members and provides proper support and feedback to them on a regular basis. A leader of the modern age needs to be technologically updated so that they can communicate with the employees as fast as possible (Espinoza and Ukleja, 2016). In the global, IT driven world the speed and quality of communication between the leaders and the followers is a key to success. Intranets, latest apps, latest network technologies should be implemented in the organization to achieve this goal. If leaders constantly pressurize scare the subordinates for making mistakes, they cannot bring out their creativity in their work. A 21st-century leader following the authentic leadership principles should always encourage such a work environment, which is open, and people are free to innovate (Tomal and Jones, 2015). Encouraging constant up gradation through constant learning and innovation helps to build a healthy collaboration between the boss and the employees. Understanding the working culture of an organization fully means knowing the belief system of an organization in and out. For a 21st-century leader to be successful, he or she should be able to establish a good work culture in the organization and should have good management capabilities for changes taking place in the culture. A global leader should always be true to ethics, professionalism, and integrity since they not only influence the employees if the organization but also the society. An ethical business is the reflection of an ethical leadership and is a key to success since people can trust on the organization (Trivellas and Reklitis, 2014). 21st-century leaders should have an open global mindset to understand the differences of culture and accept the diversity. This helps to communicate and work with people from different cultures and different countries easily. Thinking and understanding the changes is another key competency area of a modern leader. This will not only help to introduce new products and services by utilizing the various functions available in an organization but also it will help utilization of the diverse talents of employees. The 21st-century leaders need to be flexible and need to respond relevantly to the constantly changing needs of the organization, customers, and employees. They should be strong enough to discard strategies, products, services that are unsuccessful and is of no use to the organization. They should have the broadmindedness to accept their own mistakes and learn from them (Von Krogh et al. 2012).
Transformational Leadership
Organizations are now trying diverse approaches to increase productivity and growth in response to the constantly changing modern workplace. The traditional principle of superior-subordinate leadership is fading out. In the 21st century, a collaborative work culture is encouraged in which the employees are given equal importance as their leaders. Modern world collaborative leaders now give stress on developing a team in which employees have the full freedom to express their views and opinions. They also encourage creativity in work, to engage and bring out the best of an employee (Hoon Song et al. 2012).
There are major differences between the 21st-century leadership principles and the classical approach. The traditional form of leadership believes that power comes from bossing and dominating over the subordinates. Whereas the collaborative form of leadership in the modern world believes that empowering employees and giving them equal importance is the form of true power since a leader grows only when the subordinates succeed. Previously subordinates did not get clear information whereas today’s leaders believe in openly sharing information and knowledge and keeping a transparent environment for work. Classical leaders never encouraged and listened to the ideas of their team but nowadays suggestions from the team are always a priority (Cameron et al. 2014). In the previous scenario, solutions were developed and then delivered to the team. Nowadays team members are engaged fully to bring out the solution. Allocating resources and time as and when required is the principle of 21st-century leaders, which is a contrast to the classical principle of providing time and resources only when it is necessary. It has been seen that leaders of the past encouraged employees to stick to the boundaries of their own roles and responsibilities. Modern day leaders always encourage people to take that extra step out of their responsibility area and contribute to the organization. In the classical times, leaders focused on symptoms of any problem and worked to solve these outcomes. Leaders of the 21st century believe in uprooting the basic cause of the problem. Previously there was an annual appraisal system for employees based on company policy. Nowadays subordinates receive feedback on regular basis and get relevant training for up gradation (Leroy et al. 2012).
The four key reasons that brought the changes in leadership competencies are agility, authenticity, talent and sustainability. One of the very first reasons that brought changes in leadership competencies is agility or the requirement for being flexible in accordance with the constantly changing environment. Leaders of the 20th century did not have the mindset to embrace changes according to the situation. The previous leaders did not have the quality to spot changes and develop future strategies to address the situation. Previously employees did not find the leadership authentic since the leaders always kept critical information undisclosed to them. This led to the changes in the leadership competencies requiring the leader to build an environment in which the subordinates get a transparent communication of any information regarding the business (Morrison, 2012). This increases the trust level between the leaders and followers since the followers find the leaders authentic. Leaders did not utilize talents fully in the 20th century. Leaders of this age were less interested in investigating the area of expertise of their team members and hence talent remained under the cover in times of need. This encouraged the changes in leadership principles in which leaders always encourage and motivate employees to bring out their creative best. Another major factor that led to the changes is the inability of leaders to innovate proper strategies for sustainability. Inability to forecast the impact of business decisions on the environment and society led to major losses in the business. This encouraged the development of leadership principles, which can deal effectively with the issues related to sustainability (Northouse, 2012).
Servant Leadership
Harvard conducted a test on 332,860 bosses, peers and subordinates to find out what leads to a leader’s success. They prepared the results depending on the response of people belonging to different levels of the organization. The test showed that people selected almost the same competencies for all levels of leaders like supervisors, managers, and senior managers. The test also proved that topmost leaders possessed almost all leadership competencies. Some of the competencies that received the maximum number of votes were inspiring and motivating others (38%), displaying integrity and honesty (37%), analyzing issues and solving problems (37%), keen on getting results faster (36%), transparent communication (35%), collaborating and promoting teamwork (33%) and so on.
Strategic entrepreneurship means seeking new opportunities for increasing the productivity of an organization. Small organizations are good at identifying new opportunities but lack the capability of developing competitive advantages. On the contrary, bigger companies are good at gaining the competitive advantage while they lack the strategy of finding out new dimensions of success. An entrepreneurial leadership with an entrepreneurial mindset for applying creativity and innovating new strategies are important areas of SE. The competitive environment of 21st century increases complexity and uncertainty of a business. As a result, leaders must have the flexibility to develop strategies to cater for the changes and find new alternatives for dealing with the situation. The main motto of strategic entrepreneurial leadership is to capture existing markets by acquiring less aggressive businesses and creating opportunities for acquiring new markets (Tengblad, 2012). Leaders need to create strategies for innovating new ideas on making the product of an organization different and better from other competitors.
Conclusion:
Responsible leadership is one of the major points of discussion for businesses nowadays. A great evidence of responsible leadership, which turned a broken company into one of the most successful companies in the world, is Alan Mullaly, CEO of Ford Motor Company. When Mullaly took the charge in 2006, Ford was in debt and had faced a loss of $12.7 billion (Ford.com, 2017). Mullaly changed the scenario completely by following value-based leadership principles like the best team; best self, best partner, best investment and best citizen.
The analysis of this assignment gives us the conclusion that to be successful in a VUCA world a leader has to be dynamic. The leader has to adapt to the changes to lead the team in the best and beneficial way. Leaders who possess wide knowledge on the situation tackle the problem efficiently. A perfect leader is one who has the correct mixture of all the above qualities and has developed a reliable team, which can support in times of need.
References:
Ashkenas, R., Siegal, W. and Spiegel, M., 2014. Mastering organizational complexity: A core competence for 21st century leaders. In Research in Organizational Change and Development (pp. 29-58). Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Ayman, R. and Korabik, K., 2010. Leadership: Why gender and culture matter. American Psychologist, 65(3), p.157.
Bennett, N. and Lemoine, G.J., 2014. What a difference a word makes: Understanding threats to performance in a VUCA world. Business Horizons, 57(3), pp.311-317.
Bunker, K., Gechman, A. and Rush, J., 2012. Learning to lead in a volatile and uncertain world: making experience really matter. Business Strategy Series, 13(6), pp.288-294.
Caligiuri, P. and Tarique, I., 2012. Dynamic cross-cultural competencies and global leadership effectiveness. Journal of World Business, 47(4), pp.612-622.
Cameron, K.S., Quinn, R.E., DeGraff, J. and Thakor, A.V., 2014. Competing values leadership. Edward Elgar Publishing
Dinh, J.E., Lord, R.G., Gardner, W.L., Meuser, J.D., Liden, R.C. and Hu, J., 2014. Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), pp.36-62.
El-Sakty, K.G. and Osama, E., 2016. IMPROVING SUPPLY CHAIN PERFORMANCE USING ‘VUCA’DRIVERS. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 9(1).
Espinoza, C. and Ukleja, M., 2016. Managing the Millennials: Discover the core competencies for managing today’s workforce. John Wiley & Sons
Ford.com (2017) Ford Available at: www.ford.com/ [Accessed on 20 Apr 2017]
Hibbert, P. and Cunliffe, A., 2015. Responsible management: Engaging moral reflexive practice through threshold concepts. Journal of business ethics, 127(1), pp.177-188.
Hoon Song, J., Kolb, J.A., Hee Lee, U. and Kyoung Kim, H., 2012. Role of transformational leadership in effective organizational knowledge creation practices: Mediating effects of employees’ work engagement. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 23(1), pp.65-101.
Ladkin, D. and Taylor, S.S., 2010. Enacting the ‘true self’: Towards a theory of embodied authentic leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 21(1), pp.64-74.
Lemoine, P.A., Hackett, P.T. and Richardson, M.D., 2017. Global Higher Education and VUCA–Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity. In Handbook of Research on Administration, Policy, and Leadership in Higher Education (pp. 549-568). IGI Global.
Leroy, H., Palanski, M.E. and Simons, T., 2012. Authentic leadership and behavioral integrity as drivers of follower commitment and performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 107(3), pp.255-264.
Lindgreen, A. and Swaen, V., 2010. Corporate social responsibility. International Journal of Management Reviews, 12(1), pp.1-7.
Mayer, D.M., Aquino, K., Greenbaum, R.L. and Kuenzi, M., 2012. Who displays ethical leadership, and why does it matter? An examination of antecedents and consequences of ethical leadership. Academy of Management Journal, 55(1), pp.151-171.
Morrison, K., 2012. School leadership and complexity theory. Routledge.
Northouse, P.G., 2012. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage.
Rodriguez, A. and Rodriguez, Y., 2015. Metaphors for today’s leadership: VUCA world, millennial and “Cloud Leaders”. Journal of Management Development, 34(7), pp.854-866.
Tengblad, S., 2012. The work of managers: Towards a practice theory of management. Oxford University Press.
Tomal, D.R. and Jones, K.J., 2015. A comparison of core competencies of women and men leaders in the manufacturing industry. The Coastal Business Journal, 14(1), p.13
Trivellas, P. and Reklitis, P., 2014. Leadership competencies profiles and managerial effectiveness in Greece. Procedia Economics and Finance, 9, pp.380-390
Van Wart, M., 2013. Lessons from leadership theory and the contemporary challenges of leaders. Public Administration Review, 73(4), pp.553-565.
Von Krogh, G., Nonaka, I. and Rechsteiner, L., 2012. Leadership in organizational knowledge creation: a review and framework. Journal of Management Studies, 49(1), pp
Zhang, X. and Bartol, K.M., 2010. Linking empowering leadership and employee creativity: The influence of psychological empowerment, intrinsic motivation, and creative process engagement. Academy of management journal, 53(1), pp.107-128.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
