The Leadership Challenges - Essay Example

? The Leadership Challenge Affiliation An individual’s ability to influence another individual or group in order to make them achieve organization’s aims and objective is referred to as Leadership. Leaders in 21st Century organizations face various challenges and the most important challenge experienced by a leader is change. In order to face this challenge an organization has to adopt the culture of an organization that is under the process of continuous learning and is regarded as a learning organization and to adopt this culture, transformational form of leadership is very necessary. This paper focuses on the challenges experienced by a leader and how a transformation leader can help the organization obtain its objective of adopting change. The Leadership Challenge Introduction Leadership is referred to as an individual’s ability to influence an individual or a group of individuals in any setting to accomplish aims and objectives. In organizational context, leader is a person who influences other individuals of the organization to comply with him and help him in attaining aims and objectives. The individuals who are being influenced by the leader are recognized as followers of the leader, they follow a leader due to various reasons and one of the main reasons of followership is allocation of resources. An organization is a setting that experiences huge number of challenges and it has to meet these challenges to remain in the game for the longer run. Due to various challenges, an organization always desire a leader as a leader is the one who makes the decisions of utmost difficulty, carry out the process of change and communicates the vision of the organization to the employees. A leader has to experience various challenges while carrying out the duties he is expected to perform. Body Over the years researchers have figured out various types of leaderships that individuals carry out to attain the main aim of influencing. One of such types is transformational leadership, individuals who fall under this kind of leadership influence their followers by directly appealing the sensitive side of the followers or in other words, they appeal to the moral end of the followers in order to influence them. These leaders carry out their task of leadership with the aid of creating a high valued image of themselves in the minds of the followers, they present a vision of future that is quite positive in nature and they are the ones who frame the entire process of change. On the other end are those leaders who set goals for their followers and provide aid and assistance to their followers for the accomplishment of those goals by clearly informing them about the tasks and the roles they have to perform for the accomplishment of those goals. Transformational leaders are said to have the charisma to influence followers in such a way so the followers give priority to the organizational goals over their own goals. Vision is an idea of the future or the budgeted future that is framed by leaders, leaders create a positive vision in order to keep the followers tied up with each other. A leader articulates a vision by presenting a future that is quite positive and clearly defines the steps that the organization has to take to achieve a positive future. In transformational leadership, image management is of utmost importance, because a transformational leader has to lead his followers through the concept of idealizing. To achieve this objective, a transformational leader’s behavior has to be quite attractive and positive and has to lead by conducting exemplary behavior. A transformational leader is considered as one of the best forms of leadership because he has the duty of injecting the feel of high level of loyalty and confidence in his/her followers. They conduct the task of articulating the organization’s vision in such a way so the followers can relate to the vision and are highly willing to attain the objectives set in the vision. They take the step ahead and delegate authority to their followers; they provide their followers with the appropriate amount of training and advise them through their high level of knowledge and training. These leaders show creativity and set examples so the followers are even directed towards making creative decisions. These kinds of leaders provide rewards and reinforce behavior that is favorable in nature to the organization. One of their main tasks is to identify and create successors who will lead the organization in future. According to Long, the best form of leadership is Transformational leadership for organizations (Long, 2007, p.54). This is because these leaders fit best with the environment that organizations are experiencing in the 21st century. Organizations of the 21st century need leaders who are flexible and innovative so they can easily help the organization change with the changes in environment. If a business has to be successful in the 21st century, it should be ready to adapt to any changes as soon as they occurs. Organizations that accept change are said to have an added advantage over its competitors and are said to remain in business for the longer run. One of the main requirements of an organization is to remain competitive and ahead of its competitors, the best way of achieving this requirement is acceptance of change. Those organizations that restrict and avoid change cannot last in the long race of sustainability, thus a leader should always be ready to accept change and mobilize his tools and techniques to help the entire organization in adapting to change. An organization faces four stages in its business life cycle and in each stage, various changes occur, if an organization fails to comply with change in any of the stages, the organization has a higher probability of. A company’s culture should be such that the company should be ready to accept change rather than avoid it; almost every organization goes through same steps before a change is implemented. These steps include the denial phase in which employees oppose any kind of change, next employee exhibit anger in which they protest against the change, next is the bargaining phase in which the leader and the followers bargain with each other to come to terms to accept change, next comes the depression stage in which employees face stress due to the uncertainty of change and in the end employees accept the change. In all these stages a leader plays a major role as his task is to ensure that the change is implemented, he conducts this task by making the change seem favorable not only for the success of the organization, but even for the success of the employees of the organization. Another problem faced by a leader is to lead an organization that is continuously under the process of learning, such organizations and institutes are recognized as learning organizations. An organization that is continuously involved in the process of learning is the one that can easily adapt to change. An organization that gives priority to learning provides continuous training and development to its employees who enhance the employee’s knowledge skills and abilities on day to day bases. Under such conditions employees never feel the risk of losing their jobs as their skills and abilities do not get outdated and they are continuously needed and accepted by the organization. One of the desirable features of creating an organizational culture that promotes learning is teams. Teams have the ability to work closely with each other; team members help each other in accomplishment of tasks and objectives which are very essential for an organization. In such organizations, leaders do not act as a boss and delegate jobs, they share authority with their employees and take equal part in the process of accomplishment of aims and objectives. Conclusion 21st century organizations need leaders that follow the transformational style of leadership, this is because 21st century organizations continuously experience change and transformational style of leadership has the capability of helping the organizations adapt to these changes. If an organization has to become successful in continuously implementing change, the organization’s culture should be such that the organization is continuously involved in the process of learning. References Long, M. F. M. (2007). Professional school librarians as transformational leaders. Read More