The Leadership Challenges - Essay Example

Leadership is very important towards the success of an organization. The employee that has the most responsibility of providing leadership in a business is the manager. Managers are responsible for the performance of the company and its employees. There are many leadership challenges that companies face in the fast pace business environment of the 21st century. Often managers forget how to lead an organization since their time is spend on managing the day to day activities of an organization. “Successful leaders learn how to highlight their strengths and minimize weaknesses” (Leadershipfreak, 2011).

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the managerial challenges that organizations face today and to discuss different leadership theories that can be used by leaders. One of the toughest challenges for leaders is managing a diverse workforce. Diversity can be defined as the inclusion of different types of people in a workforce which includes differences due to race, age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and other ideologies (Uoregon).

To properly lead a diverse workforce a manager must apply good communication skills and the person must be conscious of the differences that make each employee unique. “Learning to respect and appreciate each other’s cultural and stylistic differences and becoming aware of unconscious assumptions and behaviors that may influence our interactions will enable us to minimize the challenges and derive maximum benefits from diversity” (Wisc). A good leader is a person that is able to motivate his staff to ensure the employees provide maximum effort and performance.

A leader must have excellent verbal and written communication skills as well as being an active listener. The leader must have good interpersonal skills and be able to deal with any conflict that occurs in the workplace. Personal conflicts between employees are a tough leadership challenge that must be dealt with. An understanding of the different conflict resolution techniques such as smoothing, collaboration, compromise, avoidance, and authoritative command is needed to solve problems quickly before they become a constraint that hurts the performance and profitability of the enterprise.

The use of leadership models and theories can help leaders understand better how to properly implement leadership in the workplace. The behavioral leadership perspective assumes that leadership is central to performance and other outcomes. Based on this theory the leader must monitor the behaviors of its employees to ensure that the employees are happy, motivated, and achieve work satisfaction. A second theory of leadership is House’s path-goal theory. This theory assumes that a leader’s key function is to adjust his or her behaviors to compliment situational contingencies (Schermerhorn, Hunt, Osborn, 2003).

The key variables associated with this theory are leadership factors, contingency factors, and subordinate outcomes. Another important theory of leadership that managers can utilize to lead their staff more effectively is Hersey and Blanchard’s situational leadership model. This model argues that situational leadership requires adjusting the leader emphasis on task behaviors such as giving guidance, direction and relationship behavior (Schermerhorn, et al., 2003). Leadership is extremely important towards the success of a company and it is imperative for managers to become good leaders to be able to accomplish the goals of a company.

ReferencesLeadershipfreak.com (2011). The Greatest Leadership Challenges. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/the-greatest-leadership-challenges/ Uoregon.edu. Definition of Diversity. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~asuomca/diversityinit/definition.html Schermerhorm, J., Hunt, J., Osborn, R. (2003). Organizational Behavior (8th ed.). New York. John Wiley & Sons.. Wisc.edu. Benefits and Challenges of Diversity in Academic Settings.

University of Wisconsin. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from http://wiseli.engr.wisc.edu/docs/Benefits_Challenges.pdf