Leadership in the Global Business Environment - Coursework Example

Leadership in the global business environment Leadership in the global business environment Introduction Based on the personal experiences and beliefs, I agree with Sohmen’s (2015, p.3) definition of leadership. Sohmen affirms that leadership encompasses the influence of processes that affect an interpretation of the activities and events for the followers, their choice of organizational objectives, and how they organize themselves to accomplish the set objectives. In addition, leadership aligns with the capacity of motivating the followers to ensuring an achievement of the set goals. Further, it comprises the aspect of maintaining the collaborative relationships, cooperation, and enlistment of support from the individuals outside the organization. Assessing leadership in a global business context provides a leeway to analyze the capacities of the managers and the way they handle commercial activities on a global arena. Therefore, it is essential to have foci on how leadership affects the business environment. Depending on its inclination, leadership creates either a good or a bad public image for the business enterprise. Anecdotal evidence displays failure of many organizations that go global. Therefore, it is critical to analyze the leadership of business enterprises in the global milieu. Organizational leadership in the global context In essence, organizations that seek to shine in the global business arena need to enhance the capacity of their leaders. The circumstance will foster their leadership in any covert or overt efforts on the leaders to evade poor leadership. Entrepreneurial leadership affects the decisions made by the business shareholders, which will have profound effects on the global business context. The tenets of the leadership theory ascertain that leaders must have a comprehensive understanding of the principles of authentic values and dyadic relations between the followers and the leaders. In addition, they must set up numerous networks among the global organizations (Kellis & Ran, 2012, p. 131). The principle of authentic values is core to the success of a business enterprise. It forms a bridge amid discretion on which leadership and accountability are dependent. Authentic and accountable leaders always have more followers, making their businesses to nourish in the global context. On the other hand, the principle of dyadic relationships identifies the influence created by the leaders to their followers. It arouses inspirational motivation, individual consideration, idealized influence, and intellectual stimulation. Moreover, networking in a global context aids the leaders to gain knowledge that facilitates the success of their enterprises. Networks leverage the businesses by bringing aboard consumers to the products and the services offered. Organizational leadership is the backbone of increased performance in all business enterprises. Leaders aid the businesses to translate their visions into a reality making them thrive in the global arena. Having effective leadership enables the shareholders to get motivated and engage in the entrepreneurial activities. In this regard, the companies manage to experience great potentialities in exploring more products and services to reach more consumers. Relevantly, leadership in the business sphere allows the participants to be confident that there is someone working to better the company on their behalf. Consumers of the goods and services provided together with the employees bestow their trust on the authentic and trustworthy leaders. Without reflecting on effective leadership, both the local and global business set-ups will be problematic and succumb to failure. An illustrative example of poor leadership is that which is experienced in the Blackberry phone Company. Contextually, Blackberry leadership entailed nepotism that saw it fail in the global sphere. In reality, nepotism handcuffs effective leadership since the leader cannot be in a position to discern unethical behaviour. Assertions point that leadership within the company promoted employees based on tenure as opposed to one’s potentialities and skills. For instance, various researchers’ works discusses leadership as the supreme influential predictor concerning the creative conduct of employees. Furthermore, positive deeds have strong associations toward the performance of the organization. Motivation drew from effective leadership go a long way to ensure achievement of both short-term and long-term goals of the businesses. Fundamentally, moral and ethical leadership receives endowment pertinent to trust and perceived justice. This propels the environs within which the businesses operate hence a vast attainment of the set goals (Guet al., 2013, p.514). VanderPal (2014, p. 120) claims that in the global empire, successful leaders are paramount human assets for firms that seek to gain an international reach. In the bid to develop, understand, and decipher the required competencies, leaders need to evaluate and reflect on their capabilities that intensely affect their commercial activities. The new realities that drive globalization necessitate the international leaders to develop their abilities. The situation will help in reacting to the changes and manage the sophisticated interpersonal relations to realize global business excellence. Reflection on effective global leadership based on seminars My experience in interacting with the global leaders helped me acquire skills in the preparation of educational shorthand notes during the presentations. Being assigned the obligation to prepare notes from talks of each speaker, it dawned on me that the most distinguished global leaders were on board. Therefore, I had to ensure that the notes prepared met the international standards that entwine the global enterprises. Due to my capacity to write in shorthand, I was capable of catching up with the fast native English speakers. It has been a benevolent idea to integrate seminars in the attempt to inform global business leaders. The sessions display an ample platform where renowned and upcoming leaders share and reflect on effective leadership. I felt convinced when one of the speakers claimed that leadership basics have not yet experienced much change over the past decades. The speaker added that effective leadership concerns actions that involve integrity, persuasion of the followers, the creation of a culture that highlights openness, and clear and succinct communication. Additionally, leadership should be built on discipline, forgiving, and confidence. Based on these factors of success in relation to leading, managers and leaders in the global enterprises need to ensure motivation of their followers, consumers, and employees. All these factors publish a positive public image about an organization facilitating a reception of more customers. A massive base of consumers translates to the successes achieved by effectively led groups. A reflecting on the differentiation of leaders and bosses with consideration of international leadership, it was exciting to learn that leaders does not equate to bosses. To bring this into the limelight, being a boss is all about the title, authority or position while being a leader is entirely behavioural. Real leadership received a lot of emphasis from most of the speakers. Further, they recognized effective leadership as one that uses soft power. On the contrary, hard power comes due to authority and embraces penalties and rewards. When followers realize the use of hard power within organizations, they become frail in their activities since they are not definite when to receive a penalty or a reward. The incident extrapolates to the extent of goal achievement and immensely affects the performance of the workforce. The businesses then perceive a negative public image that in turn affects the attitudes of the stakeholders. Contrary shareholder attitudes lead to a declined participation in the global context and hence failure of the business enterprises. Naturally, people find themselves following effective leadership that exhibits soft power. Evidently, true leaders have a wider base of followers thus their enterprises thrive in the global scope. In my understanding, leaders need to build vivid relationships that encompass confidence. Indispensable facts point out that confidence always creates trust among the employees. On the other hand, trust is the key to grease the wheels of global commercial businesses. Majorly, those relationships built on trust drive the global businesses. For instance, the consumers reckon the vendors to offer quality services and products. They exclusively trust the firms’ leadership in the production of quality goods and services. This further promotes their indulgent consumption of the products offered. Cognizant of this relationship-based success, leaders need to devote their leadership towards the attainment of the best possible effects for their companies. As echoed in the seminar by one of the most celebrated economists, global leadership demands prioritization of the organizational issues. It is imperative to offer priority to issues that affect businesses on a global scenery. Consequently, there must be a sense of urgency in relation to the activities undertaken by the enterprises. The urgency must emanate from the top management to ensure positive impact on the dealings of the businesses. Tentatively, in case of a crisis, leaders need to adopt the best strategic plans, cancel travel trips and set priorities to avert the devastating situation that might engulf the commercial activities. For example, in case of inflation, leaders possess a sinking feeling that gives them the insight to re-plan and tailor their commodities for the consumers’ needs to avoid losses in the global market. Since the seminar was international, numerous speakers were not native English speakers. Hence, I struggled to integrate their speeches into the short notes. The situation posited a challenge since it was difficult to realize promptly the words they used in their descriptive speeches. In the next setting of such a conference, I will ensure integration of most leadership speeches into the shorthand notes. It can be achieved by comprehensively and carefully listening to the sole speakers. In addition, this can be enhanced by thorough preparation through seeking and listening to early speeches made in global contexts. Essentially, my future learning in such a global environment will be enhanced because of effective listening skills gained from the past global speeches. Conclusion In the global business setting, leaders need to direct their leadership skills towards the success of their enterprises. It is worth noting that global businesses face numerous challenges in relation to their leadership. For instance, leaders ought to manage diverse perspectives that characterize the global enterprises and must be in a position to interpret correctly policies that guide their activities. Eminently, it was worth learning that leadership never equates to the boss aspect and that leadership comes with soft power while the boss comes with a title, authority, and position. Action plan What Why Who How When To listen to vast speeches from previous conferences To familiarize myself with other non-native speakers One of the speakers had noted that my writing were not tallying with the speech delivered by one of the non-native English speakers Through accessing international conference speeches from YouTube and trying to cope familiarize with the way they speak Before taking part in the next seminar To furnish my listening skills This will aid in coping with the fast non-native English speakers I realized my listening skills were poor when it came to non-native English speakers This can be achieved through studying more on listening skills Any time soon before the next global business conference Mind map (Source: Mind Tools, 2015. p. 1) Bibliography Gu, Q, Tang, T, & Jiang, W 2015, Does Moral Leadership Enhance Employee Creativity? Employee Identification with Leader and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) in the Chinese Context, Journal Of Business Ethics, 126, 3, pp. 513-529, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 7 May 2015. Kellis, D, & Ran, B 2013, Modern leadership principles for public administration: time to move forward, Journal Of Public Affairs (14723891), 13, 1, pp. 130-141, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 7 May 2015. Mind Tools., 2015. Dunham and Pierces Leadership Process Model. Web. May 8, 2015. Retrieved from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/leadership-process.htm Sohmen, VS 2015, Reflections on Creative Leadership, International Journal Of Global Business, 8, 1, pp. 1-14, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 7 May 2015. VanderPal, G 2014, Global Leadership, IQ and Global Quotient, Journal Of Management Policy & Practice, 15, 5, pp. 120-134, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 7 May 2015. Read More