Organizational Strategic Leadership - Essay Example

Strategic Leadership By (Name) The Name of the Class Professor The Name of the School Date Organizational Strategic Leadership Strategic leadership practices are significant to organizational developments. Every organization is dependent on good leadership strategies that direct the organization towards achieving the set objectives. Leaders are responsible for formulating the policies and guidelines that are used in the management of an organization. Every operation or activity of an organization is managed by a specific leader or a particular department, for example, the human resource department works to ensure that there is a good employee working environment and in satisfying the needs of the employees in an organization. Strategic leaders take up the responsibilities of solving problems and making decisions in an organization (Leavy & Mckiernan, 2009). Also, they can think ahead and make good plans for an organization that is focused towards the realization or achievements of the mission, vision, and objectives of an organization. Therefore, this indicates clearly the benefits that strategic leadership does in an organization. Strategic leaders are the focal point of all the operations and activities that are executed in an organization. Without a well-established leadership, an organization cannot achieve its goals and objectives (Sahu & Bharti, 2009). An organization should also be characterized by agile leadership which focuses on increased ideas and levels of innovation in an organization. In light of the above, this paper explains the case study of leadership in Du Company and the strategic challenges it is likely to face for the future purposes. Also, it includes the nature of its current leadership agility and the various ways through which it can be increased. Finally, in this work, I provide the ways through which I intend to increase my leadership agility for the sake of obtaining achievements I intend to achieve in the next phase of my career life. The main focus of the research paper is based on personal leadership and its agility. Strategic challenges of personal leadership for remaining fit for future purpose Today, leaders face various challenges and changes that bring transformations on leaderships. These challenges affect the quest for leaders or individuals in remaining fit to execute their future duties or purposes. The challenges associated with leadership have negative impacts on leaders, for example, the challenges can prevent them from being effective in doing their organizational duties. The first challenge that may affect personal leadership in putting attempts to achieve future purposes includes the problem of developing relevant leadership skills that are required for an individual to be more effective in his or her duties. Some of the skills needed to be developed by leaders are time management, decision-making, strategic thinking, prioritization of duties, getting up to speed with the works to be accomplished in an organization (Leavy & Mckiernan, 2009). For leaders to achieve an effective future performance, they are obligated to find solutions to the mentioned challenges and many other challenges that are likely to affect them. For instance, a leader may find a difficulty in the prioritization of works because of the organizational workload with limited resources, making it hard for leaders to be effective in their duties. Secondly, leadership presents to us our best. However, it also exposes our limitations or setbacks. Leaders may face the challenge of inspiring others in an organization. Motivating organizational leaders who have been in some positions for many years becomes a challenge to many. The motivation of others may be a way through which leaders can build their future leadership purposes and ambitions. Hence, having difficulty in motivating others may be a limiting factor as they intend to achieve plans. Another challenge that may face the leadership is that involved with team leading, team management and team development. Some of the specific challenges regarding team building may include how to provide support to other members, how to lead a team and also how to take over as a leader of a new-established team. The strategies of creating a team that is collaborative may become a challenge to many leaders as they intend to achieve their future purposes. Personal leadership in an organization is often involved with some changes that occur at various intervals within the operations of any organization. A challenge may arise in situations when a leader fails to know the way to manage, understand or mobilize the changes that take place in an organization. A leader may be faced with the problems such as finding ways of mitigating the consequences of change, how to overcome resistance to organizational change by employees and at the same time dealing with the mixed reactions from workers regarding the introduction of organizational changes. Again, leaders may face a continuous and relentless pressure that arises from various stakeholders of an organization. Moreover, when this occurs, top leaders in the organization may be forced redefine organizational strategies that will ensure that the set objectives are achieved. The relentless pressure may cause tension within leaders, hence reducing their work effectiveness. Evaluation of the current Leadership Agility For every organization to be effective in achieving its objectives, it requires agile leaders. Agile leaders are very efficient and active in the delivery of the services of an organization. Leaders of any organization should be personally agile for them to cope with some of the already mentioned challenges like the sudden organizational changes. Through this, leaders utilize different practices for them to bring positive changes in the organization. Leadership agility of an organization refers to the ability of the leaders to effectively manage the complex changes and problems that occur today in the business environment. The agility of leaders is meant for them to sustain organizational success, competencies and competitive advantage. The current leadership agility of Du Corporation is characterized by different attributes. Du Organization has a strong framework of leadership that is always focused towards assisting the company in achieving its goals and objectives to its clients. Leaders are very flexible regarding their duties (Joiner & Josephs, 2007). Their high rate of flexibility makes them deliver the best services and at the required time. The timely delivery of services because of their flexibility in different leadership departments has been a significant factor in influencing the competitive advantage of the organization. The leadership of the company has a good communication network across different departments. Therefore, the collective and effective communication among the leaders of the organization promotes understanding and agreements within the organization. Moreover, where there is a well-established communication among leaders, organizational work performance is also improved. Improved communications among leaders enhance flexibility in the organization, making the organizations to achieve its mission (Raynus, 2011). Secondly, the leaders of the organization are sensitive to the values of the organization. Organizational values define the environmental of operations of the company. It is the values that define the organizational culture. With this in mind, the leaders are focused to ensure that they obey the strict values of the organization. It makes them understand how to carry out or accomplish the work performances of the organization without causing any challenge or misunderstanding that may result in reduced organizational work efficiency. It implies that the leaders of the organizational are obligated towards delivering services that are of great value to the company and its clients. The agility of the leadership of the organization is one of innovation and ways of performance improvements within the company (Worley, Williams & Lawler, 2014). Leaders across different departments of the organization are highly innovative. They create new ideas that foster developments within the organization. For instance, the human resource department has leaders that are high innovative and full of many ideas that propel the organization towards achieving its functions. The leaders of the human resource department have been able to establish technology of high standards that directs the company towards realizing its objectives. High emotional intelligence is a characteristic of the current leadership agility of Du Company. The leaders within the organization are often involved in the process of decision-making with a clear reasoning that is not based on their emotions. The top-level leaders of the company do create a good working environment whereby every other leader is free to share his or her opinions and concerns regarding the progress of the organization and ways through which work output of the organization can be enhanced (Price & Toyes, 2017). The agility of the top leaders involves principles of affiliation, whereby they listen to other employees, thereby not coercing them with their decisions. With increased emotional intelligence in the organization, proper and effective decisions are made. In addition, the high emotional intelligence within the organization helps the leaders when faced with challenges. In specific, proper solutions towards a problem are reached when leaders apply emotional intelligence than when they engage in reasoning based on their feelings. The type of leadership in the organization is characterized by high emotional intelligence that is a guide in the decision-making process and solving problems which in the long run, makes the organization to attain its goals and objectives. The current agility of the organization is one of total leadership. The leaders are role models in the organization. This implies that they stay true to achieve the mission, purpose and the values of the organization. It is done through clear engagements of leaders in a reflective and frank communications among the organizational stakeholders before reaching any decision that is worth of help to the organization. The leaders of the organization emphasize on a complete utilization of the every opportunity that comes their way. Leaders do not like wasting chances or opportunities that may lead to further growth and developments of the organization (Joiner & Josephs, 2007). In specific, they utilize only the positive opportunities that can enable the organization to achieve its goals and objectives. The leaders also use their capabilities in all the means possible to provide solutions to different problems that do arise as the organization struggles to progress. In putting efforts to raise the performance and the reputation of the company, the leaders learn from the impacts of their past experiences to guide them in making decisions that will lead to the growth and development of the company. The leaders do strive towards eliminating old organizational practices that are not fit in enhancing the effectiveness of the organization and bringing in new ones as a source of changes to the organization (Price & Toyes, 2017). Increasing leadership agility through a developmental plan Leadership agility plays great roles in an organization and therefore should be developed to continue fostering the growth of the organization. The organization can increase its leadership agility through various developmental plans and as well track the changes they have put in place. Some of the developmental plans that can be executed by the organization to increase its level of agility in leadership include having a workshop, putting in action learning programs, coaching the leaders on the relevance of being agile and how to achieve it among much more (Joiner, 2009). However, in the quest to develop these, the organization should understand that increasing leadership originates from the inputs of every individual. It should assess the strengths and weaknesses of the level of agility among various leaders of the organization before settling on some of the best developmental plans of achieving a higher level of leadership agility. Having action learning programs is one of the ways that the organization may use to develop its leadership agility. The action learning programs entail the various ways that can be used in the organization to find more ways of having increased levels of leadership agility in the organization. The program entails setting of leadership developmental goals so as to increase their ability to use the initiatives of the organization in developing more agile leaders (Joiner, 2009). Also, having action learning programs as one of the developmental plans as one of the strategies enables the organization to create or establish the different types of leadership agility. The action learning programs in the organization are used to generate new insights and assists the organization in making wiser decisions. The program will make the organization to know and practice the different types of leadership agility. They include the context-setting agility whereby the organization steps back and conducts a re-examination of its current priorities to enable them in creating new policies that will move the organization. The second one is the stakeholder agility. In this one, the organization focuses at considering the needs of those who support the activities of the organization. The third one is creative agility in which the organization plus its leaders do focus on ways of developing efficient ways to solve the problems of the organization (Worley, Williams & Lawler, 2014). Lastly, this program will promote the self-leadership agility in which an individual leader thinks of more effective ways of enhancing the effectiveness of the company. The organization can as well use workshop programs or initiatives to improve or develop its leadership agility. Through workshop programs that are done across various departments, each is trained on how to increase the practices of leadership agility in the organization (Raynus, 2011). First of all, every leader acknowledges the relevance of being agile in the organization. These activities will be used to track the organizational progress through various ways. The main one is that it will track organizational changes by evaluating the success of the organization from the previous initiatives put forward to provide more developments to the organization (Joiner, 2009). Again, these practices will be used to assess the leaders by comparing their current levels so as to determine where the organization expects them to reach. Increasing personal leadership agility To obtain my future achievements regarding my career, I can develop and practice some of the ways that will enable me in developing my level of leadership agility. First of all, I will assess my current leadership agility to determine my strengths and weaknesses. After this, I will set my personal leadership developmental goals and then establish strategies of how to move to a new level of leadership agility. The bottom line of improving my leadership agility is to develop the habit of saying no to some things that are not worth in building or improving agility (Meyer, 2017). Therefore, to improve my leadership agility in the quest of achieving my future career, I would refocus on the practices that are directly related to my career. This will be effective in establishing the specific scope of my career. Again, I will avoid putting more schedules regarding my career. Through this, I can accomplish tasks within my ability and not have to strain so much to deliver my work performance. The other way of developing personal leadership agility is to establish personal leadership development goals which are the key to increase the agility and to use everyday initiatives in learning from other leaders of the same career practices (Meyer, 2017). In summary, every organization requires a strategic leadership to propel it towards achieving its collective goals and objectives. Also, it is better to have agile leaders in an organization. Agile leaders are very flexible, innovative and active in developing new ideas that move an organization to have new achievements. Du Company has high agile leaders that lead to the growth and development of the organization. The leaders have high emotional intelligence among other characteristics. The organization also improves its level of leadership agility through workshops and having action learning programs. This increases the work performance of the organization. References JOINER, B. AND JOSEPHS, S. (2007). Developing agile leaders. Industrial and commercial training, 39(1), pp.35-42. JOINER, B. (2009). Creating a culture of agile leaders: A developmental approach. People and Strategy, 32(4), p.28. LEAVY, B., & MCKIERNAN, P. (2009). Strategic leadership: governance & renewal. Basingstoke [England], Palgrave Macmillan. MEYER, R. (2017). LEADERSHIP AGILITY: developing your repertoire of leadership styles. [S.l.], ROUTLEDGE. PRICE, C., & TOYE, S. (2017). Accelerating performance: how organizations can mobilize, execute, and transform with agility. Hoboken: Wiley. RAYNUS, J. (2011). Improving business process performance: gain agility, create value, and achieve success. Boca Raton, CRC Press. SAHU, R. K., & BHARTI, P. (2009). Strategic leadership. New Delhi, Excel Books. WORLEY, C. G., WILLIAMS, T., & LAWLER, E. E. (2014). The agility factor: building adaptable organizations for superior performance. San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass. Read More