Challenges of Global Leadership - Essay Example

Challenges of global leadership al affiliation Challenges of global leadership A business operates in an environment that isconsistently and persistently changing. There are therefore numerous challenges that arise due to political, economic, social and technological changes and innovations. Global leaders, therefore, have a challenge in ensuring that the challenges do not affect the operations of the business. The role of world leaders and environmental scanning in helping an enterprises stand still regardless of the challenges cannot be overlooked.

However, there is need for global leaders to stay on top of the changing world so that they can succeed in identifying new opportunities as discussed below. Environmental scanning refers to the communication to internal stakeholders on how external issues are likely to affect the operations of a business. The scanning also entails the identification of the specific questions that the company is bound to face due to the continuous changes that are taking place in the different aspects of the external environment.

The scanning helps reveal the threats and opportunities to an organization and helps global leaders to overcome the challenges that they are faced with by providing a chance for development of alternative courses of action (Binscoff, Mayer, & Quick, 2015). One of the roles of global leaders operating in a changing environment is the identification of the possible threats to his business. Leaders are charged with identifying the issues that the company may face due to the frequent changes in economic, technological, social and political sectors.

Through environmental scanning, the leaders can identify the threats and also define possible solutions. Secondly, the leaders recognize the opportunities that arise for the business as a result of the changes that occur (Lawrence, 2015). Global leaders have to determine new opportunities to ensure that they remain in business regardless of the changes that occur. In this light, there is need to invest in research to identify opportunities that remain unexploited that would help an organization overcome the challenges it faces.

Moreover, global leaders should always remind the subordinates of the mission, vision and objectives of the business to ensure that changes and challenges they face do not cause them to deviate from their fundamental goals. It is only by doing this that leaders remain on top of a situation and identify changes when they arise (Bennis, 2015). One of the challenges of global leadership is team building, team development, and team management. Due to the frequent changes that pose an enormous challenge to the business, leaders have a problem of maintaining teamwork in their operations (Lawrence, 2015).

However, through environmental scanning, the leaders can succeed in achieving teamwork by having prior knowledge of the possible threats they will face and thus developing strategies that they can work on as a team. Another challenge of global leadership is the development of employees. The problem arises when technological innovation renders the employees’ skill obsolete. There is, therefore, a need to ensure that employees are continuously trained to keep them up to par with the contemporary methods in use in the industry due to innovations.

Also, the ability to develop managerial effectiveness is a challenge to many global leaders (Binscoff, Mayer, & Quick, 2015). Developing the right and relevant skills as a manager to deal with the changes and challenges is an enormous task. Skills for proper decision-making, time management, strategic formulation and thinking as well as prioritization cannot be developed overnight in the wake of new changes and challenges and thus is a problem for many managers. Besides, guiding the subordinates through the change process is also challenging.

Managing changes, mobilizing employees, understanding change, communicating the change and leading the change and mitigation process requires skills, critical thinking and strategic planning and is hence a major issue with most managers (Bennis, 2015). Businesses are faced with many challenges that result from operations in a constantly changing environment. In this light, there need to include the skills of environmental scanning in dealing with the problem that many businesses are faced with.

The role of managers in the change process cannot be overlooked. However, the managers and leaders are faced with many challenges in the wake of changes that require critical thinking and assessment to espouse success in the midst of such challenges and espouse the achievement of goals set out by a business. ReferencesBennis, W. (2015). Managing the Dream: Leadership in the 21st Century. The Antioch Review, 73(2), 364-370.Bischoff, S., Mayer, J. H., Weitzel, T., & Quick, R. (2015). Applicability of Environmental Scanning Systems: A Systematic List Approach to Requirements Criteria.

In Business Intelligence for New-Generation Managers (pp. 41-49). Springer International Publishing.Lawrence, T. (2015). Global leadership communication: A strategic proposal. Creighton Journal of Interdisciplinary Leadership, 1(1), 51-59.