In: Operations Management
Discuss leadership development trends and challenges in the twenty-first century
Ans- Leadership is nodal point of every organization's success. All the time there has been some leadership trends in rage. In current scenario we can see some development trends in leadership like inclusion, social responsibility, fairness, role of automation, and technologically advanced etc. In today's organization there are new and unique requirements from leadership, as discussed qualities are imperative in a leader for organizational sustainability.
• Inclusion is diversity of thought in an organization. Growth and individuality is included in inclusion regardless race, culture, and gender.
• Social responsibility is also a development trend in current leadership theory. Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility ( CSR ) has come in to force due to this. With this concept today's organizations are giving back to society, whose resources they are exploiting. This creates competitive advantages for organizations too.
• Role of automation: This is most talked in today's organizations. Automation is all about introducing more technology and machines in the organization. It's responsibility of leaders to induce these with lesser resistance in the organization. This created a new horizon in leadership for organizational management.
• In today's organization tech savvy leadership is required. As, tech savvy leader are versatile and prove their worth for organizational betterment. So, this is most recent trend in current leadership.
So, these are most discussed leadership development trends in today's business environment.
There are a lot of challenges in leadership development in twenty first century organizations:
• Lack of communication: This is most challenging thing in today's organizations. As, there are a number of medium in organizational communication and due to personal problems ( like ego, lack of relevant knowledge etc) and communication channel problems they unable to deliver desired message.
• Lack of accountability: In today's leadership there are lack of accountability. Leader often pass it to others, and prove themselves unaccountable for any mistakes occurred.
• Cross cultural conflicts: In the age of globalization companies are recruiting people across the globe. This is creating cross cultural conflicts at the workplace. This is most challenging work for today's leadership to create a harmony in the organization.
• Fear of firing: This is also a challenge for today's leadership development. Due to several reasons like uncertainty, technological advancement, government policy towards business, and most importantly cost cutting etc retrenchment of employees take place. This is a big challenge for leadership to retrench targeted employees and get work done with minimum employees.
So, these are the most challenging leadership development in the organization.