Importance and challenges of leadership in today’s organizations

challengeGuest post by Monika Agarwal

Business organizations today have to face an environment which is complex, uncertain and dynamic. Leadership becomes very important in such a scenario to provide organizations with the right vision. It is that part of HR which can make the right use of authority for teams to work effectively. In absence of manager leaders people in the organizations start relying on informal leaders which might not act in consonance with organizational objectives.                                                                                                                      Thus leadership can be defined as an art of converting vision into performance. It is an art as it has a strong dimension of interpersonal impact a leader has on his followers.

“Leadership is not magnetic personality – that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not ‘making friends and influencing people’ – that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to higher standards, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.” Peter Drucker

Thinking in abstract and gathering a willing cooperation of his followers to create an inspired shared vision, a leader faces five basic challenges as stated by Blanchard

Challenge 1 – Refining the shared vision to the harmonization of key players with business mission of the organization.

Challenge 2 – Energizing the vision to alignment of corporate culture and organizational individual entities with strategies and purpose.

Challenge 3 – Communicating the shared vision for bringing together organizational units and department divisions with the key results and success factors.

Challenge 4 –Relating the stated vision to the synchronization of the groups and teams with the goals and objectives.

Challenge 5 – Involving the stated vision to the synchronization of the people with tasks and jobs.

Overcoming these hurdles would require some traits and characteristics which have been found to exist in most of the effective leaders. They are vision, strategic planning, confidence, good sense of judgment, responsibility, responsive to group needs and humility.

These qualities being scarce in an individual only increase the importance of leadership. The good part of all these being that such traits can be taught, trained and developed into individuals having the required potential as given by Behavioral theories of leadership which believe that leaders can be made. . Organizations facing leadership scarcity can take charge through HRD to develop and nurture such personalities into their organizations.

monikaphotoBorn in Alwar and brought up in Ranchi, Monika completed my graduation in Engineering and worked as a lecturer in Engineering colleges for 4 years. Thereafter took a long break for kids and started again with an MBA in HR and have been working since 2013.Presently working as Professor in Jaipur NAtional University .Before starting my post graduation had also worked in an NGO named Literacy India.

 

3 Comments

  1. No one is born a leader, leadership quality needs to be nurtured and groomed.

  2. debora654 says:

    I found your article very informative and useful. Thanks for sharing this valuable content with us.

  3. Sneha says:

    2020 was a year we discovered the deep dynamism of the workplace experience. An ounce of perspective can go a long way building an understanding of it. Here are 200 perspectives from 200 influential thought leaders that have refined the world of work. https://www.peoplehum.com/blog/200-most-influential-thought-leaders-to-follow

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