Critical Issues in Business The 21st Century Leadership

Question: Discuss about the Critical Issues in Businessfor the 21st Century Leadership. Answer: Introduction Leadership is an important aspect for every business organization as the leaders motivate the employees of the organization and helps to achieve the organizational goals and objectives (Northouse 2012). Apart from these, effective leadership transforms a group of people into effective and constructive employees. It is a fact that an influential leader must have some fundamental competencies. Ingenuity and innovation must be there in a leader. A leader must be innovative and creative in order to lead a group of people. Leader must be globally acumen; that is, a leader must have the knowledge how to make successful business. A major competency that a leader must have is professional and technical expertise in his/her respective field (Lussier and Achua2015). A leader must know how to tackle a diverse workforce in the organization. Another most important aspect is that a leader must lead by example, as the employees will be motivated by watching his activities. He must be able to think critically in tough situations. It can be seen that there are some major leadership theories. The Theories of Power and Influence says that a leader must have some basic power like legitimate power, expert power, referent power, coercive power and reward power. As per the Transformational theory of Leadership, the leaders must perform beyond expectation to lead a team. According to the attribution theory of leadership, a leader must have sufficient information at the time of leading the team (Weisband2013). In addition, there are some classical leadership theories. Some major classical theories of leadership are the Trait Theory, the Behavioral Theory of Leadership, the Contingency Theory of leadership, the integrative theory of leadership and others (Otley2016). Trait Theory Trait theory moves around to find out the exceptional and specific traits that makes a leader out of a person (Nichols and Cottrell, 2014). As Weisband (2013) describes,, the traits that were recommended to be privilege for supporting a person to be a leader. One of the main assistance of this theory in the line of leadership is to reveal the components in a leaders character that people wish. However, this theory does not change the personality or mentions anything about development of trait. Behavioral Theory Men (2014) explain that this theory tries to describe the nature of work of a leader and the characteristic approaches acclimatized by him. A surplus sub classified of this theory looks towards the nature of the managerial work. Contingency Theory Contingency theory is even known as situational theory as it tries to discover the traits and behavior of a leader given a variable situation. The key contribution of this theory is that it examines situational elements, which are inclusive of the style of the work, external environment and differentiation of the followers. Some underlying causes are responsible for the changes in the leadership competencies; they are exposure to different business circumstances, diverse emotional as well as personal experiences, various activities of learning and development, personal involvement and growth, age, maturity and others. Hence, it can be seen that there are many theories regarding leadership. Diverse Emotional and Personal Experiences Personal and emotional experiences are tangled with the process of leadership and the results of the followers and the leader. This underlying leadership development initiative has received a great deal of attention in the literature of leadership. Activities of Development and Learning The process of learning occurs even for a person in the position of leadership; that may take place due to any intrapersonal knowledge or any unfavorable conditions that may be faced earlier. Personal Growth and Evolvement Every individual possess personal traits that are inherent enables them to appear as leaders but true leadership branches from continual struggle to evolve with the present requirements of business. Maturity and Age In the earlier literatures it was stated that the power of leadership arises with age and maturity. It was stated by Northouse (2012) that maturity arises with age but in the current studies that are being undertaken the earlier perception have been ignored and it is seen that maturity will enables a good leader and that may not be attained with age. In the era of twenty-first centuries, the biggest barrier in leadership is the thought that there are limited scopes of leadership. However, as per the modern leadership theories, there is not any scope in leadership. In the modern business era, the leaders must be flexible and they must have the power to influence his/her followers. Hence, it can be said that the present days leadership has become more challenging and it needs more involvement of the leaders. The explanation of leadership has been seen in various lights. There have been innumerable disagreements on what features of a humans character make them leaders. However, every researcher in every century has agreed on one thing and it is that a leader is nothing but a person having followers who wants to follow them. Lussier and Achua (2015) describes that it is rather a complex relationship of moral between the subordinates and the leaders by relying on the obligation, emotion, conviction, commitment and most significantly a collective vision. Key Words: Leadership, leaders, business organization, theories of leadership References Lussier, R.N. and Achua, C.F., 2015.Leadership: Theory, application, skill development. Nelson Education. Northouse, P.G., 2012.Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage. Otley, D., 2016. The contingency theory of management accounting and control: 19802014.Management accounting research,31, pp.45-62. Weisband, S.P. ed., 2013.Leadership at a distance: research in technologically-supported work. Psychology Press.