Forces or Trends in Leadership Today

Running head: FORCES OR TRENDS IN LEADERSHIP TODAY
Forces or Trends in Leadership Today
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Introduction
Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs an organization in such a manner that it is more cohesive and coherent. It can also be described as a process through which an individual influences a group of persons to attain a common goal. Leaders make use of leadership knowledge and skills to execute their leadership roles. Effective leadership is crucial for an organization to be successful. The concept of what makes an effective leader is ever evolving being a function of societal expectations, standards and changes occurring at workplaces. Since the advent of the 21st century, the world has witnessed profound changes. Countless challenges, especially the rise of the global economy and its subsequent influence on economies across the world have forced leaders into uncharted territories and literally redefined what it takes to succeed. The research paper will analyse major forces in the environment and context of leadership, their significance and how they influences leadership (Storey, 2004).
Leadership in the 21st Century
Management teams in various organizations have to contend with the challenges encompassing organizational modifications, market dynamics and a severe shortage of talented personnel. Innovation has been adopted as the tool to deal with these challenges; innovation employs the services of overt processes (systems and structures) and talent development to form a culture that is nimble enough to tackle complex challenges. The latter is fundamental as it is responsible for creating pools of candidates with high leadership prospective by giving them an opportunity to attain their personal aims and objectives. Many executives unanimously agree that success is dictated by the degree of flexibility in recruiting, developing and retaining talent. There is a synonymous agreement that leaders are not set apart by personality or style of management but the way in which they handle challenging situations. Many people perceived to be leaders have failed when confronted by tough state of affairs (Morrill, 2010).
Developing the necessary skills to handle crisis takes bold steps and only a few leaders have accomplished the feet. Developing internal action logic involves a gradual personal understanding and development that has not only being of great assistance to the leader but also to the organizations they lead. According to a research undertaken in the United States for a period of 25 years, it was realized that there are seven types of leaders: opportunists, diplomats, experts, achievers, individualists, strategists and alchemists. Majority of the leaders (55 percent) fall in the first three categories; this is a below average corporate performance. Thirty percent were achievers while the remaining 15 percent were individualists, strategists or alchemists (Morrill, 2010).
Internal Change and Talent Shortage
The breadth and intensity of change has caught many leaders off-guard. Very few of them have the skills to navigate through the ever increasing number of demanding situations. Change is occurring at very fast rate such that the challenges of last year are different from those being experienced this year. As noted earlier internal changes and talent shortage are impacting greatly on corporations. These two factors combined with dynamic market and globalization are the complex challenges that modern day corporations have to contend with. The market dynamism and severe shortage of talent means that organizations are expected to perform more with fewer resources and respond swiftly to changes in the market and the economy. Internal change was voted as the greatest challenge with over twenty percent of executives highlighting it. Market dynamism took the second position while talent shortage and globalization were ranked third and fourth respectively (the three factors received a percentage greater than ten). Other factors of less concerned that scored below 10 percent are rise in competition, technology, cost and customer expectations (Malloch & Porter-O'Grady, 2009).
Innovative Leadership
Given the high number of challenges to be faced by the corporate world; there is an even higher demand for creativity to optimally utilize the scarce resources. This is the case especially on the employment of the available talented workforce and the upgrading of the lowly talented. Innovation may not be walk in the park for many executives as it has been revealed that only 50 percent of companies could be regarded as being innovative in their operations. This can be interpreted to imply that half of ventures may not survive the global economic environment in the next one decade. The innovative firms cited open processes (exchange of ideas and task forces), talent development, reward programs and research as the leading strategies employed to encourage innovative ideas. Open processes and talent development took the baton with reward program and best practices following in that order (Storey & Salaman, 2009).
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