Leadership Issues in 21st Century
As we all know it is not that easy to become a successful CIO today because the person who holds the job of managing IT of a company has to go through several internal & external pressures. This is because technology of a company moves fast rapidly every day. The CEO of Fed Ex, Rob Carter has to face such challenges every day. This person is responsible for every communication and computer system activities of the company. If something goes wrong he is the one who is responsible for everything. But still he has managed to be an effective leader even in adverse environment.
In this 21st century Leaders are often subject to facing extreme challenges every day. In such a situation we are looking at certain issues which include developing trust, management power, empowering employees, leading across cultures & becoming effective leader.
Managing Power
There are 5 sources from where the leaders get powers to operate the system and take decisions of the company. Following are the sources:
- Legitimate Power
- Coercive Power
- Reward Power
- Expert Power
- Referent Power
Developing Trust
Today the most important part of being an effective leader is bringing trust & credibility among the employees. Trust is closely related belief of integrity, ability of leader, character. There are 5 dimensions of trust.
- Integrity
- Competence
- Consistency
- Loyalty
- Openness
Taking responsibilities is the biggest duty of every leader. Trust is the part of taking such responsibility in real. The whole situation is a vice versa. Employees need to trust their leaders whereas managers need to trust their employees so that they fulfil all their responsibilities. Also leaders need to increase other leads so that the whole company becomes effective and perform their duties.
What is more important is that followers should their leaders. But why? Researches tell that trust is directly related to positive returns on productivity, positive results, organization commitment and job satisfaction.
Empowering Employees
The employees in DuPont’s Uberaba Brazil have planted trees on its 10th Anniversary. Though there were so many other stuffs to celebrate, but the fact which was important was that there were no environmental incidents & no safety violations. The reason was the organisation’s STOP program- where the employees were responsible for observing each other, encouraging safety procedures & correcting improper procedure.
As We have already discuses that managers are leading by empowering employees. This involves the increase of decision taking power of the employees. This is the employee empowerment that we are talking about in the whole chapter.
Leading Across the Cultures
One thing that came out of the researches is that the leaders not just follow one style but plenty more. The style of the leaders is adjusted according to the situation. If this is not follow no leader is going to be an effective leader. For instance what works in France is not going to work in China and Asian countries. So the style of leaders may vary from country to country. As it is already explained above that a particular style is not going to work worldwide. In an Asian research it is found that here leaders needs to have good communication skills and have personal good relationships with the employees. This is not appropriate for other nations.
Links of Previous Main Topic:-
- Managing human resources
- Managing teams
- Understanding individual behavior
- Managers and communication
- What is motivation
- Managers as leaders
- Who are leaders and what is leadership
Links of Next Fundamentals of Management Topics:-