Leadership Theory in Organisations
A leader is an individual who can influence other people to attain specific set goals, particularly in an organization. Leadership is the art of influencing other people to perform given tasks, preferably in a managerial setting, to achieve desired goals. Some leaders are successful, while others are less successful because leadership is an art, and there are no set fixed features that make others excellent and other corrupt leaders. Leadership theories are thoughts put forward to illustrate how and why some people become better leaders than others. The methods examine the behaviors and traits that people can adopt and boost their leadership capabilities. These three classes of leadership theories, traditional theories, contemporary and emerging theories. Some believe that emerging approaches are the best for sustainable innovation, whereas others believe that modern theories are still the best. Few people still hold on to the traditional methods and are still lagging because the world is continuously transforming; change is inevitable.
Theories surrounding leaders and leadership continue to advance/develop as the complexity, scope of organizations shift from command-and-control structures to more agile structures for managing change. In today’s environment, the pace of disruptive innovation is fast-tracking, which is forcing organizations to rely on the latest leadership theories to keep organizations competitive in rapidly changing markets.
I agree with the above statement that leadership is continuously evolving, and there is a need for the leaders to grow with the dynamics of leadership to foster sustainable innovation. According to the emerging theories on leadership, there is a need for change to ensure organizations cope with new inventions in the business world. Adaptability, technological advancements, and organizational structure are continuously changing, and thus, leadership roles are also changing. The traditional leadership theories should be abolished to allow for expansion and exploration of the emerging trends, which will ease governance and managerial practices in offices. To accept the change, people need to embrace generation shifts, adjust theories on leadership, work on resistance to change and budget o barriers.
Traditional theories of leadership include trait approach, contigency or situational approach, behavior approach and role approach. In trait approach, leadership is measured by examining the characteristics of a person. People with specific desired features such as team building, good strategic manager, creative and impulsive would be awarded the position to lead the others. Individuals that presented with excellent team building skills would be selected as the
best leader whereas those that presented with creativity and impulsiveness were treated as ineffective leaders. Contrary to the current transforming world, traditional theory of leadership did not focus on creativity. With the dynamics in business and innovation, leadership requires people to think critically and have a systematic approach to matters. Todays leadership should reject traditional theories to remain competitive in the rapidly changing markets.
Another traditional theory, behavioral approach involves determination of excellent leadership based on employee satisfaction and task accomplishment. Organizations should note that their crucial determinant should be consumer satisfaction and innovative sustainability. Determining leadership skills based on employees may be misleading and they might make significant loses because with the dynamics in the business world, everything evolved. We no longer use the traditional approaches which are old-fashioned and the changing consumer needs. They should also note that for sustainability, the firms need to blend in employee-satisfaction and task accomplishment to ensure excellent performance. The major limitation of behavioral approach theory is that people can learn specific behaviors and practices and act as the best leaders. By practising the actions, they cannot efficiently deliver on the changing world needs from managerial positions. Theorists came up with a list of characteristics in which people often associated with leadership. They include managing change, dealing with individuals, sharing informaion, making decisions and showing compassion monst other features. The features are outdated since managerial positions have shifted from individual decision making to group decision process.
In attempt to enhance behavioral theory, theorists came up with situational model which aimed at increasing the interactions between a leadershipbehaviors, variables and styles in situations for effective leadership. In situational aproach does not hold any universal approach to leadership but instead states that effective leadership can be examined and ruled out based on situations which vary overtime. The current leadership theory borrows much from situational theory because leadership in the modern world can solve current and future problems for sustainable innovation. For sustainable innovation, creativity and determination are key. A leader would be succesful if they are TQ-oriented with a correct blend of their managerial styles and the features of their followers.
In role approach, theorists argue that leaders have to perform particular tasks to be termed effective leaders. The theory takes into situational factors just like trait and behavioral approaches. Thus, leaders at top levels of organizations may be frequently contacted or called upon to lias between the company and the external enviroment or take the role of the companys spearhead in confrences. In such situations, leadership has been measured in levels that determine individual functions and can hinder innovation because individuals will be concerned with particular task delivery rather than creativity. As much as role theory sets standards in a firm, role conflicts may arise. This is because some leaders may perform specific roles in which the employees feel they should not be performing, resulting in inefficient production. In today’s environment, the pace of unsettling innovations is fast-tracking, driving organizations to rely on the latest leadership theories to keep themselves competitive in rapidly shifting markets. Therefore, organizations should adopt the contemporary theories of leadership while staying flexible for the emerging leadership theories which are suitable for innovation and sustainability for the world’s vision 2030 goals.
Contemporary leadership refers to the current model of governance in which a leader uses personal influences to motivate, develop and inspire employees and people to achieve specific goals and make a difference in the society. Some classified traits make one a succesful leader and include Resilence, visionary, innovative, courageous, culturally sensitive, communicates openly and is people-centred. Contemporary leaders make the greatest contributions in the vast chaging business environments and are key drivers for vision 2030 call for innovation and sustainability. There are seven styles of contemporary leadership: charismatic, quantum, transactional, relational, transformational,servant and shared leaderships. The best leadership theory in the contemporary theory is the transformational theory because it is effective in analysis of complex business situations. Also, the theory emphasizes the importance of charisma leadership, inspiration, motivation, individual considerations and intelectual stimulation to influence particular group.
Charismatic approach of leadership involve the the leader motivating the employees to perform certain tasks. It involves use of charm, communication, force of personality and persuasiveness to motivate the followers or employees get to do things. Also, charisma approach may be used interchangeably with transformational leadership because both share multiple similarities inclduding that they both aim to improve ways of doing things. The theory has its basis on heroism and its origin is divine. The skill is divine because these individual leaders are eloquent and can lead people on profound and emotiional levels, rare and hard for most people. Charisma is a process and revolves around the charismatic leader, people being led, their needs, relationship of the leader and the group. The leadership is crucial where change or crisis needs to be incorporated becauses charismatic leaders have a way of influencing people with their persuasiveness and eloquency. However, the leadership can only be perceive and not tangible compared to other leadership styles.
Tranformational leadership is a theory where the leader works with the group they lead and identify gaps that need change, create visions for the chnages through motivation and execute the changes in line with the market dynamics. It is
relatively a new approach of leadership and focuses n how leaders make valuable changes in their followers. Transformational leadership is normally seen with political leaders especially when campaigning. For instance, Joe Biden can be said to be a transformative leader since his manifestos aim to impact change in the United States and restore the glory of the nation he lost by Trump. The theory was the first developed theory with morals and values examined in leadership. Therefore, it is widely used and valuable theory used in teaching and the study of leadership.
Quantum’s approach to organizational leadership refers to the new black; the law of unlimited possibilities in which everthing has potential until fixed. Quantum leaders just as quantum in physics are expected to possess creative potential in the sight of uncertainities. The leaders can rewire their brains and reinvent themselves in solving changes connected to the diversifying market demands. Amidst the wake of COVID-19, organizationa with quantum form of leadership are likely to survive post-COVID business and maret tragedy. Also, quantum leadership paradigm views nature as chaotic, complex and uncertain with new technological inventions which require leaders creativity to overcome certain problems. It aims at restoring the meaning and sense of leadership in the universe especially as we strive toward sustainable innovations.
Relational leadership is a contemporary form of leadership in which people work together to accomplish set goals and make change. The theory was created and adopted by Hollander in 1950’s. it emphasized the need for a two-way relationship between the leader and their followers. It incorporates five feature to make leadership successful. They are inclusion, empowerment, purposefulness, process orientation and ethical behaviors. Any leader willing to settle disputes, incorporate change in an organization or lead in a collaborative project should possess all the five features of a rational leader for excellent results. They should be purposeful, committed and understand the objectives of the projects or group to ensure they achive them. Their process should also focus on team work in solving roblems and in the quest to achieve communal goals.
Emerging leadership theories are contemporary theories that have been modified for efficiency and effective leadership. The previous believe that leadership involves genetic and individuals are born as leaders has been eliminated. Emerging leadership theories include situational, trandformational and contingency theories. The theories do not focus on personal traits of leaders but rather on the relationship between the leaders and their followers. They analyze the styles of leadership and respond to diverse circumstances and situations instead of individuals. The future of leadership is moving in great directions while implementing both charismatic and transformational leadership approaches.
According to the great man theory, leadership in the future will take the shape of an individual’s heroic acts. The ability to inspire other people in everday activities will take charge and leadership will be drown from such personalities. Their features will include neuroticism, openness, agreebleness, extroversion and conscientiousness. Also, organzizations are likely to utilize the five personality model in adopting and nurturing leaders. The personality model will include the ability to collaborate with the team to attain desired communal goal.
The most effective and appropriate leadership theory to incorporate into business for any organizations to remain competitive in the rapidly changing world is transformational theory. Individuals in the theory are known as transformational leaders. Transformational leadership is being utilized by big companies such as IBM and AT. The two companies have witnessed organizational transformation and extensive shanges and thus, the theory is worth adopting to ensure production merges the rapidly transforming consumer needs and innovation strategies. The future of leadership will see more research on theories which will include mixed research methods. Also,
top priority will be laid to understand leadership in diverse cultures wich are underrepreseted such as theIslam culture. Above all, the future leadership will involve evolution of leadership which is likely to focus on face-to-face and virtual environments within an organization.