MGT6B5 Critical Issues in Leadership
Introduction
Digital leadership refer to the ability to harness and leverage the opportunities offered by digital technologies in transforming business. As business leaders, it is crucial to understand, master, apply and create suitable solutions using digital technologies, social, digital networks and digital business models enhanced by new digital technologies (Cashman, 2017). Generally, digital transformations have significant impacts on establishing a business strategy, influencing mindsets of workers, development of business and learning models as well as the identification of suitable leadership models. Digital transformations are quite dynamic and are irreversible, therefore influence the way we live and work today and in the future (Dumas and Beinecke, 2018). It is therefore essential to be prepared from an early stage, as a student, in embracing the responsibility to become excellent digital leaders in the future.
External market conditions demand operational efficiency and effectiveness to handle both internal and external stakeholder expectations such as meeting consumer expectations and a lean supply chain system. Organizations require agility to build lasting relationships with employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers etc. Hence, organization and community leaders have a robust duty to build a relationship with people through influence, motivation and power in order to achieve an organizational vision and lead people through organization change (Tanniru, 2018). Effective leaders play a significant role in ensuring organizations achieve their goals. The establish a facilitating environment for making decisions, inspiring and motivating others, establishing a collective vision, offering direction by setting the tone and designing an environment that fosters growth and success in other all people.
Section 1: Transforming and Building Relationships with People
Leadership is an art, and leaders cannot manage to lead other people unless they candidly understand the people they lead. A proper way of looking at leadership is through understanding the function of a leader to guide and direct people to follow through adherence to specific established values. As an effective leader, it is essential to enable and create strong relationships with followers leading to a coherent community. Concerning transforming and building relationships, leaders need to inspire people by planning for the future by focusing on motivating followers to build relationships and offer service to the community (Friedman and Friedman, 2015). Leadership is not a role to shine or star in front of the other people but a collective expression within an organization or community. True leaders foster unified actions between them and followers by working together to achieve a common goal. How well a leader is able to unify a team is critical in shaping the organization’s ability to meet the ever-changing organization needs. Today, leaders require essential characteristics to help them build, maintain and guide followers. Key among them includes the ability to think about the future and develop a realistic vision for the team. Besides, it is fundamental to create realistic goals too but understand that flexibility is necessary because changes and disruptions could happen along the way (Medellin et al. 2019). More so, leaders need to be aware of their own initiative, need to lead and must be willing to accept responsibility. Leaders need to be motivators by establishing rewards or incentives for positive project outcomes because it gives followers energy and sense of direction.
A good leader needs to commit to the cause of the values for the group (Gerstein and Friedman, 2017). Only through commitment, a leader can find the meaning of team actions; when they discover that meaning, they find the team values. To achieve the team goal, leaders should not only show commitment but must convince everybody else to commit to the team’s cause. Leading for me is quite easy; however, leading for others is quite complicated. As a leader, it is important to exhibit high levels of integrity, honesty and support for others to create a winning environment. These characters create an atmosphere of trust because followers need to be convinced that a leader is deserving of their trust. In building trust among followers, leaders must understand what and who they lead, trust in the reason they were chosen to lead and trust their ability to deliver on the team’s established vision and goal. Another approach by a leader to grow the level of trust is by understanding where to maintain or strengthen relationship building. According to Friedman and Friedman (2015), to lead other people effectively, it is important to connect with team members. As noted by the author, when people connect and trust each other, it elevates the level of confidence, and they can take more risks and make changes that help keep the organization alive. Such actions convert followers from being passive followers to strong leaders at their own level.
In order to maintain and strengthen relationships, it is necessary to understand and value team members for whom they are. Leaders only realize that level of understanding through asking questions, listening to followers, and developing an environment of mutual commitment and understanding. Encouraging other people to take chances, giving them opportunities to contribute in decision making as well as having the courage to support their decisions are critical ingredients of an effective leader (AM and Francis, 2017). Improving communication skills as leaders, in turn, helps build the communication skills of followers too. Effective communication between leaders and followers is an essential strategy in working together to achieve a common goal. By ensuring that the leaders’ and followers’ expectations are clearly understood is mutually beneficial and helps a team to focus and prioritize on the goal to be achieved. Building relationships helps effective leaders to create cohesive teams that ensure they can work with a diverse team and quickly acclimate to change.
Section 2: Influencing People, Motivation, Impact, Power
Leaders need to have a variety of skill; being able to influence others and get them engaged in a common cause is an essential skill. In order to influence others calls for leaders to understand how they can best influence the success of their followers, organizations or communities (Gerstein and Friedman, 2017). How leaders relate to followers, play a significant role in the leader’s ability to influence others. The actions of a leader impact on their relationship with followers in various ways and could determine the ability to succeed or falter as a leader. In managing to understand this section, it is necessary to view influence, power and motivation from both a leader’s and follower’s perspective in the workplace. Whether inspiring people to change a certain behaviour, creating a healthy cultural change in an organization or encouraging followers to adopt certain ethical characteristic, influence must be integral to a leader’s traits.
Leadership is frequently associated with the process of influence in most leadership definitions. Real-life influence in leadership entails the ability to figure out how to make followers perform a certain task such as encouraging employees to work hard, inspiring students to study, or wooing voters to elect you. However, all these examples are a reflection of the leader and his/her motives. They, therefore, lack the most important aspect of a leader, motivating followers. A leader needs to know why followers do what they do, their personal goals and motives. If leaders don’t understand such aspects of the follower, it is important to ask and discuss them in line with the goals of the team or organization. Making presumptions or ignoring the goals and motives of individual members and allowing my objectives as a leader to take precedence can only create frustration among followers. Influence is quite different from manipulation; people keep influencing each other every day. As noted by Sousa and van Dierendonck, (2017), manipulation is a form of influence with a hidden and unauthentic intention. For effective influence, leaders and followers
need to be aware of influence existence,
understand how such influence promotes equity and justice, and
justly and mindfully know how and what to really influence in others.
As a leader who aims to establish equitable, just and sustainable difference within a team or organization, I must continue to improve awareness on the full effect of influence. From an individual level, it is essential to be aware of both visible and invisible influence that impact on gender diversity, ethnic settings, and socioeconomic differences.
Organizations have specific visions and missions that guide the organization. These missions and visions are also broad enough to allow workers to establish the elements that motivate them. Every follower possesses individualized, unique goals relative to those of the organization, especially in disciplines that promote innovation, autonomy and self-direction. As noted by AM and Francis, (2017), the path-goal leadership theory attempts to explain the variables that affect followers’ motivations as they transition from the current situation to the goal. Leaders must support followers in 1) defining the objectives 2) clarifying the most effective path, 3) addressing barriers, and 4) providing the needed support (Gerstein and Friedman, 2017). The road to maximizing the level of motivation is based on how leaders tackle the mentioned four elements through their leadership style. Most leaders tend to stick with their leadership style even when it’s not working and assume that followers will get used to it. However, with commitment, leaders can alter their leadership style by refocusing on the need of each follower, their individual goals and the kind of support they need. Effective leaders identify and adopt the leadership style that will work effectively given the follower’s situation (Hu and Judge, 2017). When working with high achievers are highly self-directed, a directive leadership approach will be counterproductive by creating obstacles on their path.
In addition to influence and motivation, authority or legitimate power is an essential element of leadership. A leader with authority posses the formal power to dictate on the fate of a team or a team member. Given the authority of leaders, as bestowed to them based on their role in an organization or community, sometimes may conflicts with followers when they do not agree with some decisions. The most interesting aspect of leadership is that it doesn’t rely on formal power. Instead, leaders apply informal power. Formal power is for managers. Informal power is founded on the leader’s characteristics such as charisma, experience, expertise, wisdom, among others. Leaders hence need to influence followers through the said characteristics by partnering in the process of committing and engaging for a common goal for a better future
Section 3: Creating a Vision, Values to Lead Change
Vision and strategy for change provide organizations with an imaginative but realistic picture of what the future will look like. It provides the stakeholders in an organization with a sense of direction that let go off the past by sacrificing and working hard presently and follow leaders as they drive organizations to the future. When done properly, a vision provides a realistic picture of the future that offers guidance to decision-making in an organization (Dhir, 2019). If leaders are unable to explain to followers the direction of the organization, people get confused and question the organization or team leadership. The fundamental essence of leadership to create an articulate vision. Nothing demoralizes followers than leaders who lack the clarity in articulating what and why an organization or team is performing a certain task. Excellent leaders create and articulate a vision than own it and drive it until success is achieved.
The leadership vision permeates in the workplace and is manifested in the beliefs, goals and values of organization leaders. Visions affect everyone in an organization, and each one lives to promote these goals, values, beliefs and actions by sharing the vision. According to AM and Francis (2017), relationships tend to happen based on actions, concepts and values. The primary advantage of organizations and communities are composed of people from different interests, discipline and practices. The diversity of the team creates an excellent opportunity for everyone to network and get involved with people who share like values. Values are critical ideals and help guide priorities and remain core to the organization’s success. Values bring people and help tie them together, establish a vision and affect the needed actions as an organization or community. As noted by, every successful organization has a strong commitment to shared values and a common goal.
Self-Assessment tests reflection
Through the digital leadership project and review of the critical issues in leadership, I have been able to learn a lot towards shaping my leadership skills in this digital era. Technological advancements are driving massive transformations within organizations and communities. As a leader, I have to ensure effective leadership that ensures the achievement of established goals by enhancing relationships with People, Influence and Motivate them and creating a vision and values necessary to Lead change. When reflecting on my leadership, I realize that I have the desire, attitude and commitment to serve others, there is a lot that is needed to learn and understand. Perhaps a mentorship program would do me a great deal of favour. For instance, I believe I have excellent communication and networking skills, however, I struggle in resolving conflicts. According to Sousa and van Dierendonck, (2017), most teams consist of diversified members in areas of discipline, ethnicity, and gender, cultural and socioeconomic distinctions which make conflicts unavoidable.
I have the tolerance for being calm in compromising situations. However, I am still working on improving my cultural competence to be able to address conflicts without demonstrating any form of prejudice or favour. I believe such traits are essential in enhancing trust as a leader and creating lasting relationships with followers. Besides, I am usually highly motivated and influential within the group setting. My leadership qualities at this point, my belief are founded on my ability to express myself with clarity and confidence. People seem always to love to appoint me as their leader, which I sometimes make it all about me. However, with the digital leadership project, I gained invaluable lessons of understanding it’s never about me but us. It is important to create team goals by ensuring everyone is involved in all the decision-making process. I am still learning how to motivate my team and how to exercise both formal and informal power. Leadership comes naturally; however, education, training and mentorship are critical in building effective transformational leaders.
Conclusion
Transforming and Building Relationships with People requires the ability of a leader to impact on followers through power, influence and motivation. The three elements demonstrate the reality of leadership because all activities require considerations that are carefully articulated to ensure the application of just, sustainable, equitable and ethical measures. True leaders foster unified actions between them and followers by working together to achieve a common goal. How well a leader is able to unify a team is critical in shaping the organization’s ability to meet the ever-changing organization needs. According to Hu and Judge, (2017), today, leaders require essential characteristics to help them build, maintain and guide followers. Key among them includes the ability to think about the future and develop a realistic vision for the team. Besides, it is fundamental to create realistic goals too but understand that flexibility is necessary because changes and disruptions could happen along the way. More so, leaders need to be aware of their own initiative, need to lead and must be willing to accept responsibility. Leaders need to be motivators by establishing rewards or incentives for positive project outcomes because it gives followers energy and sense of direction.
A good leader needs to commit to the cause of the values for the group. Only through commitment, a leader can find the meaning of team actions; when they find that meaning, they find the team values. To achieve the team goal, leaders should not only show commitment but must convince everybody else to commit to the team’s cause. Leading for me is quite easy; however, leading for others is quite complicated. As a leader, it is important to exhibit high levels of integrity, honesty and support for others to create a winning environment (Cashman, 2017). These characters create an atmosphere of trust because followers need to be convinced that a leader is deserving of their trust. In building trust among followers, leaders must understand what and who they lead, trust in the reason they were chosen to lead and trust their ability to deliver on the team’s established vision and goal.
Ideally, leaders have the opportunity to influence and motivate followers naturally by defining goals, clarifying the path, addressing obstacles and offering the necessary support. Besides, as a leader, it is essential to understand the leadership style being applied. Some leadership style makes be effective in one situation but may falter in another. Leaders have to identify and adopt a style that brings out the best in every member of a team. Leaders can decide to be directive, participative, and supportive or achievement-oriented. Leadership influence may come in various forms, and there are distinct differences between influence, manipulation and power. A leader can apply several influence tactics available to design relationships and mobilize people to act effectively. The source of power or role can be instrumental in developing influence tactics and sometimes greatly determine the form of relationship that exists between leaders and followers. As a result, ethical and effective leaders must recognize the source of their influence in order to apply it appropriately. More so, leaders can develop a culture that promotes motivation by exhibiting certain conditions or behaviours.
Digital leadership, therefore, requires embracing digital thinking in the development of organizational structures and policies. It requires relentless efforts by leaders to make sure things work well for everyone in the organization. Digital leadership calls for leaders to foster an open, responsive and collaborative culture that is easily dynamic in this high changing technological world (El Sawy et al. 2016). This means celebrating victories together as well as changes and failures. It calls for high levels of empathy, boldness and humility as a leader to be able to create a transformative culture within an organization or community. Leaders need to take responsibility in this digital age. They must understand that there is a high level of connection that can affect a lot of people in ways that could not be imagined previously. As a result, they must establish visions and strategies that can lead an organization through change.
References
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