LEADERSHIP

Challenges and Future Trends of Leadership



Challenges and Future Trends of Leadership

Introduction

Over the past few years, the business environment has been significantly changed. Due to this change, there is a requirement of change in the styles of leadership and management (Pertrie, 2011, pp.6). In comparison to the past, now the leaders have to equip with complex and critical thinking abilities. This paper discusses the major changes that have been occurred, and hence the challenges of leadership and management in the business environment of today and future. Also, the four styles of management are briefly discussed.

Changes in Business Environment

Difficulties and challenges in management and leadership of the business arise due to any kind of changes, either positive or negative. Examples of the negative changes are economic downturns, illnesses or deaths of the partners, natural disasters, or supply chain interruptions, while, the example of positive change may include mergers and acquisitions. In the current business environment all of these changes occur at a rapid rate, due to which the leadership styles have to face challenges, in order to adapt to the environment.

Challenges for Current Leadership

Due to the change in business environment, the leadership has become more challenging and complex (Bennis, 2007, pp.1). Below are some of the major challenges, required by the current business environment.

Changes in required Skill set

The competencies required in the current leaders have been changing. Currently, the organizations use any theory according to its structure and needs, such as autocratic leadership in which the leader makes the decision without involving anyone else in the decision, democratic in which the leader encourages the other for decision making (AIGA, 2011), and distributed leadership in which the power distributes among the employees. However, now the organizations need the leadership abilities such as adaptability, self awareness, collective thinking, and teamwork. The leaders can be successful in the future business environments, only if they have the above discussed abilities.

Obsolete Development Methods

Despite of the changing business environment, the leadership development methods have not changed much. The leadership development programs such as job assignments, trainings (Gordon, 1977), mentoring are insufficient to meet the changing business environment needs.

Future Trends of Leadership Development

In order to fulfill the leadership requirement of the future business environments, the following trends would provide help:

Focusing more on Vertical Development

Up till now, the leaders were inclined more for the horizontal development; horizontal development deals with the development of competencies. However, ...