¶ … Leadership in Organizations
Transformational Leadership in the 21st Century
It is often said a manager is what one does, and a leader is who one is. Leadership theorists, experts and practitioners agree that leadership, especially the turbulent 21st century, is more driven by unanticipated change that strict, formal execution. Leaders who are effective today have the ability to keep their organizations agile, goal-focused and moving forward to attaining challenging objectives despite formidable obstacles and uncertainty.
Transformational leaders in the 21st century nurture and foster creativity and a high level of autonomy, mastery and purpose on the part of their teams (Cheung, Wong, 2011). The growing reliance on virtual teams and the need for creating and sustaining trust within them, transformational leaders are called upon to do more than just accomplish tasks, they are expected to lead entire teams beyond their current levels of performance to higher levels of achievement (Andressen, Konradt, Neck, 2012). The combining forces of greater economic pressure on organizations and the need for greater accuracy and speed in new product development is leading many organizations to create virtual teams that are thinly staffed with highly qualified professions, with many having over a decade of experience in their own fields (Andressen, Konradt, Neck, 2012).
The role of the transformational leader has also changed markedly in the 21st century as well. Now, leaders are expected to maintain teams at high performance levels while also ensuring they stay agile enough to respond to market fluctuations and changes in direction of their firms. To attain this level of agility, the best transformational leaders infuse a very high level of autonomy, mastery and purpose into their organizations, creating a culture of self-driven motivation and long-term learning (Cheok, Eleanor, OHiggins, 2012). It takes a transformational leader to be able to attain this very high level of performance however, a manager acting in an authoritarian or even transactional leadership style will not be...
Transformational Leadership in the Promotion of Ethical Climate and Practices Some researchers have argued that transformational leadership is effective in promoting ethical climate and practices in order to influence individuals' ethical behaviors in workgroups. Ethical behavior is differentially defined from one culture to another and from one organization to another and it is this difference that the transformational leader is able to convey to the organizational employees through effective means and
Leadership is the process of directing the behavior of others toward the achievement of some general objectives. Effective leadership is very important for molding a group of people into a team, shaping them into a force that serves as a sustainable business benefit. Effective leaders have an inspirational vision. Forethought and change expectation is their hallmark. Leaders know how to make people function in a joint fashion, and how to
By the same token, by not having any specific policy implications, servant leadership theory does not expressly reject the transformational, situational or results-focused ideas of leadership. It is merely an adjunct to these theories, and is mostly useful for deciding on whether or not somebody should become a leader in the first place. Situational Leadership and Results-Focused Leadership These two leadership theories are opposed to one another, but they share the
Transformation of a group to one with unified values and a shared sense of accomplishment requires better people skills than I currently possess (Bass & Riggio 2006). These weaknesses, of course, will present certain obstacles that must be overcome during my leadership development. The drive to accommodate can denote a general desire to subsume one's will for someone else's purposes or ends, and this could limit my potential for development
The administrative support staff who is dealing with frustrated doctors who cannot adjust to the new computer tablets they are using as an alternative to paper files may require a transactional leader who can provide the organizational support needed to move through an uncomfortable transition. A single leader cannot always be everything to everyone. By learning one's leadership strengths and weaknesses and understanding the leadership skills needed to achieve
However, this does not happen always. An organization's structure is in reality an extremely powerful control technique, as the alternative to structure will automatically favor some groups and put others in trouble. In case managers are employing structure to extend power to some groups or individuals they are not just wielding power rather are getting involved in political movement. Therefore, strategic choices relating to structure might not be coherent
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