Leadership gives an Organization Direction
Every organization has made the past strides because of the leadership that came up with ideas and made them work for the organization. The strategies may be faulty or correct. They can cause an organization to fail or succeed. Once an idea has not worked in the past, the organizational leaders should come up with better policies.
Organizations and institutions have never gotten to a place where there is no need for learning. The pressure on organizations has been increasing for many years. It means that the leaders have to keep improving their skills, knowledge, and methods of dealing with contemporary challenges. One way of doing so is to continuously keep engaging in training to update their abilities (Casarella 541).
Leadership is now becoming more difficult than decades ago. The leaders have to create value for multiple stakeholders. Their organizations always need to innovate and execute new strategies for growth in the modern world. Therefore, organizations cannot just be good at one thing. They have to be good at strategy execution and innovation to gain from the market and at the same time to benefit the stakeholders (Latham, “Leadership” 13).
All the departments must work towards the chosen path. It would be disadvantageous to the organization when some like the marketing unit may not go hand in hand with the goals and strategies of the venture. The groups work without boundaries and so should the thoughts of the management.
The current leadership has a mixture of many disoriented skills and knowledge. The researchers have only been concentrating on what they like and not what the market requires. There are books, journals, and many articles about the same. The laxity in the research on leadership has brought many failures. The 21st century requires new ways of doing things because of new challenges. The theorists have concentrated on complementary, transformational, and transactional leadership theories.
Although successful for past problems, transformational leadership has not succeeded in solving the current situations. Servant leadership has become an alternative force to modern hitches in leadership. Another additional study relates to spiritual leadership. It helps to moderate the internal dimensions of both the leaders and followers (Casarella 541). Despite the overlap in these theories, many researchers are still treating them as if they are very different.
For the last five decades, there has been no great improvement in the development of effective leadership theories. Humans create organizations that have free will and may not necessarily obey scientific laws. Most of the direction studies have been quantitative. All the studies may not solve all the organization’s problems. Some leaders have chosen one path; others have two or more of the theories.
There is a need to rightly define success in leadership (Christensen and Embleton 78). The scientists would also need to simplify and narrow down to a few leadership theories in establishing effective leadership. As servant leadership becomes the most appropriate method, the researchers need to enhance the comprehensive definition of success. Leaders should not only choose the theories that are useful for the few stakeholders.
Leadership has changed substantially since the 1960s. There is a need to appreciate what has happened since then so that the leaders can work on a simplified method for each organization. Organizations have an absolute uniqueness and, therefore, need a specific approach to their challenges. There could be good initiatives by the writer to want all the theories to become one. However, each organization’s problem is different from the other. There is no need to have one method or formula for dealing with leadership. The more people become creative, the more they lead organizations effectively (Christensen and Embleton 78).
Creativity in each agency brings out the right leaders and successful organizations. Each company and each manager need to find the one right thing for their success. Otherwise, the world would have organizations that have stagnated because of following what others are following and thinking that it can succeed anywhere.
There have been failures in an attempt to do the organizational transformation. However, this has not stopped other organizations from succeeding in the market. Successful organizations need to promote other upcoming leaders who will take up their predecessors’ successful strategies. Although there are many leadership theories, the summarized ones include transformational leadership, the contingency model, and the path-goal theory. The majority of the past ideas have only concentrated their effort on the lower level management of organizations (Chapparamani 142).
The theorists have not yet converged on the best meaning of effective leadership. There have been more quantitative than qualitative research on leadership. The current institutions need more qualitative research on the top leadership of organizations.
The study seeks to develop a framework that would guide the top echelons in leadership. It has guidance from the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria for Performance Excellence. It involved interviews with senior executives from successful firms. It developed five stages for leading the transformation to greatness (Paulová and Mĺkva). The study focused on the first two categories that include forces and facilitators of change and leadership approaches.
Forces and facilitators of change have five forces that pull and push the organization to help it to transform from the old methods. The effects contribute to stopping the group inertia and propel it to grow in the contemporary world. It involves the challenges of the new organization and the parent firm, competition, and government requirements. The environment is highly dynamic. Organizations should focus on growth.
The forces include the tension that puts the pushing force on the organization. Resistance is a reaction to the tension forces. The alignment effect helps the organization to align with the goals and vision of the individual. They have to be consistent and congruent (Latham, “A Framework” 215). The Criteria for Performance Excellence relies on the organization’s strategic management cycles. The fifth force is Subject Matter Experts. The study focused on fourteen Chief Executive Officers. They used external consultants to help their organizations achieve success.
The leadership approaches include the Leading the Transformation to Performance Excellence framework. The plan includes nine criteria of the interconnected system. The stakeholders’ needs and interrelationships help to build the organization’s value (Chapparamani 142). The relationship develops through communication and collaboration. The leaders need compelling direction, focused strategy, and people. It also needs to deploy and execute measure performance, review it, reinforce positive behavior, and learn and improve.
The framework is the best approach to leadership. Organizations need a focused leadership at the top with the vision to transform the organization (Latham, “A Framework” 215). John Latham’s study has the best tenets for the top executives. The CEOs who provided the exact framework that worked for their organizations revealed the weaknesses of not working together. Leadership has evolved and requires participation and a wise application of strategy. The 1980s quality crisis should act as an example for all leaders to know that they are not exceptional to market challenges.
Any study that does not help the organization to grow in the modern world is not fit for use. There are pointers to success in the business community. The concentration on improving leadership can save millions of jobs and technological growth.
Works Cited
Casarella, Peter. “Archbishop Romero and Spiritual Leadership in the Modern World, Edited By Robert S.Pelton, C.S.C. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), Xxx + 192 Pp.”. Modern Theology 31.3 (2015): 541-542. Print.
Chapparamani, Kirthi. “Leadership Approaches.” GRA 3.2 (2012): 141-142. Print.
Christensen, Joel and Eli Embleton. “Ancient Narrative Therapy for Leadership: The Classical World and the Modern Leadership Classroom.” The Classical Journal 112.1 (2016): 78. Print.
Latham, John R. “A Framework for Leading the Transformation to Performance Excellence.” Quality Management Journal 20.2 (2013): 210-232. Print.
Latham, John R. “Leadership for Quality and Innovation.” Quality Management Journal 21.1 (2014): 11-15. Print.
Paulová, Iveta and Miroslava Mĺkva. “Leadership – The Key Element in Improving Quality Management.” Quality Innovation Prosperity 15.1 (2011): 30. Print.