Meeting Ethical Challenges of Leadership †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Meeting Ethical Challenges of Leadership. Answer: Introduction Leadership in the simplest words is both a research and practical skill which encompasses the ability of an individual to lead, guide, motivate, influence and push the organization, teams or the employees towards the fulfilment of the organizational goals and objectives. Leadership is extremely critical to the organization and leaders are the prime force responsible to take the organization at the Zenith of its industry (Bolman Deal, 2017). The purpose of the essay here is to discuss the importance of flexibility and adaptability in leadership pertaining to different circumstances an organization faces in its entire journey. In the past, plethoras of business and political leaders have changed their leadership style to better accommodate the goals of the organization or the country (Northouse, 2018). It is often said and seen that leaders have to be highly flexible and adaptable to the changing circumstances for the larger interest of the goals of the organization. Steve Jobs in his initial days was seen as a task master, who did not care about the employees and was focussed solely on the deliverables of the employee, this put him under a lot of criticism from the board and his employees (Goleman, 2018).However, during his second journey with Apple, he realized he has to change and adapt to the new ways of leadership for the overall development of the organization and his personality. It is often seen that leaders who are full of themselves and think that they know everything much better than everyone else falls hard on the ground(Ward, 2016). On the contrary, leaders who are flexible, participative in their styles, learn from the changing situation and adapt accordingly are proven to be far successful than others. A number of management authors and experts after thorough analysi s on leadership styles have commented that it is always better to have more than one tool in the toolkit; flexibility and adaptability are additional tools (Antonakis Day, 2017). Impact of flexibility and adaptability in Leadership The above mentioned argument is strongly supported by the situational theory of leadership which gives strong notions that no leadership style is the best, it all depends on the situation at hand and which type of leadership style can be best applied to the situation to get the expected result. The theory further propounds saying that the most effective leaders are the ones who are able to adapt their style to the changing situation, pick cues for the type of task, and understand the group cohesion and other factors which might contribute to the success of the job (Heifetz Linsky, 2017). Situational leadership is also referred to as Hershey-Blanchard situational leadership theory. According to the theory he has characterized the style into primary four styles of leadership. The first one is Telling, in this leader tells the people what has to be done and how exactly it has to be done. The second style is of selling; in this style leaders sell their ideas to their followers. The thir d style being participative in nature, in this leaders give less of direction and allow the flow of ideas from the employees, empowering employees significantly help the company in bringing the entire company together. The fourth style of leadership is delegating in nature, this involves the group members to take accountability and responsibility of their own actions. According to the theory a more telling style is needed at the beginning of the project as the followers are less involved thus have less responsibility towards the project. As and when the employees become accustomed to the project, the style is more delegating in nature, and they can take and make their own decision for the project, implying that the leadership style adopted from being telling in the initial stage to being delegative in the later stage. The situation approach also helps the leaders to avoid any pitfalls of the single styled leadership style, by assessing the situation and the environment; they can e asily overcome the obstacle by changing their leadership style (Renz Herman, 2016). The leaders can benefit tremendously by adopting flexible style of leadership. One of the main benefits is overcoming challenges by continuous learning. Every team and organization in its journey to become the best is encountered by plethora of challenges, which must be handled with due diligence to crush and move past them. In such scenario, the best strategy the leader can use is to sit back and see what is working and what is not working in the favour (DuBrin, 2015). Through the concept of learning agility the leader can bring all its people together on a common platform ask for their feedback, assess their performance, coach them and learn about what strategy works best for the organization. Doing this, the leader can adapt to the situation and change his leadership style to match the new strategy of the organization. Jack Welch at GE was pioneer in introducing the learning agility program which set the base for its success in the past and the future (Johnston Marshall, 2016). Strategic planning is significant, crucial and critical to every organization, however the chances that the initial plan leads to the desired result is extremely low. Thus, the leaders must be flexible to adapt the plan to the changed circumstances (Tourish, 2014). The present state of the world is dynamic, with the infusion of digital marketing, customers have a lot of control on the information available on the internet, thus the leaders have to be on their feet at all times, and change according to the changing dynamics of the market and the industry in general. A rigid mentality will lead to nothing but failure and disappointment, the recent example of this is the case of Nokia. The leadership was absolutely rigid about the changing landscape of the mobile phone industry, and they were focussed on the past success strategy of Nokia, the lack of innovation, inability to adapt to the changing circumstances was the reason for the failure once upon a time the most famous company on t he face of planet earth(Kornives, 2016). Thus, it is really important that leaders are extremely flexible in their approach, more so in the present times when the world is changing rapidly and plethora of disruptions are making their way every single day. A lost opportunity is worth a millions of dollars, reinstating the argument that leadership style has to be really adaptive and flexible to the changing circumstances (Collinson, 2014). Daniel Goleman, an expert in the field of Emotional intelligence and leadership in the year 2016 outlines 6 major leadership style and pointed out that none of the style with utmost surety can be said are the best. According to Daniel, a democratic style might fit in a particular scenario, while a command style might be a better fitment in the situation of crisis. Thus, there is no way possible that one leadership style can help the leader or organization sail through the entire journey. One has to be highly adaptive and flexible in order to make the most out of the changing circumstances and situation. Effective leaders always have to be in tune with the changing business environment in order to make the organization move in the right strategic direction, in the absence of adaptability and flexibility the organization can easily fall into the trap of redundancy thus losing its position of strength and competitive edge to a competitor. Leaders have the responsibility of evaluating th e information available to them, use their own sources to get to the bottom of any issue and then make changes in their style to accommodate the best strategy for further growth and development of the organization. The only argument against the notion can be that leaders have to demonstrate perseverance in their act to achieve the goals; this however will yield more productive result if leader is adaptable and flexible to achieve the set goals. Leadership can thus the art of knowing when to stand firm and when to be flexible. Number of experts in their journal on leadership has mentioned that in all there are three factors which decide the type of leadership in a particular situation. The first one being that leadership has to be adjusted according to the competency of the employees, a low competent employee needs more guidance from the leadership to excel in his job duties, and vice versa (Lussier Achua, 2015). The second one being the commitment level the employees have on the company and the leadership. Thirdly, the style of leadership which is finally adopted by the leader would also be affected by the ability of the leaders to provide such changeable leadership. A recent example of developing flexibility and adaptability in the leadership style is the current visionary and the one of the greatest leader of present times, Jeff Bezos. Jeff who started off with the idea of Amazon in the year 1994 grew from a dozen of employees delivering books to more than 500,000 people selling almost everything in almost 180 countries. The journey was definitely an inspiring one for the youth and the business leaders and experts. Jeff leadership style in the start of his journey with Amazon was absolutely crude, or as some people call it rough, brutal and raw, he faced a lot of flak due to his leadership style (Johnson, 2017). The company was facing a lot of troubles due to high employee turnover and in a number of exit interviews employees mentioned that they are leaving the company because of Jeffs leadership style. Jeff Bezos so was engaged in being customer-centric that he completely forgot about the core strength of Amazon, its employees. Jeff was really smart at picking up the cues and transformed his leadership style. He started valuing the employees and appreciated and motivated them whenever it was necessary, he realized the importance of building a company together. In one of his recent interviews he mentioned about the change in his leadership style as one of the reasons for the success of Amazon. The above real life example is self-explanatory towards the importance of practicing flexibility and adaptability in leadership (Verba, 2015). Leaders have to ensure that they engage the employees in the daily activities of the organization and empower them by making them liable for their own actions; they have to ensure that even the lowest employee in the food chain is highly motivated and feels strong connection with the employee (Cashman, 2017). Ensuring all this is definitely not easy when the leader has so many important things to do in a limited time thus comes flexibility and adaptability in the picture. Leader has to understand the circumstance and then distribute his time towards different activities, be flexible and not rigid in talking to the employees when they need the most. According to one of the recent study conducted by Harvard Business School, it was founded that leaders who keeps on bringing changes in their leadership style have a lot to contribute to the organization. They are not bounded by the elementary thinking, are high risk takers and a peoples person, flexibility and adaptability just adds feath er in their cap and help them in taking the organization to the envisioned heights. An analogy which explains the above mentioned argument, a flexible and adapting leader is like a train, which keeps on adjusting its speed according to the approaching station and the distance to be covered, leaders in the same way have to adapt to different styles and be flexible in their business conduct in changing circumstances (Beck Cowan, 2014). Conclusion To conclude, there are no two notions that the art of effective leadership results out of flexibility and adaptability to different situation. No two situations are same, thus it will be absolutely imbecile to use the same leadership style in every situation. A cogent leader is one who correctly assesses the situation and the business environment and makes a right call depending on the severity of the situation, and by moulding his leadership style. It is impossible to comment which leadership style is the best, but it can be easily said that leadership has to be a synergy of two or many styles to better accommodate the mission and vision of the organization and take the company on the path of increased business momentum ensuring sustainability at all times. References Antonakis, J., Day, D. V. (Eds.). (2017). The nature of leadership. Sage publications. Beck, D. E., Cowan, C. (2014). Spiral dynamics: Mastering values, leadership and change. John Wiley Sons. Bolman, L. 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