Leadership Challenges at Singapore Airlines

This assignment examines the complex leadership landscape facing Singapore Airlines. It delves into the airline's SWOT analysis, exploring internal strengths and weaknesses alongside external opportunities and threats. A key focus is on how leadership can navigate intensifying competition in the industry. The assignment also investigates the role of organizational culture and adaptability (strategic agility) in shaping effective leadership practices at Singapore Airlines.

Running head: STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
Strategic Leadership
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
1. Organisational Leadership Case Study: Description of the identified strategic challenges........2
2. The Current Leadership Agility in Singapore Airlines................................................................3
3. Development Plan........................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Agile leaders are characterized by the democratic, inclusive, and openness towards
innovations. According to Anthony (2012), the agile leaders are more likely keen in exploring
and learning innovative functionalities and developing the strong ability skills of the associated
workforce. In today’s world, the advancements brought to the business scenario are responsible
for emerging innovations. Therefore, the leaders often face the strategic challenges to cope with
such competitive landscape and lead the workforce for achieving excellence. The study would
concentrate on the strategic challenges faced by Singapore Airlines. The study would also
discuss the leadership practices to mitigate the issues and present a development plan for
increasing leadership agility. Furthermore, the study would reflect on developing leadership
agility for obtaining the future achievements.
1. Organisational Leadership Case Study: Description of the identified strategic challenges
Singapore Airlines has captured the leading position in the international market due to the
ever growing business excellence and commendable airline services. The company is focusing
on the rapid innovations and becoming adaptive changes. However, it has been observed that the
profit level of Singapore Airline has steadily dropped over past few years. It is observed that the
intensifying competition and over challenging market scenario are responsible for such sudden
decline in profit level. In the quarter of the year 2014, the profit rates were again down. The
record follows almost 52% drop in the operating profits to SGD39 million, which is nearly
US$31 million (The Straits Times. 2017). However, the excellence of the business leaders helped
the company to increase the profit level by adopting the preferable strategies. However, again on
2017, it is reported that the Singapore Airlines published a crushing set of the financial

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statement. This financial status reflects that the company experienced the loss of $138 million for
the most recent quarter (Centreforaviation.com. 2014). The rapidly growing competitiveness in
the global business scenario is posing such challenges due to which it has become necessary for
the business leaders to modify the strategic values. In order to mitigate the issues with the
strategic development, the leaders play the most significant role.
Adopting the skilled leadership practices can be much fruitful in such context. In order to
remain ‘fit for future purpose’, it is essential for the business leaders to develop the personal
insights that would help in becoming an efficient leader. The continuous development in the
competitive scenario is persuading the company to adopt more innovative methods that would be
helpful in structuring the business functionalities. In spite of the efficiency maintained in the
innovative practices, the company is continuously struggling with the higher competition with
the market. For instance, the major competitors, such as Thai Airways and Garuda, have taken
the further steps to remain proactive in this competitive scenario. The American carriers and
these regional players are introducing the most effective digital innovations for the betterment of
the customer services. On the contrary, business leaders of Singapore Airlines are struggling to
train the employees for utilizing the advanced digital technologies. These challenges are
considered as the potential threats to survive for a longer time in this competitive scenario.
2. The Current Leadership Agility in Singapore Airlines
According to McKenzie and Aitken (2012), agile leaders are much focused on fulfilling
the needs of others by acknowledging others’ perspectives. They tend to concentrate on
achieving the business goals by improving the competency level of the associated workers. It has
been observed that the business leaders of Singapore Airline are following the transformational

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leadership style, which prioritizes the needs of the individuals. The managers think that the
success of the company depends on the efforts provided by every individual working under this
company. The agile attributes of the leaders is completely visible in the leadership practices
undertaken by the business leaders of Singapore Airlines. The leaders perceive that the shared
enthusiasm and perseverance of the staffs are contributing towards improving the customer
experience.
However, in spite of the flexibility maintained in the leadership practices in Singapore
Airlines, there is the lack of shared knowledge. The workforce is facing challenges in operating
the innovative technologies due to which the company is lacking the technological skills to
participate in the market competition. An agile leader needs to create the learning scenario and
drives as well as sustains innovation within the organization (Chatman et al. 2014). The leaders
are responsible towards developing the workforce talents and direct them to accomplish the
organisational goals. These leaders have the stronger ability to maintain communication
transparency for sharing visions and inspiring others to ensure productive outcome (Nowak
2012). There are 12 major practices that an agile leader adopts in order to ensure the productive
outcome and to deal with the emerging challenges. These practices are as follows:
 Personal values sensitization
 Emotional Intelligence
 Sense Make-Give
 Mindful of Impact
 Access Capability
 Create Learning
 Cultural Competence

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 Total Leadership
 One-to-many Dialogues
 One-to-one dialogue
 Performance Challenge
 Agility Resilience
The major gap in the leadership process of Singapore Airlines was found in managing the
performance challenges, agility resilience, create learning, and cultural competence. As an agile
leader, it is important to deal with people from diverse cultural background. In order to cope with
the future opportunities, the leader needs to realize the interests of the other people and try to
find the process of motivating them in different ways. It would help the leaders in ensuring
productive outcome for the organisational success. The leaders need to focus more on the
specific issues that are preventing the workforce from developing the knowledge regarding the
innovative business practices. An agile leader possesses the democratic trait, which determines
the consultation with other people during any decision-making process. During any conflicting
scenario, they need to be communicative towards the associated workers. Taking the
performance challenge is necessary for a leader to deal with the hardships and accomplishing
goals in spite of such difficulties. In the further section of the study, the discussion of the agile
leadership practices would be discussed.
3. Development Plan
The case scenario follows the issues with the leadership consistency, which affects the
performance parameter of the associated workforce. The obtained ideas from the above scenario
describe the needs for the effective development plan that would direct the workforce towards

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achieving the organisational goals. It is to be stated that the individuals are involved in
transformation in which undertaking the unique initiative is necessary. Singapore is a culturally
diverse country where the people from different culture collaborate to perform the organizational
functionalities. The development plan for the agile leadership is based on the following
activities:
Development Plan
Leadership Agility
Skills
What needs to be done Involved People Tracking Progress
1. Development of
Flexibility
An agile leader requires being
flexible enough to deal with the
different circumstances that may
occur at any point of time.
It is essential for the
business leaders of
Singapore Airlines to
maintain such
flexibility to motivate
the associated
workforce from
different cultural
background.
Moreover, the leaders
need to train the
employees in order to
make them more
adaptive to this
dynamic business
scenario.
Internal Survey to
receive feedback
from the employees

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2. Dealing with the
Transformer
Leaders
The transformer leaders are the
ones who have the capability of
dealing with the workforce
belong to diverse cultural
background. While adopting the
innovative technicalities for
strengthening the competitive
position in current business
scenario.
The business leaders of
Singapore Airlines
have to be much
Test of the technical
knowledge of the
employees
3. Development of
the learning
scenario
An agile leader needs to focus on
the drawback and accordingly
fulfill the gap. Therefore, it is
essential for the leaders to
develop a learning scenario for
the employees and enhance their
knowledge about the business
technicalities.
The business leaders of
Singapore Airlines
Allocation of the
dynamic works to
the employees once
a week
Table 1: Development Plan
(Source: Created by the Author)
The agile leaders have to be much cautious about the scenario and uncertainties. As a leader,
it is necessary to be more cautious while conveying the messages to the people. It is essential for
an agile leader to recognize whether the messages are heard or understood by the people. If not,

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it is the prime responsibility to improve the understanding regarding the potential drawbacks.
While working under the dynamic and culturally diverse environment, there is the possibility of
the situational conflicts. An agile leader focuses beyond the possibilities and improves the work
practices to deal with such uncertainties (Lichtenstein and Aitken 2014). The case scenario
depicts that the challenges posed by the competitive environment is responsible for the downfall
in the organisational revenues. On the other hand, the current competitive scenario is mostly
driven by the innovations and improved technicalities. The following improvements would help
in creating the productive atmosphere in the business field.
 In order to improve the performance parameter of the associated workers, it is important
to provide them the proper learning session or training. In this training session, they
would learn about utilization of latest technologies and digital innovative practices.
 The leaders need to conduct the internal survey to receive feedback from the employees
about their issues and concerns.
 The leaders need to arrange the weekly meeting to communicate with the associated
workers and updating them about the latest requirements in the technological aspects.
 The establishment of the communicational transparency would be beneficial enough to
promote a multicultural environment within the organization.
 Identification of the training needs is also one of the most necessary aspects that are
needed to be taken into consideration.
The above initiatives are needed to be taken into account in order to improve the leadership
agility in Singapore Airline. The progress report is needed to be monitored every week to derive
the ideas about the further improvements. This process would be much helpful in developing the
leadership values and driving the organization towards success in this competitive market.

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Conclusion
The study develops the idea about the agile leadership followed by the case study of
Singapore Airline, which has been experiencing the greater downfall in economic structure. It
has been observed that in spite of the transformational leadership skills, the business leaders
could not retain the consistency in managing the dynamic workforce. The leaders are responsible
towards developing the workforce talents and direct them to accomplish the organisational goals.
These leaders have the stronger ability to maintain communication transparency for sharing
visions and inspiring others to ensure productive outcome Furthermore, the excessive
competitive scenario is also posing some recognizable challenges. The study develops the basic
leadership traits that would be helpful for becoming a successful agile leader and ensuring
productive outcome in upcoming future. Developing the agile leadership would turn out to be
much profitable for Singapore Airlines in the upcoming future.

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References
Anthony, S.D. 2012. The New Corporate Garage: where today’s most innovative and world
changing thinking is taking place. Harvard Business Review, September, pp.3-11.
Bennis, W.G. and Thomas, R.J. 2002. Crucibles of Leadership. Harvard Business Review,
September, HBR
Centreforaviation.com. 2014. Singapore Airlines SWOT: challenges continue as competition
intensifies as shown by 1QFY2015 results. [online] CAPA - Centre for Aviation. Available at:
https://centreforaviation.com/insights/analysis/singapore-airlines-swot-challenges-continue-as-
competition-intensifies-as-shown-by-1qfy2015-results-180289 [Accessed 29 Jan. 2018].
Chatman, J.A., Caldwell, D.F., O’Reilly, C.A.and Doerr, B. 2014. Parsing organizational culture:
How the norm for adaptability influences the relationship between culture consensus and
financial performance in high-technology firms. Journal of Organizational Behavior, Published
online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.1928.
Doz, Y.L. and Kosonen, M. 2009. Embedding Strategic Agility. Long Range Planning, Elsevier
Kempster, S. 2006. Leadership learning through lived experience: A process of apprenticeship?
Journal of Management and Organisation, June, 12, 1, pp.4-22
Kempster, S., Jackson, B. and Conroy, M. 2011. Leadership as purpose: Exploring the role of
purpose in leadership practice. Leadership, 7(3), pp.317-334