The Challenge of Leadership Today

This essay explores the challenges faced by leaders in today's globalized and complex work environment and provides recommendations for overcoming them.

Essay
Leadership
Institutional Affiliation(S)
Student Name
[Date]

1
The challenge of leadership today
A leader is a person who holds a command and is responsible managing other
individuals who work for a shared purpose. Core abilities possessed by a strong leader
includes influencing, inspiring and observing that the projects remains successful beyond
basic drives of job description. Leadership, on the other hand can be compared to science of
management and associated with vision and personality, methods and routine along with
structure and management. Personal attributes that are associated with leadership like
innovation and creativity further adds value to the management ( Wadhwa & Parimoo, 2013).
(Gentry, 2016) reveals that life of today’s leader is very challenging as they need to lead and
inspire diversified group of employees while working for international organisations. On this
note, this essay will draw upon similar challenges faced by leadership today along with
finding out ways that can potentially eliminate those challenges. This essay will conclude
after making appropriate recommendation to develop and improve leadership quality from
academic and theoretical lenses.
Gentry (2016) recognised that contemporary leaders faces complex and globalised
work environment that makes them face challenges related to political and legal barriers and
to keep up with competitors, they have to meet every stakeholders’ expectations
considerably. After conducting a thematic analysis from data collected out of seven major
countries, the author finds that significant challenges faced by todays leadership includes:
developing managerial effectiveness, inspiring others to ensure that the job is done
appropriately, developing and mentoring employees for enhanced organisational culture,
building and leading effective teams, guiding change and innovation as per industry demands
and maintaining stakeholders and politics to eliminate workflow disruptions. (Ibrahim, 2016)

2
further categorised leadership challenges into two categories, external and internal
challenges. External challenges include facing issues pertaining lack of resources and
funding, opposition for external forces like community along with interpersonal issues within
organisations that often reduces organisational performance. Social, political and economic
forces in the wider context can significantly affect organisations as well and therefore,
today’s leaders have to measure them effectively to manage with continuous succession of
minor annoyances and crises threatening the mission of the organisations. Internal challenges
to some extent can be related to those limitations that are held by leaders while transmitting
and following their vision. These challenges include insecurity, fear and lack of confidence
and tolerance which further act as a barrier while performing leadership roles. Facing
personal issues and showing positive attitude is another example real world leader face while
adapting organisational behaviour and acknowledging attitude and tendencies that may come
in their way (Ibrahim, 2016).
Apart from the above-mentioned challenges, to lead an organisation leader have to
face intense competition to survive and grow while they pursue towards their mission within
an industrial setting. Managing organisational change and business uncertainty also adds to
the leadership challenge where the leaders have to look after stakeholders and government
demands that remains more than ever volatile. Therefore, leadership across organisations
requires enabling skills that can minimise chaos admits change and directing innovative
steps. The challenge of technological advancement and innovation have made leaders face
new expectations of customers as well as highly driven technological society where any lack
seen within new kind of method or product delivered never suffice their demands. Managing
industrial harmony is another challenge that has grown due to increased complexity in
business environment. It has made workplace filled with people having diversified thoughts,
beliefs and backgrounds thereby enabling conflicts within internal managements. This further

3
hamper capacity building required for growth and reorganisation (Onodugo & Ewurum, n.d.).
BP’s Deepwater Horizon story is known to the world that reflects strategic leadership failure
of its CEO Tony Hayward who unexpectedly lacked contemporary leadership skills and
showed too much patience while handling issues in his firm. Another remarkable failure
includes the name of Martin Winterkorn, the CEO of Volkswagen who left his leadership
post shamefully after recognising several issues in his company’s products which shows how
incapability in managing challenging situations results to failures among leaders (Experience
to Lead, 2018).
It is very significant to bring changes in the way that frames and understand
leadership to meet identified challenges while leading in complex and uncertain times.
Additionally, a well-formed, targeted and planned initiatives along with training steps must
be adopted for today’s leaders that can considerably assist them to overcome leadership
challenges along with relying upon other means like social and informal learning (Gentry,
2016). Management theory of John Kotter states, “leadership is about coping with change,
whereas management is about coping with complexity” (Lunenburg, 2011, p.1). The author
claims that leadership process involves developing vision, aligning individuals with core
vision through effective communication and motivating them by empowering through basic
fulfilment of needs. The author reveals that enlightened leaders are the ones who can make
rigid complexities more flexible, remains more adaptive and innovative. As discussed before,
today’s firms face uncertainty throughout its discourse, the mind-set of leadership should be
shifted from the frame where they are viewed as an individual development process for
developing an entire wider community-based organisation. In literature, it is been said that
high performance originations consider more on development and training of leaders as
compared to typical organisations. Nevertheless, many leaders and CEO’s still think that

4
people who are employed and managed to perform a paid job should do whatever they are
told to (Kolzow, 2014).
(Gentry, 2016) states that in this ever-changing business dynamics era, mentoring,
developing others and coaching are few things that needs to be considered for meeting the
leadership challenges while leading complex and uncertain times. The author also pinpoints
significance behind team management effectiveness and meeting employees that can guide
leaders who faces challenges in incorporating change management and effective use of
resources. (Horth & Buchner, 2014) identifies that innovative leadership are what required by
contemporary organisation to operate in challenging and unpredictable circumstances.
Therefore, there seems a great requirement to create a climate for innovations in
organisations as innovative systems and thinking have become an essential component for
bringing healthier and viable organisational environment. As situations and problems
becomes more complex, they do not fit into previous patterns as what worked before, do not
work these days. Thus, to analyse beyond everyday situations, the author categorises
innovation leadership further into 2 components. Innovation approach to leadership can bring
new and enhanced thinking along with actions that can be instilled in leaders while managing
and going beyond routine work. Second approach is leadership for innovation in which
leaders learn to create organisational climate in which others apply innovative thinking for
problem-solving culture while developing new products or services. (Allen, 2018) identified
few innovative and renowned leaders who with their innovative skills and problem-solving
nature ranked among world’s top business leaders. The names include Jeff Bezos, the founder
and CEO of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Groups
and Tim Cook leading Apple Inc. successfully.
A well-designed leadership development program is the key to attract, identify and
retain corporate leadership. The major elements that are present in leadership development

5
programs includes various functions that includes: recruitment for sourcing leadership talent,
making assessments for evaluating capabilities of leaders, both internally and externally.
Third function is performance management that monitors and make course checking that
needs to be developed in leaders. Succession planning comes afterwards that avoids gaps
within leadership, following comes career planning that enables employees to comprehend
their leadership options as well as goal setting creations and lastly, development function that
creates a roadmap to fill any gaps identified. There are many theories and models that can
determine right leadership for organisations. For instance, situational leadership theory argues
that best leaders are identified by situational variables and single leadership approach can
never suit every given workplace situation. Therefore, identifying appropriate leadership style
is the most crucial step that needs to be undertaken by every organisation before perusing
further training and improvement programs for leadership development (Oracle , 2012).
Global competency model or global competency index (GCI) can be recommended
for today’s leadership development as this model pulls together several traditional theories,
combining them into one index that are required by leaders to cope up with todays’
challenging business environment. These includes: intellectual intelligence to cope with high
complexity tasks, emotional intelligence to understand, recognise and manage themselves
while undertaking other individuals’ emotional states for problem-solving and organisation
behaviours monitoring. Cultural intelligence further looks forward in solving culture-based
issues and meta cognitive intelligence enables leaders to understand oneself. Existential
intelligence shows leaders path to bring forward individuals as well as organisation action in
alignment with wider sense of purpose and lastly, moral intelligence exercises morality and
perseverance of sanctity towards other living beings and the world leaders inhibits in
(Fernandez, 2014). Unlike other theories, GCI focuses more upon leadership competencies
that can provide global leaders with high functioning elements by instilling in them six

6
leadership intelligences. The GCI approach is able to monitor and direct skills, motivation
and knowledge to form a behavioural repertory that are built on building blocks of behaviour
for a business environment that is full of complexity and challenges (Dai & Li, 2016).
The globalised and competitive organisational environment have undoubtably made
modern-day leaders’ life full of challenges as they face complex and diversified workplace
environment while working across cultural boundaries. Therefore, new economies and
business standards demands effective leadership qualities that can be summarised into
strengths, weaknesses, personalities, attitude and value that can range from extroverted
leaders to nearly secluded ones. The above essay also recognised some critical challenges that
are faced by todays organisation’s leadership while considering growth within organisation.
The recommendation made in the above essay can potentially assist todays leaders as well as
organisations by implementing leadership development programs after re-looking upon
leaders’ competencies, commitment and character. It can also be suggested that a continuous
review of organisational demands and expectations can further help todays’ leaders meet
challenges while manging organisations comprising global competitiveness.

7
References
Allen, F. E. (2018). The World's Most Innovative Leaders. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2018/09/04/the-worlds-most-innovative-
leaders/#2b75dde6517f
Dai, L., & Li, J. (2016). The Integrated Design of Leadership Development. Open Journal of
Social Sciences, 4, 127-132.
Experience to Lead. (2018). Three Leadership Lessons from Big Time CEO Failures.
Retrieved from https://www.experiencetolead.com/leadership-lessons-ceo-failures/
Fernandez, A. (2014). Leadership Competencies in the New Global Frontier. Journal of
General Management Research, 1(1), 37-50.
Gentry, W. A. (2016). The Challenges Leaders Face Around the World: More Similar than
Different. Retrieved from
https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ChallengesLeadersFace.pdf
Horth, D., & Buchner, D. (2014). Innovation Leadership: How to use innovation to lead
effectively, work collaboratively, and drive results. Retrieved from
https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/InnovationLeadership.pdf
Ibrahim, L. Y. (2016). Effective Managerial Leardership and Challenges in Sport
Organization. Journal of Sports and Physical Education, 3(5), 73-80.

8
Kolzow, D. R. (2014). Leading from Within: Building Organizational Leadership Capacity.
Retrieved from
https://www.iedconline.org/clientuploads/Downloads/edrp/Leading_from_Within.pdf
Onodugo, V. A., & Ewurum, U. J. (n.d.). Coping With Leadership Challenges for
Organization Survival and Growth. Retrieved from https://www.longdom.org/open-
access/coping-with-leadership-challenges-for-organization-survival-and-growth-
2315-7844-1-118.pdf
Oracle . (2012). Seven Steps for Effective Leadership Development . Retrieved from
http://www.oracle.com/us/media1/steps-effective-leadership-dev-1657106.pdf
Wadhwa, S., & Parimoo, D. (2013). Leadership and its Challenges in the Globalizing World.
Journal of Management Sciences And Technology, 1(1), 30-37.