Challenges in Leading an Organization

This essay discusses the challenges faced by leaders in leading an organization in a changing environment. It explores internal and external challenges and provides recommendations for improving leadership development programs.

RUNNING HEAD: LEADERSHIP
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Leadership
Essay
Student Name
4/28/2019

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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Challenges in Leading an Organization........................................................................................................2
Meeting the challenges of Leadership.........................................................................................................4
Recommendations for improving the quality of Leadership Development Program..................................6
Overcoming Limitations of Approaches.......................................................................................................8
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................9
References.................................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Leadership is influencing others to do the task or to achieve the objectives as according
to the set goals. A leader is an individual who encourages his supporters or followers to achieve
the objective on time for mutual benefits. Leader is a person with a vision and initiates his
followers so that it turns into their vision as being the common goals for both. A leader
executes some of the imperative tasks as an organizational representative; thus, the fact is tacit
that a leader is necessitated at each and every aspect of the organization (Mabey & Knights,
2018). Today’s changing scenario changed the roles and responsibilities of a leader and that
broaden the concept of leadership. Leading an organization becomes a tough task due to many
divers role of leader in this external and internal environment that creates many challenges in
the process of leadership which affects the followers and leader.
The essay includes detailing of the challenges in leadership, the role of a leader extends
to setting, computing and accomplishing the goals. Leaders part an imperative role to keep the
situations in control and instigate the employees to accomplish their goals. The purpose of this
essay is to comprehend the prime challenges faced by the leaders in leading the organization in
currently changing environment. The essay deliberates about several limitations of leadership
approaches. Lastly, essay will highlight all the recommendation on the basis of changing
concept of leadership and the challenges confronted by the leaders in this diversified
environment.
Challenges in Leading an Organization
Leadership is a greater challenge in today’s business world especially leading an
organization in such forces that demands more from a leader. These challenges make it difficult
for a leader to complete its responsibilities in an efficient manner in order to accomplish the
goals of an organization. There are three kinds of challenges that are in process of leadership;
that includes internal challenges, external challenges and that arise from the nature or role of
leadership itself (Rosenbach, 2018).

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External challenges that are faced by the leader is related to the forces outside the
organization that influence the decisions and roles of the leader in leading an organization such
issues are insufficient funds or financial crisis, opposition from other communities, criticism
from the society, interpersonal issues, and social, political forces that affects the working in a
higher extent of an organization, cultural differences, satisfying stakeholders and along with
that work with different minds and perspectives of different people is difficult (Kouzes &
Posner, 2017). To manage and cope up with these challenges become essential for a leader in
the current working environment, that are the parameters to measure the performance of a
leader if he is able to handle all the crisis, deal with uncertainties, can take advantages of the
opportunities availing in the external environment and resolve all the challenges in a manner so
that it will not be noticeable by others than he is consider as the best leader. If a leader lacks
the skills in this diverse environment to handle the challenges than organization will suffer for a
longer span of time (Wanasika & Krahnke, 2016). For an instance, any changes in the laws and
practices by government is taken as stressful by the top management or leaders then it
eventually impact on the productivity of the employees and divert them from achieving the
goals and if managed by the leader in efficient manger and he implement it successfully as a
change agent then it will have no impact on the employees so it’s up to leader how he manages
all the challenges and make an organization successful in this competitive environment.
Internal Challenges that is faced by leader are workforce diversity issues, lead and
motivate people of different cultural differences, aligning individual goal with organizational
goals, developing managerial effectiveness, inspiring others to work in a team, developing
employees, leading a team of diverse people, guiding and implementing change and managing
internal stakeholders and politics in the premises of organization. The internal challenges for a
leader is related to developing relevant skills, decision making skills, strategic thinking and
motivating others in a way that they contribute best of their ability. Leading a team is a
challenge nowadays because of understanding different people’s perspectives and view point
and taking positives out of them and implement in a non-bias way. The main challenge in
leading an organization is managing relationship in order to gain managerial support and
managing up and coordinating the departments, groups and individuals (Klein, 2018).

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Some of the challenges that arise from nature of leadership that includes be energetic
all the times, understanding their roles and responsibilities in proper manner and motivate
themselves to carry on their role in each and every challenge. Real leadership makes great
demands on people as a leader person is responsible for having a vision and mission on which
they lead to an organization, the challenge for a leader in this is to understand all the aspects
and then set the goals any problem or unachievable goals affect the organization and whole
and it is personally depends on the traits and characteristics of a person that how they manage
it. A leader have to be a leader all the time, it’s a very difficult scenario at present to fulfill all
the roles by a one person (Henson, 2017).
Meeting the challenges of Leadership
On the threshold of the 21st century, organizational leaders are facing more challenges
due to globalization and rapid diffusion of technologies. The current focus of market is not
dependent on the hard work and wealth creation but shifted to the innovation and technology
that leads to change in role of a leader or change in process of leadership. The demand of this
changing environment creates lots of challenges and broadens the role of an organizational
leader (Baltaci & Balci, 2017). Due to globalization increase in number of mergers, joint
ventures and alliances is making the workplace diverse as most of the people from different
cultures and background work together as a result at present leaders have to face challenge of
managing workforce diversity (Black & Morrison, 2015). In respond to the changing business
resultant in many difficulties for the leaders and to overcome that problem leaders change the
way to lead the organization. To come over the internal and external challenges that leaders
are facing they have to shift their efforts towards using technological things, building relation
with the stakeholders and taking care of employees and organization needs so that more
efficiency can be achieved. Try to influence others and give them chance to participate actively
and think out of the box. Some of the personal traits also needed to be change in accordance
with the current demand of leadership (Storey, Changing Theories of Leadership and Leadership
Development, 2016).

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There is a need to change and understand the new concepts of leadership in order to
meet the challenges that a leader has to face in this complex environment and uncertain times.
Uncertainty and complex situation highly impacted on the performance of the leaders as it
drives down the leader’s ability to implement and adapt change as frequently as per the
changing business environment. Greater the uncertainty and complexity, in more way the
leader experience isolation, distraction and anxiety and all these leads to lower level of energy,
reduced motivation and less ability to take risk (Cran, 2017). A leader cannot stop the change
and complexity that impact on organization effectiveness but leaders can change the way they
lead to reduce the impact of change and uncertainties on the organization performance. So
during the time of uncertainty and complex situation when teams are demotivated and
disengaged the way leader behaves has more impact on the level of performance
Today’s leader has to face many challenges and to generate best results they need to
learn the ways more than ever so that they create more level of confidence, innovation and
overcome all the challenges and ease uncertainty. The changes need to be done in today’s
leader in leading change in complex times is that they need to prioritize the things in order to
avoid their spending on less valuable things, delegation of power to others, getting out the
value to effort ratio of the work that help the leader to get clear insight about activities to be
carried on the organizational and individual level that help the leader to cope up with any
uncertain time and from that leader can respond to the challenges in an efficient manner
(Storey, 2017).
Leaders have to adjust their attitude towards change in this uncertain and complex
environment. They face challenge related to unanticipated changes that may irritate and leads
to negative aspects of the situation. In respond to these challenges leader should try to be
proactive for changes or adapt the attitude of change that gives positive approach to handle
uncertainty at that time which directly improve the decision of leader and performance of a
team. This main challenge to adapt the changes is necessary to overcome so that a business can
survive and bring positive result. A leader has ability to analysis the environment and

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opportunities from all angles or from different aspects and see the control, ownership, scope
and time of the circumstances or situation (Maxwell, 2019).
Reframing change is another way to cope up the challenges of aligning team goal with
the organizational goal and to understand the diverse workforce in this globalized business.
Organizational leader try to alter the way in which others see things and make them realize the
positive outcome of the change have to influence them in a manner so that it reduce the
negative impact of change, complexity and uncertain times. Uncertainty extended the core
challenges leaders face at present but this changes can help in overcome these challenges in a
manner which benefits the leader and the business both in the success. Together all these
changes help the leader to bring the change in his attitude and encourage his team ability to
absorb the change and uncertainty in the positive note and that provide the confidence to
successfully overcome the challenges the leader face in this ever complex business
environment (Antonacop & Bento, 2018).
Recommendations for improving the quality of Leadership Development
Program
In today’s rapidly changing world the leadership development program is an area of
concern, most of the businesses nowadays has lacking the leadership and management rights.
According to Australian Leadership study it is found that most of the organizations do not
possess the relevant leadership or management skills to face the challenges of the 21st century.
The recommendation for the leader in this changing pace is to avoid doing the same task
repeatedly or more of the same. Here are some recommendations to improve the quality of a
leadership development program in globalized environment:
1. Focusing on Leadership Competency: To be a leader requires combination of various
skills that includes intrapersonal, technical and interpersonal skills in a person.
Leadership is less related to competencies but more about gaining trust of the team a
leader lead, on the basis of Australian Leadership institute it is known that 76% of the
employees working in Australian organization don’t believe their leaders (HRD, 2019).
So a leadership program should focus on training the leaders to gain trust of the

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employees or their peers because it helps in improving the business relationship and
bring creativity and positivity in the working culture and environment.
2. Changing the methods and design of training: In this fast changing pace where the
knowledge and concepts are changing, innovations are taken place so quickly that no
one face the problem as earlier ones so top management should try to change the
methods and way to train the leader as experience is backing us to using the old ways of
doing and knowing the things, designing the program by analyzing the current and
future leaders roles and then training them accordingly will be beneficial (Shuffler &
Bedwell, 2018). To change the program according to current requirement management
need to understand the role demands from a leader in ever changing environment.
3. Assessing each leader through 360 degree: It is an essential need in developing a
leadership program to evaluate leaders performance from all the perspectives that is
from employees, stakeholders and management so that leader can know that where
they stand and how much efforts they have to put to be an effective leader for that
internal coaching through trusted advisors can be given to the leaders that help them to
develop from their own comfort zone and giving them appropriate training according to
their strengths and loop holes will definitely improve their performance and also
positively impact the organizational performance.
4. Training on leadership expectations: There is need to train the leaders on expectations
that employees have from leader and this can be done by conducting roundtable
session by the leaders so that both the parties can understand the expectations of each
other and that will increase communication and coordination in between team and
team leader (Lin & Ashforth, 2018). Leaders should set an example for the others by
leading in an effective manner in this challenging scenario.
5. Adapt the changing scenario quickly: Leaders should be trained to adapt the changes
quickly and influence others to accept the change and challenge the status quo. Today’s
businesses demand the leader who empowers other people to do best of their ability
and maintain a good relation with the employees in order to boost the creativity,
innovation and new ideas. Leadership development program focus on nurturing and

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developing the workplace relationship that leads to facing less challenges by the leader
and also promote harmony and smooth implementation of process of leadership in
achieving mutual goals.
The quality of leadership program is only improved with understanding the strengths and
weakness of the leaders and then training them accordingly as per the demand of ever
changing environment. An ineffective leader has too many challenges that may impact the
organizational overall performance whereas an effective leader has ability to deal with all the
challenges and lead the team in right direction with the right purpose so it is necessary to focus
on improving the leadership skills and to form a well-accepted leadership development
program in an organization.
Overcoming Limitations of Approaches
Leadership is a complex process that includes leading an organization, team and people
towards achievement of the common objectives. There are various approaches of leadership
that help to develop leaders and leadership in the business. Some of the approaches are
behavioral, situational and trait. All that focuses on the situation and the leadership style used
by the leader accordingly (Molntosh & Nicholas, 2019). Some of the limitations or barriers of
these approaches in the current working environment are that in this changing phase it is not
definite that these approaches fit in the real life situation and each leader react accordingly so
for that it is recommended to develop a leadership program that bring the flexibility in the
nature and thinking of leader so that they can challenge the status quo and think outside the
box. All the approaches of leadership focuses on the improving productivity but nowadays
focus of the business shifted to innovativeness and creativity that is the limitation that can be
overcome by the focusing on developing leadership competencies of an individual so that they
can bring the innovation in an team and influence its followers to participate and share ideas
(Cole, 2019). Due to traditional approaches the leaders are lacking the awareness of current
environment that leads to facing many challenges it was recommended to develop a leadership
program in a way that leader understand the expectations of the employees and the current
business environment .

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Conclusion
Leadership is an art to motivate others that is a group of people to work towards a
common goal. In today’s changing environment the concept of leadership has evolved and
leaders are facing many challenges in the globalized environment. It is known from the study
that there are many challenges that a leader face in leading an organization some of them are
categorized into external and internal challenges. External challenges were related to outside
political, social forces that influence the decisions of leader and impacted the business in
greater extent whereas the internal challenges related to the workforce diversity, encouraging
change, understanding the viewpoints of diverse people, and aligning the people efforts with
the organizational goals. To overcome these challenges some steps need to be taken that
leader is facing in such a complex and uncertain time. It is observed that concept of leadership
has changed and roles and responsibility of an individual as a leader had increased due to
globalized and ever changing environment where there is lot of uncertainty and to overcome
that leaders have to do things differently, prioritize their tasks, and focus on innovativeness
instead of hard work. Today’s businesses are demanding an effective leader who has ability to
deal with the uncertain challenges for that some suggestions were made to improve the quality
of leadership development program and these recommendations are helpful also in
overcoming the limitations of approaches used to develop both leaders and leadership.

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