Leadership in the 21st Century: Traits, Styles, and Skill Analysis

This report delves into the essential aspects of leadership, examining various traits, styles, and skills crucial for success in contemporary organizational settings. It begins by highlighting the significance of leadership in driving organizational outcomes, emphasizing the need for managers to understand and adapt to evolving leadership dynamics. The report explores different leadership styles, including transformational, transactional, and authentic leadership, and their impact on employee behavior, innovation, and well-being. It emphasizes the importance of communication, emotional intelligence, and adaptability in effective leadership, especially in the context of crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the report provides insights into the skills needed for successful leadership, such as decision-making, problem-solving, and people management. The conclusion underscores the significance of authentic leadership in fostering trust, enhancing social exchange relationships, and promoting organizational resilience, especially during challenging times. The report also focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the importance of leadership during a crisis.

Question 1
a. Find and read articles on Leadership. The articles or journals must be from year 2020
to 2022. Discuss the leadership traits/styles.
b. Based on your reading and observation, identify skills for the successful leader
need in 2022.
Your write up must be in an APA format.
[50 marks]
Introduction
Leadership is an essential behaviour, asset and attribution for managers in all industries.
Understanding what characteristic traits are being employed in the recent decades and today is
essential for leaders and managers. There is an agreement among scholars and practitioners that
leadership is vital for successful outcomes for organizations and essential for creating high-level
performance. Proper leadership by managers and individuals in various kind of sectors would
positively return cost savings from better designs, productivity, safety and sustainability in the
workforce. There is also the possibility of enhancing employees’ capabilities, morals, motivation,
retention, and development to improve the organization they work at or for. Hence, its crucially to
know how management areas could improve leadership areas and focus on motivation,
communication, team building, discussion of performance, resolving conflicts, disciplining and dealing
with individuals’ emotional side. All management level staff need to gain insights about the various
leadership styles, traits and behaviours they exhibit in an organizational setting. Effective leaders
prove extensive life experiences and the ability to focus their teams’ interests away from conflict and
towards results, providing progress opportunities as well as constructive approaches. The leadership
traits employees are looking for in a leader from management in working industries are vital for
organizations to recognize.
Leadership plays a vital role in building the process, structures and climate for an organization
to become innovative and to motivate team expectations towards innovations. An effective leader
will be able to adapt a style or combinations of styles to suit the circumstances (Zulch, B., 2014).
Understanding what leadership style works for employees is vital for the success and the effectiveness
of management for an organization. From the journal, author Asree et al. discovered that
transformational and transactional leadership are both needs for a project manager’s success,
depending on the project phase. Wipulanusat et al. found that transformational and consideration
leadership are vital for managers’ success to motivate engineering professionals. With both leadership

styles, characteristic traits such as motivating individuals, encouraging innovation, development of
subordinates, cultivating relationships, open to new ideas, achieving results, accepting diversity,
committing to safety and treating individuals with respect are the most vital traits to process. Even
with a shift of leadership styles because the styles can change from project to project, or group to
group, the communication between the individuals working for a project manager remains an intrinsic
part of leadership.
Overall, all managers must adapt to different leadership styles depending on the group or
project and utilize effective communication. The trait of communication is not limited to language
only, but also includes personality, behaviour, attitude and nonverbal such as body language. Overall,
it can be defended that a project manager in a leadership role for engineers, technicians and
construction employees must use situational leadership style for success.
Transformational leadership positively impacts on employees’ innovative work behavior
Transformational leadership creates an appropriate environment for employees who seek to
engage in innovative work behaviors, especially since those behaviors are complex and risky due to
the uncertainty in the success of the idea. Transformational leaders are developing in their sub-
ordinates a sense of self-efficacy. Thus, followers inspired by their transformational leaders recognize
precisely what it is anticipated from them to achieve, and they are willing to exert any effort to
contribute to the attainment of the organization’ goals, accordingly they are in ultimate search for
innovative solutions of approaching their tasks, which is reflected on their innovative behavior.
Inspirational motivation, a component of transformational leadership is considered a key factor in
stimulating employees’ innovative work behavior through a positive compelling future vision, while
intellectual stimulation creates motivation to challenge existing assumptions and view problems from
new perspectives that increase potential opportunities to generate creative solutions to these
problems.
Transactional leadership negatively impacts employees’ innovative work behavior
The negative relationship between the transactional leadership style and employees’
innovative work behavior is based on the conception of their styles as it is directed towards job
performance and not innovation stemmed from the reciprocal relation between the leader and their
sub-ordinates in terms of contingent rewards for satisfactory performance or punishments in case
their performance was below the preset levels or encompasses deficiencies. According to their style,
the leader identifies their desire to accomplish job tasks and how to perform them through permanent
notes that by its turn impede employees’ innovative work behavior. Transactional leadership might

have a negative impact on employees’ innovative work behavior because their leadership style is more
oriented towards employees’ performance than stimulating novel and original activities. In contrast,
one study found that transactional leaders also encourage their employees to possess innovative work
behavior at almost the same level practiced by transformational leadership.
Authentic Leadership (AL)
Leadership theory which combines servant, transformational, charismatic and spiritual leadership are
AL. This kind of leadership focuses on leader behavior development through an honest relationship
that values their employees and creates ethical principles. AL also spotlights on developing great
leaders who can understand their true self and strengths and weaknesses, as the reason, they will
know how to inspire other members to engage in organizational activities. Further, an ethical
environment and a positive mental capacity can be encouraged by AL behavior. AL can motivate their
subordinates to express their feelings and concerns about their responsibility to complete their tasks.
Authentic leadership includes self-stream, self-awareness, self-expression and flow experience that
can influence the well-being of supervisors and followers, social exchange relationships and positive
emotions. AL behavior leads to self-improvement because the critical components of AL are
concentrated in self-awareness and self-regulation. Thus, AL encourages self-development in
emotions, identity, motivations, and values. Regarding understanding their true self and expressing
true self and feelings toward others, employees can increase mutual trust in an organization and the
positive relationships between supervisors and subordinates or among organizational members. It
concludes that the four crucial components of AL are relational transparency, balanced processing of
information, self-awareness and internalized moral perspective. Self-awareness of self-realization
development required feedback from others. In an organization’s environment, the virtuousness of
the team and effectiveness of the team can be influenced by AL behavior which contributes to
promoting ethics and good performance. Having virtuous teams leads to an effective commitment by
organizational members.
COVID-19 has posed a serious challenge to AL. A leader is in charge of responding for
organizational survival. Fernandez & Shaw (2020) indicate that leadership needs rapid and effective
responses with clear communication during the pandemic. Emmett et al. (2020) indicates that leaders
with excellent leadership behavior spotlight flexibility, compassion, empathy and ethics effectively
deal with their followers. During COVID-19, emotional stability and emotional intelligence are vital for
AL due to the difficulty of organizational members. Further, emotional intelligence is essential to
develop emotional competence, which consists of identifying, understanding, regulating, utilizing
emotions about self and others, leading to individuals’ performance. Therefore, leaders with high

emotional competence tend to have a good relationship with people around them. Concerning the
workplace challenges, empathy and transparency have an essential role for AL to increase high-quality
SERs and trust in an organization to maintain employees’ social well-being, psychological health and
physical conditions. Based on social skills in emotional intelligence, AL behavior needs to promote
good working relationships, listen to others, build ethical culture, provide psychological and physical
conditions. Based on social skills in emotional intelligence, AL behavior needs to promote good
working relationships, listen to others, build ethical culture, provides psychological and physical safety
in the organizational environments.Fernandez & Shaw (2020) indicate that relationships in
organizations are very significant during a crisis. Therefore, AL should focus on increasing the
relationship in the organization. Authentic leaders needs to be good listeners, accept advice from
other without criticism, build mutual trust with other with clear and effective communication, take
care of employees and meet their expectations to encourage healthy relationships in the organization.
COVID-10 negatively impacts emotional, ethical and economic perspectives. Nevertheless, this crisis
can generate leaders whom organizational members can trust in their leadership. Trust becomes a
vital factor for working processes and working relationships.
From the consensus, which originates from both supervisors and followers, can succeed in the
organization. APA 2020 indicates that stress from supervisors can cause more anxiety in followers
during a crisis. However, effective communication is essential to maximise trust and reduce stress
from team members. Likewise, the well-being of organizational people and the supervisor and
follower relationships reflect in the sustainable workplace. Leadership in times of crisis needs
competency, such as people management, self-management and business management to adapt to
rapid changes in the uncertainty of environments. Leadership qualities should include the following
skills: decision-making skills based on analytical and problem-solving skills, ability to simplify problems,
high emotional intelligence, communication skills, the ability to manage and organize people and
negotiation skills.
Conclusion
COVID-19 situations amplify the demand to enlarge the improvement of trust in organizations.
Authentic Leadership increases Social Exchange Relationships and trust, whereas SERs enhance trust
in an organization. Furthermore, AL under the influence of leader behaviors during COVID-19 can
influence the positive associations between SERs and trust, while SERs under the influence of leader
behaviors during COVID-19 positively motivate the associations between SERs and trust in an
organization. Moreover, AL with high-quality SERs can increase trust in managers. Managers need to
show excellent AL behavior during COVID-19 to improve trust. Decentralization or shared leadership

is needed, as rapid responses from team leaders in specific fields are imperative to sustain the
performance of an organization and effectively solve the problems of management teams. AL behavior
is beneficial for boosting SERs and trust since authentic leaders build authentic relationships with
colleagues and subordinates. However, receiving care and concern for leaders can nourish a culture
of trust in their organizations. Although there is difficulty managing trust and SERs in the process of
work from home, high-quality leadership can be managed effectively. We have gone through the
toughest which is the COVID-19 outbreak, if the history repeats, organization should have better
contingency plan of leadership styles equipped for all managers to face it courageously.