BUMGT5970 Essay: Exploring Challenges of Modern Leadership

This essay explores the significant challenges facing leaders in the contemporary environment, drawing on the provided white paper and other relevant sources. It identifies key obstacles such as evolving managerial effectiveness, motivating employees, leading teams, developing employees, guiding change, and managing internal stakeholders and politics. The essay delves into strategies for overcoming these challenges, including developing specific skills like time management and prioritization, fostering a culture of coaching and mentoring, and adapting to organizational changes. Furthermore, it provides recommendations to enhance leadership development programs, emphasizing the importance of taking initiative, effective listening, motivating employees, and conflict resolution. The essay concludes by highlighting the need for leaders to adopt a 'control with' approach rather than a 'control over' approach to effectively navigate the complexities of modern leadership.

RUNNING HEAD: Management 0
Leadership

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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Challenges faced in leading an organization..........................................................................................2
Overcoming challenges.........................................................................................................................3
Recommendations.................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................4
References.............................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
The role of a leader in the contemporary environment is not stress-free. The leaders are requisite to
lead and inspire a different group of people through the organization for improving efficiency and
attaining growth. The leaders have to face complexity in managing necessities of government,
keeping up with the competitors and meeting the expectations of stakeholders as a part of the external
environment. It is tough being a leader but it can be really rewarding if tackled challenges
appropriately. It can even inspire employees to accomplish their tasks within the given deadlines. The
leaders are required to educate themselves for modern needs and should redefine their leadership
skills from time to time. This report comprises the challenges of leading an organization in today’s
world. The changes required to meet the challenges of the lead ship has been also defined in the
report. Finally, the recommendations are given to enhance the quality of leadership development
programs. It will have a role in addressing the limitation of the approaches used to develop leader and
leadership.
Challenges faced in leading an organization
The leaders almost face the same challenges in leading an organization. These are:
Emerging managerial effectiveness: The challenges confronted in the leading organizations now days
are like time management, strategic thinking, prioritization, decision making, getting up to speed with
the tasks assigned along with being more effective at work.
Motivating others: The challenge of motivating others is faced in order to satisfy employees with the
job. Inspiring the employees to work smarter is also the concern of this challenge. This challenge is
faced as leaders do not follow their discipline and people are sometimes not on the right jobs (Hristov
& Ramkissoon, 2016).
Leading a team: The challenges of team building are faced by the leaders like team development,
team management, team support, ways of leading a big team and the steps taken for taking over a new
team.
Developing employees: The challenges are faced by the organizations in emerging employees
encompassing mentoring and coaching. The practice of emerging employees takes place in order to
engage employees in the organization (Cashman, 2017). The leaders are required to have a sense of
security, ownership, and enthusiasm as for what organization is all about and the impact made.
Guiding change: Managing, organizing, understanding and leading change are some of the encounters
to be faced by the leaders.
Managing internals stakeholders and politics: This challenge is faced in managing relationships,
politics, and image. It comprises managing up, attaining managerial assistance and buy-in from
segments (Hawkins & Edwards, 2015).
The three challenges out of six challenges, motivating others, evolving employees and leading a team
are associated with the relationship-oriented part of the leadership. It is significant in the
contemporary environment for the organizations to encourage leaders to seek and contribute to the
relationships which develop their team members. In order to overcome the challenges, leaders are
required to build and maintain relationships by encouraging and developing others (Clinton, 2018).

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Overcoming challenges
The leaders should go through the appropriate development and training so that they can deal with the
challenges faced. The leaders are also required to take initiatives to overcome the challenges faced.
Developing managerial effectiveness
The managerial effectiveness can be developed by specific skills like time management, prioritization
and decision making. The activities required for overcoming the challenges of managerial
effectiveness are:
Goal setting: A person should be proactive in setting goals within the defined deadlines. A timeline
should be set to meet the goals (Boggs & McPhail, 2016).
More delegation: Delegating can make leaders be more productive. This act can even inspire people
to whom work is assigned.
Work on the tasks which maximizes value: The important tasks should be carried on out of all the
organizational priorities. The focus should be given on these important tasks. It will result in
maximizing unique value to the organization.
Attain some role clarity: The working of the organization should be comprehended. Insignificant tasks
should be avoided by clearly saying no (Halverson & Plecki, 2015).
Inspiring others
Some challenges are faced at the time of developing relationships. Concerning things to consider are:
Take a vigorous role in coaching, mentoring and evolving others: The challenging opportunities
should be provided to the workforce, the employees should be promoted to the upper management
and inspire individuals to improve their area of competence. The employees can be assisted by
offering direction and feedback (Martin, et al. 2015).
Meeting the requirements of the employees: It is not necessary to certify that employees have the
appropriate software and enough office materials. The psychological and social needs should also be
met by the leaders. They are even required to meet the varying needs of the persons who work in the
organization on a constant basis (Forester, 2017).
Manage team effectiveness: The team is necessitated to have a clear purpose, strong assistance and
should effectively share information. The stakeholders of the organization should also be updated
from time to time.
Leading a team
The efforts should be made by the leaders to create a healthy organization even if the dramatic
changes are faced in the organization which is beyond the control. Guiding change is considered a top
challenge for the leaders. The leaders should be adaptable to mobilizing, managing, leading and
dealing with the change.
Developing employees

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The employees can be developed by anticipating a vigorous role in inculcating and evolving others.
The employees can be advanced through training and development programmes. Developed
employees can better compete in the environment. The microlearning formats should be enabled in
the training programme (Antonakis & Day, 2017).
Guiding change
Both human cognition and emotion are integrated systems. The change is required for convincing
people. The rational arguments should be used more often. The leaders should be sensible to the
emotions of the employees (Freeman & Siegfried Jr, 2015). The employees should be engaged by
making them passionate, visionary and authentic.
Managing internals stakeholders and politics
The leaders require enhancing their political skill in order to understand employees at the workplace.
The knowledge is used to enact in the ways so that one’s personal objectives can be attained in the
organization.
Recommendations
The recommendations are provided to enhance the quality of leadership development programs. These
are:
Taking initiatives: The leaders should assign their employees tasks which are proven to be adapted by
all. The employees should be guided to go beyond the current position. They should not make to wait
for responsibilities. It is a good way to develop skills and accomplish the tasks which are an
outsidethe job description. The leaders should also be aware of the potential opportunities and take
advantage of these to benefit employees and organization (Northouse, 2017).
Listening effectively: The leaders should listen effectively to enhance the quality of the development
program. The leaders will be in the condition of getting feedback from others with effective listening
skills. It also helps employees to get a sense concerning the project they are working. The feedback is
a key behind listening effectively. The communication is not all about the verbal communication but
the gestures should be noticed.
Motivate others: The leaders should encourage employees of the organization to learn more and
become more. A true leader is capable of energizing and motivating employees. The employees tend
to lose motivation when they face difficulties and tired of doing repetitive tasks (Rosenbach, 2018). The
leaders should inspire employees by sharing their personal stories and experiences.
Handling conflicts: The leaders should not a way of tackling different people and resolving conflicts.
If the employees do not work up to the potential then it brings a negative impact on the work.
Discipline: The discipline has a role in executing the goals. The vision is useless if there is no
discipline. The discipline is much required in executing effectively. In order to be a good leader, a
person needed to be self-disciplined and assured that the team is disciplined.
Conclusion
The leadership necessitates somewhat more than the traditional approach of setting goals, making
decisions and leading the loops. It is necessitated by the leaders to think in terms of ‘control with’ in

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spite of ‘control over’ the employees. The report includes the challenges to be confronted in the
organization like evolving managerial effectiveness, inspiring others, leading a team, developing
teams, guiding change and managing internals stakeholders and politics. The leaders go through
formal development and training so that they can tackle the challenges faced. The managerial
effectiveness can be easily advanced by precise skills like time management, prioritization and
decision making. Taking a vigorous role in coaching, mentoring and developing help to inspire others
in the organization. The efforts should also be made by the leaders to create a healthy organization.

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References
Antonakis, J., & Day, D. V. (Eds.). (2017). The nature of leadership. Sage publications.
Boggs, G. R., & McPhail, C. J. (2016). Practical leadership in community colleges: Navigating today's
challenges. John Wiley & Sons.
Cashman, K. (2017). Leadership from the inside out: Becoming a leader for life. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Clinton, R. (2018). The making of a leader: Recognizing the lessons and stages of leadership development.
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc..
Forester, J. F. (2017). Planning in the face of conflict: The surprising possibilities of facilitative leadership.
Routledge.
Freeman, D., & Siegfried Jr, R. L. (2015). Entrepreneurial leadership in the context of company start‐up and
growth. Journal of leadership studies, 8(4), 35-39.
Halverson, T. J., & Plecki, M. L. (2015). Exploring the politics of differential resource allocation: Implications
for policy design and leadership practice. Leadership and policy in schools, 14(1), 42-66.
Hawkins, B., & Edwards, G. (2015). Managing the monsters of doubt: Liminality, threshold concepts and
leadership learning. Management Learning, 46(1), 24-43.
Hristov, D., & Ramkissoon, H. (2016). Leadership in destination management organisations. Annals of Tourism
Research, 61(C), 230-234.
Martin, G., Beech, N., MacIntosh, R., & Bushfield, S. (2015). Potential challenges facing distributed leadership
in health care: evidence from the UK National Health Service. Sociology of health & illness, 37(1), 14-
29.
Northouse, P. G. (2017). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice. Sage Publications.
Rosenbach, W. E. (2018). Contemporary issues in leadership. Routledge.