Contemporary Leadership Styles and Relevance in Today's World

This report examines contemporary leadership styles, contrasting traditional and modern approaches. It explores transactional and transformational leadership, highlighting the shift from bureaucratic to knowledge-oriented economies. The report delves into the challenges faced by leaders in a changing environment, including emerging market forces, technological advancements, and evolving employee perspectives. It analyzes the differences between authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire leadership styles, emphasizing the importance of setting clear goals, motivating team members, and focusing on individual performance. A case study of IBM's leadership challenges is included, demonstrating the need for adapting to contemporary leadership styles to enhance productivity and employee retention. The report concludes by emphasizing the significance of a balanced democratic approach and the integration of innovative ideas with traditional leadership practices to meet the demands of today's world.

Contemporary Leadership Styles and their Relevance in Today’s Changing World
Research and scholars studies regarding contemporary leadership theories and models proved
that traditional theories were more of ‘bureaucratic style’ where major focus was given to
physical production instead of knowledge- oriented economy. According to various scholars and
critics, the previously derived leadership theories were specifically made keeping in view male
leaders means they were masculine orientated. Let us have a glance that how scholars criticize
these leadership theories and how these theories will go smoothly with today’s world where
women are also found as the leader of different organizations.
According to DANIEL, C. (2017), the basic issues arises where today’s leaders declare that they
need to adapt a new style of leadership because according to them, leadership needs have
changed and worker’s perspective towards their leader has also been changed. Today people are
not willing to accept an authoritative leadership rather they appreciate an autocratic form of
leadership where a leader deals in a friendly and motivating manner. Latest research has shown
that as women are much concerned about their professional career today, many organizations are
controlled by women so need of the day is that leadership style should be more of
transformational due to women leader who believe more in reward offering for motivating
workers as compared to men. To understand this concept well that how contemporary and
advanced leadership theories are appropriate to be practiced today, we have to analyze deeply
challenges faced by today’s leaders.
Challenges Faced by Today’s Leaders
DIFFERENT
FACTORS
TRADITIONAL
LEADERSHIP
APPROACHES
CONTEMPORARY LEADERSHIP APPROACHES
Emerging Day to day changes in technology and people’s approach

market Forces Steadiness towards work and life
Changing
Environment
As per Gitsham, M.
(2012), change was
supposed to be made only
in case of emergency
Expected changes due to innovative ideas and machine
learning
Effects on
Business
Only affected by local
conditions
Business needs to be changed on global level
Working Style
Bureaucratic Approach,
Rules oriented
Shared /combined vision, long term goals focus
Previous Leadership Theories and Today’s World
The traditional leadership style rely more on personal traits of a leader like his intelligence,
behavior and approach towards work and how do they leave an impact on their team’s output
while the contemporary leadership requires to revolve around rational and collective type of
teamwork rather than an authoritative style. According to Gitsham, M. (2012), usually
contemporary leadership consists of transactional and transformational leadership theories and
here we will see that how effectively these two leadership styles fulfill the general requirements
of a leader and his followers.
Difference between Transactional and Transformational Leadership

Mukoro, E. (2017).
Transactional leadership theory requires the leader to emphasize more on reward and penalty
system to extract maximum output from the worker. Moreover, the company’s goals and
objectives are the major focus of the leader while transformational leadership theory explains
that the leader should portray himself as a role model through his conduct so that the followers
can adapt his traits in order to attain the combined goals of the company.
Whereas leadership styles are concerned, the basic leadership styles are mentioned below;
 Authoritarian
 Democratic
 Laissez-faire
All the above mentioned leadership styles reflect different approaches of leader towards work
and their followers. As the name reflects authoritarian leadership style refers to all decisions and
policies to be made by the leader alone and followers are not appreciated if they want to interfere
in formulating company policies. As per Kettnaker, J. (2018), today this approach is
considered as quite strict but at certain level when attainment of company’s goals is the main
concern, this style can be followed.

While democratic leadership style is considered as the most favorite style of leading because
here employees are motivated to participate in decision making and team members are
encouraged to share their experience just to improvise the company’s output. Laissez-faire style
is another quite lenient style of leading where all team members are left free to work with their
own style. Leaders do not interfere in their follower’s working style and are only concerned
about the targeted results. As stated by Mukoro, E. (2017), each member of the company is
considered equally important and highly skilled. This approach requires that instead of proving
yourself to be the one and only competent member of team, the leader should help its followers
to succeed and excel in their career.
In short, need of the day is that leaders should adapt the following strategy to lead its followers
with contemporary leadership style;

 Set clear goals and make strategies to attain them
 Formulate work frame
 Derive proper strategies to motivate and monitor team members
 Focus on individual performance and guide them accordingly. Margayu, P. (2017).
Leadership Challenges Faced by IBM

Changing environment and contemporary leadership styles application have arouse many
challenges for world’s famous organizations as well. IBM has also gone through such scenario
recently where adaptation of contemporary leadership has become an integral part to proceed
further. According to Management, 2018), recently IBM decided to reverse their leadership
approach when its executives were found monitoring and controlling their team members with
strict and authoritative style. That approach made its employees to lack interest in their job and
employee retention level declined instantly. The basic reason was that instead of practicing
shared accountability, the company’s executive were just preferring a dictator style of leadership.
The whole scenario turned the productivity and output of IBM to decline gradually when the top
level executives decided to reverse their leadership development failure through arranging
periodic meetings with the employees where they could share their experiences, problems and
interests with their seniors. Moreover, executives define organization’s goals clearly in front of
their team and asked them to contribute equally in attaining the joint interest of the organization.
The CEO of IBM took another intelligent and motivating action where he asked his executives to
name one of their team member who has shown leadership potential. Research has shown that
this approach turned quite effective and each manager realized that they are responsible to
present any member as the best one so their focus on team members got sharper. Moreover,
leaders were made to focus more on overall results instead of analyzing the activity more.
Conclusion
Contemporary leadership requires that followers should be guided keeping in view the current
needs and future targets of company. A well balanced democratic leadership style should be
preferred over an authoritative approach. As the traditional leadership styles are equally good but
they should be adapted along with innovative ideas and latest leadership approaches.
References
1. DANIEL, C. (2017). Contemporary Leadership Styles: How relevant are they in today’s
changing world?. [online] Leading in a changing world. Available at:

https://culcdanial.wordpress.com/2017/12/27/contemporary-leadership-styles-how-
relevant-are-they-in-todays-changing-world/ [Accessed 24 Mar. 2019].
2. Gitsham, M. (2012). LEADERSHIP IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD.
3. Kettnaker, J. (2018). Modern approaches to leadership.
4. Management, M. (2018). How IBM Overcame Leadership Development Challenges |
MIT Executive Education | MIT Sloan Executive Education. [online] Executive.mit.edu.
Available at: https://executive.mit.edu/blog/so-many-bad-bosses-so-few-good-
leaders#.XJpAtpgzbIU [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].
5. Margayu, P. (2017). Leading in changing worldPamndita.
6. Mukoro, E. (2017). The relevance of contemporary leadership styles in today’s changing
World.