Leadership in the Modern Workplace: Challenges and Opportunities

Desklib provides solved assignments and past papers to help students succeed.

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents
Q.1 WHAT IS INVOLVED IN BEING A SUCCESSFUL LEADER?........................................................................2
Q.2 CAN GOOD LEADERSHIP IS DEVELOPED, AND IF SO, HOW?..................................................................8
Q.3 WHAT DISTINGUISHES LEADERSHIP FROM MANAGEMENT?..............................................................10
Q.4 WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT LEADERSHIP FROM YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES ON THIS COURSE
AND ELSEWHERE?.....................................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................17
1

Q.1 WHAT IS INVOLVED IN BEING A SUCCESSFUL LEADER?
A leader plays a vital role in a company. A leader should always be a good influencer in order to
get the best result from his team. There are certain things that every good leader needs to carry
in himself and these are-
 Effective communication
 Passion and commitment
 Positive Attitude
 Sense of humor
 Ability to delegate
Every business needs an effective and successful leader to make the company successful and
without a good leader, a business can't run. Leadership is really not an easy task for any person.
There will be lots of challenges in the journey of becoming a good leader. Although there are
some practices that every leader should do and these practices are -
 Perspire - A leader can be a good leader only when he will put endless efforts. A leader
should be very focused towards the planning like how to work with others, how to build
effective team, and envision for bright future in the business and finally, guide the team
in a best possible manner.
 Show grace under pressure - This is high time to show the leadership talent. Whenever
the company faces losses and rejections and anything falling down in a company. A
leader can work hard to bring back things on track (Goleman, 2018). This will be the
time when an organization will realize the actual talent and potential of the person to be
a good leader in a company.
 Have integrity - Every team wants their leader to be loyal, honest, true and candid and
should treat every team member equally in terms of providing opportunities,
promotions, assignments, and training.
 Team’s inspiration - A leader should be an inspiration for his team members. Team
2

leader’s work will encourage them to work more to achieve more.
 Faith on himself and his team- A good leader is needed to be confident itself for his
work to be done on time and he is also required to keep faith in his team. So that the
team will feel positive at the time of work it will help to maintain the good relationship
between leader and team members.
1. GREAT MAN THEORY OF LEADERSHIP
This theory believes that the leaders are not made but they are inborn leaders. And the inborn
leaders are always great in terms of personality, command, judgment, high intuitions, courage,
charms, action-oriented and so on. Great man theory also asserts that great leaders make
history and few have also made it (Spector, 2016).
Figure 1: Great Man Theory
[Source: Spector, 2016]
3

For Instance,
The inborn leaders In UK are Theresa May from Conservative Party, Jeremy Corbyn from labor
party, Ian Blackford from Scottish national party, Vince cable from Liberal Democrats and so on.
It has said in this theory that these leaders were carrying the in-built qualities of leadership and
this is the reason they made the history in this world.
2. TRAIT THEORY OF LEADERSHIP
Trait theory is a little different from The Great Man Theory. Train theory argues that leadership
qualities can come up with training and practice.
Figure 2: Trait Theory of Leadership
[Source: Nawaz et al., 2016]
There should be some qualities that can create good leaders are described below-
4

 Intelligence - A good leader should be intelligent to understand the internal and
external environment to work. His intelligence could be a reason to be a good leader.
 Personality - Personality is not only about outlook and appearance. It also involves
some qualities such as maturity, emotional stability, self-confidence, optimism,
extrovert, disciplined, ability to cooperate, and integrity in character and so on.
 Other qualities - A good leader should be open-minded, socially sensitive, scientific
spirit and objective-oriented. These things create a good leader and the genetic born is
not required in it to be a good leader (Wyatt and Silvester, 2018).
3. STOGDILL’S TRAITS;
As per this theory, when a person is having the strong will to take responsibility and having
problem-solving skills could be a good leader. Apart from this, he should be task-oriented, self-
confident, ability to influence others and socially interactive to be a good leader. These traits
are actually a sign to be a leader in a particular place. Nowadays, leaders are required
everywhere for growth and development so we really can't wait for inborn leader and training
and practices, sometimes a leader is required now or never. So this theory helps to find out the
strong will person carrying certain leadership qualities to be a successful leader in business
(Feser et al., 2015).
Figure 3: Stogdill's Trait factors
5

[Source: halabdulhadi, 2017]
For Example;
A person working in a company in executive level with his will and enjoying his work without
any complaint finishes the task very effectively, handle the stress without thinking that it is a
stress and the highest achievements in their work actually show that they are capable to handle
a team and could be a good leader.
CONTEXTUAL
SKILLS-BASED MODEL
This model mainly focuses on the individual’s overall knowledge involving, technical knowledge
and skills, communication skills and conceptual skills. And a leader is needed to develop these
skills to be a good leader (Aragón et al., 2016).
SITUATIONAL APPROACH
Situational approach or leadership is based on the leader’s style to fulfill the organization’s
need. A leader is required only one quality that is adaptability by which he can move from one
style to another style in order to understand what is required in a business to fulfill the
changing needs of employees and organization.
GOLEMAN THEORY OF SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP
This theory is based on six styles of situational leadership t
1) Coaching leaders work to develop an individual's skills.
2) Pacesetting leaders are highly motivated and believe in setting higher expectations from
the followers.
3) Democratic leaders are those who give the votes to their followers in almost every decision.
And hence this is time-consuming as well as not the best style to work.
4) Affiliative leaders are those who look at the employees first. These leaders always motivate
6

employees when their morale is low. This style could be a reason for poor performance as
leaders build the employees in order to get better performance in the future.
5) Authoritative leaders are those who are good in analyzing and identifying the problems and
challenges. These leaders are quite good in order to develop the organization from the
worst situation (Sosik and Jung, 2018).
6) Coercive leaders are those who are well aware of their vision and they work till they reach
to its destination.
PATH GOAL THEORY
Path-goal theory mainly focuses on the employee's comfort to work with a leader. In this
theory, the leader takes care of the team members in order to know how they will be
comfortable to work. This is actually the best strategy to work with employees. If employees
will feel comfortable with their leaders then they will be able to complete their task without
any delay and discrepancy (Storey, 2016).
Figure 4: Path-Goal Theory
7

[Source: Tengtrakul et al., 2016]
Q.2 CAN GOOD LEADERSHIP IS DEVELOPED, AND IF SO, HOW?
Yes, good leadership can be developed. A person should be very enthusiastic about being a
good leader. A leader is required to develop the few leadership skills and qualities that are
described below-
1) People-oriented leaders – A leader should always be people oriented. If one of the
team members is late or didn't come to the office then a leader is required to contact
that person to know why he/she didn't come yet. Meanwhile, it is also a responsibility
to ask the rest team members that how they are feeling and managing the work in the
absence of a team member.
2) Capable of making a hard decision – Several times a leader faces complicated situations
where he is required to take hard decisions which impact the complete team members.
A good leader should be capable to take hard decisions in every situation and should be
able to delegate the work to his team members. If required then he must train his team
members for new tasks in order to get the better result.
3) Inspire confidence to team members – Effective teamwork is very important in order to
get an effective result. A leader should always appraise their team members publically in
order to increase their confidence level to work (Mendenhall et al., 2017). Well, Team
leader will always be confident for his work but the challenging task is to transfer the
work to the team members in order to get the expected result. Sometimes it happens
that the leader doesn’t get the result he expected for and can criticize team members
also. Instead of criticizing them, he should trust team members and should provide 1
more opportunity with clear clarifications to work.
4) Think strategically- Every leader should have a clear vision and should focus on different
strategies. Strategic thinking has become a very important part of modern leadership. It
helps to make the work innovative and creative that insist team members enjoy their
work.
8

9

For example;
Strategic thinking can be developed. As per my point of view, the Leader should play chess. It
will definitely help to learn the strategy. Chess is the game when two parties play just to win
and there is always turning situation when 1 party has to think about to overcome from the
situation before ending of the game and this game is really helpful to sharpen the mind as well
as increase the thinking capacity.
5) Lead from the front- A good leader could be a good leader only when his team
members will understand him (Amanchukwu et al., 2015). A team leader can educate
his members or train them so that the members can understand each and every task
given by the team leader. In addition, these training and educations will help the leader
to enhance his qualities and skills also to become a good leader.
6) Capable to develop new opportunities – A good leader is required to be an opportunity
seeker as well. Leaders never React they always act so a leader should be very punctual
to find out new opportunities actively in order to act wisely instead of waiting for the
chance. A leader should always think that the whole work is providing opportunities to
develop. A leader is needed to take every opportunity as a challenge with an open mind.
Apart from this, there are possibilities that the leaders could fail multiple times but the
leaders act on their constant offers and acceptance will develop them and eventually
they will be the best leaders.
7) Use effective communication- A leader is required to communicate very effectively and
precisely because the leader is the only one who always speaks in front of people and
rests people hear him (Kwiatkowski, 2019). A leader should always convey the correct
and point to point information without any unnecessary talk. In order to increase
communication skills, a leader can take communication training and can use social sites.
As per stodgily theory, a good leader should have the strong will to take the responsibilities and
the person with will works harder and performs better than any inborn leader or trained leader.
10

Q.3 WHAT DISTINGUISHES LEADERSHIP FROM MANAGEMENT?
Meaning of Leadership
Leadership means leading a team to get things done with effective output. Leadership is very
important in every organization to achieve success. Leadership is an interpersonal role of a
person to influence people or a group of members to achieve business goals. Leadership
strategies could be different in different fields. A leader is required to focus more on his skills
that how he can apply his talent and qualities in his work in order to reach the target of the
organization.
Meaning of Management
Management is a discipline of an organization and a technique to manage and deal with
different people with different age groups and behavior. Management is based on 5M's i.e.
men, machines, materials, money, and methods (Dyllick and Muff, 2016). A person who
manages all the things is known as a manager. Apart from this, management also involves the
planning, organizing, controlling, motivating, leading and decision making. Management is not
only in professional places. It is everywhere. We can take the example of our home where the
mother of all the house chores, saves money and spend where is required. This is all
management that is done by all people.
Leadership and management in professional places play a big role. They are responsible to
manage and lead the teams from every aspect in an organization to maintain the discipline and
to get the result. Both things are important at their place for the development of business.
Basically, Leadership and management are not similar anymore. Both have different roles and
activities that they are required to perform. For better understanding leadership and
management has differentiated below-
11