Leadership is a process of influence to the people in organization to regulate their behaviour as desired by the leaders.
Leadership is a process of influence to the people in organization to regulate their behaviour as desired by the leaders. But people are most difficult to understand and getting complex than the earlier days because of the education and rising expectations.” In line with the above statements explain the emerging approaches and current issues in leadership.
Emerging Approaches and Current Issues in Leadership
Leadership is a term that conjures up different images in different people. For some it means charisma, while to many, it means power and authority. Leadership skills emerge out of spontaneity needs.
Leadership plays a crucial role in organizational dynamics. It fills many of the voids left in conventional organization design, allows for greater organizational flexibilities and responsiveness to environmental changes. It provides a way to co-ordinate the effort of diverse groups within the organization, and facilitate organizational membership and personal needs satisfaction. It is the quality of managerial leadership that often differentiates effective and ineffective organizations. A rational leader should know different emerging approach of the leadership and about current issue in leadership so that they are well equipped to adjust and adapt accordingly.
Emerging Approaches of Leadership
There are different approaches emerging in the field of leadership. Some of them are explained briefly.
- Attribution theory of leadership: it deals with people trying to make sense out of cause- effect relationships. When something happens, they want to attribute it to something. This theory tells that the leadership is merely an attribution that people make about other individuals. Effective leaders are generally considered consistent or unwavering in their decisions.
- Charismatic leadership theory: Followers make attributions of heroic or extraordinary abilities when they observe certain behaviours. Some examples of charismatic leaders are John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther Kin, Jr. Walt Disney, Ted Turner, Barack Obama, etc. They are found to have extremely high confidence, dominance and strong convictions in his or her beliefs.
- Transactional or transformational leadership: Transactional leaders guide or motivate their followers in the direction of the established goals, clear roles and task requirements. Transactional leader, inspire followers to transcend their own self-interests for the good of the organization. They are capable of having a profound and extraordinary effect on his or her followers. Transformational leadership is about leading, changing the organizational strategies and culture so that they have a better fit with the surrounding environment. They are change agents who energies employees and direct them to a new set of corporate values and behaviours.
- Visionary leadership: Visionary leadership refers to the ability to create and articulate a realistic, credible, attractive vision of the future for an organization unit. This vision, if properly selected and implemented, is so energizing that leads to great success of the organization. A vision has clear and compelling imagery that offer an innovative way to improve, which recognizes and draws on traditions, and connects to actions that people can take to realize changes. Vision taps people’s emotions and energy. A properly articulated vision creates the enthusiasm that people have for spotting events and other leisure time activities, bringing the energy and commitment to the workplace.
Issues in leadership
Some of the contemporary issues in leadership are explained briefly.
Gender issue: Research has shown that regardless with gender, people with leadership traits-such as intelligence, confidence and sociability- more likely to be perceived as leaders. However, there are some differences in leadership styles. For example, males tend to use a directive command and control style, while females tend to adopt a more democratic leadership style.
Biological basis for leadership: There is an increasing evidence indicating that leadership has biological roots. Two chemicals-serotonin and testosterone are found to have profound affect on becoming a leader. Increased levels of serotonin appear to improve sociability and control aggregation. Higher levels of testosterone increase competitive drive and they are found higher in the players of tennis.
National culture and its effect on the choice of leadership style: National culture affects leadership style. Leaders cannot choose their styles at will. They are constrained by the cultural conditions that their subordinates have come to expect. For example, an autocratic style is compatible with high power distance and participation style is compatible with low power distance.
Popularity of empowerment: Empowerment is putting employees in charge of what they do. The problem with the current empowerment movement is that it ignores the extent to which leadership can be shared and the conditions facilitating success of shared leadership.
Moral dimension to leadership: Leadership is not value free. So we should look at the moral content of a leader’s goal and the means he/she uses to achieve these goals.
