Leadership Contours & Landscape – Changes A Paradigm Shift

Dr. C. N. Narayana
Founder MBA Pulse

Professor, Author, Mentor & Social Worker

Change is an inevitable phenomenon across the world. In the recent past it is happening at a galloping speed with geometric progression. The technology could be one of the key drivers of change as disruptions normally bring unforeseen changes. Now, even pandemic and the environmental changes bring changes that are dauting task to counter for leadership roles. As we all know the top leadership is always agile and ready to face such challenges and changes. Decision-makers become both risk-seeking when they have celebrated gains and success in the past and suffered setbacks and losses earlier.  Building from experimental evidence, prospect theory and house money effect will provide ample insights, especially how decision-makers react to outcomes from actions similar in the past. The leadership roles now face different type and levels of changes ever before. Be it an organizational or political leadership for that matter even the leadership goals of socially sensitive organizations. The role of leadership is beyond organizational goals of revenue, profit growth to societal, environmental and impactful. The basic traditional ingredients of leadership traits and the types have also undergone changes in the recent past. Leadership roles now need to manage contradiction and conundrum parallelly. The seven management components which will drive the modern-day leadership which will lead roads to riches are interestingly Oxymoron in nature. A leader who treads the path carefully addressing all these pointers mentioned below will positively impact both people and the organization towards the growth path.

Practice Humility with Heroism at heart to achieve goals:  Generally, humility and inner peace and calm go hand in hand. The less compelled you try to prove yourself to others, the easier it is for the leader to build a great team of performers.  It takes enormous amount of energy to perpetually point out your achievements, trying to convince others. Instead, you build a cohesive team and celebrate every single small achievement of members so that there is faith in you as a Hero who empowers the team and be with them always.  Leaders who are quiet, with inner confidence, and not to chose to be always right are generally well respected and considered as heroes. It extends further to understanding competition and the market while practicing humility and parallelly meet the revenue target balancing out with humanism in the leadership approach. Therefore, a composed attitude coupled with resilience will make it all the closer to the organizational goal.

Practicing Innovator & Tech-savvy: Leadership must not only demonstrate the need to innovate new practices, products and services but also possess an innovative mindset by practicing it and then acting as a role model. The leader must be able to make smart decision on any innovation and ability to face challenges and failures too. It leads to the point that the leaders should have the passion to learn and apply newer technologies and way of doing things. He just cannot be a supervisor to the innovative team but a practitioner. For this leader must continuously upskill and reskill him or herself. The leadership should also consider human implications and ensure nurturing and building for future success.

Gratitude & Kindling improved results: A leader must be an awakener and an inspirer with a clear goal of achieving results without autocratic style. The treading of the path must be determinedly undertaken and engage the team productively. Expressing gratitude to the team members on the milestones achieved should be the way of life. The happiest person on earth is not always happy should be the approach to kindle the team in a relaxed way by understanding both negative and positive feelings of the team members and undertake the journey with them.

Choosing the battles wisely as a politician with ethics: a real oxymoron and much of this achieved through access roads which are essential for economic growth with integrity of highest order by choosing the battles wisely whether it is internal political management or external competitive environment. Leadership strategies to handle different difficult situations to cross over to the next milestone is critical for the desired goals. Many a time you may be politically right but maybe the other way around when it comes to corporate governance, ethics and integrity. Navigating this path carefully will make or break true leadership.

Global Vision with the local heart: The recent pandemic has cleared the myth that leadership of MNC is different from that of local or specific geography. The world has witnessed an equal opportunity to all the countries of the world to prove their worth. The vaccine race and the healthcare innovations are the best examples where developing nations like India had shown the credentials. Leadership role now encash this boundaryless approach with a global outlook but with a local heart to achieve productivity and quality and give equal importance to the local market growth.

Strategic alignment with precise execution skills: Traditional leadership approach of strategists alone must give way to the dual role of short-term executor and a long-term strategist for market growth. This necessitates knowing the ground realities of operations, market, consumer and understanding the needs and support required for team members while articulating strategy and how it needs to evolve alongside addressing the multidimensional need of the hour and the future simultaneously.

Entrepreneurial mind with Empowerment focus: Leadership should move away from the traditional control regime by opting for AI to handle normal checks and balances. This approach will result in higher delegation and empowerment of team members to play a higher-level role as the leaders will be involved in short-term goals also. Dedicating disproportionate time only for long-term strategy is not required with proper empowerment at the workplace. Envisaging the future problems and addressing the current need is the crux.

To conclude the contours and the pitches of changes have drastically changed in the leadership roles as well apart from organizations facing the disruptions of the highest order. A variety of different sources of competition, consumer behavior, technological changes and last but not the least, the environmental changes have really made leadership roles highly challenging, madly changing necessitating smarter and faster adaptability and agility to the leadership roles in modern organizations.

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