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By Dr Rabindra Karna
Leadership is never built or developed magically. It is rather cultivated deliberately based upon the organisational vision, mission, values and the intended business destination. Developing leaders is one of the most difficult issues in today’s business world as a result of global demographic shift. Leadership practically doesn’t mean only the person sitting on the top. It is mainly an attitude of ownership, pride and command over a particular skill or a set of skills. Organisations in various parts of the world now follow community leadership – an acknowledgement of every individual’s contribution to the business. Community leaders are committed with job ownership and pride for everything they do. The success of any business depends heavily on leadership quality and thus community leadership becomes essential for driving and achieving success. It is nothing but empowerment of every member in the organisation and goads them to exhibit leadership skills at all times. It is thus widely acknowledged as Team-Based Leadership/Organisation.
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One of the crucial challenges in today’s business world is to find and retain effective business leaders. Effective leadership is a self-sustaining organisational practice that transforms the personality of an individual leader. However, organisations are faced with difficulties in encouraging development of leadership due to need of clarity pertaining to the impact and understanding of factors contributing to sustainable quality leadership. Therefore, the need of the hour is to encourage a culture of change and compete in today’s turbulent business environment.
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Leadership transition has not only become eminent but a fact of the business world. At the same time, it can be converted into opportunity with effort & understanding. In recent management practices, there is a frequent practice – that of encouraging human resource to lead the work process and projects. Most employees are truly showing a sense of ownership in relation to their job and company direction. It is necessary to provide total support to employees in business-decision making by encouraging participation and facilitating interaction amongst key people without imposing any viewpoint beforehand. You must trust the employees with accomplishing their jobs well.
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John Alban-Metcalfe, a Lecturer of Psychology and Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe, a Professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Leeds in the UK stated, “Leadership qualities are often found in organisations at lower levels but rarely at the top. The reason is simple: while track record and management competencies are adopted as criteria for selection or promotion, leadership is rarely defined explicitly.â€
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One of the important tools for the success of any organisation is its overall performance standard. In the case of a particular unit performing poorly, a domino impact is experienced resulting in weakened performance of the entire company. Thus, it is important to provide essential tools to all members of the organisation to ensure success. Leader selection heavily depends on clarity about future needs rather than on past experiences. Equipped with firm definitions of leadership competencies, it becomes comparatively workable to define assessment tools to facilitate the recruitment process. Given the current competitive edge, organisations are required to remain active and progressive to select and develop their leadership talent with a clear understanding, “Without leadership, there cannot be clarity on a company’s vision which may result to wastage of resources.â€
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If employees are able to master task and time management and perform efficiently, they certainly will find greater space in the team with sharpened ability to focus on achievements. Once the employees are able to overcome stress with positive attitude, they will have the ability to perform their responsibilities at a desired level. In addition to classroom trainings, seminars and individual coaching, corporate coaching can be useful to generate and implement leadership shift in business practices ensuring expected business results. Whether there is a need for change management, cross functional communication, skills enhancement or improving the financial health of an organisation, coaching the critical group of identified leaders or influencers becomes most important to succeed.
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Present economic moves don’t permit ignorance of global perspective and cultural sensitivity as organisations have no room for escaping competition in the local and global markets. Organisations are thus required to equip themselves with capable leaders having clarity about global perspective in business dealings. The teamwork and cooperative leadership sharing role is essential in the current fragile and uncertain business environment. Team-based leadership also ensures check and balance or prevention from irrational decisions. Leaders trying to walk alone in today’s competitive environment would be a self-defeating act because innovation and knowledge capabilities are rated as most important indicators for an organisation’s success. The ability to network effectively with the concerned parties and cultivating relationship within and outside an organisation has become most important to maximise the chances of capturing available business opportunities. It also enables leaders to gain expertise in different areas.
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J Richard Hackman, Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at Harvard Kennedy School says, “More companies are moving away from the ‘heroic’ single leader model of leadership and gravitating towards a model of shared team responsibility. The team would not be wholly dependent on a particular member; if a key member in the team became unavailable for a critical task, others would be equipped and able to pitch in and make sure that key activities were initiated, completed well and on time.â€
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However, nothing can happen overnight and it requires continuous effort from all stakeholders. Changes in our hierarchical mindset and clarity about shared responsibilities for future need of both – ‘The Organisation and the People Resources’ are equally important for this shift to happen successfully. It would be great to have an open discussion and reach the conclusion within the organisation about this shift in leadership-defining advantages to the people and the organisation. It is also advisable to have acceptance of such a shift from all the stakeholders so that the implementation results in a success and the achievement is appreciated by all. In fact, it is the demand of today’s growing talent-scarcity especially in our part of world with globalisation and boundary-less skills market. This leadership shift from one heroic to multiple talent/heroic scenario, if driven cautiously and carefully, will always be fruitful in view of the current business need to guarantee business success. Time has come for many brains to work together and acknowledge each other rather than depending on individual charismatic leadership.
(Dr Karna is the Executive Chairman of MARK Business Solutions Pvt Ltd and Ad Abhyas Marketing & Communications Pvt Ltd. The article is based on various research reports and his practical experiences as management practitioner.)
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