Blog 2: Contemporary Leadership Styles: How relevant are they in today’s changing world?

Leadership styles are about the collection of tendencies of behaviours and ways of thinking presented by leaders in their processes of leading their subordinates to expected performance in the workplace. There are different leadership styles, such as coercive, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and coaching . They vary a lot in terms of the ways in which the involved leaders try to reach expected managerial performance (Zanecchia, 2015). That would be reflected from the concrete interactive relationships to be established between the leader and the followers in the managerial processes or work processes as well. For example, in the coercive leadership style, leaders tend to emphasize on dictatorship while in democratic leadership style, leaders would expect to listen to both good and bad ideas or comments from the followers who are expected to be more active in making contributions to shared goals in work (Zareen et al., 2015). To reach optimal work performance, leaders may be facing the task of deciding on most effective and appropriate methods of motivating and influencing the followers.

(Zanecchia, 2015)

Main leadership issues in a changing world

While operating their businesses, leaders in the banking industry sector are faced with the task of deciding on appropriate and reliable management strategies and plans to respond to the barriers or opportunities observed in the target market (Iglesias, 2017). Despite that, they are likely to be facing some important issues in designing and implementing their concrete leadership strategies, especially when it comes to the aspect of leadership styles to be adopted. First of all, leaders in the banking industry sector in the contemporary business world would be facing high level of requirement for flexible thinking to be applied in deciding on more effective strategies or plans. That is due to the high level of possibility for diversified human resources to be included in their organization or work team. It would be difficult for optimal management efficiency to be reached by applying a single leadership style in reality. What is more, they are likely to be facing the issue of unwillingness for some subordinates to cooperate with each other in the implementation of the strategies plans used in managerial practices (Macbeath, 2016). Leaders would have difficulties in reaching optimal performance when they fail to make feasible plans for positively respond to the possibly challenging management contexts facing them in reality. Apart from that, the uncertainties in the external environment can lead to barriers for leaders to decide on more appropriate strategies with respect to leadership styles. The employees recruited from the external labour market may have been used to certain leadership styles and a different leadership style can result in challenges for optimal performance to be reached when they work for the organization.

Possible changes about contemporary leadership styles

In the contemporary banking industry sector, as is the case in many other industry sectors, leaders are faced with the possibility of facing more complicated and uncertain situations while trying to reach desirable management efficiency (Evans, 2010). It would be a challenging task for leaders failing to decide on the most effective and appropriate leadership style to make the best of their human resources in reality management processes. The leaders are likely to be facing a group of subordinates from varying backgrounds or cultural contexts, indicating high level of cultural diversity or cross-cultural context. What is more, in contemporary leadership style studies, it is possible for more attention to be paid to the research into the effective measures of dealing with bias between genders. At present, females in the global context are found to be suffering from unfair treatment in the workforce on the whole (Reunanen and Kaitonen, 2017). That is believed to be an important barrier for exploring optimal human resources in the business world under the current and future contexts. What is more, it is possible for more attention to be paid to the studies into more reliable solutions to the problems of barriers for optimal management efficiency to be reached. The globalization will thus have more positive impacts on sustainable development in the global context.

Contemporary leadership styles under the current changing world

In the current business context that is featured in challenges, opportunities and uncertainties, leaders need to pay sufficient attention to the importance of assessing the nature of their businesses and the optimal solutions to identified and potential problems in management (Lipmanblumen, 2018). Or else, it would be difficult for them to reach pleasing management outcomes. Comprehensive thinking and flexible thinking would be of great impacts on the concrete leadership style to be adopted or presented by a leader in reality management processes then.

References

Evans, D. (2010). The changing face of leadership: different styles of leadership facilitate changing needs in healthcare, politics and industry. Strategic Direction, 26(1), 21 – 23.

Iglesias, J. L. C. (2017). Practical situation in leadership style change. Ssrn Electronic Journal, 88(2), 41-52.

Lipmanblumen, J. (2018). Connective leadership:. Change the Magazine of Higher Learning, 30(1), 49-53.

Macbeath, J. (2016). Leadership in a changing world. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 71(6), 223-250.

Reunanen, T., & Kaitonen, J. (2017). Different Roles in Leadership Styles in Modern Organization.  Journal of Business Management, Training and Education, 59 (3), 109-121.

Zanecchia, M. D. (2015). Experiential learning and changing leadership style. Journal of Nursing Education, 24(9), 360.

Zareen, M., Razzaq, K., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2015). Impact of transactional, transformational and laissez-faire leadership styles on motivation: a quantitative study of banking employees in pakistan. Public Organization Review, 15(4), 531-549.