LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES
INTRODUCTION
It is great role in the nations
or organizations that leadership plays. Leaders play a tremendous role as we
know in number ways by using various styles. It does not mean that leaders are
free from challenges, criticisms etc… or they are in a comfort zone having
showing the direction or inspiring people or aligning the people, yet they
encounter a diverse type of challenges.
The challenges of leadership are
inside leaders. Stop blaming organizations and others for your shortfalls and
failures. Take the bull by the horns. You are the bull (Dan, 2012).
Being a leader is not quite
a cakewalk. In fact, to be very honest; managing people is one of the most
challenging tasks. You really need to extract the best out of your team members
and handhold them even in the worst situations. We all want to lead a team, but
have we ever realized what are the challenges faced by a leader? Remember, a
leader is just like the captain of a ship. One wrong decision and the entire
blame comes on you.
The biggest challenge in
leadership is to listen to everyone’s opinions and come to a mutually
beneficial solution. You just can’t afford to ignore anyone, else he/she would
turn out to be your biggest enemy and would neither respect you nor bother to
listen to you. Agreed, there are all types of people around. You may like
someone; you may not like someone at the workplace, but that does not mean that
you start being rude to the person you are not comfortable with. Avoid
favouritism. As a leader; you really need to be impartial towards everyone. Not
every individual has the quality of being fair towards people. As humans, we
generally tend to develop feelings of jealousy and hatred towards people we do
not like. Remember, such negative feelings have no place in the professional
world. Sit with your subordinates, listen to their grievances and always try to
come up with innovative solutions. Never ever loose your temper. The moment you
do so, trust me, very soon your name would appear in the bad books of employees.
The 12 Toughest Challenges of Leadership:
- Humility
during success.
- Confidence
during setbacks.
- Stepping
back so others can step up.
- Putting
plans into action – Follow through. Experience shows up to 90 percent of
strategic plans never achieve execution.
- Leading
change. Leaders don’t just do things, they change things.
- Admitting
mistakes. One contributor suggests that self-awareness and honesty are
essential to saying, “I was wrong.” (See more comments on Facebook)
- Listening
with the goal of learning.
- Encouraging
constructive dissent.
- Learning
from criticism.
- Asking
for feedback.
- Maintaining
focus on the future.
- Building
the team.
What’s most challenging about leading
organizations today? And do the challenges differ around the world? When researchers went straight to the source to answer these questions, gathering
input from 763 middle- and executive-level leaders in organizations from
China/Hong Kong, Egypt, India, Singapore, the U.K., the U.S., and Spain.
Our study found these leaders
consistently face the same 6 challenges — even if they describe their
challenges and specific context in different ways:
1. Developing managerial
effectiveness is the challenge
of developing the relevant skills — such as time-management, prioritization,
strategic thinking, decision-making, and getting up to speed with the job — to
be more effective at work.
2. Inspiring others is the challenge of inspiring or motivating
others to ensure they’re satisfied with their jobs and working smarter.
3. Developing employees is the challenge of developing others,
including mentoring and coaching.
4. Leading a team is the challenge of team-building, team
development, and team management. Specific challenges include how to instill
pride, how to provide support, how to lead a big team, and what to do when
taking over a new team.
5. Guiding change is the challenge of managing,
mobilizing, understanding, and leading change. Guiding change includes knowing
how to mitigate consequences, overcome resistance to change, and deal with
employees’ reactions to change.
6. Managing internal
stakeholders is the challenge
of managing relationships, politics, and image. This challenge includes gaining
managerial support, managing up, and getting buy-in from other departments,
groups, or individuals.
CONCLUSION
Knowing that these challenges are common
experiences for middle and senior managers is helpful to both the leaders and
those charged with their development, according to our researchers.
Individuals can benefit from knowing their
experiences aren’t isolated, and can feel more confident reaching out to others
for help facing these challenges.
REFERENCES
Personal limitations are so powerful! Thanks for sharing all this information.Cheers Anfass
ReplyDeleteexcellent,very helpful to learn about apart of leadership
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