Transformations in Leadership - Essay Example

?To, Mr. ABC, Dear ABC, I am glad to have this opportunity to write a letter to you and share with you my secrets of successful leadership. This is aunique opportunity for me as well as for you as not many people get to talk to their 20 years younger self. Today, I am the leader of Caps, that is the world’s biggest retailer of the year 2032. I led this company from its nascent stage to becoming the world’s largest retailer. This letter is a reflection over my entire career as a leader, and a very valuable piece of information and advice for you to follow me toward success. As a leader, I have come a long way since the start of my career. Although I had learnt a lot of things about leadership and the skills required of a leader in the books upfront as “[t]he organization and management literatures are full of discussions about the best ways to organize to carry out various tasks” (Alvord, Brown, and Letts, n.d., p. 148), yet one only comes to understand everything in detail with experience as one gets an opportunity to be in the tough situations, and thus play one’s role as a leader. One does not need to go to very expensive colleges and universities to learn how to become a good leader as there are plentiful examples of leaders like Steve Jobs who have done a phenomenal job without seeking proper education in the past (Stanford University, 2005). I learnt a lot of things in detail as I experienced them as a leader over the years that I was just introduced to in the books as a student. In this letter, I am going to share some of the most fundamental essentials of leadership that I have mastered with time. As a leader, you have to be the captain of the ship. So it is very important for you to know which path you have to guide my crew toward. This necessitates you to do the homework required for any kind of task at hand so that a variety of options are revived in your mind and you may be able to choose the one that is the most convenient for your crew and you as well as leads to a result that is of value to the stakeholders. As a leader, you have to be proactive. People look forward to you in the time of crisis and expect you to lead them to peace through the times of conflict. As a human being, everybody has limitations and so do leaders. In order to optimize on your potential to deliver your best, it the advisable for you to assess the risks involved in a certain process beforehand so that you can take the steps required to fix things in advance. One factor that has increased as a barrier to successful leadership over these 20 years is diversity. 20 years back, leadership was easy in that the interests and concerns of the followers in an organization were similar to a very large extent than they are in the organizations today. In 2012, except for few, most companies had a centralized organizational structure. Leadership used to be easy because one company had one set of rules and regulations, principles, culture, and the work setup as a whole. Over the last 20 years, there has occurred a revolutionary change in the way businesses are done and a vast majority of companies have become multinational and the distinct branches of the same company work in a decentralized fashion. That the organizational structure has shifted from centralized to decentralized in most of the cases over the last two decades. As a result of this, the different branches of the same company have started to compete with one another as if they are different companies and do not belong to the same parent organization. Separate systems, laws and regulations, and principles are enforced in different branches of the same company. Since such organizations have mushroomed over the last 20 years, I have frequently been part of them and have served in the leadership position in many such organizations. It was very difficult for me to maintain one style of leadership as I was made the branch manager of different branches operating in different countries. In order to deal with the barrier of difference of organizational culture between different branches of decentralized organizations, I had to adapt my leadership style to the individualistic needs of different branches. In addition to that, rather than focusing my entire attention toward the high-potential programs, I placed a lot of emphasis on alleviating the anxieties of the managers whom I required to execute those programs. “One way to do this, for example, is to require managers to mentor one of their high-potential direct reports. Not only will this approach be good for the chosen employees in the short-term, but also it will force managers to get more comfortable with performance differentiation and developmental dialogues” (Ashkenas, 2012). Becoming a leader was a unique experience for me every time I had it. Although there were certain basic things that I always had to retain e.g. tolerance and hard word, yet the circumstances in which I had to practice them differed from each other by a great deal. The most surprising thing I learnt after becoming a leader was that I had to reengineer things every time I was supposed to serve as a leader in a new environment. Everything made a difference ranging from the scope of work, the type of work, the locality, the macro culture of the society in which my organization functioned, and the micro culture of the organization itself. I learnt that circumstances would never change to adapt themselves to me. I was the one who had to adapt to the circumstances to play the role of the leader successfully. Another unexpected outcome of becoming a leader was that I also became a good manager. From my experience, I can tell you that anybody who is a good leader is also a good manager because there are a lot of skills that are common between a leader and a manager; supervision, agility, and tolerance to name a few. Occasionally after becoming a leader, I was also required to serve as a manager at certain places, and I could feel a dramatic change in my management skills, and the change was for the better! Leadership requires tolerance. After having served as a leader in a wide array of organizations with different circumstances and organizational cultures, one quality that I have felt the most need of was tolerance. Leaders assume the maximum power and authority in any organization. The decision making authority fundamentally rests with the leaders. After performing one’s duties as a leader for some time, there is an involuntary and unintended feeling of superiority inculcated in the leader, which makes it difficult for the leader to deal with the disobedient subordinates. A leader overwhelmed with this feeling of superiority in comparison to the subordinates takes even such things very serious and personal that he would have laughed away outside the job. Many a times, I have been caught in situations in which my mettle was tested and judged by others. Every time, I started to get things on my nerves, I seemed to be losing the battle. At times, it becomes very difficult to tolerate things because as a leader, one is dealing with so many things simultaneously which becomes frustrating. Maximum authority of the leader does not come with maximum responsibility, and at the end of the day, it is leader who is held accountable for both the successes and the losses experienced by the organization. One needs to have a lot of tolerance in order to take the pressure and yet give one’s best in tough circumstances. “Extraordinary bosses set a general direction and then commit themselves to obtaining the resources that their employees need to get the job done. They push decision making downward, allowing teams form their own rules and intervening only in emergencies” (James, 2012). If you do this, this would provide your followers with greater autonomy and they would feel more responsible for their actions because you had placed confidence in their abilities by delegating the power to make decisions before. “So often, it seems, that is the definition of true leadership: empowering common people to achieve uncommon feats” (Shrestha and Bosack, 2009, p. 1). Be prepared for a change! Every organization has its own needs and expectations from a leader. Remember, a leadership style successful in one organization may completely turn out to be a failure in another organization. You have to have strong prediction and readiness to make the right move in the right time. Take the example of Steve Jobs. He was a genius of your time. “That may seem like a silly word game, but in fact his success dramatizes an interesting distinction between intelligence and genius” (Isaacson, 2011). He made unexpected and instinctive imaginative leaps that were supported by his intuition rather than analytic rigor. He could ascertain the challenges lying ahead merely by sniffing the winds. That is the level of perfection you need to achieve in order to make a difference and be remembered as a successful leader. I hope you will be able to work upon my advice, and pass these 20 years with flying colors to meet me here in 2032. Your’s sincerely, ABC, 26 Sep. 2012. References Alvord, SH, Brown, LD, and Letts, CS n.d., Leadership That Facilitates Societal Transformation—An Exploratory Study, Social Entrepreneurship, [Online] Available at < http://health.cat/open.php?url=http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/55803/CPL_WP_03_5_AlvordBrownLetts.pdf> [Accessed: 26 September 2012]. Ashkenas, R 2012, The Paradox of High Potentials, Harvard Business Review, [Online] Available at [Accessed: 26 September 2012]. Isaacson, W 2011, The Genius of Jobs, The New York Times, [Online] Available at [Accessed: 26 September 2012]. James, G 2012, 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses, [Online] Available at [Accessed: 26 September 2012]. Shrestha, AM, and Bosack, M 2009, Transformations in Leadership, The Journal of the East-West Center Leadership Certificate Program, Vol. 1, No. 3, [Online] Available at [Accessed: 26 September 2012]. Stanford University 2005, 'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says, [Online] Available at [Accessed: 26 September 2012]. Read More