In what ways must leaders and leadership, including how they are Essay

In what ways must leaders and leadership, including how they are developed, still adapt to the demands of today - Essay Example Authority and position based leadership can be perceived to be a rather inadequate tool for aiding modern day leadership in effectively tackling the challenges that leaders face today. According to Heifetz (251), this form of leadership is now largely perceived to be the myth of the lone warrior: the rather solitary individual whose individual brilliance and heroism serve to enable him to effectively lead the way, in a flawed notion that reinforces the leader’s isolation. This form of leadership was most often seen to be a characteristic of the autocratic leadership style that saw the leader try to exert individual control over all individual decisions with minimal input from the various group members. This leadership style is also seen to typically requires that the autocratic leaders make choices that are seen to be primarily based on their own individual judgments and ideals while rarely accepting any advice from the followers as the leadership style basically involves auth oritarian, absolute control over a group of individuals (Gitman and McDaniel 162). While the leadership style can at times be beneficial in the case where decisions quickly need to be made without having to consult a large group of people, it is important for authoritative leaders to avoid being excessively dictatorial, bossy or controlling as this can result in various problems resulting in an impediment in their ability to efficiently adapt to the demands of today. Modern leadership is required to have the capacity of helping individuals learn a variety of new ways of solving, understanding and defining the often complex modern day problems and challenges that Heifetz (254) refers to as adaptive challenges. Heifetz, points out that the strategic challenge of modern leadership is seen to entail the giving back of work to people without being perceived to be abandoning them. If people are inadvertently overloaded, they will be seen to avoid learning while under-loading people will c ause them to grow complacent or too dependent. Our world is currently faced with a series of various adoptive challenges that are found to be fundamental issues that communities must learn how to effectively cope with regardless of the actual nature that leadership might happen to take in the next century. Leaders and leadership must adapt and effectively handle these challenges as these challenges are largely not static and new ones always appear. It is thus seen that modern leadership is required to bear the actual weight of problems for considerable time durations. The shouldering of the various uncertainties and pains of an institution or organization, and particularly so, in times of distress is seen to part of the modern approach to leadership and can only be avoided at the institution’s peril (251). While the planned change theory with its premises of a deliberate decision being made to change, might have been appropriate and served to greatly aid leaders and leadershi p during the previous century, future leaders and leadership must essentially adopt the principles laid out in the unplanned change theory that will allow them to quickly react to their current environment and thus be able to adapt in an effective manner to the demands of