THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES

World is going through fast evolution in the area of leadership. May be it is true that everyone cannot become a leader, but people are not willing to accept old fashioned, autocratic leaders. They look for values, knowledge and talent in their leaders, not brute force, money or capital. People also seek leaders who emanate positive energy and unending enthusiasm.
Instead of authoritative leadership, people now look for leaders who duly acknowledge the followers. Personal growth of individuals have come to attain certain standards now that people want leaders to respect their individuality and recognize their potential. The leader - follower relationship had indeed undergone a paradigm shift.

This century of knowledge economy, online business and high technology had begun well and it had spawned collaborations and concurrent activities that are essentially team centric. The individual who used to win the war with brain or brawn is a thing of the past. Whichever arena, be it political, corporate or societal, most of the situations demand collective, inclusive efforts. With global competition in the market place and with technology becoming a pervasive force, time had come to reckon that only teamwork could handle these challenges. Thus, today’s leader is not an extraordinary personality, but a collective conscience keeper.

In most of the transformation that is taking place around us, we see that people are the real force behind the transformation. A super computer can do nothing, if there is no one to program it and run it in the first place? To achieve success we depend on people and people depend on leaders. Only those leaders who can collaborate to re-invent, can get most out of the people whom he leads.

There is constant improvement in quality in all walks of life and profession. The workers, who are constantly up against newer technologies and intense international competition, feel that they need to be on their toes always, as more and more efforts are required to be put from their side. This also calls for change in working habits though that is something they dread to undergo. It is often seen and felt that creativity and the resulting innovation plays a major role in the management of the changing paradigms. Followers expect their leader to have the creativity, knowledge and attitude to take them through the ever changing changes.

Leadership is all about influencing people, In times of transformation, the leader is expected to lead from the front by undergoing the change himself. Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘be the change that you want to see in the world’. It is very clear, without oneself changing, he cannot expect changes in the followers.

Let's look at leadership requirements. A necessary requirement for a leader is to gain confidence from the people he works with, otherwise there will be no followers, and to gain confidence in a leader, the followers must be convinced that the leader has integrity, he speaks the truth and he has the authority.

There are different types of authority. And they are Authority granted by position, Authority of personality and Authority of knowledge Whereas in the first one what matters is the title, position and the power bestowed on the position, the second one is having influential qualities such as behavior and conduct anf the third one is the authority is based on the competency & expertise, apart from other forms of knowledge that are essential in certain areas.

In the past, authoritarian leadership prevailed and there was a tendency for leaders to be supported by the position that they held in the organization/community. Nowadays the tendency has shifted to the other types of power, where personality and knowledge had become key attributes.

There are very many ways by which leadership is defined, but one thing that everyone agrees on, is that a leader must have character and personality. These are the moral qualities by which a person is judged, apart from other values such as intelligence, competence and special talents.

There are instances of leadership emerging from certain situations. These may be known as situational leaders. Let us assume that an apartment complex catches fire. Under normal condition, the president of the apartment would have been the leader, holding the power of decision. When calamity strikes, everything will depend on the situation. Once the fire catches on, the person who coordinates the fire fighting will be the leader. If there are many wounded or burnt and a doctor is present, he will become the leader. After all the people are attended, leadership will then pass automatically to anyone who has the knowledge of salvaging the building complex. This shows the importance of know-how in relation to the situation, and many times without anyone noticing, leadership flows from one place to the other. Great leaders know how to get people to share their knowledge.

We must remember that to become a leader, one needs to have leadership abilities, the power of decision and the ability to effectively to communicate with people. A person must be flexible and have the good sense to handover over the decisions, when the matter gets out of his own knowledge sphere.

The true leader must be adaptable to changing situations, and one who never stops learning. He is always interacting with people, and getting everyone to work together for a common objective, so as to get excellent results. People will follow him without even knowing that they have become a follower. And that makes the leader different from the others.