LEADING FOR THE FUTURE

Leading for the Future
University of Capella

Abstract The word leader has changed over the years, leaders was the head of a group for a cause. Organizations today are bringing leaders to lead and managers are starting to be a thing of the past. Majority of the organizations realize that to gain a matter service or product they have to have someone who believe in the service and product, by them believing in the service or product then the employees will believe too. In this paper all the information regarding the role and changes of the leader over the last few years will be reviewed and researched.
Leading for the Future The need and role of an organizational leader has undergone significant transformation over the past two decades. This is due to the interplay of several factors. Firstly, the breakdown of information barriers and free dissemination of information is leading to workers being increasingly knowledgeable and aware than over the previous decades, leading to the weakening of the power and respect that a leader could command over his or her subordinates. Secondly, in line with the increased knowledge, workers of the current era are more ambitious and driven towards being in a leadership role, at a much earlier stage than the workers of the earlier decades would have aspired to. Thirdly, with the advancement of technology and breakdown of global trade barriers, most industries and organizations are getting more competitive as they seek to outdo each other in product development, marketing or enhanced user experience. This requires a much more sincere and dedicated effort at leadership than has ever been the case before. However, conventional notions of leaders and their roles continue to limit the possibilities of creative, out of the box attempts at leadership styles and place important boundary conditions on such attempts. For instance, who would be held responsible for setting targets and achieving them in case of a more diffused leadership structure? Or who would be held liable for compliance related matters and acts as the company or the department’s representative with external stakeholders? In this regard, the ideas propagated in two academic papers, “Five Keys to Flourishing in Trying Times” (Cameron, 2010) and “We the Leaders: In Order to Form a Leaderful Organization” (Raelin, 2005) are worthy of being critically examined and their learnings assimilated for the benefit of modern day leaders.

Learning from the leadership techniques of Positive Energy and Collective Leadership The role of building a positive work environment and managing with virtuousness, even in phases of economic downturn has gained a lot of interest among industry practitioners as well as researchers of late. It is now well established that organizations in which leaders hold a positive outlook and communicate the same relentlessly throughout the organization have demonstrated a far performance for the entire gamut of stakeholders, including their employees, customers and shareholders. Yet near miraculous stories such as those of a young violinist’s tunes enabling the healing of military sergeants who had returned from an emotionally draining mission (Harvey, 2001) or the Laughter Lab at Carnegie Hall that helped scores of people overcome their grief of the events of the September 11 tragedy and helped raise a generous sum of money for the families of the victims (Marks, 2001) make us stand up and notice the profound effect positivity can have in the most trying of circumstances. Along with positivity, the emerging leadership patterns of the present era need to be unshackled from the bondages of hierarchical leadership that is individualistic, powerful, and dispassionate and controlling to a shared, participative and dynamic model where leadership is derived from an individual’s knowledge, respect among his or her peers or past experience. In such a model, leadership