21st century leadership
CULTURE
21st century leadership, challenges, criticism and Conclusion
21st century leadership can be explained as a mind set that people learn which ultimately identifies opportunities for change. It also develops diverse skills to adopt that change in an effective way. Research shows that 21st century leadership is a relationship based integrative and multi dimensional view of leadership.
According to Lorz (2012) 21st century leadership is defined as a process of interaction in between leaders and the environment including the followers. And also it is a process for vision formulation, acquisition of situational knowledge and joins followers to achieve the vision collectively
The 21st-century leadership is started from the perspective that public leader has to exactly
and wholly know either himself or condition and society’s aspiration (Kurniady, Nurlatifah, Komariah, &
21st century leadership styles respect the developmental nature of human life and bring forward new ways of doing and knowing through shared purposes and aspirations. The main features of 21st century leadership styles is inclusion, collaboration benefiting all the stakeholder including individuals, organization and society.
A leader who can meet the modern challenges of 21st century and adapt the modern era skillset can be referred to 21st century leader. 21st century skill which is commonly known as 4c (critical thinking, communication, creativity and collaboration) is the core feature of this leadership. Hence this concept is inline with the experts who think 21st century leadership is the one which can overcome modern challenges and develop human skill of this century. (Kurniady, Nurlatifah, Komariah, & Sunaengsih, 2020)
Adaptive Leadership
A leadership style that attends to changes in persons habit and belief in order to face challenges and develop new skills through system transformation. (Bier & Sherblom, 2021)
Or
“The practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough
challenges and thrive” (Stukes, 2021)
Adaptive Leadership definition
Adaptive leadership is defined as emergent change behaviors under conditions of interaction, interdependence, asymmetrical information, complex network dynamics, and tension. (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007)
How Adaptive Leadership started
The theory of Adaptive Leadership was developed by Heifetz, Linsky, and their colleagues at Harvard Kennedy School. According to them, leadership is the practice of "mobilizing people to tackle tough issues, adapt, and thrive" (Heifetz et al, 2009, p.14).
How Adaptive leadership helps organizations
Adaptive leadership helps organization in a way that it support collective action, support and guide how the world might change, build resilience among societies and appreciate community innovation.(Ramalingam, Wild, & Ferrari, 2020)
Moreover
“Adaptive leadership also helps to transform the old DNA of leaders and build individual and collective capacity for creative future building” (Nicolaides & McCallum, 2013)
Adaptive leadership challenges
One of the main challenge for adaptive leaders is to help people identify about the critical things that they must preserve from their organizational culture and herniate and what to leave. . Successful adaptations are thus both conservative and progressive. Previous wisdom must be effectively utilized. The most effective leadership anchors change in the values, competencies, and strategic orientations that should endure in the organization
Servant Leadership
It can be defined as leader’s desire to offer hope to its followers, motivate and provide guidance as well as provide a more caring experience through established quality relationships (Schneider & George, 2011)
Servant Leadership definition
Servant leadership is defined as the leadership philosophy that focuses on developing employees to their full potential towards implementing tasks more efficiently, community leadership, self-motivation and future leadership ability (Grieves, 2010).
How servant Leadership started
The entire principle of Servant leadership was developed in the framework of Greenleaf’s notion that the sole reason for the leader's existence is to serve the followers. First scale to measure servant leadership was developed by Laub (1999) and was named as OLA (organizational leadership assessment). (Kashyap & Rangnekar, 2014)
How Servant leadership helps organizations
One of the simplest thing that servant leaders do is that they help to build an open and noninvasive dialogue in the work environment(Lu, Zhang, & Jia, 2019)
As a result
Servant leaders create a win-win situation at workplace for everyone and achieve the organizational goals and optimum productivity.
Servant leadership challenges
One of the critical task for servant leader is to do jusitice to the vision and mission of the company as well as upholding the integrity above becoming a profit generator (Van de Bunt-Kokhuis & Peshawaria)
Furthermore
Servant leaders are responsible and help their employees to remove the obstacles (which reduces the productivity of employees) and give freedom and appreciation to the employees (so they can deliver their full potential).(Arnold & Harris, 2000)
Criticism on 21st century Leadership
Technological advancements such as Artificial intelligence and others are making the leadership practices more complex
Criticism on 21 century leadership
A comprehensive theory of leader development which can cover modern aspects is missing in the literature. Although there is no shortage of leadership theories or developmental practices for leaders. (Day, Riggio, Tan, & Conger, 2021)
Criticism on 21 century leadership
Moreover, research scholars also argue that leader development efforts should also be grounded in theories of adult development. Even though researchers have tried to incorporate theories of adult development into leadership and leader development, (Day, Riggio, Tan, & Conger, 2021) much more is needed
Criticism on Adaptive Leadership
One of the most common criticism on Adaptive leadership styles is that it is mostly understood as a prescriptive approach lacking specific action-reaction decisions (Hales, 2017)
Criticism on Adaptive Leadership
Many research scholars are not in the favor of regarding adaptive leadership as a fully fledged theory. However it does provide an argument about how individuals acclimatize their behaviors to react in a thoughtful manner to different situations. It has been applied in many fields such psychology, business, medicine, education and administration and implicates changing behavior in changing situations.
Criticism on Adaptive Leadership
Adaptive Leadership endures significant criticism surrounding its lack of theoretical underpinnings, empirical research, clear conceptualizations, and evidence-based support for the framework’s basic tenets (Northouse, 2021)
Criticism on Servant Leadership
Servant leadership has been widely criticized for being oversimplified. Although it has the platitude to being applicable to schools, churches, enterprises and even government. However Greenleaf (who is believed to be the first one to introduce this concept) was of the view that servant leadership is too naive to be applicable in the real world (Kim, Kim, & Choi, 2014)
Criticism on Servant Leadership
Through empirical observation servant leadership useful, but it is very challenging to be academically acknowledged in the process of measuring and verifying whether ambiguous concepts are used. As it is difficult to obtain realistic usability in this process, it would be useful to develop questionnaire items that question about what qualities should be kept by a servant leader
Criticism on Servant Leadership
Servant leadership is also criticized for encouraging leaders to become too weak, passive and accepting. Due to this reason various scholars call it unrealistic.
Conclusion
To conclude, modern leadership styles are critical in current scenario as technological advancements are changing entire business. Modern technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are replacing the common jobs done by human being. However, the complexity of jobs are also increasing day by day. In order to compete efficiently and effectively in such environments, businesses must adopt 21st century leadership styles which focuses on Team work and help every individual to succeed according to his true potential.
References
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