Good Research Paper About Current Trends In Leadership Management

Leadership Development

Leadership development means such type of activity, which increases the overall quality of leadership within an organization or an individual. These actions include all level of activities at educational level and action learning. Leadership development mainly focuses on development of all types of qualities. Attitudes and behaviors that is necessary to become a good leader. Leadership development is related to mainly three variables that includes the followings. Individual characteristic of leader

Nature and quality type of leadership programs

Proper support from supervisor of leader for change in behavior of leader
Actually, the personality trait, willingness to learn and attitude of learner have much importance for leadership development. There is a need of self-motivation, self-monitoring and internal focus for control for leadership development. In leadership, development there will be four key features.

Experiential learning

Self-efficacy
Visioning
Attitude
Experiential Learning
It means that the persons should passes from all the four main stages of learning that is developed by David A. Kolb. These stages include concrete experience, reflection, and observation, developing abstract concept and testing for new situation.

Self-Efficacy

It means that the right state of coaching and training causes an individual to develop self-efficacy in his personality. It is actually the confidence and belief of the leader himself about his qualities and abilities to learn about the leadership development
Visioning
It is actually an ability to make clear image about the bright future of the organization .this matters a lot in leadership development if any leader has an ability to formulate images about future performance of any organization
Attitude
Ability addition to willingness of any leader to bring positive changes in his personality refers towards his attitude. This is the most important factor for leadership development.
Leadership development not only limited to individual level of personality building but it also focuses on interpersonal linkages among all the team members of a group. There is a need to bring all the team members together with the leader to bring positive and desired results.

Challenges That Is Required For Current Situation

Now the whole trend is changed and there are many challenges that have to face for the current situation or leadership development. Globalization has changed the entire trend and now there is a need for critical thinking. There is requirement of new competencies for the future leaders to make them enough capable to lead in an effective way. The common skills and abilities that are needed to give more focus includes (Petrie, 2011)

Adaptability

Self-awareness
Collaboration
Network thinking
Boundary spanning
There is a need of complex thinking to learn about all above given abilities. Strategic thinking can help any leader to make him a good leader. There is a need of learning about complex thinking styles and resolve the problems with strategic and complex thinking styles. (Petrie, 2011)
Currently we are using traditional methods to develop leadership, which is not working very well. All the organizations are mostly depend upon their human resource department to conduct pipeline for managers to learn them about leadership development. According to many managers and senior directors, organizations that are using current methods for leadership development are not sufficient to develop such abilities and capabilities that are required in current situations. Mostly the traditional leader development programs include the following methods.

Job assignments

Training
Action learning
Mentoring
Executive coaching
360 edge back
When interview are conducted with managers they revealed that such type of methods may helpful but not meeting the demands of such criteria that are badly needed from past few years as there is tremendous changes in economic situation has took place. (Petrie, 2011)

Future Trends in Leadership Development

There is a need of some new trends in leadership development. According to many responses of interviews, it is responded that many old methods such as content heavy tracings that are used repeatedly in this century are insufficient to produce such leaders that can cope with changing trends with in the business community. Such type of methods can work well in past but they have mismatch with the new changing trends and such programs are not showing good results in changing the behavior of leaders. This is the time to change the trends that best fit according to future demands. There are few trends that are necessary for future. (Petrie, 2011)

A new era of innovation in leadership development

Decline of heroic leadership, concept of collective leadership
Transfer the developmental ownership towards the individual level
Increased attention towards vertical development
It is proven psychology that motivation level of employees is increased when they are given autonomy for their personal development. It is actually about to understand the concept that when training programs are conducted it means that someone is telling them that how they can build their capability level high , now a days there is a need of self-decision. Every employee wants to know about his or her personal development by himself. There is a need to sit the employees on driver seat and put decision into their hand for their own development. According to gaffe in our organization, employees are trained that someone else is trying to develop their abilities. We should think that there is a need for developing themselves. Why others are telling you about your development.

There are some modern factors that are needed for coaching. (Petrie, 2011)

It should be the demission of manger that what he want to focus on not the trainer.
Each person has different style and different personality so there will be customized programs or every manager for their development training.

The trainer should act that he is the thinking partner of the manager not the authority.

There is no specific content for learning that must be covered in a specified time.
It should be conducted as a developmental process but not as an event.
However, there are some hindrances that are always present for coach as there is no scale for judging the developmental progress. However, it is suggested that if authority of development is transferred to the individual level with the help of experts then there will be a good progress in developmental process. These principles can be applied on larger scale for an entire organization. For applying the concept of this developmental trend there are some important factors that must be kept in mind before applying this concept to any organization. (Petrie, 2011)
It should be recognized in organization that in case of any complex situation, business strategies cannot only applied without taking authority from senior executive (McGuire and Rhodes, 2009)
All the staff should be educated about the fact that how the whole process of development occurs and in return, what benefits them can get from it.
There should be proper awareness to, managers that why this transfer of ownership for develop mat will work better for them

There should be use of new technology in this process.

There will be development of such culture in which taking risk is necessary to teach them about to open their mind in discomfort zone.

Decline of Heroic Leadership with Concept of Collective Leadership

The whole trend is changing very rapidly and this is the time when we are confronting with adaptive challenges. In this environment, it is not the task of any one individual to take all the decisions but also to understand all the problems critically. To solve these adaptive challenges there is a need for collaborative leadership. There should be involvement of many stakeholders in solving a problem so that better solutions come from them and there will be a margin for all of them to learn and to develop theory leadership ability. Now the whole trend is changing and there is no more concept of a single leader that run all the matters alone and gets a better image in the eye of other employees. Manager level employees consider such leaders as a heroic personality and began to idealize him and consider themselves as incapable for making such decision. Now there is a need of collective leadership. (Goffer, 2006)
Now it is time to redefine the term leadership. Leadership is no more a role now but it has become a process. A process that is motivating people to accept challenges and facing the difficulties, leadership role is not only confined to only one person but leaders are those who actively participate in any organization for directing, aligning, and committing. It is not only confined to a specific role now but it has transformed to a process now. Senior executives should help them to flourish such culture in organization. There is being certain conditions that must include in this developmental process of leadership (McGuire and Rhodes, 2009)

There should be an open flow of all information.

There will be flexible hierarchy.
All the resources must be distributed according to challenges.
There should be trend of distributed decision-making.
There should be no more centralized authority control over others.
Organizations that want to adopt such conditions must use new modern technologies for their developmental programs. We are currently at the initial stage of thinking about collective leadership. There is more work that is necessary to be done to get good ad effective results (McCauley and Van Velsor, 2004).

New Era of Innovation for Leadership Development

There is a need of creation of modern developmental methods. There is always a space for betterment and for innovation. In this fast moving age, there are new trends that are coming every day. Innovation is such a process that can never be underestimated in any field of life. Organizations try to do innovations for their products to take the advantage of competitive edge. In the same line, development of leadership must also include innovation. All the other forms of developmental leadership trends that include vertical development, collective leadership, and transfer of ownership are actually a form of innovation in this process. In future, there will many networks that will handle the innovative leadership programs to get a good an effective process of leadership development. This is only a staring pint and there is a need of doing much work about this important concept. As organizations, succeed when there is an ability to take adaptive challenges and to show good performance by solving such challenges. (Petrie, 2011)

Increased Attention towards the Vertical Development

Horizontal develop mat
Vertical development
Horizontal Development
It is actually development of new abilities, skills, and behaviors. This form of development includes technical learning. This method of development is used when there is clear vision about all the problems and you have known techniques for them. You have to just pick up an accurate solution for the known problem. There are clear source of information that can be easily transferred from one expert to others.

Vertical Development

This type of development included level of complexity. In this process of vertical development, there are actually stages that are progressing by people to make the sense about the world. We can easily explain it by saying that children learn about the stages, as they grow old. There is mental development with the varying rate as there is progressing the age. At every new level of development, adults can make a new sense about the world in form that is more complex and their vision about the world grow older and become more mature. It is suggested that this is the time to include the concept of mental competency in the leadership concept so that in future all leaders show development both in horizontal and vertical direction. It is the bad experience of organizations that they develop the competency level of leaders but do not give attention to develop their mindsets progressively. (Goffee, 2006)

Importance or Need of Vertical Development

Then here the most important question arises here that why there is a need for vertical development in leadership. The best answer of this question is that when we see with the leadership perspective then it comes to mind that those people perform good in complex situation that reach at higher level of development. According to Rhodes and McGuire, it is suggested that for every successive step there is always a greater ability to learn complex problem solving and find out new directions to lead a specific change. At a higher level people have greater ability to solve more complex situation and when comes a step forward for higher level there is more space for learn much faster as now their minds are open to accept things at faster rate than the others. It means with every stage of development, mental ability of leader to accept more challenges and to think more critically increases (McGuire and Rhodes, 2009)
In this process of vertical development, there comes the important concept of keg an adult level of development. According to this model, there are three main levels that are defined (McGuire and Rhodes, 2009)

Socialized mind

Self-authorization mind
Self-transforming mind
Socialized Mind
This is the level when our mind readily picks up the expectations of all the society that is near to us. Whatever we think is influenced by the society around us. At this age, people are called as dependent conformer.

Self-Authorization Mind

This is the stage when we depend on our own thinking and ideology. At this stage, there is an internal compass that provides guidance to us. It is our belief system, values and personal codes that is aligned with our mindset. We listened to our internal voice. This stage is called as an independent achiever.

Self-Transforming

At this stage we although have own ideology at the same time we think about the more practical vision. In our minds, there is presence of many contradictions in our mind and we do not run towards the polarized style of thinking. This adult stage is called as independent collaborator.

According to Rhodes and McGuire, there are actually three stages of vertical developmental process (McGuire and Rhodes, 2009)

Awaken
Unlearn and discern
Advice
Awaken
At this stage everybody know that there exist a new way of thinking about the world and there are many new possible things that can be possible to do.

Unclear and Discern

In this stage, all suppositions are challenged and space is given to the new experiences. New experiences and assumptions are experimented and tested with many new possibilities.

Advice

This stage refers to the maturity level stage. When there exist new ideas rather than old ones. In this stage, there is more sense about the developmental level and it makes sense than the older level.
This vertical development is necessary as people become frustrated and bored when they have to face same challenge for a longer time period. This cause to limit the thinking ability of anyone, there will be enough support to remain firmed in case of any conflict and anxiety (McCauley and Van Velsor, 2004).

Recommendations

Leadership development is a process in which there is continuous need for innovations. According to my opinion as there is need for complex thinking now so it is necessary that there will be proper implication of all these new trends if any organization want to remain in competition in this era of innovation.
Although there will be required more resources for this developmental process but this is the time when managers should give training in such a way that they can easily develop their personality. History shows that all alone power to a single leader can affect the whole nation drastically. There is a need to apply this new trend to all organization and on the national level as well.
In my opinion there is much potential is hidden behind personalities now it is the time to explore such hidden strengths that can cause a positive effect in the organizations. When we talk about the transfer of ownership, it should be kept in mind that there is always a chance of mistake. Therefore, every manger should give a second chance to prove him. There will be no more dictatorship but should implement democracy at many levels of management hierarchy. There is always new room for betterment. Organizational culture will be of such type that support the innovative culture and give confidence to all level of leade5rs that they can do a good job. There will be no centralization for decision-making. When all level of leaders is engaged to take part in decision, making then there will be new possibilities about a problem by means of brainstorming. In this, way different opinions come and this leads towards the better solution. At the same time, new leaders can also get a chance to learn by experience and they feel themselves that they have a potential for doing great job. Leadership is not the quality of a single person but it is like skills that can be enhanced with the passage of time with more experiences (McCauley and Van Velsor, 2004).

References

GOFFEE, R., 2006. Why should anyone be led by you?: What it takes to be an authentic leader. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
MCCAULEY, C., & VAN VELSOR, E., 2004. The Center for Creative Leadership handbook of leadership development. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
MCGUIRE, C., & RHODES, G., 2009. Transforming your leadership culture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
PETRIE, N., 2011. Future trends in leadership development. Center for Creative Leadership white paper.