Challenges for New Leaders

Twenty-First Change Challenges Today's organization face an external political environment that is marked by unprecedented levels of bipolarization that have arguably reached new heights relative to any time in recent history. Although most organizations will not experience the same levels of bipolarization internally, at least on the surface or overt political disagreements, due to the fact that most organizations have at least a minimal level of professionalism that prohibits discussions or arguments about personal beliefs that are not related in somehow to the organization, its strategy, or its operations.

However, at the same time, there are still undoubtedly disagreements that manifest within a professional organizational setting that are somehow grounded in an individual's personal worldview. Furthermore, it is often the case that the power and politics that are in play internally in any organization often mirror those found in the macro external environment.

Therefore, one situation in which leaders will undoubtedly have to tackle to a greater extent will be conflicts that are deeply seeded and grounded in general worldviews as the business world continues to become more globalized and increasingly diverse. Furthermore, individual employees may not always voice their justifications for their positions within such a broad framework that includes their worldview positions, and other lines of reasoning and arguments will be given that are more specific.

However, it is reasonable to suspect that many of the conflicts found in organizations will be difficult to resolve on a superficial level given the deeply held beliefs that are driving potential disagreements. This analysis will briefly a critique on the ability for leadership models to address the political factors related to organization behavior.

Discussion Given the assumption that the diversity found within a majority of organizations is increasing as the result of several trends such as multiculturalism and globalization for example, many issues for organizational behavior and leadership follow from the development of these trends. For example, given increased diversity, leaders and managers will have to more sensitive to cultural differences that are found within the workforce.

As such, there has been several research studies that have focused on the leader's level of emotional intelligence as means of successfully navigating a diverse environment and understanding what can motivate employees that have different cultural values than the domestic majorities position.

Some of the characteristics that can define emotional intelligence include items such as the ability for high levels of self-regulation and personal accountability, controlling personal emotional reactions to various situations, avoiding the gambit of stereotypes that can appear (even subconsciously), and understanding the emotional needs of employees among many others (Lindebaum & Cartwritght, 2010). Furthermore, some of the researchers that have focused on issues that are related to leadership in diverse environments have studied issues like emotional intelligence as an extension of the traditional concepts of transformational leadership.

Previous generations of research on the transformational leadership model has been able to produce evidence that indicates that the model correlates with organizational success and some have even found that there were certain personality traits, such as consciousness, extraversion, and agreeableness that can be predictive characteristics of an individual's potential for transformational leadership in an organization (Ross & Offerman, 1997).

It is also reasonable to suspect that the transformational leadership is inherently adaptable to the challenges that are found in organizations that arise from conflicts centered on the power and politics that can hinder teams with diverse worldviews. More specifically, one of the original definitions of a transformational leader is their ability to push followers beyond their immediate self-interests (Bass, 1985).

This is arguably one of the most critical of all success factors in leadership in modern organizations that are influenced by the negative effects of power and politics that can influence employee sentiment and behavior which arise from these coercive forces. For example, despite the presence of coercive factors that could negatively affect an organization, a transformational leader, at least theoretically, could facilitate employees focus on shared goals and collective interests as opposed to allowed individual reactions to these factors to interfere in organizational objectives.

The example of employee reactions to offshoring was also presented, and it is reasonable to believe that this characteristic of a transformational leader would be able to maintain levels of trust even in the presence of such a divisive organizational strategy. Another leadership model that seems ideally designed to counter the ill effects that certain leadership decisions, such as offshoring and outsourcing, can have on employees would be the servant leadership model. Servant leadership model has been developed on.