How organizations benefit from leadership development

Organizational leadership is now becoming much more dynamic as businesses continue to adjust to shifts in workplace behavior. Not only has business become much more global in scope, technology has created a much more competitive landscape. Now, anyone can seemingly complete on a global scale with little to no upfront capital investment. In addition, shifts in labor have created a much more dynamic work environment predicated on hybrid and fully remote work options. Finally, economic circumstances such as accommodative monetary and fiscal policy have causes shifts in the way leaders think about workplace compensation and benefits. Each of these elements both directly and indirectly develop leaders and their relationships with follwers (Argyris, ).

To begin, the competitive environment has become much nimbler and more dynamic. Barriers to entry into most fields have been lifted due primarily to technology. As such competition is fierce as businesses look to capture market share. Companies such as Amazon purposefully operated with losses in order to gain market share and disrupt the overall retail landscape. Small operators are also selling goods, products and services online, albeit, on a much more limited basis. Competition is omnipresent. As such, leaders must now be cognizant of how they develop talent within the organization to adjust to these rapidly changing dynamics. Here, research has found that servant leadership is one of the primary methods of doing so. Through servant leadership, organizations are better aligned with the needs and desires of the employees, creating a much more robust operating environment. Through the theory of servant leadership, business leaders look to mimic the behaviors they wish followers to exhibit (Letizia, 2018). Likewise, they look to “serve” in employees by empowering them to achieve both personal and business aspirations. This ultimately helps to align the interest of both parties through communication, shared goals and shared objectives. This form of leadership helps to develop all parties involved as they achieve mutually beneficial aspirations (Meyer, 2015).

Another element of organization leadership is the ability to properly gather information and make informed, calculated decisions. As discussed in the paragraph above, leaders can no longer rest and rely on their prior accomplishments. Businesses both small and large continue to compete heavily. As such the ability to properly leverage data and make informed decisions is critical for both leaders and followers. The push towards remote or hybrid work environments, for example, is heavily based on the ability of leaders to leverage information and make decisions in the interest of all stakeholders. As COVID-19 ravished the world, many mission critical businesses needed to remain operational. Leaders had to maintain operations, without exposing their employees to the risk of disease, and to an extreme level, death. This all had to be accomplished in an extremely uncertain and unpredictable period. Many organizations adopted a remote policy which ultimately proved to be the correct choice given the circumstances provided. Although uncertain, leaders in the organization took a calculated risk, with many benefiting to this day (Meindl, 1985). Other, less extreme circumstances can continue to rise within the organization as well. Decisions related to hiring, product line development, business expansion, acquisition activity, and financing all utilize data. Organizational leaders must therefore have an ability to properly ascertain the implications of their decisions on various stakeholder groups throughout the organization. They must also be able to do under various time constraints due in part to fierce competitive forces. This ultimately helps develop the leader and follower relationship as those impacted have faith that leaders are adequately accounting for their interests within the operations of the business (Parris, 2013)