¶ … Transformational Leaders: Service and Technology
Challenges Facing Transformational Leaders: Service Delivery and New Technologies
The prominent challenges facing the world depict the significance of social enterprises that promises financial sustainability of organizations. There is a call for effective conflict management for the success of the social enterprises. It is crucial to identify the challenges and associated skills aimed at effective management of tensions within the business environment. Leaders face internal and external business challenges that hamper growth and the realization of business outcomes. Social entrepreneurs need successful integration of skills, challenges, and pedagogical tools in the creation of a realizable leadership model (Smith, Besharov, Wessels, & Chertok, 2012).
Today, the business world has created a dual responsibility for business leaders to create business value and bring down the operational costs. It is a call for transformational leaders to realize this seeming dichotomy. The leaders face a wide array of challenges that may hamper the road towards creating value within their organizations and bringing down the cost of doing business. Technology occurs as a business model that business leaders have adopted to bring down operational costs. Transformation of an organization also involves technology based on its dynamism in business activities.
Literature Analysis
Forces of globalization, competition, and innovation have created new avenues in technological and economic frontiers. However, the forces have resulted in aspects of financial injustice, environmental devastation, and violation of human rights. The growth of social enterprises has come in handy to address ills in the society with innovative ways. Realization of this great potential relies on the zealous nature of social entrepreneurs. Management of social missions requires a unique set of skills. The unique set of skills reflects dynamism that surpasses the quest of achieving commercial goals of an organization. Meeting social and financial needs benefits the organization. The pursuit of these needs coincides with attributes of norms, value systems, and competing identities. Addressing this gap requires skills that enable the entrepreneurs to meet social and economic demands (Smith, Besharov, Wessels, & Chertok, 2012).
Social enterprises risk losing dual focus status based on the competing demands that arise. The demands emanate from the pursuit of organizations in achieving social missions through commercial means. Conflicts can also occur with the risk of intractable conflict between social and commercial sides of an organization. As a result, leaders face 'double-edged' conflicts that call for the commitment to social missions and business plans. Effective management of internal conflicts of the organization facilitates the realization of organizational goals. Linking acceptance, differentiation, and integration aspects enable the organization to become productive rather than becoming intractable.
Entrepreneurial innovation enables social enterprises to impact positive change and create social value. Social enterprises face a unique set of challenges based on the need to adapt to commercial methods to achieve the pursued social ends. Operational conflicts between financial and social demands emanate hampering the adoption of commercial endeavors in service by social entrepreneurs. Successful handling of these demands calls for unique skills to manage the conflicts and tensions between the competing demands.
The salient nature of competing demands can elicit strong tensions and reactions amongst organizational leaders. Consequently, it may lead to detrimental responses within the organization such as disagreements that derail organizational progress. Solving the problem calls for leaders to embrace inconsistencies and seek support for the contradictory elements in a simultaneous fashion. The latter poses creative and beneficial alternatives to conflict resolution for the organization. Paradoxical tensions between financial and social demands emanate in the pursuit of the social mission by social enterprises. Economic values define commercial viability whereas social missions depict societal values.
The tendency of overemphasizing on either commercial viability of social mission creates a challenging task for social entrepreneurs who have to strike a balance between the two. Association of the demands with distinct subgroups within the organization can result in intractable conflicts within the organization for social entrepreneurs. Tensions within groups result in polarization as limited initial collective engagement may arise due to group commitments. In extreme cases, polarization results in intractable conflicts that characterize mistrust between groups and entrenched competition. Inability to address these challenges poses detrimental effects on organizational performance. It is crucial for social entrepreneurs to overcome these challenges to sustain dual commitments.
The pursuit of commercial viability provides growth, innovation, efficiency, and performance for social entrepreneurs. On the other hand, social missions elicit motivation, passion, and commitment. The combination of the two factors endeavors to address the existing challenges in the business environment. Realizing positive potential relies on the ability of business leaders to embrace competing demands rather than rejecting them. The dual forces of passion...
Achieving these skills encompasses interpersonal skills aimed at providing transformation experiences for business leaders. The skill of differentiation entails recognition of distinct contributions from different demands. It encompasses the attendance to various distinctions between domains in the business environment. Acceptance encompasses a simultaneous view of social and financial demands. This aspect entails the adoption of an abundance mentality and embracing paradoxical thinking. Integration involves the collaboration of financial and social demands to inculcate productivity rather than intractability on arising conflicts (Smith, Besharov, Wessels, & Chertok, 2012). Collaboration between the two demands calls for the establishment of openness, trust, and cultural sensitivity. Additionally, it calls for synergizing decision-making approaches.
It is a call for business leaders to manage conflicts from a commercial and social point-of-view. Creating a balance between the two aspect promises financially sustainable organizations, solutions to world business problems. The three meta-skills of differentiation, acceptance, and integration play a crucial role in the realization of a paradoxical leadership model for social enterprises. Adoption of the three skills enables business leaders to be more engaging, understanding, and collaborative rather than rejecting because it catalyzes underlying tensions.
Adoption of an abundance mentality encompasses attendance to resources based on a mindset of plentiful and regenerative rather than a limited and a scarce one. Thinking widely reframes the problem-solving focus thereby facilitating the possibility of identification of solutions to challenges in business. Shifting from a zero-sum and competitive approach to a positive-sum and collaborative yields benefits for the organization (Smith, Besharov, Wessels, & Chertok, 2012). Adoption of the approach gives leaders the chance to strike a balance between the competing sides. Transformational leaders require envisaging such a mentality to facilitate the realization of the set goals and objectives.
Implications of paradoxical leadership model include the development and measurement of social missions on aspects of efficiency and effectiveness in the business environment. The leadership model embraces the exploration of personal beliefs and challenges that affect the set frameworks. It is crucial to acknowledge the difficulties that arise in shifting mental models. However, shifting from an informational knowledge approach to a transformational knowledge approach challenges leaders to create sophisticated emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills. Encompassing the meta-skills facilitates the realization of these benefits for the business leaders.
Interpersonal skills including openness, trust and cultural sensitivity create a favorable atmosphere for the open exchange of ideas. People feel comfortable once they have gained confidence in expressing innermost thoughts, feelings, and perception on issues. It is crucial that business leaders create a harmonious environment to get a wide array of ideas and opinions aimed at addressing the progress of the organization. Adequate knowledge of the ideas facilitates dynamism in the adoption of ideas that benefit the organization.
Comprehension of the competing demands on management facilitates the realization of social entrepreneurship. Adoption of pedagogical techniques yields significant benefits for business leaders. Social enterprises come in handy in the development of these skills.
The access to data, services, and other technological devices has occurred as a critical focus for organizations. It is crucial that transformational leaders realize the essence of technology in the business environment. Today, cloud computing have created obsoleteness of other business models. Technological advancements have also created new security challenges that business leaders need to address. Failure in doing so compromises the effectiveness of the business model thereby failing the organization. Consumer demands for information access with superior experiences call for an integrated approach to leveraging new technologies and promoting transformation.
Transformational leaders lead the pack in the management of organizational work culture and the entire business environment. It is crucial that they portray emphatic and persuasion skills in the organization. In doing so, they initiate ironing out of controversial ideas without the fear of ridicule. Nurturing the acceptance of organizational transformation process brings into play adoption of meta-skills, unique to the organization. As a social process, leadership propels orientation of individuals towards goal achievement. The transformational process relies on human aspects of trust and commitment effort and satisfaction of the end goals.
Conclusion
Transformational leaders should portray the capability in grasping and understanding situations. It is crucial that they view the relation between different aspects around a certain situation in question. Up to today, leaders still grapple with this challenge in maneuvering between challenges within the organization. Additionally,…
