A Significant Challenge Faced As a Leader

Introduction 

In the dawn of globalization, it’s been recognized worldwide that managerial effectiveness serve a fundamental role in harnessing employees’ abilities and know-how in gaining competitive advantage within the climate of multinational corporations. In this arena, the key strategy is effective leadership (Sheehan, 2012). Notably, leadership in itself is a challenge. Three forms of challenges surround leadership, namely external, internal and challenges streaming from within the leader him-or herself in relation to the nature of leadership. It is virtually impossible for a leader to evade external challenges such as inadequate funding, oppositional forces from community and organization’s interpersonal issues. Others are political, social and economic forces. A great demand is laid upon persons in real leadership. In spite of the fact that organization’s vision, missions and core values is a shared responsibility, leaders bear the greatest burden of upholding them. In this paper I share my leadership experience mainly focusing on how I developed effective managerial skills, the challenges faced and how I solved them. 

Developing effective managerial skills is a challenge that emerged at all point of my leadership. It was worse when I was new in leadership. These challenges entailed acquiring relevant skills in order to exercise more efficacy at work. Included among them are time management, strategic analysis and thinking, prompt and precise decision making and prioritization of agendas in addition to creating a team-player attitude and environment geared towards achievement of a common organization’s goal. The problems were aggravated by the need to expand my organization following the end of a fiscal year. 

Remedies to the Challenge 

For starters, leadership needs to be redefined by leaders – elaborating what it means to the organization. Questions that constantly resonated in my mind included: “What is my target within this timeframe? What are the priorities in achieving these targets? What do I need at this point in my organization to arrive at my goals? Do I inspire or motivate my team into achieving the institutional overall objective? What are major barricades in obtaining the set targets and how to I address them?” Accordingly, I redefined my leadership throughout by consistent education and skill acquisition. In essence, what was once considered strategy A or priority 1 may not necessarily be the most crucial need of the organization presently. In my experience it was essential to constantly offer a definition for those needs depending on the prevailing circumstances. Agreeably, as Trivellas and Reklitis (2014) puts it, managers characterized by high levels of job performance excel in practicing all leadership competencies. Most of my managerial actions where driven by my leadership competency in directing, mentoring and even innovation. I adopted four concrete ways that boosted my managerial skills development. These included setting goal, delegating more, working on task that maximize unique values, and gaining some role clarity in my organization. 

Being proactive in goal setting with specific timelines and deadlines was essential in streamlining every member of my organization. The goals were formulated using the SMART approach (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound). Empowerment and productivity of my staff was enhanced through delegation. In doing so, I effectively evaluated my workload and work preference before delegating appropriately. Moreover, to ensure effective delegation, I appraised the staff in order to evaluate his ability to handle the task to be delegated. The sequence of events that followed included: stating the purpose of the task, adequate appraisal and rewarding. Upholding organization’s competitive advantage within the globalized economy demanded talent management. To achieve that, I systematically identified principal areas that could sustain these (Sheehan, 2012). To maximize unique values I prioritized key issues and filtered out tasks that were not urgent at the time. Role clarity was gained by knowing what the core responsibilities are for one’s role, and what are secondary responsibilities, or even work that belongs to someone else. Finally, my managerial coaching facilitated workers’ learning process to perform effectively in the organization (Ratiu, David and Baban, 2017). 

The Implication of Approach 

Using the four state approaches starting with setting goals, managerial challenges that led to frustration, loneliness and burden of workload were effective handled through navigation around these obstacles. Maximization of employees’ corporation and productivity was achieved in the context of a globalized economy. More job satisfaction was attained with more success. My Coaching style, as a professional development technique (Ratiu, David and Baban, 2017), has greatly contributed to the managerial behaviors that facilitated development at subordinate level, as they are captured by some transformational and transactional scales. The knowledge from the method aided in managing and appreciating employee behavior vis-à-vis their attitudes in my institution. 

Lessons Learned 

In my service as a leader I have learnt that dealing with a constant series of problems in an effective way, to a larger degree, is the true measure of a leader. The ability of a leader to calmly resolve crisis with minor fuss by taking advantage of the opportunities makes it easy for smooth work flow without noticing most of the external problems. Despite the fact that leadership offer an opportunity to show the best of one’s ability, it also exposes one’s limitations. For transmission to occur to permit chasing of vision, a leader must overcome the limitations. A mediocre manager can be transformed into a great leader when he admit and overcome his limitation. Lastly, given the power held by managers, they are an important source of support. Studies have shown that work engagement is directly linked to positive social support (Breevaart et al., 2015). 

References 

Breevaart, K., Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., & van den Heuvel, M. (2015). Leader-member exchange, work engagement, and job performance. Journal of Managerial Psychology , 30 (7), 754-770. 

Ratiu, L., David, O. A., & Baban, A. (2017). Developing managerial skills through coaching: Efficacy of a cognitive-behavioral coaching program. Journal of rational-emotive & cognitive-behavior therapy , 35 (1), 88-110. 

Sheehan, M. (2012). Developing managerial talent: Exploring the link between management talent and perceived performance in multinational corporations (MNCs). European Journal of Training and Development , 36 (1), 66-85. 

Trivellas, P., & Reklitis, P. (2014). Leadership competencies profiles and managerial effectiveness in Greece. Procedia Economics and Finance , 9 , 380-390.