Servant Leadership
There are various types of leadership evident in multiple settings. One of these is the servant leadership which is characterized by the leader placing the needs and interests of their subjects above their own. In servant leadership, the leader shows no self-interest but instead works towards promoting the development of the people they lead, upholding the practice of authenticity and community-building. These are the man pillars that hold such a form of leadership. Additionally, vision and direction form a significant aspect of this type of leadership where the leaders are vision-oriented and strive towards leading the team to achieve a set objective (Liden, Wayne, Liao & Meuser, 2014) . Contrary to other forms of administration, the fact that these visions and plans come from the top of the leadership hierarchy does not mean that the other members are barred o limited in their participation of drafting and implementing these plans and visions. Instead, they are actively engaged through open and frequent meetings in which they are encouraged to air their opinions and insights on how they feel a particular aspect should be implemented. According to servant leadership, when the subjects are made aware of the organization's direction, the leader then is required to turn the pyramid hierarchy the other way by serving the subjects and helping them implement the set visions. This is the main feature of servant leadership. It is mainly characterized by the drive for the leader to come down to the level of the subjects and actively help them in implementing whatever change that is agreed upon, as opposed to overseeing the implementation from a boss point of view. The critical skills employed in servant leadership include open communication. Here the subjects are actively engaged in public discussions to get their views, as well as to brief them of whatever projects or changes there are to be made (Spears & Lawrence, 2016). Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa are some of the exemplary servant leaders the world has known. These individuals dedicated their lives to helping those around them find and implement solutions to whatever situations they had to go through.
Women Leadership
Women leadership has for the longest time significantly been influenced limited even by the stereotypes which hold on to the notion that men are better leaders than women. In this regard building on what would be called stereotype assimilation of women leaders. In this case, the women in leadership are channeled to follow what the society believes to be the conventional way of command; as defined by the male leaders. The effect of this form of assimilation is that women administration lacks authenticity and originality. Women find it hard to come up with leadership strategies or ideas that have never been tried before because they are so much restricted to play by the rules and regulations set by the male counterparts (Hoyt & Murphy, 2016). A diversion from this would lead to opposition by the stereotypes who disregard women innovation in leadership and undermine its impact. The end effect of this is that women never get to fully exploit their potential in administration by rising above the set standards. This reaction by the society is called stereotype reactance. The stereotypes are made to react in a certain way towards women leadership strategies, in this case, the response is negative and opposes any changes the women leaders attempt to bring into their leadership strategies or structures. The stereotypes, in this case, would refuse any insight that is not male-generated or has never been approved by the male leaders beforehand. No matter how good or useful the change might be, the stereotype reactance is designed in such a manner that it strongly opposes it (Schaumberg & Flynn, 2017) . The effect of this on the women is that they are undermined and not given a chance to prove their strategies. As such they would feel discouraged even to lead. This explains why there are fewer women leaders in any given setting.
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Culture and Leadership
In understanding how culture influences the leadership process, this argument will center on the organizational culture and how it promotes or hinders organizational leadership. The simplest definition of corporate culture is how an organization operates. Organizational culture takes into account in a very minimal percentage the qualities of any one leader. In other words, it does not matter how great or inexperienced a leader is. What would define their leadership is their ability to blend their leadership style with the organizational culture. The corporate culture, therefore, plays a very critical role in establishing and upholding the right direction, just as much as it does to limit and undermine leadership should such a culture be weak (Bolman & Deal, 2017). In effective leadership, therefore, it is imperative that the leader identifies the values, norms, and practices of an organization and learn to play by them to influence his leadership strategy. A strong organizational culture would capitalize on such leadership qualities as open communication, team play, diversity, and active engagement. In this regard, it becomes effortless to develop a strong leader capable of defending the goals of the organization and drive change to the next level. However, if the organizational culture is such that it does not appreciate diversity or innovation, then it becomes quite tricky for the leader to fully exploit their potential and of those under their leadership by trying out the conventional ways of administration which are mainly characterized by unity and diversity (Northouse, 2018). To this end, such a culture significantly undermines the leadership structure or strategy put in place, and it, therefore, becomes hard to uphold strong leadership.
Team Management
With the advancement of technology, more businesses are moving from the traditional ways of doing things, including managing the teams. There is the increasing adoption of the virtual teams over face-to-face teams. However, managing the former is proving to be quite a task as opposed to leading the face-to-face teams. This is seen first in the selection of the team members. In face-to-face groups, members are selected primarily based on their functional skills. Here they are interviewed in practical settings where they are given a chance to defend their abilities. But in the virtual context, a different module has to be used in the selection of team members (Gilson et al., 2015). This is because members of this team solely rely on the electronic form of communications to defend their ideologies and as such may find it a bit hard to defend their ideas practically. The result of this is that the lack of social focus in the virtual team leads to the isolation and loneliness to some team members who may feel as if they are not given an equal chance to prove themselves. On the other hand is the issue of the organization structure. Virtual teams, in this case, flatter the organization structure with dark lines of authorities and hierarchy. While this may be important in surviving in the otherwise hypercompetitive market settings, it becomes difficult for the team leader to keep tabs on the personal development of each team leader since they cannot personally supervise their activities but instead rely on electronic worksheets and chats which might be to some extent fabricated and not exact (Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014) . Based on this, it is critical that a different module approach is taken for the virtual team other than the one face-to-face teams advocate for. In other words, not all of the parts of the leadership model apply to the virtual group.
The Holding Environment
The holding environment can be defined as "having the cohesive properties of a relationship or social system that serve to keep people engaged with one another in spite of the divisive forces generated by adaptive work" (Heifetz , Grashow & Linsky, 2009). The holding environment can alternatively be referred to as the pressure cooker for it provides the appropriate adaptive challenges and support to the team members. In other words, this environment plays a critical role in easing in the team members into the organizational leadership. Considered as some form of transition, the holding environment neither stresses the team members out to such a point that they are no longer able to function effectively, and neither does it let them get away with avoiding the difficult adaptive work. The holding environment, therefore, more or less plays the orientation function of allowing the team members know what is expected of them, train them on how such activities are supposed to be carried out and then giving them a head start (Heifetz & Linsky, 2014) . This being the case, it is, therefore, vital to create, strengthen and maintain a holding environment that allows the team members enough room to safely discuss the organizational values, perspectives and personal ideas, strengths, and weakness and finding the best way forward to incorporate these into the corporate culture to boost creativity and productivity. This is a significant part of the adaptive leader's work. In summary, the holding environment plays a critical role in providing the optimal range of distress within which the urgency in the system motivates people to engage in adaptive work (Heifetz , Grashow & Linsky, 2009). If these levels are to be too low, the team members will be reluctant in maintaining their current ways of operations. An if on the other hand, the levels are too high, then they are likely to be overwhelmed and may panic and to extreme cases engage in work avoidance, both of which are detrimental to the organization.
References
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership . John Wiley & Sons.
Gilson, L. L., Maynard, M. T., Jones Young, N. C., Vartiainen, M., & Hakonen, M. (2015). Virtual teams research: 10 years, 10 themes, and 10 opportunities. Journal of Management , 41 (5), 1313-1337.
Heifetz, R. A., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The practice of adaptive leadership: Tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world . Harvard Business Press.
Heifetz, R. A., & Linsky, M. (2014). Adaptive Leadership: The Heifetz Collection (3 Items) . Harvard Business Review Press.
Hoch, J. E., & Kozlowski, S. W. (2014). Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership, structural supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of applied psychology , 99 (3), 390.
Hoyt, C. L., & Murphy, S. E. (2016). Managing to clear the air: Stereotype threat, women, and leadership. The Leadership Quarterly , 27 (3), 387-399.
Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Liao, C., & Meuser, J. D. (2014). Servant leadership and serving culture: Influence on individual and unit performance. Academy of Management Journal , 57 (5), 1434-1452.
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice . Sage publications.
Schaumberg, R. L., & Flynn, F. J. (2017). Self-reliance: A gender perspective on its relationship to communality and leadership evaluations. Academy of Management Journal , 60 (5), 1859-1881.
Spears, L. C., & Lawrence, M. (Eds.). (2016). Practicing servant-leadership: Succeeding through trust, bravery, and forgiveness . John Wiley & Sons.
