Leadership has an important role to play in today’s business world. For understanding the above concept and process of Nurturing Leadership in the 21st Century, let us make an attempt to understand what is meant by nurturing & leadership and what kind of leadership is required in the 21st century.
NURTURING: Nurturing refers to upbringing, growing, developing, shaping, looking after, encouraging, caring, supporting and the like.
LEADERSHIP: Leadership can be described as the ability of an individual to influence, motivate and enable others, to contribute towards the effectiveness and success of an organisation or group of which they are members. A person who can bring about change, therefore, is the one who has this ability to be a leader.
A true leader is the one who says to his team – BRICKSBATS ARE MINE AND BOUQUETS ARE YOURS. This means failures are mine and successes are yours (of the team). He gives credit for winning to his teammates and if the team loses, he takes the blame on himself. Look at MSDhoni, when he won the world cup, he took the trophy as a captain and then gave it to his teammates.
When the media was clicking the winning teams’ pics, after India winning the world cup, M.S. Dhoni was standing somewhere at the back of the team, with the team holding and showing off the trophy. And look at this, he is now playing under Virat Kohli as his captain, who was once his team member. He has no issues with being a follower also.
Why so much talk about leadership?
The role of leadership is important for getting things done. The true leader builds team morale, motivates, co-ordinates, guides, cares, provides the right environment, initiates action, focuses on the goal and achieves it.
An effective leader can make big difference between winning and losing.
21st CENTURY: 21st century is the current century, our present day world is also referred to as the VUCA World, where VUCA stands for –
V = VOLATILE
U = UNCERTAIN
C = COMPLEX
A = AMBIGUOUS
Leadership is to be understood in the context of this kind of business environment.
GIG ECONOMY :
The future economy is going to be a Gig Economy, which refers to a labour market characterised by the prevalence of short term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs. Skill is going to be the next currency.
AUTOMATION, TECHNOLOGY, DIGITISATION :
Technology & digitisation are impacting our lives greatly. Look at UBER, OYO, GOOGLE, MOBILE, E-Commerce, E-LEARNING (UDEMY, COURSERA, BYJU, KHAN ACADEMY, SWAYAM) all are greatly impacting our daily lives. These concepts have to be differentiated and adopted only if required and not just for the sake of it because everybody is adopting them. See what problem will be solved by using technology/digitisation. Routine work can be given to technology but quality work will have to be done by humans. Eye contact and handshake are more important than technology and digitisation.
Leadership requirements in this kind of business environment have challenges which are different from the challenges faced by erstwhile industry leaders. The skill categories today are specialised and they expect and require different kind of leadership behaviours from those holding leadership positions. As skills are becoming more and more important, employee wellness at physical, mental and emotional levels assumes greater significance. Hiring the right talent becomes extremely important because one single wrong fit can hamper the growth of the organization.
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Blog Post by Mr. P.K. Gupta
Corporate Head- Human Resource
Texcorp Ltd.
Advisory Member – HR SUCCESS TALK
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