Global leadership can be defined as the role which is acknowledged worldwide and globally challenged. The role of global leaders is very dynamic and constantly changing. The leadership has been studied broadly in different backgrounds and going through ranges of leadership theories. The tremendous rise of globalization has laid pressure on the global leadership to change their style and develop a new optimistic approach to face this unprecedented complexity (Youssef at el, 2012). The leaders are known for their style, their qualities, their behavior, traits, passion and also for their authenticity. The study of leadership has covered different nations, time periods and the theoretical opinions (Melissa, 1997).
The role and the requirement of the global leadership was the key attention of the series of Guest lectures. The lectures highlighted on the nature, influence and the strategy of the leaders in the present global scenario. The themes and ideas which surrounded the Guest lectures 1,2,3 and 7 are: Crisis, Politeness, Charismatic, Gender, Authentic leadership, Notion of Change, Barriers of Change, austerity, Politics and Culture. The series of presentations stressed and emphasized on both locally and globally business issue and also the leadership roles with changing times.
Discussion and self-reflection on Themes arisen from lectures:
The leadership is more associated with people and vision. The role of the leaders is to deal with the changes in a planned manner. So leaders need sound skills and qualities to deal with people and responsibilities. The people don't want to be managed by someone but they want to be led. There are different types of leaders in the world like political leaders, religious leaders etc. and people are led by them. It has been seen for decades that leaders are more successful than managers ( Kotter, 1996).The leaders have vibrant vision and they share their vision with the people so that they will follow them gladly. They introduce the methods, information and knowledge about how to accomplish this vision. The leaders always need to maintain coordination between the followers and stakeholders (Allman, 2003). The present scenario of the world seems to be lacking in good leadership and leadership style. The important aspect of a good leadership is the style which leader will adopt.
There are different types of leadership styles but the more familiar and dynamic ones are given by the John Lewis ( Wheeler, 2008). The leadership style is very vibrant and the leader should implement and develop such style which can be very convenient and will not submerge into conflicts. Today's leaders are operating in the global atmosphere. Their decisions and action has huge impact on global context.
According to Kotter the leadership and change go at the same time but the important aspect is the vision of a leader and how efficiently and effectively he communicates his vision to the people ( Kotter J, 1996). Authentic leaders are characterized as those who are more interested towards long term wins rather than consuming their efforts towards achieving short term goals of an organization, but in present scenario of the world who is more interested towards achieving long term goals and have elongated vision for his organization and people. The lecture given on Conquering the Global Marketplace portrayed a picture of " Survival of the fittest", which meant to explain that only a large scale organization might survive while the small scale organization might face hard time. Some sort of change can be observed here, where only those business organizations can exist and survive who can accept and initiate alter in the organization with always changing business environment. The professor Liz Town Andrews wants us to understand the value of innovation center and how it can help the business organization to boost their growth. She also associates it with the leadership and change. How these innovation centers helps business organizations to adopt and survive the changing business environment? And also helps the leaders of organizations to understand how they can implement new changes and also adopt the new business environment?
The researches conducted by the CIPD found that people find very hard and challenging to accept the change, however With the help of proper strategy and efficient and effective management and leadership can find a better solution for introducing and accepting change (Gilbert P, 2005). The need of authentic and honest leadership for managing change can be revealed from this and also how imperative matter it is to have genuine leadership in handling change. Does this urge that The change can be global and also very often while authentic leadership is very rare? Or does it suggest that authentic leaderships are volatile and change is very stable?
Professor Martin Plant presentation contributed additional about the vital and the insight of a leader. The professor describes the few important characteristics of an authentic and genuine leadership. May be Martin Plant wants us to rethink about the responsibility and characteristics of authentic leadership and how they are different from an usual leader. The Martin plant conveys that it's very complicated to predict and define an authentic leader as different leaders have different style of dealing with situations. Professor Martin Plant serrated out some of examples about the authentic and honest leaders and also about those who were seen as bad leaders for some period of time but later on it changed. Different types of leaders were debated in the lecture and it makes us to think about the role of the authentic leader like Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. Some parts of the world consider them dishonest and untruthful leaders because of the destruction caused by their decisions and actions towards them, but in their own countries they are authentic and sincere leader for their actions, vision and long term planning for their people and country. So again its complex to understand who is authentic leader. The lecture also gives rise to the gender and leadership. The Martin Plant wants to think us who are more effective leaders men or women and he also point out some examples of great women leaders. One can think of the women leaders like Hillary Clinton and Sonia Ghandhi. The speakers represented that change is required and women's leadership can be more effective and efficient than man's leadership. The presentation on leadership also makes us to think that are leaders born or made? Are charismatic people more attracted towards leadership and how good leaders they are? The speakers also try to expose that charismatic people are more attracted and followed by people but they cannot be anticipated as authentic and sincere leaders. But a number of researchers find out that organizations needed a new style of leadership at the time of disorder in an organization a company generally accepts charismatic leaderships to strength of change and improvement ( Conger & Kanungo, 1994). Does it mean that at the time of turbulence the charismatic leaders seem to be more authentic as a force of change? Or does it mean that charismatic people are better leaders and can turn out to be more effective and sincere for leadership? If so then why charismatic people are lacking in glowing and effective leadership. Actually the speaker wants us to rethink about those appealing people who try to become leaders but failed in to be an authentic and honest leader and leads to conflicts and crisis.
Professor Kevin Rowles put further light on the conflict and crisis and its relation to the authentic leadership and change. The speaker has tried to describe the picture of flimsy and unauthentic leadership in Europe which led them into crisis. The change in the environment is a very significant aspect and should be dealt in a proper and strategic manner otherwise it can make authentic leadership flimsy (Senge p, 2000). The public and followers of leaders have belief on its leaders that they will fulfil their promises in terms of genuine change but the leaders are not proving authentic and sincere on what they have promised. Whenever there is a situation like crisis in an organization it is the role of leaders to guide and assist it to certify endurance ( Mumford et al, 2007). The speaker further puts light on that swift decision and actions are required to stabilize the issue of crisis. The change must be approached in a systematic and strategic manner. But again it raised the question are the present leaders skilled of such imperative decision and actions to gear with change? It has been perceived hat there are some obstacles which are stoping the leader to change. The change is very imperative and essential but barriers to change can hinder the idea of change. The speakers want us to think about the great leaders and how they came out at the time of crisis and showed their authenticity like Bill Gates and Rudolph Giuliani. It's been found that some personalities adopt themselves to change rather than getting changed fundamentally. Authentic leaders might be sailing in the same boat, But again it gives rise to several questions like the incompetence of leadership? Impact of culture on leaders towards change?. It has been suggested by different researchers that great leaders are unique in their own style,innovative and visionary they don't copy someone else. One might think of the leader like Barack Obama who again won the election because of being authentic and sincere for his country and he is a facing new challenges like recession and increased unemployment in the country but it seems he is very skilled, unique and best to cope up with new challenges and new changes in the environment. The authenticity of leadership is also connected with the culture. The best time to promote culture are crisis ( Lord & Maher, 1993). Culture and change can affect the authenticity of leadership. So it's important to understand the culture.
Professor Daniel Z Kadar presented the idea of culture and politeness and its association with the authenticity of leadership and change. The speaker wants us to understand the concept of politeness in different cultures and how it's connected with leaders. The speakers gave an example of interaction between Obama and Jintao two leaders of great nations and how their interaction was misunderstood by people. The speaker wants us to understand that the leadership is not confined to a particular area but the impact is on a global context. The authentic leaders is one who can understand different cultures and have the skills and abilities to deal with multiple cultures. After globalization the world has become smaller so one can also notice changes in the working environment . The speaker further puts light on politeness and its necessity to understand for authentic leadership.
Conclusion:
The authenticity of global leaders and their strategic approaches towards change were the main highlights in this article. Different issues were debated in this article about the failure of leadership in present global context and their impact on peoples lives. The series of lectures presented by the speakers put further light on the topic and several questions were raised about the authenticity of leaders their style, approaches, behaviors and qualities. Several key themes and ideas were identified on which these series of lectures were engulfed. The arguments were raised about the authenticity of present leaders and their style and attitude towards implementing and adopting the change. The present leaders seem lost the control and lacking in achieving the goals and their vision. To face the change in strategy and effective manner the leaders need to adopt a more positive approach in dealing with the situation. Different examples were discussed about the past leaders and how they come up with positive and effective solution towards implementing change. This interaction was based on how leaders can prove more authentic in dealing with change as change is perhaps necessary and it's the role of leaders to implement and accept it in a positive manner.
Benefits of working in Group and Individual evaluation:
It's very beneficial for an individual to work in a team. It gives new experience and helps in learning new culture and idea. Same was the case with our group. All the members were from a different culture and having different experience and ideas about dealing with the situation. We decided to choose an influential topic so that we can learn new things. We distributed the work among the members of the group so that everyone can make research and come up with new ideas. My role in the group was very important as I was the group leaders and editor. The passing of each week makes us to learn new thing and our approach towards module changed and it becomes more interesting week by week.
