The Leadership Challenges Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Leadership Challenges - Essay Example The purpose of this paper is to discuss the managerial challenges that organizations face today and to discuss different leadership theories that can be used by leaders. One of the toughest challenges for leaders is managing a diverse workforce. Diversity can be defined as the inclusion of different types of people in a workforce which includes differences due to race, age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and other ideologies (Uoregon). To properly lead a diverse workforce a manager must apply good communication skills and the person must be conscious of the differences that make each employee unique. â€Å"Learning to respect and appreciate each other’s cultural and stylistic differences and becoming aware of unconscious assumptions and behaviors that may influence our interactions will enable us to minimize the challenges and derive maximum benefits from diversity† (Wisc). A good leader is a person that is able to motivate his staff to ensure the employees provide maximum effort and performance. A leader must have excellent verbal and written communication skills as well as being an active listener. The leader must have good interpersonal skills and be able to deal with any conflict that occurs in the workplace. Personal conflicts between employees are a tough leadership challenge that must be dealt with. An understanding of the different conflict resolution techniques such as smoothing, collaboration, compromise, avoidance, and authoritative command is needed to solve problems quickly before they become a constraint that hurts the performance and profitability of the enterprise. The use of leadership models and theories can help leaders understand better how to properly implement leadership in the workplace. The behavioral leadership perspective assumes that leadership is central to performance and other outcomes. Based on this theory the leader must