The changing nature of leadership

Abstract

Purpose

The paper is designed to discuss how leadership is evolving to meet the demands of a global environment, where teams operate across boundaries; leadership is often at a distance and lacking direct line‐management control.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper discusses an intervention in one global pharmaceutical company designed to equip leaders with the skills and techniques to meet this challenge. A highly qualitative ethnographic approach was used to analyze the organisation, teams and leadership, including informal interviews and observation. Evaluative data were collected immediately after the intervention, six weeks and 18 months later, focusing upon personal reactions, through to changes in organizational culture.

Findings

The intervention was almost universally seen as addressing a real need. Traditional leadership development initiatives had not equipped leaders with the skills or techniques necessary, to successfully operate in this new and far more complex leadership environment.

Research limitations/implications

This intervention is limited by its very nature to one organisation, but the concept of identifying and changing meta‐directions has significant implications for improving attempts at organizational change. Further research in this area, both in terms of identifying meta‐directions and changing them could significantly enhance our understanding of organizational/cultural change.

Practical implications

This paper highlights the importance of enhancing leadership capability and an approach to identifying key areas to change i.e. meta‐directions and shows the importance of the integration of learning domains, i.e. cognitive, psycho‐motor and affective as a way of effectively enhancing leadership capability to meet the challenges of change.

Originality/value

The paper identifies the importance of identifying meta‐directions as a significant step in bringing about organizational change, demonstrates the changing nature of leadership driven by a more global and complex operating environment, and identifies an intervention designed to enhance leader's capabilities to meet these changes by integration of all three domains of learning.

Citation

Speechley, C. (2005), "The changing nature of leadership", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 46-52. https://doi.org/10.1108/13683040510588837