What Kinds of Leadership Skills?

management involves taking the strategic planning process and extending it into an ongoing management paradigm of anticipating and managing organizational change and environmental uncertainty.”

Paul Joyce (2015) emphasized a necessity of the awareness of the situation, challenging people to change, understanding and managing stakeholders in strategic management. One important aspect of leadership must deal with globalization, visions, the demand for outsourcing, competitiveness, ethical leadership, and transformational leadership. Strategic management requires visionary skills to predict the future and take appropriate action to deal with environmental challenges. Strategic public leaders have to undertake a thorough Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis to develop action plans for future plans. Through the use of strategic planning, the agencies can assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Leadership must take advantage of the opportunities that may arise as a result of globalization, and at the same time, deal with the threats. Globalization and new technology have made many of the services and tasks of the government obsolete. Therefore, the leadership is responsible for predicting the future development and take appropriate actions to deal with possible threats. Threats can arise due to political, economic, and technological changes. Politically, emergence of a hostile government in which another country has a substantial investment can pose a serious threat. Any act of terrorism, war, and political turmoil can disrupt smooth operations. Leadership is responsible for taking appropriate actions to deal with the situation and take actions so that the effects are minimal. Similarly, economic fluctuations can pose serious threats to the well-being of society. A major recession can ruin the lives of many people with devastating results. The leadership has the responsibility to be prepared for the possible consequences of the economic disaster. The other threat is technological change, which may have serious consequences. If technology replaces some products or services, it can create massive unemployment. Therefore, the leadership is under pressure to take appropriate steps to deal with unemployment by creating an alternative product, and services. A strategic leader needs to predict the situation and take measures rather than react to the situation. Therefore, a strategic leader must evaluate the opportunities and the threats to be prepared for the situation and make proper decisions.

The leaders have a responsibility to socialize the team with organizational visions and goals, and, simultaneously, to create the support system to achieve the goals. Pickering and Brokaw (2007) suggest the use of six

change levers to create high-performing organizations: leadership, vision, values, strategy, structure, and system. They raised the crucial questions relating to performance: how the governments are delivering the services and how they are treating the stakeholders, and the customers. Besides strategic leadership, the leaders under a globalized world need to develop important skills to deal with the challenges.

WhaT Kinds of Leadership sKiLLs? One of the most frequently asked questions is: what types of leadership skills are necessary for today’s world? In the following pages, the chapter assesses the important skills.

Trustworthiness To be effective, public leaders must earn the respect and trust of the public. The importance of trust has become more prominent at present time because of declining trust in leadership. If people cannot trust their leaders, they will be reluctant to provide obedience. In an extreme case, the people can rise in rebellion to overthrow their leaders. Kim Chulwoo (2009) asserts that the effective leader–group relationships can increase the level of trust in government, which can promote high performance. Newell (2012) emphasizes the importance of constitutional, personal, public service, and professional values and skills. He emphasizes integrity, listening to others, tolerating dissent, involving others, and making moral decisions. Hellriegel and Slocum (2007) have argued that the likelihood of trust for the authentic leaders by the followers is higher because they promote open two-way communication, share critical information, and very open about their perceptions about the followers. Allert and Innes-Brown (2005) focused on communication and building trust for diversity management in an age of globalization. Goleman et al. (2001) emphasized the “soft” emotional intelligence skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, social skills, motivation, and empathy. Avolio et al. (2004) insisted on the authentic leadership approach, in which leaders: (1) know and understand themselves; (2) know what they believe and value; and (3) act on their values and beliefs through open and honest communication with subordinates and others. Short (2012) asserts the necessity of balancing between hard and soft skills. The hard skills are strategic, organized and result oriented leadership and the soft skills are caring, inclusive