What Are the Current Big Issues in Leadership?

Leadership is a challenging role, and leaders face several big issues today. You must navigate the delicate balance of challenges and rewards as a leader. It is similar to being led by your own team, while simultaneously juggling a multitude of responsibilities. These include fostering motivation, providing mentorship, continuing to learn, and meeting established goals. Setting direction is another key aspect of leadership, where one creates a compelling vision and inspires others to work towards it. In addition, good leaders do not just talk the talk but also walk the walk by taking courageous action and holding themselves accountable.  

The challenges of leadership are many, from providing inspiration and developing others to leading change and handling difficult situations. Ultimately, leadership is about guiding and influencing others towards a common goal, whether it be individuals, teams, or entire organisations. Here are some of the current big issues that leaders like you are facing:  

• Recruiting new talent: Recruiting new talent for a job role is one of the most common leadership challenges in 2023 and into 2024. You face a myriad of challenges when it comes to finding new talent, including hiring fairly, attracting the right candidates, shortage of skills, standing out from the crowd, fewer applicants, lack of experience, millennial challenges, and a shift in employee needs. You can find out more here.

• Improving the workplace environment for talent retention: Leaders need to focus on creating a positive work environment to retain their top talent. Creating a comfortable and enjoyable workplace environment, encouraging teamwork and communication, offering wellness resources, and recognising good work can all positively impact employee engagement, productivity, and job satisfaction. 
• Maintaining authenticity during self-promotion: You need to balance self-promotion with authenticity to build trust with your team. Balancing self-promotion with authenticity requires understanding your value proposition, using language that shifts the focus towards the value you provide, being honest and open, striking a balance, sharing personal stories, and doing it all in a way that feels true to yourself. See the RegInsights article on authenticity.
• Honing effectiveness: Leaders need to develop effective skills such as time management, prioritisation, and strategic thinking. See the RegInsights article on effectiveness.

• Leading change: Leaders need to be able to lead change effectively to keep up with rapidly evolving obstacles. Leading change can be a daunting task, but there are ways to make it easier. To lead change effectively, you will need a clear vision, communicate, collaborate and be proactive. you should involve all departments affected by the change and be patient as the process takes time. Successful leaders learn from their experiences and adjust their approach accordingly. 
• Dealing with different perspectives: Leaders need to be able to handle different perspectives and opinions within their team. See the RegInsights article on cross-paradigm conversations. 

• Getting distracted by low-ROI tasks: Leaders need to be able to prioritise high-ROI tasks and delegate low-ROI tasks. The Pareto 80:20 principle applies here. Find the 20% of what you do that delivers 80% of your value. Have a look here for more background.
• Keeping the business afloat: Leaders need to be able to keep their business afloat during challenging times such as a recession or pandemic. Have a look here to refresh your understanding.
• Online meeting fatigue: Leaders need to be able to manage remote teams effectively and avoid burnout from virtual meetings. Combatting online meeting fatigue requires creating meeting goals, minimising distractions, being interactive, limiting meeting length, avoiding multitasking, taking breaks, reducing onscreen stimuli, switching to phone or email when possible, and creating an agenda beforehand, while also being willing to adapt and grow as necessary.
• Transforming the business while maintaining strong performance: Leaders need to be able to transform their business while maintaining strong performance. More about high-performance teams here.
• Resolving the tension between profit and purpose: Leaders need to be able to balance profit and purpose in their decision-making. Achieving a balance between profit and purpose is challenging, but it is possible. Companies should embrace a multi-stakeholder approach, create a clear mission statement, make brave decisions, balance commercial and social logics, accept and confront paradoxes, understand the link between purpose and profit, create incentives for long-term growth, balance short-term and long-term goals, and avoid the failure to resolve paradoxes between “purpose” and “performance” to avoid cynicism and low levels of trust. Here is a helpful insight.

• Lack of confidence and fear of failure: Many leaders face internal challenges such as a lack of confidence or fear of failure. Overcoming a lack of confidence and fear of failure can be daunting, but various techniques are available to assist you. These methods include accepting and acknowledging your fears, staying optimistic, setting achievable goals, creating a “fear list,” visualising worst-case scenarios, seeking professional assistance, and understanding that failure is a natural part of the learning process. More about fear can be found here.

Overcoming leadership challenges involves taking care of yourself, being clear on your role and responsibilities, seeking support, utilising feedback, fostering open communication, developing key leadership qualities, staying focused on the bigger purpose, managing relationships and stakeholders, and maintaining authenticity.  

It’s a tough call, but you can do it.