Evolving at neck-breaking speed, with multiple teams, new age business models, complex issues, a modern workplace comes equipped with new-age digital tools that connect and support employees within and outside the physical boundaries of the office. Desired leadership goals include maximizing productivity, engagement, innovation, and collaboration amongst employees to achieve strong top-line business results. Modern workplaces represent a cutting edge work environment that is equipped to deliver to the expectations of all stakeholders and achieve market leadership.

A Leader or a Boss?

• The style difference

Leading the workforce from the top and focussing towards completing a task, a boss exemplifies transactional leadership style, whereas a leader works alongside his/her team to achieve a mission with a shared vision focused on creating breakthroughs, innovation that turbocharges the business for growth, motivates team members to achieve higher goals, reduces costs that enable the organization to achieve market leadership.

• Motivation vs Control

A boss tends to use intimidation, interpersonal behaviour, rewards or punishments as a tool of control the workforce whereas a leader sets & motivates the workforce by delegating his/her authority and empowering team members to go beyond their horizon. Being an able leader requires an open-minded approach, a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of his/her team in order to guide and motivate them to achieve common goals.

• Differentials

Modern workplaces seek to differentiate through uniqueness and creativity that spurs innovation. This can be said to be a hallmark of such organisations. A leader identifies the path to opportunities with the participation of team members encouraging creative, innovative solutions to complex business problems.

• Technology’s Role

None of this is possible without the role of technology. Use of technology at every step to reduce wastage of resources, time and manpower paving way for a lean mean organization also resulting in faster interdepartmental communication.

Reduced friction amongst workers, greater mobilization of resources, lowest input costs, improved interdepartmental functioning, increased consumer satisfaction, higher consumer engagement leading to product innovation, increased turnovers, reduction in employee attrition rates are some of the demands of a modern workplace that only leaders can churn out.

Creating Leaders for Modern Workplaces

To create multidimensional leaders, Transformational leadership courses online fill the knowledge gap at a mid-career stage and encourage continuous learning as well as development for the aspiring leader.

Transformational Leadership Courses Online are an investment into a business focussed program for accelerated growth. These courses allow the mentee flexibility of managing the course and timings without disturbing other priorities. One such course is the Executive Development Program offered by XLRI on the Talentedge platform The Transformation Leadership Certification awarded upon completion is recognized by the industry and valued for your acquired skills.

As rightly said, leaders are not born, they are created. In a modern workplace scenario, it becomes imperative for a leader to lead by example of wisdom, courage and compassion to bring out the best from the workforce and inspire them to achieve breakthroughs. A modern workplace has space only for leaders.