CHARACTERISTICS OF BUSINESS LEADERSHIP

Apple Inc - Characteristics of Business Leadership

Apple Inc - Characteristics of Business Leadership

Describe the business leader's primary business or businesses, highlighting how the leader got started and analyze the leader's 3major business challenges in establishing and/or running the company.

Leadership challenges in business can become obstacles if they are not properly addressed. Though business challenges can differ, readiness to address common challenges in a field of industry can help leaders create plans to minimize problems that the challenges might create. Leadership challenges can come in the form of human limitation challenges like emotional problems or deficient skills, or they can appear as empirical challenges like whether the business has enough money to expand (Simom, 2005).

Ethical Leadership Challenges

An organization depends on a leader to guide its members in their ethics, or the practice of doing what is morally right (Hannum, 2004). When a team is acting on behalf of a leader, the leader must be sure that the team is behaving congruently with the ethical rules he set for the group. Ethical challenges in business can occur, for example, when a company decides whether to conduct business that may damage the environment or decides whether to cover up evidence of company wrongdoing.

Challenges Can Vary

Leadership problems can differ depending on the type of organization and the situation. According to the Executive Leadership Survey Report published by Duke University in 2009, one of the biggest leadership challenges for a small employer is overcoming a lack of available capital to operate and grow the business. A similarly important problem for larger businesses is retaining employees.



Common Challenges

One leadership challenge that a business of any size can face is a lack of good leadership. Reasons for a lack of leaders in a business can include insufficient training and motivation for workers to become leaders or a lack of pay or benefits sufficient to attract good talent to an organization (Hatch, 2007). A business can correct these problems by training employees to become managers before a manager is needed and by increasing employee pay, benefits or perks to attract or retain better managers.

Constructing a Diverse Team

Leading a team of people who have largely the same sets of talents, skills and work habits can make some things easier, like harboring friendships among team members. In production, though, the lack of diversity can create problems for a business that is looking to expand. Creating a diverse team, in both culture and skill set, will give a business access to a wealth of skills and ideas that can help develop the business (Holton, 2004). Sometimes, promoting diversity within a team can present another leadership challenge: team disagreements. Team members with diverse backgrounds should learn to work together, but a leader should also take care to ensure any additions to the team improve operations with careful hiring and training.

Analyze this business leader's leadership style and discuss how he or she has adapted to cultural differences and how he or she operates the ...