Leadership:Today’s Requirements and Future Challenges

Organisations are caught in the web of globalization, facing challenges of the ‘dot com’ world. It is felt that the key to the castle of organisational success is ‘leadership’. A leader is one who verbalizes a compelling vision and mission, possesses a healthy blend of optimism and courage, and looks beyond mere promulgation of plans, engagement in empty rhetoric or delivering few glib phrases and platitudes. The present paper explores the current dimensions of leadership requirements, along with an introspection of the upcoming challenges for a global leader. Implicit in the paper are certain concepts in leadership, like that of entrepreneurial culture, fast track leaders, wisdomization of leadership, orchestration, transformational leadership and ethical leadership. The ‘Leadership Era’ seeks to succeed the bygone Industrial, Information and Knowledge era. The paradigmatic shift from the ‘brick world’ to the ‘click world’ has transformed the role of leaders, the only continuity between the bygone and the coming ages is that of the leader being a dreamer, daring to gaze beyond the horizon.