Grad's guide to graduate admissions essays - Colleen Reding 2015
University of Virginia - Darden school of business
Business
Share your perspective on leadership in the workplace and describe how it has been shaped by the increasing influence of globalization.
The best leaders for a globalized era develop their employees’ creativity and facilitate a team atmosphere. I have seen such leadership in action at the Federal Reserve, where I have worked under leaders focused on developing an organization ready to create new solutions to unforeseen problems. I believe that developing a flexible organization, with employees who can work together to apply their skills to new challenges, is more critical now than ever.
Today’s leaders must foster creativity both within themselves and their teams. One of the predominant trends of globalization has been the quickening of information diffusion, which has accelerated the speed at which organizations need to adjust to change. In a globalized environment, leaders cannot develop stationary organizations centered around their own decision making, but must encourage their employees to acquire analytical skills while retaining a flexible mindset to apply those skills to new areas. I have seen the benefits of such an approach at the Federal Reserve, since many of the ideas about what actions to take during the financial crisis were created not by working off of old ideas, but rather by defining goals and then considering what strategies, tested and untested, were most likely to reach those goals. Facilitating creativity is challenging, but leaders in a globalized environment must encourage their employees to consider problems from a variety of perspectives and question current modes of operation.
To succeed in a globalized era, leaders must also create a collaborative atmosphere. Having employees work together lets them learn from each other’s skills, while also promoting productivity through specialization. Enabling employees to gain expertise and responsibility in a certain area lets them take advantage of their creativity to develop new perspectives and deeper knowledge of that sector. At the same time, a team atmosphere should encourage people to contribute in areas outside their expertise. By combining these two benefits of teamwork—using it to acquire new perspectives and skills, and then applying these to new areas—leaders can prepare businesses to compete in a global market.
I have seen leadership with these foci in practice: I believe that a large part of what makes my organization successful is that its leaders encourage people to work with others with different academic backgrounds, so that everyone is exposed to new ways of thinking about their work. Teamwork has always been important, but the best leaders in a global environment will develop employees with varied perspectives, specialized skills, and the ability to apply them to diffuse sectors of the business and broader economy. In this way, leaders can prepare their firms for the novel challenges globalization will bring.
Leadership has always been critical to business success, but globalization has created new demands for managers in today’s workplace. Today’s leaders must focus not only on today’s challenges, but also on developing creative, team-oriented organizations to face unpredictable obstacles. By doing so, they will position themselves to have long-term success in a globalized market.