Leadership Development in an Agile Environment

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,7, University of applied sciences, Cologne, course: Master of Business Administration, language: English, abstract: The environment of companies changes and become more global, cross-culture and networked. Rapid changes in customer needs, global trends and technological possibilities create new challenges for companies and especially their leadership. The leaders are confronted with complex problems, unknown solutions and fast changing product requirements as well as a challenging role in the society because of prevailing crises in the economy. One common trend in this context is to be agile - not only according to software developing but also according to the whole organisation of a company. Many companies think they already are agile or are heading for agility but anyhow when a challenge arises the company can’t deliver. To become agile it is not sufficient to adapt new strategies, restructure the organisation or increase speed in selected teams or products. Much more it is to introduce agility in the whole organisation including the culture of the company. The questions for this assignment are: Has agility an impact on leadership? Do new skills for leaders exist? Is it necessary to design new leadership development concepts? To answer these questions the assignment starts with the definition of the changing environment, leadership and leadership development. After this it covers the topic of agility and the impact on leadership and leadership development.