Leadership Challenges in the Australian Tourism Industry

The first leadership challenge in the tourism industry in Australia has been the inability to recruit the right kind of workers and to retain those that have been hired (high employee turnover). Staff has had constant issues with management regarding its approach to recruitment and to leadership when ruling over these employees (Christensen, 2001). Most of the time, the employees have complained of having to do so much work due to shortages of staff. Another challenge has been the failure by leadership to supervise staff effectively. Leaders have been known to lord it over their juniors (Wilks, 2006).

They have built hedges around them and cannot be reached for communicating with employees. Bureaucracies in leadership and organizations have also served to widen the chasm between senior staff and the junior ones. This has made relations between the two sides to be strained (Theobald, 2005). There is poor participation of employees in the making of decisions regarding the organizations they work for. The worst cases of employee being required to take on decisions they were not part of have been reported in tourist hotels and villas. Recommendations for the Leaders in the Industry

There ought to a lot of working together between the leaders and the other employees in the industry (Hollander, 2008). One can never be an effective leader unless one pays close attention to the needs of the followers. To do this effectively, the leader has to listen to the followers. A second recommendation is that the leaders in the industry ought to be more visionary and futuristic in their approach to industry challenges (Wilks, 2006). This will make them to be better placed to foresee challenges and act accordingly to address them before they turn into nagging problems.

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The other recommendation is that the leaders ought to be cognizant of the great importance and value of recruiting staff using information technology so as to have not only the best employees but also those who are less likely to leave at the earliest opportunity (Wilks, 2006). Then the leaders need to be more strategic in approaching the challenges of the industry. For instance, they need to realize that there are peak and off-peak seasons for tourists and so might try to hire more staff during the peak seasons and reducing them during the off-peak seasons.

This is because strategy is what defines a good leader (Ledeen, 2000). Finally, the leaders ought to be able to be situational and adaptive. They have to be able to foresee and determine what ought to be done to make sense of otherwise horrible situations. They must be ready to respond to problems and challenges as they come and not hide under certain pretexts. They have to always be ready and willing to work together with staff and other stakeholders to bring about solutions to nagging problems facing the industry (Bass, 2006).

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