The Relevance within Corporations by Kimberley K. Hyde A Paper Presented in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements of LEAD500 LEADERSHIP STYLES AND THEORIES May 19, 2013 \ Effective leadership is the greatest tool for the success of any organization; they articulate the vision of the organization and are the motivation for others to fulfill that vision. Leaders have an impact on those they lead; followers. In today’s corporate world companies and organizations need to be cognizant of staff they hire within leadership positions.
During the interview process, it is particularly important to understand the interviewee’s leadership philosophies, ethics, morals and abilities before consideration for hire. Most leaders value the importance of ethical behavior and demonstrate their values and ethics in their leadership. There has been a tremendous focus within the media in the past decade about the ethics of leadership within corporations. Corporate scandals and government corruption seems to be all too common these days.
Lately, we have heard an abundance of stories in reference to top executives within multi-million dollar companies found guilty of conspiracy, theft and fraud; also known as unethical or pseudo-transformational leadership. “Pseudo-transformational leaders may create the impression that they are doing the right things, but will secretly fail to do so due to their own narcissistic interests. They are less likely to listen to conflicting views and more likely to be intolerant of the differences of opinion between their followers and themselves” (Howell & Avolio, 1992).
The Essay on Human Behavior in Organization with Ethics
Etiquette and custom defines proper and improper behavior that can result in social disapproval. Morality and religion is concerned with right, wrong, and sin. Law is concerned with legal and illegal behavior defined by legislative or judicial bodies and can result in punishment. Another defines each of these approaches. Ethics is the determination of appropriate or inappropriate behavior as ...
For appearances, a pseudo-transformational leader appears to be virtuous, but is actually deceptive. They set a regulatory plan to manipulate the values of followers and often at the expense of others and/or organizations. “Pseudo-transformational leaders’ individualized consideration creates dependent followers instead of empowered ones” (Bass & Bass, 2008, p. 233).
Followers who have the inability to work independently or think for themselves can give a pseudo-transformational leader treacherous power and often the green light for manipulation. Followers will lack self-confidence, creativity and most importantly honesty.
The first step to trust between a leader and follower is the leader relaying their ethical and moral beliefs to all employees, so extremely powerful. The ethical and moral trait he looks for in his employees is honesty, the ability to recognize the individual impact on peers/internal and external employees, transparency, and integrity. “Pseudo-transformational leaders are skilled at communicating their beliefs and promoting their missions using rhetoric and metaphor, but they motivate followers through deception and false promises, often substituting self-indulgent emotionality for logic. (Bass and Steidlmeier, 1998).
Self-promotion is a bad characteristic of pseudo-transformational leaders; seeking personal gratification and put their own needs before others, a very narcissistic attitude. With a leader who is self-promoting, this can turn any productive, successful team into a dysfunctional one quickly and in the end followers within that team will drift away and become distant. How successful a business is depends on their willingness to make a change to create a thriving innovativeness capable of long-term. There has to be a paradigm shift from old to new.
The new paradigm’s main ideas are to create a culture of leadership that is investing in their people. Businesses cannot be successful without their employees they are not liabilities they are assets. They need to be treated as an investment, i. e. , treating everyone with fairness, dignity and where values and ideas respected. Empowering employees to be independent and share their ideas makes them truly believe in the company. Employees tend to be loyal and committed; ambassadors to the success of the company. An empowering leadership team within any organization is the key to success and a self-promoting leader will not work.
The Essay on Transactional Leader and Transformational Leader
Transactional Leader as the word implies business or exchange. Burns, 1978, opined that a transactional leader is someone who leads though social exchange. It is a process that I simply call trade by batter, you do this for me, and you get that in return. A politician can be a transactional leader when he seeks to exchange one thing for another i.e. making promises and pulling through with the ...
An organization must have trust in their leadership team. Being an effective leader means to influence, inspire, support and instruct your team through challenges and uncertainty while standing strong, remaining calm, empowering and focused. Pseudo-transformational leaders are far from being effective. Leading by fear, leading by force, can be detrimental to any organization. An effective leader is one who is authentic, influential and motivating. Organizations employing leaders practicing pseudo-transformational leadership will have their ethics questioned as well as their loyalty and dependability; especially by customers and stakeholders.
The concept of treating employees well is that, in turn, customers get treated the same. References Howell, J. M. , & Avolio, B. J. (1992).
The ethics of charismatic leadership: Submission or liberation? Academy of Management Executive, 6 (2), 43-54. Bass, B. , Stiedlmeier, P. (1998) Ethics, character, and authentic transformational leadership. [Electronic Version]. Leadership Quarterly, 10(2).
181-218 Bass, B. & Bass, R. (2008).
The Bass handbook of leadership: theory, leadership, and managerial application. New York: Simon & Schuster.
