The relationship between Authentic Leadership, Leader-member Exchange, and Employees‘Psychological Capital
Effective organization performance depends on the leadership that motivates the team to give their best. A leader must be able to get the best out of the members and inspire them to achieve set targets. Good leaders must strive to elicit the best behaviors and attitudes towards work and translate the energy to benefit the organization and the workers. The modern business organizations require leaders that fully understand their workforce and, display the right behavior to nurture the potential of the employees. Furthermore, successful leaders must enhance the capabilities of their workers. This study will discuss the relationship between authentic leadership, Leader-member exchange (LMX) and employees’ psychological capital (PsyCap). Additionally, the study will explain the ways to build Psychological capital for different employees in the different industries such as professional and administrative workers, employees from varying generation and different ethnicities. Moreover, the study will examine why the emotions of leaders and employees affect the performance of employees.
Authentic leaders work with full knowledge of self on their abilities or limitations to deliver. Authentic leadership foster positive thoughts without any deception on the capabilities and promote the performance of a team. Authentic leadership is a behavioral pattern from leaders that promote positive psychological capacities, fostering self-awareness, ethical working climate, and relational transparency aiming to foster positive self-growth (Datta 2015, P.62-75). On the other hand, Leader-member exchange is a system that works to establish quality relationships with different members of the workforce and commit to working towards a common goal. Leader-member exchange is a system where leaders build independent relationship varying in quality with members of the subordinate based on interdependent behavior and shares common outcome (Lunenburg 2010, P.1-5). Psychological capital, on the other end, refers to the creation of capacities for employees to grow and improve their performance in the workplace. Psychological capital is the positive state of development that encompasses self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience (Chaurasia & Shukla 2014, p. 342-356).
Consequently, authentic leadership, leader-member exchange, and employees’ psychological capital involve the creating a favorable environment for employees to improve their job performance. According to Datta 2015, authentic leadership influence the followers’ self-efficacy and team cohesiveness through qualities such as trustworthiness and ethics creating a positive work environment that improves job performance (P.62-75). Leader-member exchange positively relates to employees psychological capital (Chaurasia & Shukla 2014, p. 342-356). Therefore, authentic leadership, LMX, and psychological capital improve the performance of employees through the creation of opportunities to learn positive behavior, enhance commitment and willingness to work towards the set targets. Authentic leaders focus on self-awareness and knowing others. Through knowing one’s abilities and limitations, one is able to establish areas that need improvement for better productivity. This directly relates to the Psychological capital that focuses on self-efficacy. Development of employee efficacy gives them the ability to handle tasks that were initially challenging with ease. Furthermore, this relates to Leader-member exchange where leaders create a personalized relationship with subordinates depending on their capacities and give them more roles. Hence, authentic leadership, MLX and psychological capital all work to improve the performance of employees.
Building Psychological Capital
Additionally, authentic leadership, MLX and psychological capital work towards creating an engaging leader-employee relationship that grows and fosters productive organization behaviors. Employees’ engagement involves investment in the physical, cognitive and the energy abilities of an employee (Chaurasia & Shukla 2014, p. 342-356). The development of employees in all aspects enhances individual, team, and organization performance. Rego et al. 2012, point out that engaged workers perform betters in their roles due to empowerment and the organizational citizenship behavior (P429-437). Authentic leadership improves employees’ psychological capacities, ethical and moral behaviors. This provides room for trustworthy engagement and boosts employees’ creativity and problem-solving skills. This relates to the Leader-member exchange that allows leaders to give subordinates more tasks and invite then to decision-making tables. Moreover, this closely interlocks with the psychological capital that improves the well-being of employees, reduces work-related stress and enhances performance. Hence, authentic leadership, MLX, and psychological capital all elicit better organization behavior such as creativity, resilience, adaptivity, commitment, time-consciousness and employees retention.
Building employees’ psychological capital allows the employee to gain capacities to handle the work-related tasks in a more improved behavior that enhances results. Psychological capital capacities of self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience improve work satisfaction and performance, reduces work-related stress and improve the overall of workers well-being (Nestingen 2017, P.11-46). Thus, building psychological capacities of employees is at the heart of an individual, group and organization better performance. Self-efficacy is an employee capacity inspires confidence in handling challenging tasks at work. A worker believes he is able to complete tasks effectively. Hope is a self, positive motivation sense that allows employees to go for realistic goals with a belief they will succeed (Ruderman & Clerkin 2015, P.4-12). Optimism is a capacity to always look at the bright side of things. Optimism is having faith that you have abilities to change things for the better. Lastly, Resilience is the ability to regain your initial position after going through hardship (Ruderman & Clerkin 2015, P.4-12).
Every organizational leader that strives to get the best results for the organization must build the self-efficacy of employees. Successful leaders must give their employees the opportunity to participate in learning models to develop their self-efficacy. Authentic and inspiring leaders develop their employees’ self-efficacy through vicarious learning models that allow them to witness and experience mastery of skills and resulting success (Müceldili, Turan & Erdil 2013, P. 673- 681). Therefore, employees can gain self-efficacy either by observing experts work or by participating in a successful organization project mentored by successful people in the industry. For example, a leader of professional employees in an organization can take his followers to self-efficacy training or mentorship programs. This will enable them to pick the behavior build confidence at their work. Leaders can help employees gain self-efficacy through psychological and physiological stimulation and positive feedback and social persuasion (Nestingen 2017, P.11-46). Thus, business leaders dealing with blue or collar white employees can stimulate their cognitive to believe they have the abilities to handle tasks or giving the positive feel to encourage and build workers confidence.
Possessing hope that you can achieve your targets and perform your role is paramount to job satisfaction and performance and, business leaders should strive to build the hope capacity of their employees. Therefore, leaders can build the employees’ hope capacity by engaging them in organizations ambitious plan. According to Chaurasia & Shukla 2014, leaders can build hope capacity of their followers by involving them in goal setting, decision making, and organization strategic plans drafting (p. 342-356). For example, a business leader dealing with, professional and administrative employees, white and blue collar employees and different ethnicities employees can build their hope capacity through taking their opinions and contributions towards the organizational strategic plans and goals. These steps will create a feeling of shared goals and ambitions to make the employees work with the hope of achieving them. Moreover, organization leaders dealing with different generation cohorts can come up with a fair rewarding system that gives everyone hope they can be rewarded equally.
Every employee needs to have a feeling that they can be better at their work and have the requisite skills and abilities to change their situation and achieve their ambitions. Organization leaders can build their employees’ optimism capacity through encouraging performance appraisals and providing equal growth opportunities in the organization. An authentic and inspiring leader can build employees optimism through lenient past performance evaluation (Datta 2015, P.62-75). The assessing of the performance in an understanding and encouraging manner build positive thoughts that one is capable and hence, strive to better the performance. Moreover, the show of appreciation of current performance gives the employees and optimistic drive to use more improved ways to make their performance better and improve the organization performance. Therefore, for business leaders dealing with different generation cohorts of employees can cultivate optimistic capacity through encouraging and lenient appraisal or through appreciating and reward present results.
Successful leaders must strive to build the resilient capacity of employees to build their abilities to recover from any setback and regain their productivity. Leaders can build their employee resilient abilities by providing new opportunities to work on similar projects (Chaurasia & Shukla 2014, p. 342-356). Providing employees with new similar opportunities to allow them to learn from the previous mistake and incorporate the experience into their new roles. This builds the employees ability to deal with hindrances and obstacles and succeed in tasks that were challenging at the start. Moreover, business leaders can appreciate the setback and encourage the employees to take future challenges. Leaders can also organize mentorship programs for employees to hear from people who have gone through the same situations and, build the confidence that they can also bounce back. Therefore, business leaders dealing with blue or white collar employees can appreciate the current situation, provide employees with a similar task in the future and organize mentorship programs to develop employees’ resilient capacity.
Emotions displayed by leaders and employees have an impact on employees performance in an organization. Emotions play roles in an organization in five levels i.e. within-self, individual, dyadic, team and organization (Avey et al. 2011, P 127-152). Thus, emotions expressed by leaders and employees impact the performance in a positive or negative manner. Emotions displayed by a leader impact on the leadership effectiveness. Positive emotions displayed by leaders influence their leadership effectiveness (Van Kleef et al. 2010, P.1827-1834). Leaders create a room to influence the performance of their organization positively when they display appealing emotions to the employees. Thus, employees will work willingly to achieve results and heed directions from a happy manager. On the contrary, leaders who display negative emotions will negatively affect their leadership influence and result in poor relationships with employees. A leader is at a risk of losing control of the workers if he displays emotions perceived to be negative. Thus, emotions affect the leadership effectiveness of business leaders in a positive or negative manner.
Emotions Elicit necessary reaction from employees toward work in an organization. Leaders who display emotions, positive or negative, make a communication that gives direction towards the desired reaction. According to Visser 2013, subordinates can use the emotions expressed by their leaders as guidance for the job-related information (P. 172-188). Thus, employees can improve their work performance by observing the emotion displayed by leaders and, use the emotions to react, amend or continue with the same behavior. Van Kleef et al. 2010, notes that emotions displayed by leaders can be used as a response to either success or failure in the conduct of the business which affects the quality of their work (P.1827-1834). Therefore, emotions displayed will affect the performance of workers when taken as an indicator of the route to take at work. Emotions communicate and as such, display of anger, happiness or smile will convey a meaning to the recipient. The workers who read the emotions correctly are able to react appropriately to maintain or improve their performance.
Emotions expressed by organization leaders’ decreases negative attitudes and behavior. Emotions play a vital role in leadership by ensuring the communication of the right attitude and behaviors which in return improves the performance of workers. Emotions expressed by people elicit affective emotions from other people which affect their behavior (Avey et al. 2011, P 127-152). A positive change of behavior in an organization enables workers to align themselves with organizations ambition and goals. Leaders can improve the subordinate performance by stimulating effective responses in behavior through positive emotions. Thus, a happier leader and who receives workers grievances with a smile and respond with the willingness to solve the issue transform the behavior of workers positively. The workers will commit to work and drop negative attitudes about their work. Hence, the leader will curb absenteeism from work, enhance timely completion of duties and cultivate organization citizenship behavior. The results will be improved individual and organization performance.
Emotions displayed by organization leaders affect the emotions of employees. Emotions are part of human and are easily transferable from one person to another. Additionally, our current state of emotions dictates how we do the duties at hand and behave. Emotional expression affects how we feel and how those around us feel and react (Madera & Smith 2009, P. 103-114). The display of happiness emotions transfers the same feeling to others. Similarly, display of sadness or anger emotions is transferred to those within our vicinity. Emotions affect workers productivity either positively or negatively depending on the type of emotions displayed by colleagues or their leaders. Happier emotions generate positive feelings while anger and disgust reduce the feeling of positivity (Gopinath 2011, P.1-15). Thus, work performance is tied to the negative or positive feelings and thoughts. A worker in a happy environment will attract the feeling and get the best personal and organization results. On the other hand, a work in an environment full of sadness, anger, and resentment will have poor productivity.
Emotions in the workplace affect teamwork. Business organizations rely a lot on teams and groups to perform their duties. However, members of the teams can affect the productivity of their groups if they display negative emotions. Emotions displayed by members of team act like a cue communicating to the others on the situation and eliciting reactions from the team (Baksh Baloch et al. 2014, P 3-20). Negative emotions such as anger and resentment in a group make members react in a negative manner and, this hampers the productivity of a team. The display of negative emotions distracts the members from the core business of the team and eventual failure to achieve the intention of the team. Emotions such as fear in taking a certain task in a group instill fears to other members and reduce the willingness to pursue the duties of the team (Nair, Tambe & Marsella 2005, P. 311-329). Thus, a team will fail due to the negative emotions displayed by others members.
Emotional display at the workplace impacts of the workers’ creativity. Employees’ creative abilities play a crucial part in enhancing individual and organization performance. Positive or negative emotions affect work productivity (Jo & Lee 2013. P 1-8). Creativity in employees enables them to brainstorm and implement new ways of doing business and improve the organization performance. Leaders’ Positive emotions display elicits positive reactions from followers and enhances the creativity of followers. in the same way, negative emotional display from leaders and workers in an organization curtails workers creativity abilities. Followers task performance in enhanced by followers’ creativity (Nair, Tambe & Marsella 2005, P. 311-329). There is a direct relationship between improved individual worker performances in an organization and individual creative abilities. An employee working with a happier group of people is able to develop creativity and increases the performance of the group and organization. Similarly, working in an anger and resentment filled environment hinders creativity and work performance.
Emotions display at the workplace impact on the workers’ decision-making abilities. Individual and organization performance is greatly affected by an ability to make clear, quick and productive decisions towards the task to take. Emotional display arouses personal values and firm decision abilities that enhance the productivity of an individual, team, and organization (Purwaningrum 2016, P. 2-6). Workers with good decision-making abilities make quick organization interventions through problem-solving activities. Good Decision makers are pro-active when handling the different task in the organization. These attributes and values contribute immensely to the individual productivity and, in return improves the organization productivity. Leaders who show emotions to the followers impact the abilities to read the emotions and make the right decision on how to act on a task at hand (Gopinath 2011, P.1-15). There is a direct relationship between good decision and individual performance. Therefore, emotional display at the organization level elicits values and attributes such as decision making that enhance productivity.
Conclusion
Consequently, authentic leadership, Leader-member exchange and employees’ psychological capital target to improve the performance of workers at the organization. Authentic leaders, LMX, and Psychological capital create a trustworthy and ethical engagement environment and yield the best returns by enhancing employees’ capacity. Psychological capital includes the development of capacities such as self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilient. Business leaders can build the psychological capital of employees through various tasks such as training and mentorship, employees’ involvement in key decision making, lenient and encouraging appraisal and giving future opportunities. The paper finds out that emotions display in organization impacts of workers performance through affecting leadership effectiveness, attitudes, and behaviors, eliciting creativity, decision-making skills affecting teamwork and employees emotions.
References
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