Understanding Leadership and Character
Definition of leadership.
Leadership refers to art of motivating a group of individuals work toward meeting similar objectives. Even though definitions tend to vary, this definition captures the essentials of person to inspire other people. Good leadership relies on ideas either borrowed or original and are relayed to other people in a manner that they are convinced to act as per the leaders’ direction. Simply, a leader inspires and directs a group of people towards a particular direction. The combination of personality and leadership in such a person persuades others to abide by the leader`s advice (Kim and Mauborgne, 2017).
Character is a complicated mental and ethical traits which differ in every person and are developed during growth and development. Thus, the way in which a person reacts towards different situations is determined by the nature of character and characteristic traits. For instance, a truthful personality will give facts concerning an occurrence and a person with the quality of tolerance are less prejudiced and accepts other people.
The importance of character of leadership impacts widely on any business environment ascertaining character is essential in leadership. Any person who tends to possess good character assure an organization a competitive advantage; which means any company focuses on employees with good character who represents the image of the company positively. Ideally, a leadership that is about character is one that meets its purpose and extends on how to be, and what to do (Berkowitz, 2008, p. 414-431). In other words, an individual must inhibit the best character traits so as to ensure activities are done personally and organizationally. Leaders with character perform in a more desirable manner that reflects on the outcome of the organization. Therefore, managers who have good character ensure the best environment for all people, whereas leadership is key in development of the society; socially, economically, and politically. Unfortunately, the character of leadership is assumed in a number of events. Good leaders are supposed to be strong and have a moral principle that determine their actions. Such leaders are known as authentic leaders. The leadership practices are purely what they believe in, and are consistent with their ethical values and actions (Wright and Huang, 2008, p. 981-987).
There are different ways in which character can be expressed, but literature from different psychologists define five basic traits.
Openness
Individuals who are open enjoy adventure. Such characters have are more curious and appreciate art and often imagine new things. However, individuals that are low in openness are the opposite. Instead, they feel safe when they don’t change their habits and avoid new experiences and apparently do not cherish adventure. Of course, changing personality may be such a difficult process, but openness is one character that lead to change as soon as young people become adults.
The Five Basic Traits of Character
i.Conscientiousness
Individuals who are conscientious are well organized and committed to duty. They are people who others can depend upon, also disciplined and focused to achieve. In very rare occasions do conscientious character move around the world with only a backpack. They plan adequately. Personalities that are not conscientiousness however, are more spontaneous and freewheel a lot. Meaning, they are careless in their actions. Since conscientiousness has been prove to contribute positively in institutions and work environments, it is proper that people exercise the trait.
ii.Extraversion
People who are extravert are full of social life. They love chatting, socializing and use a lot of energy from social gatherings. Also, tend to be more assertive and cheered in social meetings. Introverts love spending time alone since they systems process social life in a different way. Notably people who shy are not necessarily introverts. Shyness refers to the fear to interact in social groups. This is different with introverts who may be perfect at charming at other people but only in solo activities or small groups.
iii.Agreeableness
This character implies the extent a person is warm and kind to other people. As long as an individual is agreeable then they can easily trust, help other and show compassion. Disagreeable people on the other hand are usually dull and do not cooperate easily. This may be as a result of envious. Envious people often feel threatened whenever other people achieve more than them.
iv.Neuroticism
People who have the character of neuroticism are used to worrying many at time and suffer both anxiety disorder and depression. They are associated with poor health most of the times, and die when young. Even when everything is happening as required, neurotic people still worry. One vivid example suggests neurotic people with good enumerations tokens feel sad when their income payments are increased. On the contrary, personalities who are less neurotic stable with their emotions.
Why character is relevant in leadership
Character is significant both to our daily lives and qualifications to become a leader. In reality, it is not possible to character cannot be set aside and bring then in only when they are required. Any leader who is effective inhibit stable life, to mean their personal life is in agreement with their lives in public. Even though people want to refer to ethics at work as if it is unique to the regular life, ethics still is the same. An ethical leader must be ethical in every activity, hence serves as guide in life. In events where people behave differently at work, it means they also behave differently at home and such behaviors compromise ethical standards. There is an identifiable character in a person before behaving in a bad way or breaking law, which is why character is relevant in leadership (Avery and Bergsteiner, 2011, p. 5-15)
The Significance of Character in Leadership
Similarly, some of the activities in the recent past ascertain the relevance of character to leaders. A key illustration is when the former president of America poor character went viral in public. In fact it even reflected on other leaders under his tenure. It is clear the leaders could only perfect on their characters and make positive changes in their lives but not defend the president. Additionally, leaders can do nothing to in restoring faith of the people under them strictly by expressing good character (Spears, 2010, p 25-30). The society too must make prioritize the character of a person in preparing and selecting good leaders.
Define ethical values and beliefs.
Values are described as things that are important to a person or organization and are highly valued. These two groups of beneficiaries in turn determine good and bad thus this defines what is meant by ethics. To behave ethically means behaving in a moral right manner. Either, belief means trust.
Ethics and good leadership go hand in hand to create a positive relationship (Goleman, 2017). Sure enough, good ethical behavior results to effective leadership. One example is trust in leadership. Trust is perceived as a basic in leadership and result to success for a long duration. To gain it, the people who are led refer to the past records of the leader and also, asses the leader`s behavior in the present. The past and present activities of a leader that are trustable are true reflections of good leadership. Moreover, leaders with an elaborate understanding of ethics makes the right decision before conducting any activity. The current behavior also influence the development of trust from followers. Good ethical values and beliefs impact on previous behaviors that enhances good character and promotes faith.
Next, leaders can only form positive relationship with as if they first understand themselves, another example where ethical values and beliefs influences leadership. Ethical standards impels a person to develop an elaborate understanding of one’s self. Thereafter, the understanding of in and outer self is an added advantage in taking leadership. Otherwise, it is challenging for any leader to have knowledge and skills without ethics. In a sum, good personal ethics are the backbone of good leadership. Different factors that influence leadership are triggered by good ethical values and beliefs.
The first mechanism how ethical values and belief change is change in knowledge base. People acquire knowledge depending on the encountered hard times and in their work environment. Social values and attitudes have changed in the past years and up to now they are still changing. The way in which people dress in different occasion, utilize free time and relate with authorities are reflected in social value and attitude. A big part of this section attribute to how ethical values and beliefs change. In addition, experiences in a person`s life illustrate the change. It is in human nature that every person changes with time. Either the things we love to do, our views on issues or friendship cycles confirms how change in ethical values and beliefs occur. The personal nature of experience is necessary and affects by causing a change in our minds.
Ethics and Good Leadership
The great man theory.
The great man theory of leadership became known in the 19th century. This theory was used by some of the prominent leaders in the world like Abraham Lincoln. The theory, suggests that the right person for the job take charge of the overall situation and leads the followers towards success. A number of previous studies focus on personalities who exercised leadership successfully. These individuals practiced aristocratic rule and acquired their leadership positions as soon as there were given born. More relevance in the great man theory is that, the current society perceive prominent leaders as heads who possess the right qualities and character for the position, thus agreeing to the fact that good character is what translate to effective leaders (Drucker, 2017)
This theory is keen on identification of different characters and traits that are part of successful leaders is varying events. According to the concept in trait theory, extraordinary leaders are responsible for shaping history. Leadership ability in this case is something that an individual is born with and not really developed. Moreover, only successful leaders show passion in their leadership, inhibit abilities and individual character that differ from other leaders (Dawlabani, 2014, p. 7-13). Relying of a couple of studies in the past, different traits that make successful leaders have been identified. Nonetheless, the traits are not a guarantee if a person will be a successful leader or fail, but only show the potential of becoming a leader. Lastly, the trait theory has certain implication. Some traits lead to generation of particular patterns which reoccur in different scenarios and finally during birth, a person is born with the traits.
Able leaders encourage member within their leadership by practising emotional intelligence (Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, 2013). The emotional leadership style are generally five with the first being the visionary leader. This type of leader creates a positive progress of team members inventing new directions towards the objective of the business (Ahmed et al., 2011, p. 2011). The coaching leader, motivate team players to assess the area they are strong in and weak respectively and then determine how each trait is important. The affiliate leader promises a friendly environment by eliminating all the bothering factors. Next is a democratic leader who considers the opinions from other team members too. The pacesetting leader focuses on the challenges and goals and creates the best standards with limited energy and direction. The last style is the commanding leader who dominates using power (Goleman, 2011).
Evolution of Ethical Values and Beliefs
Transformational Leadership vision is necessitate the process. Employees perform best when they know the vision of the organization, basically what the company aims to achieve. Out of interest and passion, a transformational leaders orientates employees and the entire company about vision (Kantabutra and Avery, 2010, p. 37-45). This process is significant especially in organization where the psych to work by employee is low or the company is making significant adjustments. Differently, situational leadership is affected by many factors including external and internal factors. Say, outside relationships with the society and the organizational culture. Therefore a situation leader practices culture that is promotes cooperation of members and unity, and the effective of the culture can be measured by regularly engaging team member to seek information (McCleskey, 2014, p. 117). Evidently, situational leaders instill special emphasis on retaining top employees and consider individual development at the top for the success of an organization.
Developing managing effectiveness is one of the issues and challenges that face leaders who values re different from leadership styles. The problem associated is these leaders cannot develop the necessary skills like managing time, prioritizing ideas, strategic thinking, speed and decision making (Jing and Avery, 2008, p 67). The leaders can neither inspire others nor ascertain they are comfortable with their work. Developing employees is a different issue and this means the leaders are not able to coach nor mentor their groups. In terms of leading the teams, team building, development and management is not well observed. This problem is similar to guiding the group. Finally, these group of leaders cannot manage internal stakeholders and politics at work (Rosenbach, Taylor, and Youndt, 2012).
Nelson Mandela
Mandela envisioned the country he led, South Africa with apartheid rule that ensure every citizen was guaranteed freedom and remain equal. This is the vision that sustained his leadership abilities even by the time he was in captive. Typically, many people associate success with material possession which is for a fact wrong. Whenever situation get tougher, such people give up along the way because such a vision cannot sustain them (Jing, Avery, and Bergsteiner, 2014, p. 599). In leadership, it is also in accordance for a leader to fight for leadership, and Mandela is a vivid example how leadership is not rooted to a position. Have become the president of South Africa, Mandela position became more formal but also expounded on the influence and of his leadership.
The Great Man Theory of Leadership
The British Petroleum uses its employees to get things using its leadership. This is in particular, influencing the social lives and motivating them. As such, the organization uses three different leadership styles that are examples where leadership and culture of organization is practised, especially positively. The company uses participatory leadership that encompass involving other employees in decision making (Heller, 2012). It practises transformational leadership where it relies on its vision to achieve maximum performance. As a result, many leaders, including John Browne and Tony Hayward borrowed transformational leadership from BP (Valvi and Fragkos, 2013).
Though not very elaborate, the key agenda is leadership. The Richardson Chamber of Commerce companies in the President’s Club reflect on genuine leaders in the business and the community. These group of individual in serving as examples, express leadership by participating in voluntary leadership and also ensuring financial support of the Chamber. Due to their endure commitment, President’s Club members help the Chamber realize its vision to perfects the business environment for its members and the community (Gibbs and Duffy, 2012).
Ethical dilemmas often occur to people during decision making. The anticipated results are likely to be unclear and the position not very ideal. For nurses in this contexts, the outcome during ethical dilemmas may compromise the quality of patient care, relationships among hospital staffs and moral. The doctors, nurses and other hospital staffs are thus supposed to be keen on ethical issues and moral standards and their role to mentor. This notion consider the fact that the hospital handles the lives of sick patients who need a lot of care support. To be safe, nurses rely on their managers to make decisions that are ethics oriented (Thompson, 2008, p. 912-914)
Traditional vs. Modern Leadership styles
Traditional leaderships and modern leadership styles differ from different perspectives. In terms of power, traditional leadership corporate the approach to power is only done by one overall head. As these leasers believe, power is acquired from authority. A longer duration a leader takes when leading other crew attracts more power. Modern leadership however recognizes power is great when the team being led is collaborative. Secondly, when it comes to information, preserving information is the order of activities in traditional leadership. Modern leadership though ensures open sharing of information. Absolutely, ensuring every members are aware of information allows joint effort towards a project. The last difference is in idea solving. Traditional leadership incorporates culture and believes and this segregates the team since different people have different cultures. However for modern leadership, solution for problem are brainstormed within the group and then implemented by relevant forces.
Trait Theory: Identifying Traits of Successful Leaders
The decision whether leaders are born or made is debatable and either concerns has adequate to be justified. During birth, every person is given birth with particular genetic features and for those born as leader have different characters that easily makes them leaders. These include, assertiveness, extrovert, social intelligence and empathetic. On the other hand, after birth, there is a continuous interaction with the environment. These interactions, positive or negative attach to people in different ways, and this is when leadership is developed. Later on, additional interaction inspire a person to be a leader by redefining the values and natural behaviours (Crossan, 2013, p. 285-305).
Young leaders face different challenges and one of them leading people who are older than them. This intimidates, especially the elderly ones and corporation may be a problem. Young leaders are also impatient. According to them, they prefer when activities are conducted and results are obtained as soon as possible (Larson and Walker, 2010, p. 340). This is caused by the challenge that young people get into leadership positions with too many ideas and desires at the same time. Nonetheless, their areas of leadership may not be willing to effect such changes. Finally, young leaders lack experience. It is not something that is learnt or read from class like other disciplines, but frequent practise and engagement (Schwartz, Hazari, and Sadler, 2008, p. 18). It is also important to note young leaders focus too much on themselves in leadership positions.
References
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