Daneen, I appreciated reading your reflection on why you thought the principles of respect and serving others were the most important of the five ethical principles. They were different than the ones that I chose, which were honesty and justice. As I read your reasons for choosing respect and serving others it made it more clear to me how all five of these ethical principles support and contribute to the success of each other. Looking at Figure 13.3 in Northouse (2016, p. 341) I tried to figure out if there was a starting point for a cycle around the circle where one principle leads to the next. As I was looking at it I realized that perhaps the pattern would not be spherical, but would rather be in the shape of a star inside a pentagon (Figure 1). This connects each principle with the four others. As I was reading your post it seemed that perhaps each of these principles form a reciprocal relationship with each of the others.

SOURCE: Adapted from Leadership: Theory and practice, Seventh Edition (p. 341) by Northouse, P. G., 2016, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Copyright 2016 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

As an example, serving others would cause a leader to manifest honesty because “representing reality as fully and completely as possible” (Northouse, 2016, p. 346) enables a leader to better evaluate a situation and therefore better serve others, and when a leader is honest about a situation it should spur in them a desire to serve their followers so they can all achieve their common goals. This particular example is supported further through the servant leadership characteristic of awareness, which “helps one in understanding issues involving ethics, power, and values” (Spears, 2010, p. 27). This seems almost synonymous with honesty.

Thank you for your post as it spurred these ideas for me.

In response to your question, trust seems to be deeply connected to ethical leadership. Trust seems to be part of the ethical leadership principle of honesty because “when we lie to others…we are saying that we do not trust the other person in the relationship to be able to deal with information we have” (Northouse, 2016, p. 346). Honesty requires some form of trust. McAllister (as cited in Newman, Kizazd, Miao & Cooper, 2014, p. 115) presented a model that “distinguishes between two dimensions of trust: cognitive and affective trust” (Newman et al., 2014, p. 115). Cognitive trust is rational and objective, where as affective trust is more relational and “from the heart” (Newman et al., 2014, p. 115). Newman et al. (2014) found that ethical leadership lead to cognitive trust, which lead to affective trust, which ultimately lead to organizational citizenship behaviours. Furthermore “ethical leadership implies trusting more” (Schwartz as cited in Osifo, 2016, p. 13). Therefore, I would say that trust is foundational to ethical leadership and that ethical leadership builds trust. In the same way that I proposed that the five principles of ethical leadership form symbiotic relationships, I would also posit that ethical leadership and trust also form a symbiotic relationship.

References:

Newman, A., Kiazad, K., Miao, Q., & Cooper, B. (2014). Examining the cognitive and affective trust-based mechanisms underlying the relationship between ethical leadership
and organisational citizenship: A case of the head leading
the heart? J Bus Ethics, 123, 113-123. doi:10.1007/s10551-013-1803-2

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice, Seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Osifo, O., C. (2016). Improving trust through ethical leadership: Moving beyond the social learning theory to a historical learning approach. Journal of Media Critiques, Vol 2(8). Retrieved from https://ezproxy.student.twu.ca:2420/10.17349/jmc116201

Spears, L. C. (2010). Character and servant leadership: Ten characteristics of effective, caring leaders. The Journal of Virtues & Leadership, 1(1), 25-30. Retrieved from http://www.vizenllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CharacherAndServantLeadership.pdf