<\/p>\n
Van Buren defines ethics as “principles, values and beliefs that define what is right and what is wrong behavior”. She further postulates that leaders set up the moral tone for organization,\u00a0 and that staff respond to moral clues from their leaders . All leaders will have to face some ethical or moral challenge in their roles , likely more often than once . Their actions during the challenging time will set the tone for the behavior of the rest of the organization.\u00a0 She lays out that leaders can create an ethical culture by – being a role model, communicating ethical standards, promoting effective financial management, providing ethical training, institutional ethical culture, provide protective mechanisms to employees who bring forth their concerns about ethics violations.\u00a0The principles that lay the foundation for the development of sound ethical leadership ( Northouse, 2016, p. 341) are – respect for others , serving others, showing justice, manifesting honesty, and building community . All the readings I have come across so far stress that one should “treat others the way in which you like to be treated”<\/p>\n
The concept of authenticity originates in Greek philosophy \u201cto thine own self be true\u201d ( Avolio & Gardner, 2005) . More recently it is defined as “the extent to which one is true to the self “( Erickson, 1995; Trilling, 1972) or, \u201cone’s relationship with oneself\u201d\u00a0 (Erickson, 1995, p. 124).\u00a0As per Kernis ( 2003) ,\u00a0core elements of authenticity are : self-awareness, unbiased processing, relational authenticity, and authentic behavior\/action. As per Shamir& Eilam (2005), authentic leaders have\u00a0the following four characteristics : 1. they are true to themselves (rather than conforming to the expectations of others); 2.\u00a0 they are motivated by personal convictions; 3.\u00a0 they lead from their own personal point of view, i.e. they are original ; 4.\u00a0 the actions of authentic leaders are based on their personal values and convictions.<\/p>\n
“Authentic leadership development involves ongoing processes whereby leaders and followers gain self-awareness and establish open, transparent, trusting and genuine relationships, which in part may be shaped and impacted by planned interventions such as training “,\u00a0 (Avolio, 2005) . They propose a number of components of authentic leadership, including leader and follower components. I believe that ‘positive psychological capital’ and ‘positive moral capital’ in leaders is inherent; one either has it, or doesn’t. On the other hand ‘leader self awareness’ and ‘ leader self regulation’ can be inculcated by training . They propose that ‘ follower self awareness’ and ‘follower development’ can lead to followers aligning their ideas with the leader. I think this is contradictory to the premise of authenticity which is ‘ being true to oneself’ . Isnt it too presumptuous to believe that a follower’s beliefs will always align with those of the leader? How does one reconcile with being true to themselves and also following a leader whose beliefs one does not necessarily agree with ?<\/p>\n
In section 4.1 where the authors differentiate authentic leadership from transformation leadership, they postulate that authentic leaders have\u00a0 ” a deep sense of self; they know where they stand on important issues, values and beliefs. With that base they stay their course and convey to others, oftentimes through actions, not just words, what they represent in terms of principles, values and ethics”, whereas transformational leaders “may be able to transform others and organizations, through a powerful, positive vision, an intellectually stimulating idea, attention to uplifting the needs of followers and by having a clear sense of purpose” ( Avolio & Gardner, 2005) . In these terms\u00a0 authentic leadership seems very dogged and inflexible to me, whereas transformational leadership seems to have the power to influence (convince) followers, which to my understanding is the very basis of leadership. If I was to recommend a model of leadership to my organization, it would be transformational leadership.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
References<\/p>\n
Avolio, B. & Gardner, W. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership.\u00a0 The Leadership Quarterly, 16, 315-338.<\/p>\n
Erickson, R.J. (1995). The importance of authenticity for self and society. Symbolic Interaction, 18 (2), pp.121-144<\/p>\n
Kernis, M.H . (2003). Toward a conceptualization of optimal self-esteem. Psychological Inquiry, 14, pp. 1-26.<\/p>\n
Shamir, B., Eilam, G. (2005) . What’s your story: A life-stories approach to authentic leadership development. The Leadership Quarterly<\/p>\n
Trilling, L. (1972). Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.<\/p>\n
Van Buren, J.A. ( 2013, March 29). Retrieved November 6, 2017, from\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ks2QGoIq5nA .<\/p>\n
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Van Buren defines ethics as “principles, values and beliefs that define what is right and what is wrong behavior”. She further postulates that leaders set up the moral tone for organization,\u00a0 and that staff respond to moral clues from their leaders . All leaders will have to face some ethical or moral challenge in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,1,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ldrs500","category-uncategorized","category-unit-7","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9i0gL-2n","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/icandothis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/icandothis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/icandothis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/icandothis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/icandothis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/icandothis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/icandothis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/icandothis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/icandothis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/icandothis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}