Relations between ethics and leadership

Relations between ethics and leadership

According to Daft (2011), “developing leadership capacity goes beyond learning the skills for organizing, planning, or controlling others. It also involves something deeper and more subtle than the leadership traits and styles…it means using the whole selves, including intellectual, emotional, and spiritual abilities and understandings” (p. 134-135). I would say that ethics is related to leaderships on the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual abilities. When we say ethics, we suddenly think about doing the right thing. That is, it implies a thinking process requiring moral (religious aspect), good conducts (legal and social aspects), and reasonable decision making (organizational skills in favor of the society). There is no leadership without the capacity to inspire others. The inspiration is based on objectives translated into a clear vision, which needs to be compatible to the organizational culture. In addition, the organizational culture made of the institution an agent of progress not only for the stakeholders, but also for the community as a whole such as employees, customers, and people whose lives is impacted in a certain way by the goods or services of the organization. The Machiavelli’s approach of leadership is the art to manipulate people for your egoist own finality while pure leadership is strictly related to ethics as the art to inspire followers to act with ethics and professionalism for the well-being of the stakeholders and the community. Leadership should not be used to hurt the stakeholders and the community. The power to motivate and to inspire should not be used in the Adolph Hitler’s way.

Can a toxic leader be an ethical leader? Why or why not?

The best form of leadership knows as transformational leadership “places a strong emphasis on follower’s needs, values, and morals” says Northouse (2012, p 187). The purpose of a transformational leader is to help followers to reach higher standards of competency and moral responsibility. A toxic leader is all the contrary of a good leader because of lack of integrity of honesty. According to Johnson (2012), “nothing undermines a leader’s moral authority more quickly than lack of integrity”(p.85). Manipulation is used to divide followers and to strengthen malicious self interests. According to Goldman (2012) Toxic leaders are causing “Employees to be demoralized, angry, trivialized and productivity drastically drops off. Negative words and emotions spread. Poison seeps in and demotivates and demoralizes them.” The aforementioned reasoning process for each style of leadership, the values behind each move, and the results are confirming that toxic leadership is in straight opposing direction to the responsible ethical leadership style.

References

Alan Goldman. (2012). Corporate cancer: Failure to diagnose. Transforming Toxic Leaders. Retrieved on October 26, 2012 from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/transforming-toxic-leaders/201205/corporate-cancer

Bridges, W. (2009). Managing transition (3^th Ed.); Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo Press

Johnson, C.E. (2012). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Northouse, P. G. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice (5th Ed.); Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publication, Inc.

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