Write 3 paragraphs in length by selecting one of the leadership theories below that best describes your own leadership style.

1. In what ways does your own leadership style align with your selected leadership theory?
2. How do you know? Thoroughly explain. After doing so, use real-life examples to support your assertion. 

Please be sure to validate your opinions and ideas with intext citations and references in APA format.

Responsible Leadership

Discuss the roles of leaders in creating ethical organizations. Although theories have increased our understanding of effective leadership, they do not explicitly deal with the roles of ethics and trust, which some argue are essential to complete the picture. Here, we consider contemporary concepts that explicitly address the role of leaders in creating ethical organizations. These and the theories we discussed earlier are not mutually exclusive ideas (a transformational leader may also be a responsible one), but we could argue that leaders generally appear to be stronger in one category than another. Authentic Leadership SAP’s Co-CEO Bill McDermott’s motto is “Stay Hungry, Stay Humble,” and he appears to practice what he preaches. Campbell Soup’s CEO Denise Morrison decided to lower sodium in the company’s soup products simply because it was the right thing to do. McDermott and Morrison appear to be good exemplars of authentic leadership.70 Authentic leadership focuses on the moral aspects of being a leader. Authentic leaders know who they are, know what they believe in, and act on those values and beliefs openly and candidly. Their followers consider them ethical people. The primary quality produced by authentic leadership is trust. Authentic leaders share information, encourage open communication, and stick to their ideals. The result: People come to have faith in them. Related to this behavior is the concept of humbleness, another characteristic of being authentic. Research indicates that leaders who model humility help followers to understand the growth process for their own development.71 Authentic leadership, especially when shared among top management team members, creates a positive energizing effect that heightens firm performance.72 Transformational or charismatic leaders can have a vision and communicate it persuasively, but sometimes the vision is wrong (as in the case of Hitler), or the leader is more concerned with his or her own needs or pleasures, as were Dennis Kozlowski (ex-CEO of Tyco), Jeff Skilling (ex-CEO of Enron), and Raj Rajaratnam (founder of the Galleon Group).73 Authentic leaders do not exhibit these behaviors. They may also be more likely to promote corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Ethical Leadership

Leadership is not value-free. In assessing its effectiveness, we need to address the means a leader uses to achieve goals as well as the content of those goals. The role of the leader in creating the ethical expectations for all members is crucial.74 Ethical top leadership influences not only direct followers, but all the way down the command structure as well, because top leaders create an ethical culture and expect lower-level leaders to behave along ethical guidelines.75 Leaders rated as highly ethical tend to have followers who engage in more organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and who are more willing to bring problems to the leaders’ attention.76 Research also found that ethical leadership reduced interpersonal conflicts.77 Ethical and authentic leadership intersect at a number of junctures. Leaders who treat their followers ethically and authentically—with fairness, especially by providing honest, frequent, and accurate information—are seen as more effective.78 Transformational leadership has ethical implications since these leaders change the way followers think. Charisma, too, has an ethical component. Unethical leaders use their charisma to enhance power over followers, directed toward self-serving ends. To integrate ethical and charismatic leadership, scholars have advanced the idea of socialized charismatic leadership—conveying other-centered (not self-centered) values through leaders who model ethical conduct.79 Charismatic leaders are able to bring employee values in line with their own values through their words and actions.80 Although every member of an organization is responsible for ethical behavior, many initiatives aimed at increasing organizational ethical behavior are focused on the leaders. Because top executives set the moral tone for an organization, they need to set high ethical standards, demonstrate them through their own behavior, and encourage and reward integrity in others while avoiding abuses of power. One research review found that role modeling by top leaders positively influenced managers throughout their organizations to behave ethically and fostered a climate that reinforced group-level ethical conduct. The findings suggest that organizations should invest in ethical leadership training programs, especially in industries with few ethical regulations. Leadership training programs that incorporate cultural values should be especially mandated for leaders who take foreign assignments or manage multicultural work teams.81 For ethical leadership to be effective, it is not enough for the leader to simply possess high moral character. After all, there is no universal standard for ethical behavior, and ethical norms vary by culture, by industry, and even sometimes within an organization. Leaders must be willing to express their ethical beliefs and persuade others to follow their standards. Followers must believe in both the leader and the overlying principles, even if they don’t personally agree with every minor stance. To convey their beliefs, leaders should learn to express their moral convictions in statements that reflect values shared with their organization’s members. Leaders can build on this foundation of trust to show their character, enhance a sense of unity, and create buy-in from followers. The leader’s message should announce high goals and express confidence that they can be reached.

Servant Leadership

Scholars have recently considered ethical leadership from a new angle by examining servant leadership.83 Servant leaders go beyond their self-interest and focus on opportunities to help followers grow and develop. Characteristic behaviors include listening, empathizing, persuading, accepting stewardship, and actively developing followers’ potential. Because servant leadership focuses on serving the needs of others, research has focused on its outcomes for the well-being of followers. Perhaps not surprisingly, a study of 126 CEOs found that servant leadership is negatively correlated with the trait of narcissism.84 What are the effects of servant leadership? One study of 123 supervisors found it resulted in higher levels of commitment to the supervisor, self-efficacy, and perceptions of justice, which all were related to OCB.85 This relationship between servant leadership and follower OCB appears to be stronger when followers are encouraged to focus on being dutiful and responsible.86 Second, servant leadership increases team potency (a belief that your team has above-average skills and abilities), which in turn leads to higher levels of group performance.87 Third, a study with a nationally representative sample found higher levels of citizenship were associated with a focus on growth and advancement, which in turn was associated with higher levels of creative performance.88 Other research found that servant leadership and a resulting culture of serving increased employee job performance and creativity, while reducing turnover intentions.89 Servant leadership may be more prevalent and effective in certain cultures.90 When asked to draw images of leaders, for example, U.S. subjects tended to draw them in front of the group, giving orders to followers. Singaporeans tended to draw leaders at the back of the group, acting more to gather a group’s opinions together and then unify them from the rear. This suggests the East Asian prototype is more like a servant leader, which might mean servant leadership is more effective in these cultures.

Positive Leadership

Describe how leaders can have a positive impact on their organizations through building trust and mentoring. In each of the theories we’ve discussed, you can see opportunities for the practice of good, bad, or mediocre leadership. Now let’s think about the intentional development of positive leadership environments. Trust Trust is a psychological state that exists when you agree to make yourself vulnerable to another person because you have positive expectations about how things are going to turn out.91 Although you aren’t completely in control of the situation, you are willing to take a chance that the other person will come through for you. Trust is a primary attribute associated with leadership; breaking it can have serious adverse effects on a group’s performance.92 Followers who trust a leader are confident their rights and interests will not be abused.93 Transformational leaders, for example, create support for their ideas in part by arguing that their direction will be in everyone’s best interests. People are unlikely to look up to or follow someone they perceive as dishonest or likely to take advantage of them. Thus, as you might expect, transformational leaders generate higher levels of trust from their followers, which in turn are related to higher levels of team confidence and, ultimately, higher levels of team performance.94 In a simple contractual exchange of goods and services, your employer is legally bound to pay you for fulfilling your job description. But today’s rapid reorganizations, diffusion of responsibility, and collaborative team-based work mean employment relationships are not stable long-term contracts with explicit terms. Rather, they are based more on trusting relationships than ever before. You have to trust that if you show your supervisor a creative project you’ve been working on, he won’t steal the credit behind your back. You have to trust that the extra work you’ve been doing will be recognized in your performance appraisal. In contemporary organizations, where work is less closely documented and specified, voluntary employee contribution based on trust is absolutely necessary. Only a trusted leader will be able to encourage employees to reach beyond themselves to a transformational goal. THE OUTCOMES OF TRUST Trust between supervisors and employees has a number of specific advantages. Here are just a few from research: Trust encourages taking risks. Whenever employees decide to deviate from the usual way of doing things, or to take their supervisor’s word on a new direction, they are taking a risk. In both cases, a trusting relationship can facilitate that leap. Trust facilitates information sharing. One big reason employees fail to express concerns at work is that they don’t feel psychologically safe revealing their views. When managers demonstrate they will give employees’ ideas a fair hearing and actively make changes, employees are more willing to speak out.95 Trusting groups are more effective. When a leader sets a trusting tone in a group, members are more willing to help each other and exert extra effort, which increases trust. Members of mistrusting groups tend to be suspicious of each other, constantly guard against exploitation, and restrict communication with others in the group. These actions tend to undermine and eventually destroy the group. Trust enhances productivity. The bottom-line interest of companies appears to be positively influenced by trust. Employees who trust their supervisors tend to receive higher performance ratings, indicating higher productivity.96 People respond to mistrust by concealing information and secretly pursuing their own interests. TRUST DEVELOPMENT What key characteristics lead us to believe a leader is trustworthy? Evidence has identified three: integrity, benevolence, and ability (see Exhibit 12-6).97 Integrity refers to honesty and truthfulness. When 570 white-collar employees were given a list of 28 attributes related to leadership, they rated honesty the most important by far.98 Integrity also means maintaining consistency between what you do and say. Benevolence means the trusted person has your interests at heart, even if your interests aren’t necessarily in line with theirs. Caring and supportive behavior is part of the emotional bond between leaders and followers. Ability encompasses an individual’s technical and interpersonal knowledge and skills. You’re unlikely to depend on someone whose abilities you don’t believe in even if the person is highly principled and has the best intentions. Exhibit 6 The Nature of Trust TRUST PROPENSITY Effective leadership is built on the trust of leaders and followers. Trust propensity refers to how likely a particular employee is to trust a leader. Some people are simply more likely to believe others can be trusted.99 Those who carefully document every promise or conversation with their supervisors aren’t very high in trust propensity, and they probably aren’t going to take a leader’s word for anything. Those who think most people are basically honest and forthright will be much more likely to seek evidence that their leaders have behaved in a trustworthy manner. Trust propensity is closely linked to the personality trait of agreeableness, and people with lower self-esteem are less likely to trust others.100 TRUST AND CULTURE Does trust look the same in every culture? Using the basic definition of trust, certainly it does. However, in the work context, trust in an employment relationship may be built on very different perceptions from culture to culture. For example, a recent study in Taiwan indicated that employees responded to paternalistic leadership, when it is benevolent and ethical, with increased trust performance.101 This positive response to paternalism may be unique to the collectivistic context where the Confucian values of hierarchy and relationship predominate. In individualistic societies, we might expect that paternalistic leadership will rankle many employees who prefer not to see themselves as part of a hierarchical family workgroup. Employees in individualist cultures may build trust along dimensions of leadership support and consistency instead, for instance. THE ROLE OF TIME Time is the final component for building trust. We come to trust people by observing their behavior over a period of time.102 To help, leaders need to demonstrate integrity, benevolence, and ability in situations where trust is important—say, where they could behave opportunistically or let employees down. Second, trust can be won in the ability domain by demonstrating competence. Third, research with 100 companies around the world suggests that leaders can build trust by shifting their communication style from top-down commands to ongoing organizational dialogue. Lastly, when leaders regularly create interpersonal conversations with their employees that are intimate, interactive, and inclusive and that intentionally follow an agenda, followers demonstrate trust with high levels of engagement.103 REGAINING TRUST Managers who break the psychological contract with workers, demonstrating they aren’t trustworthy leaders, will find employees are less satisfied and less committed, have a higher intent toward turnover, engage in less OCB, and have lower levels of task performance.104 Leaders who betray trust are especially likely to be evaluated negatively by followers if there is already a low level of leader–member exchange.105 Once it has been violated, trust can be regained, but only in certain situations and depending on the type of violation.106 If the cause is lack of ability, it’s usually best to apologize and recognize you should have done better. When lack of integrity is the problem, apologies don’t do much good. Regardless of the violation, saying nothing or refusing to confirm or deny guilt is never an effective strategy for regaining trust. Trust can be restored when we observe a consistent pattern of trustworthy behavior by the transgressor. However, if the transgressor used deception, trust never fully returns, not even after apologies, promises, or a consistent pattern of trustworthy actions.

Mentoring

Leaders often take responsibility for developing future leaders. A mentor is a senior employee who sponsors and supports a less-experienced employee, a protégé. Successful mentors are good teachers. They present ideas clearly, listen well, and empathize with protégés’ problems. Mentoring relationships serve career and psychosocial functions (see Exhibit 12-7).108 Exhibit 7 Career and Psychological Functions of the Mentoring Relationship In formal mentoring relationships, protégé candidates are identified according to assessments of leadership potential, and then matched with leaders in corresponding organizational functions. Informal mentoring relationships develop when leaders identify a less experienced, lower-level employee who appears to have potential for future development.109 The protégé is often tested with a particularly challenging assignment. If performance is acceptable, the mentor will develop the relationship. In both formal and informal mentoring, the goal is to show the protégé how the organization really works outside its formal structures and procedures. Are all employees in an organization likely to participate in a mentoring relationship? Unfortunately, no.110 However, research continues to indicate that employers should establish mentoring programs because they benefit both mentors and protégés. One study in Korea found that mentors achieved higher levels of transformational leadership as a result of the process, while organizational commitment and well-being increased for both mentors and protégés.111 Although begun with the best intentions, formal relationships are not as effective as informal ones,112 perhaps due to poor planning, design, and communication. Mentors must see the relationship as beneficial to themselves and the protégé, and the protégé must have input into the relationship.113 Formal mentoring programs are also most likely to succeed if they appropriately match the work style, needs, and skills of protégé and mentor.114 Mentors may be effective not because of the functions they provide, but because of the resources they can obtain; a mentor connected to a powerful network can build relationships that will help the protégé advance. Network ties, whether built through a mentor or not, are a significant predictor of career success.115 If a mentor is not well connected or not a very strong performer, the best mentoring advice in the world will not be very beneficial. You might assume mentoring is valuable for objective outcomes like compensation and job performance, but research suggests the gains are primarily psychological. Thus, while mentoring can have an impact on career success, it is not as much of a contributing factor as ability and personality. It may feel nice to have a mentor, but it doesn’t appear that having a good mentor, or any mentor, is critical to your career. The mentor is a boost to your confidence.