honest leadership

Leadership is the art of motivating people to achieve a common goal. Effective leadership requires honesty (truthfulness) that builds trust. Previous research supports the idea that people want to follow honest leaders. Several studies listed numerous leadership traits and asked more than 75,000 respondents to select the traits they most admired in their leaders. More than half of the respondents (50% – 80%) in each study listed honesty as one of the most important traits of leaders. Organizational unity increases with honest leadership. Leaders set good moral examples by conducting business with honesty and transparency. Leaders must be a model of honesty, openness, and ethical behavior.

open leadership

Open leadership requires sharing important information with followers and accepting feedback. To practice open leadership, leaders must be able to admit and share mistakes. Hiding mistakes is a major barrier to open leadership.

Mistakes are hidden because leaders who make mistakes are sometimes seen as failures and inept. Therefore, leaders tend to withhold information until they are sure that the information does not reveal their mistakes. While withholding information hides mistakes, it can also reduce productivity and ultimately cause followers to distrust leaders. Leaders must accept that they will make mistakes and make sure that their followers recognize that mistakes will happen. Effective open leadership requires that leaders and followers understand that mistakes will not always lead to payback.

Leaders sometimes withhold information to maintain power/control. Many leaders understand that knowledge is power and believe that they will lose power if they do not have more information than their followers. Successful leaders of the past have shared that preparing (and then empowering) followers to act on their leader’s behalf leads to organizational success. Followers respect open leaders, and many view open leadership as a source of security. While open leadership builds trust, leaders need to be mindful of how they disclose organizational information (ie, leaders should only disclose sensitive organizational information confidentially and in appropriate settings). Revealing inside information at the wrong time and to the wrong audience can be detrimental to an organization.

Ethical Leadership

Ethical leadership is a concept that refers to doing what is good or right in accordance with one’s duty and moral obligation. Simply put, ethical leaders do the right thing. Some scholars believe that character and personal values ​​are the most important aspects of ethical leadership. Leaders must carefully consider their values ​​before making decisions. Leaders must think critically about what they have been taught and decide whether or not it is necessary to change their beliefs. Ethical leaders must have the courage to stand up for what is right and do what must be done to correct unethical situations. When leaders fail to practice ethical leadership, their actions ultimately negatively affect their organizations and often cause harm to their followers.

One leader, an army general, ordered two of his followers to stay in a barracks that had often been fired upon by the enemy. The two subordinates, knowing how often the barracks had been shot at, chose a different barracks. Although the General had been taught never to expose his soldiers to serious danger, he upheld his order that the two use the historically dangerous barracks. Because the subordinates refused, the general accused the two soldiers of disobeying an order, took them to court, and expelled them from the army. In another case, an army officer, a lieutenant colonel, ordered a federal public employee under his supervision to participate in a two-hour teleconference. The official attended all but the last ten minutes of the teleconference before leaving to use the bathroom. Although the lieutenant colonel knew that the subordinate attended the teleconference for one hour and 50 minutes and that the general meeting guidelines stipulated a ten-minute break per hour, the lieutenant colonel made sure that the civilian worker’s supervisor punished the subordinate. for not following his order. The General and the Lieutenant Colonel, in the aforementioned cases, made unethical decisions that negatively affected their subordinates and probably damaged organizational morale. Ethical leadership is vital to maintaining a healthy organization. Unethical leadership, sometimes referred to as toxic leadership, can be detrimental to followers and organizational morale.

toxic leadership

Toxic leadership can be defined as poisonous, destructive, or harmful leadership. It has been noted that many military students view toxic leaders as those who focus on visible, short-term mission accomplishment and are preoccupied with providing superiors with impressive presentations of mission-focused activities. Many military students find toxic leaders to be arrogant, self-serving, and less concerned with the morale of subordinates or the organization. Toxic leadership breeds toxic followers and subsequently another generation of toxic leaders. Leaders need to realize that they are promoting the standard they set and if their leadership is toxic, the morale of the organization will suffer.

Organizational Moral

Organizational morale is defined as the degree to which followers exhibit a positive or motivated psychological state and have positive feelings regarding assigned tasks and the work environment. Organizational morality is an indicator of how an organization will perform. Leaders can boost morale by maintaining an ethical climate and creating an atmosphere of open communication. Honest, open, and ethical leadership creates an environment of trust and inspires followers to embrace the organization’s mission, which has a positive influence on organizational morale. In addition to establishing a climate of trust for the organization, an effective leader must model the behaviors that promote a healthy organization; leaders must lead by example.

Conclusion

Leadership is the art of motivating people to achieve a common goal. Organizations benefit from honest, open, and ethical leadership. Leadership that does not include transparency (ie, leadership that is not open) can be detrimental to followers and organizational morale and can eventually grow to fit the definition of toxic leadership. Leaders must take steps to foster environments of trust. Trust breeds cooperation and positively influences followers’ perceptions of leaders and the organization. Leaders must employ practices that positively influence leader-follower relationships (eg, being honest, open, and ethical). Leaders should make use of role models to help foster positive organizational values, behaviors, and morale.

The Ingram Transparency-Morale model (http://juney1.wix.com/transparencymorale) illustrates the relationship between transparency, perceived fairness, and morality. The model shows how leadership controls transparency and how positive perceptions from followers increase as transparency increases. The combination of transparency (employed by honest, open, and ethical leadership) and increased positive perceptions help achieve a healthy level of organizational morale.