LEADERSHIP

LEADERSHIP

The need for effective leaders to steer organizations to prosperity, which can enable them to sustain their performance has led researchers to search for the best leadership styles (Criswell, 2008). However, there is no one leadership style that can outperform the others. Consequently, various organizations have leaders who use one or a mix of leadership styles. Transformational leadership has gained popularity over the years because of its focus on building beneficial relationships between the leaders and the followers through motivation and support. In spite of this popularity, other leadership styles such as authentic leadership and ethical leadership have emerged. Moreover, behavioural constructs such as Behavioural Integrity have influenced leadership styles in a variety of ways. These leadership styles have similarities and differences with transformational leadership. This paper will examine the relationship between transformational leadership and the other leadership styles (authentic leadership, ethical leadership and behavioural integrity).

Transformational leadership has been popular due to its ability to impact positive change in the followers. Unlike other leaders, transformational leaders create vision, formulate strategies of achieving the vision and influence behavioural change in the followers to conform to those required to achieve the vision. Transformational leaders focus their attention on helping followers to succeed in their tasks. To influence the followers’ attitudes, perceptions and behaviours, transformational leadership has components. These components include individualized consideration, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and idealized influence. Transformational leaders foster a supportive environment for their followers to thrive (Schermerhorn et al., 2011). They achieve this through creating individualized consideration for individual followers.

Transformational leaders pass on inspirational motivation to their followers by helping them perceive the common vision through a mental construct. The leader can transform the vision into a mental model that the followers can identify with and understand (Marquardt, 2009). The identification with the vision by the followers inspires them to work tirelessly to achieve the common vision. Transformational leaders challenge the status quo by encouraging their followers to be creative through intellectual stimulation. The leaders encourage and support the followers to seek new ways of performing tasks, which in return help them to learn. The idealized influence component of transformational leadership depicts the leader as a role model. Employees receive their leaders’ ideas and own then.

An ethical leader leads people in a respectful manner that shows his concern for their dignity. Leaders wield social power by the merit of the position they hold. Ethical leadership is concerned with how the leaders use their power in decision-making, their actions and the manner in which they influence others. Ethical leaders should have high levels of integrity. Their integrity, as perceived by their followers, will determine how the followers will trust them. Trustworthiness is indispensable in leadership because the followers can only accept and drive the leader’s vision if they trust the leader. Ethical leaders are selfless and people-oriented. They channel their social power to serve the common goal instead of serving their own interests. The ethical leaders are at all times concerned with the impact of their decisions on their followers. To achieve these goals, the leaders motivate their followers to emulate them in performing their duties to serve the common welfare of their organization (Calarco, 2006). This motivation comes in the form of intellectual engagement between the leaders and followers. The leaders inspire the followers to commit their emotional and intellectual abilities in achieving the common good. This engagement places accountability and responsibility on both the leaders and the followers in every decision they make.

Ethical leadership is similar to transformational leadership in a variety of ways. First, both leadership styles motivate followers to be committed to the leaders’ vision and to the common goal. Their goals may differ since ethical leadership focuses exclusively on the moral aspect of leadership. However, the motivation of followers to support the dream is similar. Secondly, ethical leadership inspires the followers and stimulates their minds with visionary goals, just like the transformational leaders. Ethical leadership is also similar to the transformational leadership in that the leaders are committed to assisting the followers to gain competence through empowerment so that they may have confidence in performing their tasks (Cohen, 2004). The main difference between transformational leadership and ethical leadership is that ethical leadership focuses on the moral aspects of the leader-follower relationship. On the other hand, transformational leadership encompasses the ethical aspect of the relationship and other broad aspects. For instance, transformational leaders allow the followers some autonomy to decide how to carry out their duties while encouraging them to behave in a manner that will benefit the entire organization. Moreover, transformational leadership aims at transforming the entire perception, attitudes and behaviours of the followers. On contrary, ethical leadership aims at shaping the behaviours of the followers from a moral perspective.

Authentic leaders are aware of the values that make up their personality. They spend a considerable amount of time examining their inner self to understand their abilities and areas they are destined to perform best. They are passionate about their purpose and are consistent all the time in their deeds, talk and action. Authentic leaders have the ability to build relationships that last a life time (Hallam, 1996). These relationships define their legacies long after they are gone. They lead using both their heads and their hearts. Their success is defined by their life stories that are influenced by varying factors that shape their lives. Authentic leaders are disciplined and can persist in their quest for results until they are achieved.

Authentic leaders are willing to expose their vulnerability in the process of assisting others. Authentic leaders know that people are the primary strength in their leadership and spend time building them. To expose their vulnerability, these leaders explore their inner self and engage their conscience intimately. The inner probing yields self understanding, which guides their behaviour and decision making. Consequently, the leaders have a strong moral foundation. The actions of authentic leaders are loud than their voices because they live their talk. Authentic leaders’ actions are aligned with their core values. Since they are consistent in their talk and deeds, they earn trust from other people and become an inspiration to them.

Authentic leaders are insightful and can discern the right course of action to take from complex situations. This trait is in great demand, in the current business world, where business environments have become extremely complex. This complexity hinders businesses from attaining their goals. Therefore, authentic leaders are needed to steer organizations to success using their wisdom and discerning power. Other types of leaders are visionary. However, having a vision is not enough because the complexities of life may render the vision unachievable. To execute the plan that leads to the achievement of the vision, authentic leaders with discerning abilities are required. Such leaders, with wisdom and discerning power become role models to employees within organizations in times of economic crises (Purington, 2003). Economic conditions such as recessions diminish employees’ morale and increase uncertainty. Therefore, employees need leaders who are confident despite the hard economic conditions. Authentic leaders can effectively analyze the complexity of this nature and drive the organizations out of the situation successfully.

Leadership is recognized by followers when leaders manage to accomplish their goals. Leaders are authentic because of the impact they make through their actions (Boyce, 2007). Authentic leaders make permanent and real changes in their workplaces. They believe that their authenticity is only legitimized by their ability to maintain a long-lasting impact in peoples’ lives. Therefore, the measure of their impact on followers determines how authentic the leaders are. When the impact is large, the leaders’ legitimacy is boosted. However, when the impact is minimal, the leaders perceive their efforts to have failed.

The foundation of authentic leaders is their integrity. Integrity pertains to doing the right thing through actions and words (Talula, 2006). Vices have tainted organizations in the current business world. The greed for material wealth has surpassed the need for moral behaviour. As a result, many leaders in organizations have engaged in practices that undermine the expected moral standards. As such, the leaders create a culture of individualism, where people work towards achieving personal goals at the expense of organizational goals. As a result, organizations fail to achieve their objectives and may collapse. Authentic leaders create communities and build teams. Communities and teams create synergy required to initiate innovation, creativity and change. Authentic leadership is similar to transformational leadership in many ways. Both leadership styles insist on the importance of teamwork. Leaders using these leadership styles realize that their success depends on the power of teams. In the two leadership styles, leaders are visionary. Their actions are guided by the vision they have for the organizations they lead. In both leadership styles, the consistency in the leaders’ actions and behaviours earns respect for them from their followers. Although the two leadership styles have similarities, differences are also evident. The first difference is that authentic leadership is hard to generalize. Authentic leaders gain their leadership ability by searching their inner selves to realize their strengths and weaknesses (Campbell, 1999). On the other hand, transformational leaders became leaders by simply creating visions and influencing behavioural change in their followers. Authentic leaders are likely to leave behind a more lasting legacy than transformational leaders because their work and vision are a reflection of their true nature. Consequently, they may work more passionately and have a greater impact than transformational leaders. While the greatest achievement of transformational leaders is to create and implement visions, authentic leaders pride in their discerning power.

Behavioural integrity is the perception of how a people’s words match their actions (Diane, 2001). This concept is crucial in leadership and management because the effectiveness of leaders depend on how the followers perceive congruence between their actions and words. The credibility of leaders is determined by the followers based on perception. During the decision-making process to determine whether a leader is credible or not, followers look at consistency between the leader’s words and actions. Apart from the fit between the leader’s words and deeds, the leader’s adherence to established rules, corporate mission and values are part of Behavioural Integrity examination. Perceived congruence may result to followers having faith in the leader. However, any inconsistency in the leaders’ actions may alienate the followers from the leader. As earlier mentioned, the success of any leader depends on how the followers identify with their leaders and their visions. Organizations can fail to achieve their objectives if their leaders do not walk the talk. Employees have expectations from their leaders. The trust that leaders gain from their followers depends on whether the leaders represent the interests of the followers. According to Simons (Rothwell, 2005), trust is a crucial aspect of the relationship between employers and employees. In an organization setting, two types of trust exist. Cognitive-based trust is the trust that employees build on their leaders depending on the leaders’ past deeds. Employees use this trust to gauge whether they can depend on their leaders or not. Moreover, the trustworthiness of leaders evaluated using the cognitive-based trust model can help employees accept help from their leaders to improve their competences. Affect-based trust refers to the degree of emotional bond between the leaders and followers. When the bond between the leaders and the followers is strong, trust exists. Consequently, behavioural integrity is perceived to be present.

Behavioural integrity as a construct defines some of the attributes that a leader should possess. This construct, which is based on the relationship between the followers and their leaders, has a close relationship with transformational leadership. Behavioural Integrity construct is anchored on trust and credibility. According to the construct, the followers can only trust their leaders if the leaders’ words are consistent with their actions. Similarly, transformational leadership’s success depends on the trust between the followers and the leaders. Secondly, the Behavioural Integrity construct asserts that when employees in an organization perceive the management to be concerned with their welfare, they trust the managers. Similarly, transformational leadership creates a vision and communicates it effectively to employees. The transformational leaders create the vision and strategy to achieve it such that at the core of the vision is the employees’ welfare. The vision in the transformational leadership is about the common goal for the common welfare of the entire organization. This motivates the followers because their interests are taken care of by their leaders. One of the differences between the Behavioural Integrity construct, and transformational leadership is that transformational leadership focuses on the efforts of the leaders to influence the followers. Behavioural Integrity concentrates on the behaviour of employees and their perception towards the leaders (Martineau, 2001). Another difference between Behavioural Integrity and transformational leadership is that Behavioural integrity is not a leadership style. Moreover, its implementation depends on the leadership style being used in a given organization. Transformational leadership leads to change within an organization. The change that might take place due to transformational leadership may involve structural and developmental change. On the other hand, Behavioural Integrity involves changes of perception in employees towards their leaders. Behavioural Integrity does not lead to structural and developmental changes. The behavioural Integrity construct can act as a supporting model to one of the main leadership styles.

Among the three leadership aspects, authentic leadership is the best suited to deal with ethical issues in an organization. Ethical problem that arise in different organizations are caused by people’s failure to consider the implications of their actions (Kantambu, 2009). Ethical problems results from leaders making decisions that favour their own personal interests. In such a case, only a leader with inner conviction can avoid such ethical problems. Authentic leaders gain their leadership skills through life experiences. Their decisions are based on their core values that drive their lives. These values are developed after the leaders self-examine their core values to determine the best way to behave under various circumstances. The values are part of the leaders and are hard to change. When the authentic leaders are faced with an ethical dilemma, they will make the choice consistent with the expected outcome, which would favour the common good. Ethical leaders can also solve ethical problems within organizations. However, when put on the scale, authentic leaders would outweigh them because integrity and ethical principles have been shaped for many years and are part of authentic leaders’ lives. According to (Cohen, 2005), leaders with specific personal characteristics perform better ethically than those who lack such traits As for Behavioural integrity, it is weak and cannot effectively deal with ethical issues within an organization. The weakness in this construct is that it is not a leadership style, but a model (Spulber, 2007). As such, it requires a certain leadership style to be present in an organization to achieve success. In comparison to other leadership styles, authentic leadership is the most recent and is proving very challenging for those trying to adopt the style in their mature age. This difficulty in adopting authentic leadership underscores the value and importance of the leadership style.

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