Comparing Ethical versus Unethical Leadership - Essay Example

As disclosed from Exhibit 6.1: Comparing Unethical versus Ethical Leadership (Zauderer, 1992), paying the executives confirms the manifestation of unethical leadership in the sense that the selfish interests of these executives were given priority more than the general interests and welfare of other stakeholders who were gravely jeopardized by excessive payment of bonuses to a limited few. This action was obviously unfair and created low morale that significantly affected job satisfaction, motivation, productivity, and performance of the greater number of personnel employed by the organization.

Part 2: Four Leadership Approaches

          The authoritarian leader exemplifies an autocratic style of leadership where the leader relies primarily on their manifested power and authority within the organization to get things done. An example is a leader in a manufacturing company who dictates to the followers the activities and strategies that are to be done and implemented in ways that have been clearly and explicitly defined by the leader.

The participative leader, on the other hand, encourages teamwork, participation, and collaboration among members of the organization, whose contributions are seen as instrumental in achieving identified goals.  Using the manufacturing organization as an example, the participative leader would solicit inputs and comments from his subordinates in the processing operations that could be improved based on the professional opinion of his colleagues.

Stewardship leadership style focuses on acknowledging that all resources

(materials, man, money) are owned by the organization and their roles as leaders are to be managed, govern, administer effective utilization of these resources to maximize potentials and to minimize costs. An example of this style of leadership is one who looks after all the resources of the organization and, as entrusted by the owners, the leader sees to it that potentials for utilization of these resources are optimized and maximized to generate the most effective profits with the least costs.

Finally, servant leadership was premised on putting all other facets of the organization first rather than his own. An example is a leader who “devote themselves to serving the needs of organization members, focus on meeting the needs of those they lead, develop employees to bring out the best in them, coach others and encourage their self-expression, facilitate personal growth in all who work with them and listen well to build a sense of community and joint ownership” (McCrimmon, 2010, par. 2).

The results of the Leader’s Self: Insight 6.2 indicate that one’s leadership approach is predominantly skewed towards being a participative leader. One actually strongly agrees with the outcome since one’s leadership style and philosophy support the participative approach where the inputs and comments of the subordinates are considered crucial in improving the performance of people.