Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership - Personal Statement Example

Manifestation of maladaptive motivation arises when organizations possess a high tendency of tolerating violent behavior. Managers of the organization can assist by practicing and maintaining the ethical environment at the workplace so that the organizational culture reflects ethical culture along with highly motivated employees.

• “Leaders need to have a degree of confidence to make a tough decision, but their self-images are often seriously distorted.” (p. 54)

Self-image refers to the image which a person holds for himself. Many types of research in psychology have highlighted the importance of Self-image in one’s personal and professional life. For effective leadership, it is vital to possess a positive and optimistic self-image. Leaders must have faith and confidence in their decisions. For that, it is necessary to have enough brainstorming done before taking any tough decision. All the pros and cons must be analyzed carefully, a maximum number of managers must be involved in the final decision to avoid any uncertain situation and bring the desired goals into reality. Sharing information with reliable employees also lightens the burden of managers. Smart managers understand the fact that confidence has a considerable impact on their decision-making and ultimately on the profitability of the company.

• “Successful leaders see hard times as positive high points of their lives. In contrast, less successful leaders are defeated and discouraged by similar events.” (p. 99)

Not only leaders, but even every individual person also gets stronger after facing hardships in life. Every pain and harm serves with a lesson. Successful leaders don’t get themselves caught up in any problem. They tend to keep on striving for better results in the future. They believe that failure creates new opportunities for them in contrast to that, fearful and less successful leaders get discouraged by these types of events. It is often said that; “Hardships test Leader’s true strength”. When things are good, leaders demonstrate leadership qualities, but when things go wrong many leaders get apprehensive and go astray. That’s the right time to test and judge a leader. The true way of measuring a person is to see how they perform in difficult times. In my mind, leaders are then remembered for their leadership traits in that tough time, and not because of their wins and losses.

• “Clearly virtuous leaders are other-centered, not self-centered (p.170)."

Through decades, it has been observed that a good leader is more concerned about others than their own self. A recent example that supports this statement is Steve Jobs. Despite being diagnosed with cancer, he gave his optimum efforts to satisfy and please Apple’s customers and to increase the profitability of his company. Under the reign of Steve Jobs, the stock price of Apple’s share grew around 9000%. It shows the importance of the selflessness of a leader. This type of leadership style is known as Servant Leadership.  The presence of such leadership inspires not only the employees but the customers as well. The strength of this style of leadership is that it values, respects, and motivates employees who are reporting to them. It forces people away from domineering and self-serving leadership, hence when everyone reaches their full potential, the overall performance of the company gets better. 

• “Limiting leadership solely to good leadership ignores the reality that a great many leaders engage in destructive behaviors.” (p. 4).

The statement mentioned above has been said by Barbara Kellerman, Professor at Harvard University. She further argued that bad leaders portray a sense of unethical and ineffective leadership. Some of the characteristics of bad leaders are, they can be; rigid, incompetent, corrupt, callous, intemperate, evil, and insular. Leaders possessing such traits are incapable of running an organization and motivating employees. They lack self-control and are uncaring and unkind. Instead of synergizing and creating harmony with the organization, they disintegrate employee-subordinate relationships. These types of leaders end up in hostile situations. Numerous examples in every sector can be seen where these types of leaders created havoc for the organization and for the stakeholders as well.