Chapters Summary 9-12 :from The Art of Leadership, 4th edition by Manning and Curtis - Essay Example

The Role of Ethical Values Most organizations define Policies of Ethics that dictates what kind of behavior is acceptable or unacceptable at workplace. Honesty is considered to be the most prominent leadership virtue. According to Karl Marx, the situation determines the honesty of a person. His salary, job satisfaction, working condition, recognition etc play a vital role for a person being honest or dishonest. Leadership to certain extent is related with the ethical and moral values of a person.

There are many organizations where unethical or dishonest leaders created disasters for their companies in order to satisfy their personal interests. Ethics at Work In order to improve ethical climate at workplace, organizations need to assess whether day to day activities are also being performed on the basis of improving and maintaining Ethics at workplace. Companies need to determine if: Ethical misconducts are being handled fairly and impartially. Code of Conduct is practiced in every day decision making.

Within the organization, there’s a formal body that addresses ethical lapses and issues.Leadership Authority Manning and Curtis (2002) describes a servant leader as the one who is sharply different from the one who is just a leader. Servant leader assures if the other person’s highest priorities and other needs are being served first. A servant leader believes in a better understanding among people at workplace. The following ways should be adopted to promote an effective two-way communication:Emphasis on explicitness and clarityCultivating the practice of enduring communicationRemoving intimidation, apprehension and fear In Participative leadership theory, leader puts himself as team member and discusses with his members regarding the possible decisions.

Empowerment at Workplace Empowering refers to enhance the social, spiritual and economic strengths of communities or individuals. Empowering at workplace synergizes the individuals for the accomplishment of goals and objectives. Empowered workplace helps the employees in the following in:Accessing authority and power; because no one ever gets successful alone. It takes an entire group to develop something that can be successful.Employing individual’s strength in dealing with others.Have a sense of kindness and worthiness.

Ability in making decisions upon one’s own choice. Empowered organizations often get rewards of High performance organizations as well. High performance organizations are those that:Spend less and work betterProvides value to its stakeholders and customersAchieves credits and rewards for the services which it provides In my opinion, it is the duty of top management to lead an organization in such a way that basic ethical values and standards are not violated. An apparent message should also be conveyed to all hierarchical level of employees that good ethical values are the basis of successful businesses.

ReferencesManning, George and Curtis, Kent. (2002). The Art of Leadership (4th ed.). Europe: McGraw-Hill International.