Ethical leadership style and the contribution of philosophical thinking of the East and West
There are multiple leadership definitions that could be synthesized in the process of guiding others towards the achievement of an objective, and certainly important elements would be left on the outside. Making this caveat, the essential leadership occurs in the leading-secondary interaction, because it is critical and independent of any leadership style that you have, what should happen in the leading-second-second interaction? According to Bowie: the ethical perspective, because today’s corporate leaders are required attitudes and behaviors that allow them to gain the trust and loyalty of their colleagues and their collaborators.
Western thought about leadership focused throughout the twentieth century in knowing what was effective to a leader? In this way we met multiple theories that initially emphasized the features, physical characteristics and skills of leaders. Then, they focused on showing two types of leadership that opposed each other: the one oriented to the tasks versus the relationship oriented. In the second half of that century, the concept of context analysis was introduced as a factor that should be considered to lead, and the answer to the question was still without being resolved. The 80’s marked a new mile. At the end of the century, Bennis and Nanus explained the difference well: while managers do things well, leaders do the right.
The transactional leader is in essence a controller that monitors specific tasks, and understands the leading-follower relationship as an exchange process that only maintains the status quo. The transformational leader instead, seeks to stimulate change and attitudes by empowering and promoting the internalization of the leader’s vision in the followers. Ethically this type of leadership is superior, which coincides with the approach of Bennis and Nanus. From this moment on ethics and moral. Since then, research on leadership stopped addressing the initial question about the leader’s effectiveness.
This new approach has substantially enriched academic discussion in the West with the appearance of other theories, such as service leadership that broke the traditional authoritarian and hierarchical leadership schemes, emphasizing the ability to listen, empathy, self-reflection,persuasion skills and commitment to the growth of people, among others, and involving the participation of people in decision -making and the development of an ethical commitment and support. From this perspective to be a leader is to serve and direct with love, humility, altruism, vision and trust empowering the followers.
The main difference between transformational leadership and service leadership lies in the fact that the first strives to align their interests with the good of the stakeholders, while the second seeks to serve their followers individually (Koshal, 2005) crossing alllimits. The server leader is mobilized by his constant desire to serve, while the traditional leader is mobilized by his aspiration to lead. This is not a strange result, and there are many examples in human history related to this type of philosophy of life. For example, African philosophy Ubuntu, ethnic communities in different parts of the world, the most recognized leaders of many social and philanthropic organizations, and also of companies that have adopted this new approach focused on service.
What can we learn from this new perspective? That the service leader at the team level: ‘creates a culture of trust, fair, collaborative and help that can result in greater individual and organizational effectiveness … applicable in a variety of cultures, contexts and organizational environments’
In the 21st century Western thought about leadership has continued to evolve. In 2005, Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May and Walumbwa integrated different perspectives and definitions in a new theory: authentic leadership. Understood as a leader’s behavior pattern that: promotes positive psychological abilities and a positive ethical climate, encourages self-knowledge and internalized moral perspective, balances the information delivery process, manages relational transparency and encourages positive self-development.
The authentic leader acts in coherence with his personal beliefs and values to gain respect, credibility and trust of his followers. Authenticity has two categories: own authenticity that requires leaders to act consistently with internal thoughts and feelings, and relational authenticity that requires leaders to build trust and actively act generating significant relationships with others;Neither can be absent. Unlike transforming and service leadership, authentic leadership is not charismatic or insp.
In 2012, Zhang and his colleagues developed an empirical investigation related to the authentic leader in the context of China who enriched the vision of the authentic leader from Confucius philosophy. Indeed, oriental philosophies first emphasize the leader’s self-transformation as a condition to follow to transform the organization;while the theories of transformational leadership of the West seek that the leader converts the interest of followers into an organizational collective interest.
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