Effective Leader Member Exchange

This essay discusses the relationship between LMX, Psychological Capital and Authentic Leadership. It explores the impact of emotions on employee performance and building psychological capital for different types of employees.

Running head: EFFECTIVE LEADER MEMBER EXCHANGE
Effective Leader Member Exchange
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Introduction
Leadership is defined as the core capability of the management of the company for
setting and achieving the challenging objectives, outperforming the competition, taking
decisive and swift action and finally inspiring others for performing better (Schermuly,
Meyer and Dämmer 2013, p. 2).It is extremely tough for placing the value on leadership as
well as other qualitative organizational aspects in comparison to the quantitative metrics,
which could be easily tracked and is much easier to compare within companies. The
individuals, who have stronger leadership skill are responsible for rising several executive
positions in any company. The leaders provide direction to his or her sub ordinates regarding
work or other organizational activity. The employees require to know the respective
direction, where they could head or follow for reaching the destination (Vidyarthiet al. 2014,
p. 468). It majorly includes showing the workers the significant procedure of effectively
performing the responsibilities and supervising for task completion. There are several
important and vital theories of leadership and amongst them, Leader Member Exchange or
LMX is one of the most effective. This essay described about the relationship between LMX,
psychological capital and authentic leadership.
Discussion
Authentic Leadership
According to Martinaityteand Sacramento 2013 p. 980, authentic leadership is present
within authentic leaders, who are self actualized persons and are even aware of their own
strengths, limitations and emotions. The authentic leaders could show themselves to their sub
ordinates or followers. The main characteristic of an authentic leader is that they do not act
separately in private and public and never hide their weaknesses or mistakes in front of
anyone. Authentic leaders even realize that the journey of being self actualized is never

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completed. These leaders are completely driven by mission and they mainly focus on the
results.
The organizational goals and objectives are met properly and they work for their own
interest and hence is termed as one of the most important types of leaders for the
organizations. These authentic leaders even focus on the long term planning and long term
organizational operations and processes (Little, Gooty and Williams 2016, p. 87). This type
of leadership is extremely common and is a management style, where the individuals could
act in a real, sincere and genuine method, which is true for the other
individuals.Performances, loyalty and trust are the major issues that are required for the
employees. These leaders are committed and disciplined to their own growth and
improvement.
Leader Member Exchange (LMX)
LMX or leader member exchange theory solely suggests that the actions of leaders are
not similar to the respective sub ordinates. There is a number of dyadic relationships for
linking the follower with the leader. As per Gooty and Yammarino2016 p. 921, the entire
quality of relationship is subsequently reflected by the significant degree of support, loyalty,
obligation, respect and trust. As per this particular theory, the leaders could various types of
relationships with the several subordinate groups. One of such group is solely referred to as
the in group being favoured by the team or organizational leader.
The quality of the decisions is affected to a huge extent and hence the relationships
lead to the scope of employment. Moreover, the approach of leader member exchange or
LMX is responsible for promoting the positive employment experience as well as augmenting
the organizational efficiency. Kim, Liuand Diefendorff2015 p. 221 state that, this specific
approach is broadly utilized by almost every manager and could even replace most of the

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predecessors. The latest version of this LMX theory provides the explanation of the growth of
vertical two way work place influence and even the team performance in respect to selection
or self-selection of the informal apprenticeships within leadership.
Psychological Capital or PsyCap
PsyCap or psychological capital is defined as the positive situation for the personal
development with each and every feature of the self-reliancewhile dealing with the major
challenges of the individuals (Kimura 2013, p. 589). This particular factor comprises of a
positive impact on the organizational sustainable competitiveness and helping them to gain
competitive advantages. PsyCap is also expected to provide positive influence on the
organizational benefit and also to reduce the expenses and hence mitigating the negative
influences within the company. This type of positive or development state of the individual
could be easily characterized by the higher self efficacy, resiliency, hope and optimism
(Casimiret al. 2014, p. 372). The positive psychology is the systematic study of optimum
human functionalities and hence respondingto the bias. The four capacities of this
psychological capital could easily provide a proper balance to the organizational positive
attitude and the respective organization.
Relationship between Authentic Leadership, Leader Member Exchange and
Employees’ Psychological Capital or PsyCap
A relationship within the authenticated leaderships, PsyCap or psychological capital
capacities and the theory of LMX has one of the major roles to provide extremely high
efficiency and effectiveness for any specific organization. The subsequent relationship then
exists for the emergence of leadership after inclusion of attributes like adjustments, self
efficacy, conscientiousness, extraversions or various others (Sunet al. 2013, p. 220). Four
important capacities of the psychological capital could be responsible to improve dedication
or absorption in work. Moreover, the psychological capital can even mediate this relationship

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between work engagement and authenticated leaderships. Various organizational members
can also manifest the higher level of company commitment to produce even more. This type
of connection with employee relations and PsyCap is achieved after considering the help of
LMX theory. When the measurement of psychological capital is high, the employees would
consist of the positive relation for every individual.
Building Psychological Capital for Different types of Employees
According to Tse et al. 2013 p. 974, four distinct and specific psychological capital
capacities are present, which help the individual to build this psychological capital for several
types of organizational staffs or employees. These four capacities of the psychological capital
are provided below:
i) Hope: The first and the foremost capacity of psychological capital is hope. This is
one of the positive motivation state that is considered on the basis of the respective
interactive or derived state for each and every success oriented agency. Moreover, this hope
is also termed as the goal oriented energy or certain pathways that help the individuals to
meet the various objectives and goals of that particular organization. Any individual would
get a higher hope when he or she would get a chance to reach to the respective objectives for
the proper implementation of ideas to attain all of the goals (Little, Gooty and Williams 2016,
p. 96). The most significant objective of these goals is to be inspiring and at the same time to
be realistic. The psychological capacity for any employee could not be built if he or she does
not have hope. This is extremely important for each of the organizational employees.
ii) Optimism: This is the second important and effective capacity of psychological
capacity, which refers to the fact that the employees should not only have an expectation for
the better results, but also to have a positive feeling for every occurring event in his or her
life. The positive events could bring positivity and positive work attitude for that person and

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hence he or she would be successful. The respective positive events must be pervasive,
permanent and internal so that the person obtains better efficiency and effectiveness within
the organization. This particular capacity of optimism gets faith for their own capability for
the improvement of the specific situation.
iii) Resilience: The third capacity of the psychological capital is resilience for the
several types of people in any organization. Resilience is majorly based on adversity. The
significant returning to the respective former functioning and learning levels could be easily
completed from the experiences. These organizational employees thus should comprise of the
core capability to cope as well as thrive with each and every work obstacle.
iv) Self Efficacy: The next important and significant capacity of the psychological
capital for several types of employees is self efficacy. This particular capacity majorly refers
to the task specific self-confidence or self-trust with the core belief that these employees
would be having the ability to accomplish several organizational objectives efficiently (Kim,
Liu and Diefendorff 2015, p. 216). This self-confidence of organizational employees to
perform extremely proactively to have the broad roles or responsibilities is one of the main
requirement of the specific psychological capital.
Professional versus Administrative Employees
The employees who are considered as the most important members of company and
company and also earn living from similar activities. Each and every professional employee
could even describe the important education trainings for the purpose of preparing each of
them with main knowledge or skills and then performing the respective professional roles.
Moral, professional and ethical obligations are to be followed by these professional
employees (Martinaityte and Sacramento 2013, p. 991). They comprise of hope, self efficacy,
resilience and optimism.

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The administrative employees could exercise the independent judgment or discretion;
however there is a proper duty completion. The two PsyCap capacities for these employees
are hope, resilience and self efficacy.
Emotional Labour
Emotional labour could be described as the most important procedure to mage or
control the important expressions or feelings for the fulfilment of job requirements. Most of
the workers comprise of an expectation to regulate the emotions, while they could interact
with the clients and co-workers. Decision making and proper analysis is also possible with
emotional labour (Vidyarthiet al. 2014, p. 468). The PsyCap capacities required here are
resilience, self efficacy and hope.
Blue Collar versus White Collar Employees
The employees who mainly does physical labour mainly or completely are termed as
blue collar employees. These employees mainly work in factory and workshops. The
outcomes are tangible and could be identified. They comprise of positive work attitude and
the capacities of optimism, self efficacy and hope are present within them.
The white collar employee can easily complete the administrative, professional and
managerial works and they have the capcities of optimism, hope and self efficacy.
Impact of Emotions on the Employees’ Performance
Emotion of a specific person could be eventually stated as the basic conscious
experiences that are being substantially features by several actions of intense mental state and
appropriate measurements of pleasure or displeasure. Each of the emotion is even inter
connected with moss, disposition, personalities, motivation and temperament. An important
and vital aspect of the emotion is termed as cognition (Tseet al. 2013, p. 974). Moreover, this
kind of emotional aspect also acts majorly for the emotions, which the persons could feel.

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The various mental processes are extremely important for acting as the significant
understanding of the subsequent events.
The emotions are extremely complicated as well as complex and according to the
significant theory of Leader-Member Exchange or LMX, some of the basic feeling states are
present and hence resulting in few of the physical and psychological alterations for
influencing the behaviour of that particular individual. This particular physiology of emotions
is majorly linked with the most effective and efficient arousal of human nervous system. This
physiology undertakes the human strengths or even the states of arousal relations for few of
the specific results. Hence, the emotions could be considered as one of the major driving
forces behind the positive or negative thoughts or motivations.
These emotions even comprises of the stronger impact on the total performance of the
employees for the specific organization. The specific team spirit, skill of leadership, skill of
decision making, job performance could be majorly impacted by the various emotions.
Moreover, these innovations, creativities and also the interpersonal relationship is majorly
influenced by the organizational employees (Casimiret al. 2014, p. 381). All of these
emotions like the interest, grief, anger and trust are not instantaneous and thus these emotions
are not prolonged such as mood. Simultaneously, the emotions could be termed as the
subsequent summary of several synchronized changes in body or mind, which is responsible
to directly affect the effective employees’ performances for the company.
Conclusion
Therefore, from this essay, conclusion could be drawn that leadership is one of the
major requirements in any team or organization for helping the employees or staffs to work
under proper guidance. It even provides a positive spirit and attitude towards work and hence
the employees are benefitted. Some of the most important and noteworthy characteristics of

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effective leadership like honesty, trustworthiness, ethics and integrity. These leaders could act
in line for earning the rights for being responsible for bringing success in organizations.
Stronger leadership solely includes the clarified communication skill and the leaders could
speak with and even listen to the staff members. The company could be moved forward by
using efficient skills of communications and achieving the new success levels. The above-
provided essay has described the core understanding of a relationship within between LMX,
psychological capital and authentic leadership with relevant details.

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References
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