Leadership and Ethics

RUNNING HEAD: LEADERSHIP AND ETHICS 0
Leadership and Ethics
Student’s Details-
9/14/2019

LEADERSHIP AND ETHICS 1
Leadership and Ethics
Leadership is the act of influencing a group of people in order to achieve the end goal of
the organization (Antonakis & Day, 2017). A leader is engaged in influencing and persuading
others in order to create an impact and direct the team towards the attainment of the personal and
organizational goals. Ethics defines the right way of something. It is important for the leader to
be ethical in the decisions and actions (Durkheim, 2018). Here, the essay discusses my
leadership experience in a clear and concise manner that I faced when I tried to bring change at
my workplace as a manager in an organization and in this essay I have used relevant theories
describing my experience in order to ensure the fit between the theories and my experience.
Further, a recommendation is also included to describe the importance of ethical leadership
within the organization.
When I was working in an organization as a manager or a leader, I was continuously
facing issues due to my employees’ decreased morale at the workplace. This was bringing my
company profits lower and also decreasing the productivity of my company. Therefore, for
dealing with the situation, I decided to bring a change into the company in order to keep my
employees motivated. The change was to reduce the working hours of the employees in order to
create job satisfaction and keep them focused towards the work. However, I had faced several
problems when I introduced the changes. Some of the employees were resistant to the changes
but somehow my leadership approach worked in a better way as I convinced everyone with
showing the positive things and benefits of the changes. I motivated my employees by
demonstrating the benefits of the reduced working hours and also provided them prior guidance
to fulfill the targets within the certain time. It can be noted that when the employees get less
time to be spent at the workplace, they are more likely to give positive results in the future.
Therefore, by using the leadership approach I will communicate the change to the employees and
motivate them to improve their performance in order to bring productivity. This change
enhanced the productivity of the company and also led to increased job satisfaction. Throughout
the experience, I motivated and influenced my employees to achieve the objective and also
guided them in their job in order to bring profitable outcomes.

LEADERSHIP AND ETHICS 2
For my experience, I am able to apply the theories of leaderships. The first theory that
can be applied to my leadership experience is the contingency theory. Contingency theory states
that leaders have different way of leading the organization as per the situation (Shao, Feng, &
Hu, 2016). When the situation changes, the leaders change their patterns and take the decisions
as per the situations. Thus, it can be noted that a leader has to take crucial decisions as per the
variations into the situation and has to ensure that the decisions taken are compatible with the
current situation. Similarly, in my leadership experience, contingency theory can be applied. As
a leader, I took the decision of bringing change into the working hours for the purpose of
enhancement in the current scenario. The decision was taken according to the circumstances.
Further, the second leadership theory that cab be applied is transformational leadership theory
which is the most effective leadership style that a leader should have. As per the transformational
theory, the leaders have interactive skills and have the ability to build strong relationship with the
employees (Banks, McCauley, Gardner, & Guler, 2016). These leaders are followed by the
employees because of their inspirational nature and thereby builds a very high level of interest.
Thus, transformational leadership theory enables the leaders to determine the behavior of the
employees and also attempts to maintain a good relationship with them in order to achieve the
end goal. Similarly, in my experience, I have the ability to inspire my employees through telling
them the success stories and asking them to be productive within their workplace. Also, I can
make good interactions with the employees which helps me creating an impact on them and
executing the changes efficiently.
Further, power and influences used by the leader greatly identifies the success of the
leadership goal (Reiley & Jacobs, 2016). However, describing my experience as a leader using
of power and tactics can help me in better execution of the change and gaining the acceptance of
the employees. Power and influence are concerned with the use of strength and controlling the
actions of another person in order to persuade him/her to follow the footsteps of a leader
(Eggleston, 2016). Power can be used as a positive or a negative way (Tedeschi, Schlenker,
& Lindskold, 2017). I as a leader used positive way to exercise my decision-making power to
initiate the change and persuaded everyone to accept the changes. I used reward power to
motivate my employees through giving them special awards, increase in the pay. Thus, this
helped me a lot during my experience as a leader as it was a very profitable and positive way to
influence the other people’s actions or behavior.