Leadership and Ethics

This article discusses the importance of leadership and ethics in managing organizational tasks effectively. It explores the pillars of leadership and the major challenges faced by organizations. It also covers different leadership styles and theories and their strengths and weaknesses. The author relates their leadership style with Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon Inc. and suggests adopting advanced methodologies to enhance leadership skills.

Leadership and Ethics

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Leadership is an art for guiding as well as leading other people through convincing power,
skills for motivating, etc. This aspect plays vital role in managing organizational tasks in an
effective manner. Leadership is one of the most significant contributing factors in relevance
with organizational sustained growth and development (Arthur, 2015). Leadership plays
significant role in every aspect and it is essential for leaders to adopt appropriate skills and
attributes so that requirements of organization could be fulfilled as per the external market
conditions. Leaders are required to be flexible enough so that they could sustain along with
leading group of individuals in dynamic business environment. Beliefs, values, characters,
and ethics are pillars of leadership and these pillars reflect the true essence of leadership. A
person with these attributes could become a good as well as effective leader which could
lead his teammates towards attainment of organizational desired goals and objectives.
Major challenge for every organization is to manage and leads its people in one direction
through which sustainable growth and objectives could be attained. Along with this, it is
expected from every leader that they will demonstrate high standards of ethics, beliefs, and
values and show a positive character in their actions so that they could lead the assigned
team in an effective manner along with generating positive outcomes (Beck & Cowan,
2014).
While considering the aspect of leadership, it has been evaluated that a person with
effective communication skills, bright vision and mission, intelligence, learning and
dynamic nature is said to be a good and effective leader. Although, these qualities do not
affect functionalities of a leader but with these attributes, leader is known as trustworthy,
effective in terms of accomplishment of tasks and building trust amongst the teammates
(Boaks & Levine, 2015). As per my opinion, it is necessary for a leader to adopt these
qualities and attributes along with the good character in order to portray a reliable image
amongst the teammates in relation with winning trust, faith, respect and love from the
teammates and followers. Character of a leader is an essential element and it helps the
organization to lead the whole team in an effective manner along with the accomplishment
of desire goals and objectives of a leader. Good leadership styles reflect with great values
such as integrity, compassion, responsibility, and forgiveness. In consideration to this, it

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has been analysed that leader’s good character could be identified with these attributes as
well by analysing his personal values (Cashman, 2017).
I could relate my leadership style with Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon Inc. He is a charismatic
leader and constantly changes his style of leadership in order to meet the current
organizational needs. With regards to this, organization could easily match up with the
current business’ requirements, changing customer’s demands, tastes and preferences
(Choi, 2015). I am holding the position of branch manager of a multinational corporation
and its operations are expanded mainly in Asia, some parts of Europe and Australia. I am
acting as a branch manager at one of the fastest growing nations i.e. in China. In relation
with this, I try to develop and maintain coordination amongst the teammates by organising
team activities, interactive sessions and by other similar activities in regular intervals. This
helps the teammates to coordinate with each other through which tasks could be managed
in an effective manner along with gaining positive outcomes. Being a charismatic leader, I
always try to bring creative and innovative ideas into workplace so that operations could
be accomplished. Along with this, I have also promoted my teammates and other
employees all necessary resources for thinking out of the box. This helps the organization
to gain all possible ideas for enhancing organizational performance as well as for facing all
obstacles and issues of the organization. Apart from this, my leadership style also matches
with the transformational leadership style as I always try to find out creative as well as
unique ways for attending clients’ queries (Ciulla, 2014).
It has been observed by me that born leaders are more effective in comparison to the
created leaders. Although, both require appropriate training and development sessions to
enhance their skills to match up with the organizational as well as marketing requirements,
but born leaders are quite more effective, understanding and coordinating in comparison
to the created leaders (Daft, 2014). Following are major characteristics of a strong leader:
 Self-Discipline: This is the action of analysing what is right at every moment of
execution irrespective of the ramifications. Self-discipline is one of the major aspects
in every leader’s life because it helps the leader as well as his teammates to execute

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the functionalities in an effective manner along with estimating positive return over
investments (Fairhurst, 2016).
 Moral courage: It is one of the attribute for every leader to face challenges, dangers
and risks in relation with the accomplishment of tasks. In relation with this, I used
to analyse the ramifications of all possible actions so that one of the best alternative
could be adopted for the accomplishment of organizational tasks. Along with this, it
also helps the organization to gain its desired goals and objectives as well as in
terms of motivating employees for accomplishing organizational goals with the help
of most appropriate method (Goetsch & Davis, 2014).
 Core values: Majorly, every leader’s as well as mine qualities are almost same i.e.
integrity, harmony, compassion, caring, and respect for every teammate. With the
help of these core values, I have been able to accomplish manage all the teammates
as well as his efforts in an effective manner. This has also helped me to enhance my
skills along with uplifting organizational performance in the dynamic business
environment (Heifetz & Linsky, 2017).
Usage of leadership has been increased with the effect of globalisation as well as
liberalisation within the business contexts. However, it has also been analysed that
leadership has been one of the major aspect for every organization from past certain years
(Katou, 2015). In relation with my leadership experience, I would like to relate them with
the following leadership theories:
 Trait theory of leadership: This theory is most suggestive amongst the all theories
of leadership in nature. I have observed from my styles of leadership as well as
from the other’s styles of leadership that every leader has its own sense of sense of
performing tasks which makes them as effective leader. These traits also show the
character of a leader and these traits could also be moulded as per the
organizational requirements. Some of the traits which I follow in terms of my
leadership style are integrity, good decision making, respect, empathy and the
ethical responsibilities (Kiel, 2015).

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 Behavioural theory: Behaviour theory of leadership describes one leader’s
behaviour with its teammates in relation with the accomplishment of assigned
tasks. For example, I used to treat my employees and teammates as my family
members and regularly I used to conduct different interactive sessions so that
coordination could be developed amongst them along with describing them the
need of teamwork (Lawton & Páez, 2018).
Apart from this, I relate myself with various other leadership theories such as
transactional, charismatic, and transactional as well as with the democratic leadership
style. All these leadership styles are relevant as per my leadership style. Along with these
theories, I also used to practice contingency theory of leadership which is developed on the
ideology that leadership is highly flexible and leaders are quite effective to understand the
circumstances of business in order to adopt an appropriate measure for attaining
sustainable growth and development for the organization. Every leader has its own
limitations as well as the strengths through which any obstacle could easily be confronted
along with gaining positive outcomes (Normore & Brooks, 2014).
Strengths and weaknesses of my leadership style are as follows:
Strengths
 Strong communication skills
 Better understanding of business as
well as employees’ needs
 Democratic in nature (Pardey,
2016).
 Welcomes all ideas from employees
to select one of the most appropriate
alternative
 Constantly update the strategies in
order to meet with the business’
requirements
Weaknesses
 Lack of multitasking abilities
 Charismatic leaders are known as
activators but there are various
times where I fail at execution
(Sandis & Taleb, 2015).
 Lack of knowledge regarding
technical knowledge

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 Provides resources to the employees
to think out of the box
Opportunities
 Diversification in skills
 Adaptation of technological
strategies along with moulding to
match up with every type of
business situation
 Self-development for better
organising and managing the people
Threats
 Managers and junior level leaders are
major threats for me
 All those leaders which have huge
understanding regarding
organizational procedures could
easily overtake my position (Sosik,
2015).
As my role model is Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. He is known as one of the biggest leader of
this era. He stands in the list of top thirty richest men across the globe. In the initial days of
his leadership, he uses centralised power through which he confronted criticism from his
own teammates. This nature also brings various negative outcomes for him but later on, he
realised the importance of teamwork and adopted the decentralised strategy for decision
making process. This helps the organization grow and expand in various parts of the globe.
Since then, organization has acquired leading position in the online retailing industry and
operates in more than 18 countries across the globe with registered offices in 12 different
countries (Terry, 2015).
With regards to the journey of Jeff Bezos, I realised that teamwork and passion is required
for making a dream into reality. I am working as a branch manager in China which is one of
the fastest growing economies across the globe. It is a manufacturing unit and it is being set
up in the China market by reviewing the availability of high class skilled labour in the
market. With regards to this, it becomes difficult for me to manage labours and supervisors
with the objective of attainment of organizational desired goals. Skilled labour becomes
efficient enough to acquire the position of supervisors and other upper positions. This
leads to generate competition amongst the organization which later on turns into
aggressive competitive environment within the workplace. These types of environment

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does not create positive results for the organization and in relation with providing equal
opportunity for every employee, I have conducted IJPs (internal job posting) method under
which every employee is given equal opportunity to prove their qualities, values and
efficiency for acquiring the higher position. This has helped me to manage all the
employees in an effective manner along with the development of an effective environment
at the workplace for attainment of organizational goals and objectives (Winston, 2016).
With regards to my previous and current experience, I will suggest myself to adopt
advanced mythologies as adopted by the effective leaders of current era such as Jeff Bezos,
Tim Cook, etc. This would help me to enhance my skills in order to treat the teammates in
more appropriate manner. This would also ensure the attainment of sustainable growth
and development related objectives. Further, it can be concluded that leadership is one of
the most appropriate and effective element for enhancing organizational performance. As
per my opinion, I have observed that along with leadership, leaders also plays vital role.
Thus, it is necessary to analyse the business’ requirements, demands and needs so that
appropriate leadership style could be followed in relation with the attainment of desired
goals and objectives.

Leadership and Ethics 7 | P a g e
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