Contemporary Perspectives on Leadership: Styles, Ethics, and Cross-Cultural Competencies

This report explores contemporary perspectives on leadership, including styles, ethics, and cross-cultural competencies. It discusses transformational leadership, ethical decision making, and challenges in cross-cultural leadership. It also covers self-development tools and training programs to enhance leadership skills.

Running Head: CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON LEADERSHIP 0
CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON LEADERSHIP
(student name)
12-13-2018

CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON LEADERSHIP 1
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Leadership styles.............................................................................................................................4
Cross-cultural leadership and decision making...............................................................................8
Cross-cultural leader’s competencies..........................................................................................8
Challenges in cross-cultural leadership.......................................................................................9
Leadership ethics.............................................................................................................................9
Various traits of ethical leadership are:.....................................................................................10
Ethical decision making.............................................................................................................11
Leadership training program..........................................................................................................11
My learning through a leadership training program..................................................................12
Leadership training benefits......................................................................................................12
Self-development tools and its effectiveness.................................................................................14
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................16
References......................................................................................................................................17

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Introduction
The leader is considered, as a head who is responsible for a group of people that is his or her
team. There are various leaders like a political leader, or an executive in an organization. In this
report, the discussion included on the leader in an organization, more specifically the leadership
will be understood with the help of my learning as a leader of a project, within the organization.
Leaders are responsible for their act of action and their team as well. They are responsible for
creating a vision for them and their team to set a direction to work. Moreover, they use
management skills to help people in accomplishing their respective task with the more effective
and efficient way (Hill, 2016).
Leadership is a very vital aspect to study, which has been researched on a large scale in past by a
number of researchers. From the leadership theories, some believe that leaders are born, which
means leadership traits are inherent and cannot be developed. On the other hand, some theorist
believes that the leadership qualities can be adapted with practice and experience. There are
various self-development tools, techniques, and training program that can be helpful in
enhancing leadership skills, and develop better competencies to become a successful leader,
which will be discussed in the report further (Davis, et al., 2016).
A leader is someone who is managing and taking decision for a team, and while taking a
decision, the aspect he considers is important, which leads the report to study ethical leadership
and cross-cultural leadership. The most important aspect is leadership style, which reflects in an
individual practice as a leader, for this the various leadership style; moreover, my leadership
style in the organization will be discussed in the report. Leadership plays important role in the

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success of a project or a company, it is the leader, who brings innovation, set a clear direction,
and makes others understand that as well (D’Innocenzo, 2016).
Leadership styles
Leadership styles are characteristics behavior of an individual while motivating, directing,
guiding, and management of the team. In the organization, some people seem to be an effective
leadership style and the way they apply leadership in the organization. I believed that I was a
great and successful leader while leading the last project in the organization. The leadership style
I have is “transformational leadership style.” Some of the various leadership styles are as
follows:
1. Authoritarian leadership - This type of leadership style usually follows a hierarchy, which
means the top leaders take a decision, and inform team members and subordinates. This
is a bit restrictive or rigid way of performing leadership in an organization (O'Neil,
2014)
2. Democratic leadership – this is the most common and popular leadership style.
According to this style, a leader discusses everything with his team and take the
suggestion, before making any decision, it can be said that the team collectively take a
decision, and with mutual understanding.
3. Laissez-faire leadership – this style includes delegating authority to the subordinates,
which means the decision power is given in hands of subordinate to take quick decision
making and increase the speed of the process of work.

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4. Transactional leadership – under this leadership style follower-leader relationship is
considered. The major advantage of this style is the clear and defined role of every
individual, which leads to timely completion of the task.
5. Situational leadership – this leadership type is adaptive and change in characteristics
depending upon situation and environment. This leadership style is helpful when an
individual is working in a very dynamic environment, and changing very frequently.
Moreover, it can be said that this involves a various style of leadership all together like
telling style, selling style, participating style, and delegating style (Megginson, 2017).
6. Transformational leadership – this is the leadership style that I prefer the most, as this
leadership style is most effective. According to this leadership style, major characteristics
include motivation to the team members and inspiration to the followers, and creating
positive changes in the team. This type of leader is considered energetic, emotionally
intelligent, and passionate. I being this type of leader was committed to help my project
team members in the organization to accomplish and reach our goals, moreover helping
team members to understand and use full potential. Through this, I was able to get better
performance from the team and enhanced satisfaction than other styles of leadership
(Jacobsen, 2015).
Pros:
 Quick vision formulation – this leadership style is responsible for creating a
vision for the team considering the current situation, which will be helpful to the
team to get a direction, in which they will work.

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 Promote enthusiasm – when the team members will observe their leader be
energetic, enthusiastic, they would like to follow their leader and desire to have
that success which will eventually increase enthusiasm among all members
 Use of inspiration for motivation – the motivational tools in this leadership style
is inspiring people, that is sharing experiences, success story, to influence them to
perform according to that and follow their leader
 Lowering turnover cost – the employees and customer retention is more likely to
have according to this type of leadership style
 Change management – bringing innovation and change becomes easier when this
style of leadership is adopted, as there are a mutual understanding and inspiring
individual to adopt change easily
 Encourages rapid learning – the learning is ongoing with this type of leaders,
which is beneficial for a team in the future as well
 Effective communicators – this leadership style individuals, are very effective
communicators and good in communication and disseminating information in a
team effectively
 Change situations of low morale – the low morale continuous can be easily
handled by the transformational leader, as they motivate and inspire others
 Relationship building – as per this type of style, relationship building becomes
easy because of interpersonal communication with the team members (Jing,
2016)
Cons:

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 Continual communication – the communication need to take place continuously to
keep the members motivated. In case of deviation, the outcome could be negative
instead of positive
 Constant feedback – the feedback by the leader need to be provided constantly
and consistently so that the mistakes are immediately deviated and improved, this
could be time-consuming for leaders and members as well.
 Disruptive risk – since innovation and change is the key factor for this leadership
style, the risk involved is disruptive in nature
 Not detailed oriented – this type of leaders are concentrating over innovative
ideas, big picture, and the end result, which could lead to fixated leaders and do
not focus on detailing in any aspect (leadershipcenter, 2018)
Cross-cultural leadership and decision making
Globalization is the major reason for cross-culture. Culture plays important role in working place
in the organization, especially if people from different cultures are working as a team because
there are many cultural differences. Since the company is working internationally, and consist of
employees from different cultural backgrounds and nation, the cluster or a group of people may
be different from each other in terms of culture, behavior, and way of thinking. This will enhance
challenges for a leader to manage a team effectively.
This impact the major decision taken by the leader, as the action taken by the leader can be taken
differently in every culture. Like asking subordinates advice, some people like to be kind to one
another and in another culture; people are more professional instead of building relationships.

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There are nine cultural dimensions, which are held responsible; those are uncertainty avoidance,
institutional collectivism, and power distance, in group collectivism, assertiveness, gender
egalitarianism, human orientation, performance orientation, and future orientation (Koryak,
2015).
Cross-cultural leader’s competencies
 Understanding the political, business and cultural environment globally
 Learning, that is learned different taste, perspective, technologies, and trends of various
cultures
 Working Simultaneously with different culture’s people
 Adapting living and communicating in various cultures
 Ability to relate people from different cultures
The leadership style selected was a transformational leadership style, which seems to be
successful and it will be successful in the cross-cultural team as well (Groh, 2016).
Challenges in cross-cultural leadership
 Diverse workforce management – the workforce in a team is very diverse, which makes
a leader in a difficult position while managing things among the team, as this can affect
coordination among the group members to complete the project effectively and in
scheduled time.
 The barrier to communication – since one of the major aspect is language, which can be
the biggest barrier while working with the cross-cultural team. For example to motivate
others, or to make them understand the vision created for the team, the leader has to
learn their respective languages. This can lead to delay in project completion

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 The original style of leadership can be destroyed – while trying to manage a cross-
cultural team, it can be possible that the original leadership style can be distracted and
lost. For example, while handing cross-cultural teams, the main objective of innovation,
motivation, and inspiring others can become secondary, which is the destruction of my
transformational leadership style (Li, 2018).
Leadership ethics
Ethics play an important role in decision making of a leader in an organization. Ethical
leadership consists of respect, rights, dignity, values, and ethical behavior in the team and
organization. This leadership is related to honesty, trust, fairness, and charisma. Ethical theories
provide a system of principles and rules as a base or direction for making decisions regarding
what is bad or good and what is wrong or right in the particular situation. On an individual
perspective, an ethical theory provides a relevance for the understanding of morally decent
individual behavior. There are two major positions explained by Richard De George, those are
ethical absolutism, according to which there are various universal moral principles, which tells
wrong or right, and consist of objective qualities, which are determined rationally. Another
position is ethical relativism, where morality is subjective and context-dependent, which says
there are no universal wrong or right that can be determined rationally and depend on the
decision making of an individual and the culture in which they are existing (Ghaderi, 2016)

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Various traits of ethical leadership are:
 Respectfulness and dignity – a leader who shows respect to other and there believes and
maintain dignity while making any critical decision, considering believes and ethics,
values, personal and organizational goals. Moreover, this includes listening to others and
considering their point of view before making any decisions and just imposing on others
(Hanson & Casey, 2017).
 Serving others – this trait includes that a leader who is putting others point of view,
feelings, and request above his own interest and act in a manner that the decision taken is
fruitful for his team members or followers.
 Justice – the leader to be ethical is being just and fair. Moreover, treating all the members
equally, and not partial towards the members you have a better bond. The personal biases
must not exist with the leader. However, in case of any different treatment with any
particular individual must be based on morality, clear, and fair (Gould, 2017)
 Honesty – the leader must be honest and loyal towards their organization and team.
Honesty is important in every aspect of living life, and in this context, it is essential for
an effective leader and to earn members respect for yourself. This type of leader presents
the circumstances and fact completely and truly, it doesn’t matter how harmful or critical
the fact could be
 Community building – an ethical leader is responsible to develop the community and
considers his followers and purpose the efforts of an individual in the team. He
considers the individual goal of members and organization goal and tries to achieve both
the goals and work hard to achieve community goals (elcompanies, 2018).

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Ethical decision making
The decision-making by the leader depends on various influences. One the influence is an
individual influence, it includes many factors such as the way a leader feel, think, perceive
situations, and activities that are significant to ethical decision making. This influence depends
upon gender, age, cultural characteristics, psychological factors, employment, personal integrity,
personal values, moral imagination, and education. Another influence is a situational influence;
according to this, some leaders make an ethical decision according to the external factors and
situations, they have “multiple ethical selves.” The two main factors to influence is context
related and issue related factors (forbes, 2018).
Leadership training program
According to various theories of leadership, it was believed that the leadership skills can be
observed from birth, but on the contrary, it can be said that these skills can be learned and
adapted by an individual to turn into a great leader. To make leaders learn different skills, or to
enhance their skills according to the change in environment, role, duties, and work. The training
program of leadership is helpful in providing concrete tools for leadership, which may be useful
in productivity increment. Through the leadership training, leaders can learn new skills, retain
existing skill and use that drives performance efficiency on the job and share the appreciation for
enjoyment and achievement in own lives and employees lives (D’Innocenzo, 2016).
My learning through a leadership training program
 Team communication method and techniques
 Effective delegating task learning and follow up skills
 Execution of the project on time

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 Enhance the productivity of team members
 Better planning skills, and organizing abilities
 Increased concentration, in case of disruption
 Retaining employees skills
 Change management skills
 Conflict handling skills
 Motivational skills (fosteredu.pennfoster.edu, 2018)
Leadership training benefits
From leadership training I gain during my role as a leader in the project, I observed various
benefits that I gained due to the program:
 Increased productivity – one of the improvement observed after the program was
conducted and I implemented the learned skills in the project as a leader. It was observed
that team members and mine have increased productivity as well. This increase in
productivity was due to better management by me, and changes in my skills, which was
helpful in making the clearer and better vision for the team, which make planning better
and better evaluation. These activities along with enhanced organizing of team results in
better productivity of the team (Carvalho & Junior, 2015)
 Retaining members – since the motivational skills were learned through the program, the
ability to retain members and make them work for the team, and do not quit from the
project becomes possible through the training program.
 Increased engagement of employees- various things were learned by me in the program,
which also included the incentive system or rewarding system. Through these activities,
employees are motivated to achieve above target and keep them engage in activities,

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through the reward and recognition techniques. Moreover, through follow up and regular
feedback will make employees and leader engaged in work ( Ipsen & Nielsen, 2017)
 Implementing effective leadership styles – since the most appropriate styles were learned
during the leadership program, and according to the situation, I was aware which
leadership style I should use to enhance the teamwork and productivity. The style used
was a transformational leadership style, which previously discussed. The implementation
of this style of leadership was enhanced after the learning through the program (Van &
Berends, 2018).
 Making better decisions – through a training program, and learning of new skills, the
decisions are taken by me was better due to enhanced thinking and evaluating skills. I
was able to observe and analyze situations with a better approach, which leads to better
decision making (Zepeda, 2013)
 Nurturing leaders for future – leadership training is helpful in fostering future leaders
(creativechange, 2018)
Self-development tools and its effectiveness
Being a leader, I realized that while attempting a new project and leadership role, one should be
using major tools for self-development and its effectiveness, these include:
1. Strategic thinking – to become a better strategic leader, this aspect is very important, as
the ability to or a skill to think strategically is relevant for business leaders, which I
needed to have. This included the way of thinking and planning and identifying the way
to respond to various situations like many movements in team, opportunity rise, rising
concern, handling new entries to the market.

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2. Decision-making skills – these are most relevant skills, as a leader is not taking a decision
only for himself but for a team a whole, which cannot be wrong in any case, and if it was
then it could result into negative outcomes. Therefore, one of the major tools to have is a
correct decision-making tool. This can be done by exercising brain activities, getting a
sound sleep for this skill to enhance yourself. For this, various applications are also
available like Lumosity, which could be helpful in improving decision making
3. Conflict resolution skills – conflicts are the major problem in a team. People are working
in a group because every individual has a different perspective than from another, which
increase the chances of conflict amongst the group. Leaders are responsible to handle
such conflicts, for this, a leader can attend workshops related to conflict resolution, which
would provide experience and more control over the environment to handle
uncomfortable and difficult situations (Gibb, 2014).
4. Team building activities – collaboration and teamwork are important for the timely and
effective completion of the project. For this, team-building activities are essential that is
to be performed by leaders, which can be done by recognizing good people around and
building a team to work together.
5. Delegation skills – delegating task is also a very crucial step for the leader to conduct, for
effective work done. For this, a leader must be able to recognize the abilities of each
member of the team to delegate accordingly (Pandey, 2015)
6. Innovation – innovation is important in any project, I being a transformational leader, a
major aspect is an innovation, for which skills can be learned. Innovation can be
enhanced through brainstorming, trial and error, and collaboration (Qu, 2015).

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Conclusion
From this report, it can be concluded that the discussion was regarding the leadership and
its effectiveness, for which my own experience as a project leader in the organization was taken
into consider. The leader is an individual who has the traits to plan, manage, organize a group of
people effectively, and influence them to perform well and to accomplish set vision and goals.
There are various leadership styles, like the authoritarian style, where leaders take every decision
in their hands. Democratic style is where leaders consider every member of the team to take any
decision. I used transformational leadership style, where the leaders motivate their team
members, create a clear vision and direction for them, and become an inspiration for members.
Moreover, it was observed that culture also plays an important role while applying
leadership to the team. This is due to globalization, and various culture’s people working in a
team. There are various challenges for the leader to manage cross-cultural teams like diverse
workforce management, the original style of leadership can be destroyed, and the barrier to
communication. While making decisions for a leader, ethics are essential and various
characteristics of ethical leadership, which include respectfulness and dignity, serving others,
justice, honesty, and community building. The leadership-training program can be helpful in
enhancing and retaining skills of the leaders. Moreover, there are some self-development tools,
which can be helpful for the leaders to use to become a better leader now, and in the future.

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