Effective Leadership: Integrating Ethics, Values, and Beliefs

This essay delves into the critical role of ethics, values, and beliefs in effective leadership. It begins by defining effective leadership and highlighting essential characteristics such as honesty, integrity, confidence, and strong communication skills. The essay then examines different leadership styles, including autocratic and transformational leadership, arguing that situational leadership is the most effective approach. It emphasizes the importance of adapting leadership styles to various situations. Furthermore, the essay underscores the significance of values in leadership, explaining how they guide decisions, strengthen influence, provide clarity, and reduce stress. The discussion covers the impact of values on an organization and its employees, concluding that integrating ethics, values, and beliefs is crucial for successful leadership. The paper uses various research articles to support the arguments and analysis.

Running head: ETHICS, VALUES AND BELIEFS
ETHICS, VALUES AND BELIEFS
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Introduction:
Effective leadership can be defined as the trait by which an individual guides the
employees of an organization helping them to achieve the goals effectively. Leaders are seen to
motivate the employees in ways by which they are able to realize their own potential and at the
same time, the employees get encouraged to work beyond their potential to fulfill their objectives
(Swanson and Frederick 2016). A leader is seen to provide direction to the organization and
thereby involves showing workers how to perform their responsibilities effectively. They are
seen to supervise the work of the employees and help individuals to overcome challenges and
barriers faced by them in their roles or in their tasks (kim and Mouborgne 2017). Researchers are
of the opinion that setting a positive example to the employees that would be easier for them to
follow would encourage the workers to dedicate themselves more to the organization. Leaders
are those individuals, who try to make people excited about their work, motivate to expand their
horizons, help them out as needed and help in maintaining bonds and trust among team and
many others.
Characteristics of effective leadership:
Effective leadership should include strong character. Leaders should be exhibiting
honesty, ethics, integrity as well as trustworthiness. One of the most important traits that should
be inculcated in the characteristics is honesty and integrity. Researchers are of the opinion that
leaders who possess the qualities of integrity and honesty are looked upon by their followers as a
positive role model whom they should follow (Goleman 2017). These in turn help the employees
to select pathways of success that are based on honesty and integrity. This gives very little scope
of unhealthy as well as illegal practices and means to reach the goals. One of the traits of

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important leadership is confidence. When the character of the leaders shows confident in his
approach or the decisions that they take for meeting the goals, the employees develop respect for
their leaders and feel that they are guided in the proper ways by which they would be achieving
their goals successfully. Inspiring others and showing commitment and passion in the approach
also helps the employees to feel that they would be able to learn from their leaders and hence
themselves become expert professionals (Mabey and Mayrhofer 2015). Some of the other
characteristic that are very important to be an effective leader is being a good communicator that
is the person who has extraordinary communication skills with effective feedback sharing skills,
inspiring skills, and many others. Both verbal and non-verbal communication needs to be well
developed for a leader in order to be perceived positively by the employees. Accountability,
delegation as well as empowerment are three of the other traits that the character of the leaders
should have. Creativity and innovation are now considered by researchers to be an important
skill as this has the capability to face challenging situations and come out with solutions that are
not only quick but also helps in overcoming the barriers in a different ways than the traditional
ones (Ward 2016).
Argument in the proper leadership style to be adopted:
Researchers are of the opinion that no particular leadership style is effective in the
present day situation. Often different types of situations arise in different business organizations
and therefore accordingly an effective leader has to modify his leadership style to meet the needs
of the situation and help the employees to overcome the issues effectively. One of the leadership
style called the autocratic leadership is often criticized by researchers in the 21st century where
they state that transformational leadership and more importantly, democratic leadership are
becoming successful in leading teams in an organization (Syed et al. 2016). However, this should

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be argued as different leadership styles are helpful in different situations and accordingly
individuals should modify their styles of leadership following the situations. Autocratic
leadership styles makes individuals take all the decisions themselves and do not accept or
consider any inputs from the employees working under them. They use negative reinforcements
or punishments to enforce rules and they are mainly seen to use knowledge as the power. Such
leaders do not give scope to their employees to make any kinds of mistakes and blames are put
on the individuals rather than faulty processes (Christenesen et al. 2017). Therefore, it is seen
that such rigid form of leadership makes the employees feel motivated as they feel that their
suggestions and feedbacks are not accepted. Such pressure from the leaders make them tensed,
nervous and anxious and therefore this leadership style cannot bring out best potential from the
employees. However, there arise many situations when this form of leadership style is seen to
bring best benefits such as in case of emergencies as well as in chaotic situations when there is
very little time for discussion and conducting feedback session (Sozbilir and Yesil 2017).
Therefore, although this style of leadership character does not promote trust, communication or
teamwork, they are extremely effective in crisis situations when actions needed to be taken on an
urgent basis and employees need to work immediately to handle the crisis.
Again, there is another form of leadership called the transformational leadership that is
appreciated by the researchers of the present generation and believes to bring out the best
outcome for the employees working under it. The leaders are mainly seen to include inspirational
motivation that helps in providing vision for the future to their followers and thereby help in
motivating the employees so that they can perform beyond their expectations. The leaders are
mainly seen to provide intellectual stimulation that are seen to replace old assumptions, beliefs as
well as traditions with different types of novel thoughts (Northhoise 2018). They also uptake

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individualized considerations where they care for the needs as well as skills of the followers so
that they do not feel pressurized or stressed with the work they are expected to conduct. They
also provide ideal influence as well as charisma. This is mainly seen to refer to the values as well
as the morals that are not only observed but are also emphasized by the leaders effectively. All
these skills make this leadership style very powerful as the leaders develop the potential to
motivate employees making them perform beyond their expectations (Ang et al. 2015). This kind
of leadership is mainly seen to help in situations where new changes are implemented in the
organizations and the employees need to be made aligned to such changes. It is seen that often
there arose many situations in the organizations where changes are required to make the business
more productive or there is need of change in the working styles of there is need to fix up certain
aspect of the business organization. There is a natural tendency of the employees to resist change
as the employees do not want to come out for their comfort zone or they feel that they do not
require the need of new changes in the organization. In such situations, this form of leadership is
found to be extremely important that helps the employees to align with the changes by
motivating them, influencing them and even encouraging them to meet the needs of the
organization (Pruzan et al. 2015). Therefore, this form of leadership is extremely helpful in
training employees, guiding them through different types of motivating sessions, helping them to
adopt to the new changes in the environment and thereby being able to help the individuals to
meet with the requirement of the new organizational changes.
Therefore, one might conclude that no effective leadership style can be considered
perfect to meet all the requirements of the organization. It entirely depends on the situation at
hand and thereby depends on the type of the leadership strategies that would help to suit with the
situation at the best. Researchers have therefore put forward an importance of the term of

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situational leadership where the leaders would be adapting their style to the different types of
situation. These situations thereby look at the cues that may include the type of the task, the
nature of the group as well as the other factors that would help in contributing to the job done.
The most important of the four aspects that leaders should follow is the diagnose where they
need to understand the situation that they are trying to influence. The second one is the “adapt”
where they need to adjust in response to the contingencies of the other situation, then
“communicate” where they need to interact with others in the manner where they can understand
the situation, accept feedbacks, and thereby “advance” where they need to manage the movement
(Storey et al. 2016). The main benefits of this form of leadership are that they help in
maintaining an acute awareness. It also involves helping in conducting highly effective coaching
conversations, skillfully influence up, down and across the organizations. They also help in
creating teams that are more productive, develop engaged and committed employees and thereby
effectively drive behavior change and business results.
Values in leadership:
Values and ethics are two important criteria that go hand in hand with effective
leadership. Values can be described as the constructs that mainly helps in representing the
generalized behaviors as well as the states of affairs that the individuals consider to be important.
They can be described as the ideas, beliefs as well as the mode of action which individuals are
seen to be desirable or worthwhile. These are seen to affect the behaviors of the individuals in
different situations and permeate the organization. They are also seen to drive every decisions
and one should never sacrifice them. Values are mainly learned through different socialization
procedures and gradually they become internalized. In leaderships, values are mainly seen to
represent the integral components as well as emotional investments in oneself. The first

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important reason why values are important is that values of an individual leader guides the
decisions. When an individual is in the place of a leader, he often has to take decisions that not
just impact himself but also the lives and work of the employees associated with the tasks and
also with the organization (Denhardt 2015). Those leaders who have high values can take
decisions faster and much easily with greater confidence that brings out benefits and goodness to
all. Secondly, the values are also seen to strengthen the ability of the leaders to influence the
employees as well as the other stakeholders. When the leaders are seen to communicate from the
perspectives of their values, they can connect successfully with their passion. When leaders are
seen to speak with their passion, employees are drawn towards him and they are more likely to
hear the message. This will help the leaders to become more successful in persuading as well in
influencing. Many researchers are of the opinion that values help leaders to develop clarity. It is
seen that when individuals are clearer about the values in their lives, it become easier for them to
lead various type of people by maintaining clarity in their own approaches. Clarity mainly helps
in focusing and helps the leaders to be more productive. Therefore, being clearer about the
values would help individuals to develop clarity and when the employees see that their leaders
are very sure of what they want, the employees themselves develop confidence and trust on the
leaders. Values are also seen to reduce stress when individuals have high values and they are
very clear about the initiatives that they need to take, it results in less tensions among them as
they remain well aware of their actions that they will be undertaking and do not feel confused
(Hermann et al. 2015). Therefore, when values are present, leaders are able to handle stress
successfully and provide effective output. Values are also seen to guide actions. The better the
values of individual leaders, the actions that would be taken by them would be more ethical and
effective in achieving success. Some of the most important values that need to developed by

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leaders in order to properly lead a team and to achieve maximum productivity. Some of the
values that should be developed is the integrity, value of developing caring attitude, contributing
attitude, inner harmony as well as peace of mind. Some of the other values that also need to be
possessed by the leaders for effective management and leasing are personal growth and harmony,
learning as well as self-actualization. This also includes achievement as well as accomplishment.
Some of the other most important values that are needed to be developed by the researchers are
integrity, compassion, respect, accountability as well as excellence. Such values take individuals
along way helping them to make the employees reach their potential of success (Choi et al.
2014).
Ethics in leadership:
Ethics can be defined as the code of values as well as moral principles that mainly guides
an individual as well as the group behavior with respect to the two attributes of what is right or
wrong. Ethical leadership may be defined as the terms of the healing as well as energizing
powers of love. This also helps to realize that leadership is a reciprocal relation with the
followers where the leader’s mission mainly focuses to serve and support and his passion for
leasing is mainly seen to come from compassion. Ethical leadership mainly focuses on what is
right and mainly helps in exemplifying to the followers that they are there to help and never
exploit the vulnerabilities of others (Pffefer 2015). Some of the ethical values on which the
leadership should be based on are trust, charisma, consideration, fairness and honesty. Some of
the characteristic traits that need to be developed for being an ethical leader is to be humble and
to remain concerned for the greater good. Such individuals need to be honest and straightforward
and thereby fulfils commitments at the same time for striving for fairness. The individuals are
seen to show respect for the employees and even encourage and develop others. They are also

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seen to serve others and also shows courage for standing up for what is right. Some of the ethical
values are following justice, respecting each other, maintaining honesty, focus on teambuilding,
value driven decision-making, encouraging others and thereby to lead by example. Leaders are
mainly seen to act as role models and therefore, it is extremely important for the leaders to lead
by positive example. When the leaders are there to encourage the individuals or an organization
to behave and act in an ethical way, it becomes important for himself to behave in ethical manner
and set an example (Klenke et al. 2016). When individuals are seen to work in an ethical way, it
encourages the building of trust and thereby inspires the individual employees in following of the
different example set. Ethical leadership is also seen to earn respect and credibility and thereby
can lead to collaboration with the ethically minded individuals and development of successful
organizations. Leading with ethics provides an individual as well as organization with
unquestionable integrity. It also provides the leaders with the opportunity of leading from a
moral high ground.
An example of leadership style:
Richard Branson who is the founder of the Virgin group of industries has portrayed one
of the most important leadership style. He has portrayed transformational leadership along with
the charismatic leadership style. He is a dynamic as well as symbolic entrepreneur who has wide
creative des and innovative strategies that impress employees and help them to align with his
goals. Richard Branson had been able to successfully maintain a healthy leader member
relationship with its members and consider all the employees to be equal (Board et al. 2015). He
treats everyone with family and with respect and is even seen to invite his employees to his
house parties. This make the employees feel cared for in the organization and therefore their
dedication is seen to increase. He has provided much freedom of work to his employees without

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much interruption and interference from the superiors. He believes that “it is important that you
build a great team that believes in what you do”. He is seen to be highly driven by values where
and is also highly people oriented. He has the idea that praising employees helps them to feel
motivated for which they tend to work beyond their potential helping the organization to reach
the zenith of success.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it becomes clear that effective leadership style with proper
values and ethics have the capability to make an organization reach the peak of success. It is
mainly seen that different leaders in different nations often adopt transformational leadership
styles, autocratic leadership styles and many others. However, researchers have stated that a
particular type of style cannot satisfy all the situations that arise in workplace. Therefore,
individuals need to modify their leadership skill according to the situations. Moreover, values
and ethics are other two important traits that help in achievement of success in leadership.
Richard Branson is one such eminent leaders who have been lead his members effectively and
had helped his organization to become one of the richest empire in business word.

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