This exercise will help you to evaluate how values may impact leadership.
Read the situations outlined in Chapter 6 “What would you do? HIGHLIGHT 6.2” in your textbook. Choose one and write a 4-6 page paper considering the following points:
- How did you determine what was ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ about the situation? What moral principles did you use to make that determination?
- What do you consider to be the ethical stand and the unethical stand in response to the situation you chose? What values did you use to make that determination?
- If you were directed by your leader to take the opposite stance to the one you are most comfortable with, how do you think you would you react? Would you be willing to take a stand? What stressors would there be on your decision? For example, if you were at risk of losing your job, would you do as you are told rather than what you feel you should do?
Chapter 6.2 is below Qus are at the top 1-3
Introduction
In the previous chapter, we examined many different facets of power and its use in leadership. The topics in this chapter go hand in hand with understanding the role of power in leadership. That is because leaders can use power for good or ill, and the leader’s personal values may be one of the most important determinants of how power is exercised or constrained. For example, a political leader may be able to stir a group into a frenzy (and become even more popular) by identifying a scapegoat to blame for a community’s or nation’s problems, but would it be right? Is it ever right for a political leader to stir a populace into a frenzy? And what standards should govern the application of such power? Or, a person may be promoted to leadership positions of ever-greater responsibility and reward, but at a cost of broken relationships in his family life; would you choose that trade-off?
The mere possession of power, of any kind, leads inevitably to ethical questions about how that power should and should not be used. The challenge of leadership becomes even more complex when we consider how individuals of different backgrounds, cultures, and nationalities may hold quite different values yet be thrown into increasingly closer interaction with each other as our world becomes both smaller and more diverse. This chapter will explore these fascinating and important aspects of leadership.
Leadership and “Doing the Right Things”
In Chapter 1, we referred to a distinction between leaders and managers that says leaders do the right things whereas managers do things right. But just what does the “right things” mean? Does it mean the “morally right” things? The “ethically right” things? The “right things” for the company to be successful? And who’s to say what the “right things” are?
Leaders face dilemmas that require choices between competing sets of values and priorities, and the best leaders recognize and face them with a commitment to doing what is right, not just what is expedient. Of course, the phrase doing what is right sounds deceptively simple. Sometimes it will take great moral courage to do what is right, even when the right action seems clear. At other times, though, leaders face complex challenges that lack simple black-and-white answers. Whichever the case, leaders set a moral example to others that becomes the model for an entire group or organization, for good or bad. Leaders who themselves do not honor truth do not inspire it in others. Leaders mostly concerned with their own advancement do not inspire selflessness in others. Leaders should internalize a strong set of ethics, principles of right conduct or a system of moral values.
Leadership cannot just go along to get along . . . Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.
Both Gardner1 and Burns2 have stressed the centrality and importance of the moral dimension of leadership. Gardner said leaders ultimately must be judged on the basis of a framework of values, not just in terms of their effectiveness. He put the question of a leader’s relations with his or her followers or constituents on the moral plane, arguing (with the philosopher Immanuel Kant) that leaders should always treat others as ends in themselves, not as objects or mere means to the leader’s ends (which, however, does not necessarily imply that leaders need to be gentle in interpersonal demeanor or “democratic” in style). Burns took an even more extreme view regarding the moral dimension of leadership, maintaining that leaders who do not behave ethically do not demonstrate true leadership.
Whatever “true leadership” means, most people would agree that at a minimum it would be characterized by a high degree of trust between leader and followers. Bennis and Goldsmith3 describe four qualities of leadership that engender trust. These qualities are vision, empathy, consistency, and integrity. First, we tend to trust leaders who create a compelling vision: who pull people together on the basis of shared beliefs and a common sense of organizational purpose and belonging. Second, we tend to trust leaders who demonstrateempathy with us—who show they understand the world as we see and experience it. Third, we trust leaders who are consistent. This does not mean that we only trust leaders whose positions never change, but that changes are understood as a process of evolution in light of relevant new evidence. Fourth, we tend to trust leaders whose integrity is strong, who demonstrate their commitment to higher principles through their actions.
Another important factor impacting the degree of trust between leaders and followers involves fundamental assumptions people make about human nature. Several decades ago, Douglas McGregor4 explained different styles of managerial behavior on the basis of people’s implicit attitudes about human nature, and his work remains quite influential today. 167168McGregor identified two contrasting sets of assumptions people make about human nature, calling these Theory X and Theory Y.
In the simplest sense, Theory X reflects a more pessimistic view of others. Managers with this orientation rely heavily on coercive, external-control methods to motivate workers such as pay, disciplinary techniques, punishments, and threats. They assume people are not naturally industrious or motivated to work. Hence, it is the manager’s job to minimize the harmful effects of workers’ natural laziness and irresponsibility by closely overseeing their work and creating external incentives to do well and disincentives to avoid slacking off. Theory Y, on the other hand, reflects a view that most people are intrinsically motivated by their work. Rather than needing to be coaxed or coerced to work productively, such people value a sense of achievement, personal growth, pride in contributing to their organization, and respect for a job well done. Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, seems to exemplify a Theory Y view of human nature. When asked, “How do you stand up to executives?” Jackson answered, “Well, I just find that most people appreciate honesty. I find that if you try not to have any pretensions and you tell the truth, you talk to them and you treat them as collaborators, I find that studio people are usually very supportive.”
But are there practical advantages to holding a Theory X or Theory Y view? Evidently there are. There is evidence that success more frequently comes to leaders who share a positive view of human nature. Hall and Donnell5 reported findings of five separate studies involving over 12,000 managers that explored the relationship between managerial achievement and attitudes toward subordinates. Overall, they found that managers who strongly subscribed to Theory X beliefs were far more likely to be in their lower-achieving group.
high lights 6.2
Here are several situations in which values play a large part in determining your response. How would you act in each one, and by what principles or reasoning process do you reach each decision?
- • Would you vote for a political candidate who was honest, competent, and agreed with you on most issues if you also knew that person was alcoholic, sexually promiscuous, and twice divorced?
- • Assume that as a teenager you smoked marijuana once or twice, but that was years ago. Would you answer truthfully on an employment questionnaire if it asked whether you had ever used marijuana?
- • Your military unit has been ambushed by enemy soldiers and suffered heavy casualties. Several of your soldiers have been captured, but you also captured one of the enemy soldiers. Would you torture the captured enemy soldier if that were the only way of saving the lives of your own soldiers?
- • Terrorists have captured a planeload of tourists and threatened to kill them unless ransom demands are met. You believe that meeting the ransom demands is likely to lead to the safe release of those passengers, but also likely to inspire future terrorist acts. Would you meet the terrorists’ demands (and probably save the hostages) or refuse to meet the terrorists’ demands (and reduce the likelihood of future incidents)?
- • If you were an elementary school principal, would you feel it was part of your school’s responsibility to teach moral values, or only academic subject matter?
- • Assume that you have been elected to your state’s legislature, and that you are about to cast the deciding vote in determining whether abortions will be legally available to women in your state. What would you do if your own strong personal convictions on this issue were contrary to the views of the majority of the people you represent?
Source: Adapted from G. Stock, The Book of Questions: Business, Politics, and Ethics. New York: Workman Publishing, 1991.
Values also help leaders choose right from wrong, and between ethical and unethical behavior. Along these lines, research has shown that leaders with strong Commercial values and weak Altruistic values are often seen as greedy and selfish.22 Many of these leaders are so obsessed with wealth and material possessions that they think nothing of “cooking the books” in order to make money. Unfortunately, many of the high-visibility examples from Enron, Arthur Andersen, Tyco, WorldCom, Charter Communications, Computer Associates, Parmalat, Ahold NV, Boeing, Royal Dutch Shell, and the investment banking and mutual fund industries seem to confirm the notion that many top-level executives are willing to do whatever it takes in order to make money (see Highlight 6.3). Even those executives with strong Commercial and weak Altruistic values who do not engage in organizationally delinquent behaviors think nothing of cutting thousands of jobs in order to improve “shareholder value.” These same executives, who also happen to own a considerable number of shares in their companies, often run their companies into the ground but personally make tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in the 176177process (examples include the Qwest acquisition of US West or the AOL–Time Warner merger).
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