Introduction
I am extremely interested in organizational behavior – as a prospective future leader of an organization, it is immensely important that I learn exactly how organizations behave and interact if I am to make full use of each employee’s specific traits and skills. An organization is a powerful collective of unique minds and special attributes, and it is the responsibility of a leader to harness those energies in a powerful, productive and ethical way. One way in which a leader can be most effective is to facilitate trustworthiness between individuals, as well as promote ethical stewardship in leadership behavior. I am also very interested in transformational leadership – the ability for members of a group to follow the orders and instructions of a leader, further contributing to the effectiveness of a well-run organization. These two attributes concern me most in the subject of organizational behavior, all throughout the blanket of leadership.
Article 1
According to Caldwell et al. (2010), the essence of a true and productive leader lies along "the relationships between leadership, perception of interpersonal trustworthiness, and the elements of ethical stewardship - a construct of organizational governance that has received increasing discussion in both the academic and practitioner literatures" (497). The authors take from Chemers (1997) and other theorists in order to facilitate a consistent theory of leadership. In this theory, leaders have to perform three crucial tasks. To begin with, there is relationship development: this involves productive coworker interaction, as leaders build relationships with the people under them, allowing them to understand their performance status and building morale and camaraderie around the workplace. After that, leaders must take on resource utilization – here, leaders take command of the material and financial resources at their disposal and use them to best purposes. Thirdly, leaders must exercise image management – leaders have to create an expectation (or image) that fits the needs and wants of their colleagues and employees (Caldwell et al. 498). By doing all three of these things, internal integration and external adaptation can be found within an organization, and conflicts within the company can be limited. What’s more, a company’s reputation and basic performance can be improved through this level of interest and involvement within a corporate culture.
Leadership is also shown to heavily require trustworthiness as a fully independent principle that requires its own distinct effort (Caldwell et al., 2010). Leadership and trustworthiness are linked through the social contracts created between leaders and followers, and are maintained through the leader’s ability to fulfill said contract. Ability, benevolence and integrity are said to be crucial elements to cultivating trustworthiness (Caldwell et al. 500). Leaders must learn to behave using accountability as a major motivator, in addition to the aforementioned traits, leaders are more likely to earn the trust of their followers. Trustees who honor the commitments of values of those who trust, this makes them more likely to make people believe they will continue in that vein. When leaders use this trustworthiness, coworkers are then able to give those individuals greater respect. Given that "leadership behaviors associated with resource utilization, relationship development, [and] image management influence individuals' perceptions of interpersonal trustworthiness," Caldwell et al. show the importance of interpersonal trustworthiness in leader behavior, and the ways in which this trust can be gained (p. 500).
Caldwell et al. show that leadership also must contain an element of ethical stewardship, which involves providing a moral and ethical environment in which followers can work. Stakeholder theory and other systems of governance are cited thoroughly in order to showcase the important ethical responsibility leaders have to their stakeholders, which is vital to effective leadership. Caldwell et al. (2010) define stakeholder theory as "a higher level duty of governance in which the motivations of the manager are based on pro-organizational rather than self-interest behavior" (p. 501). Common interests are shared and merged by stewards, which contributes to an organization (and its accompanying workers) becoming more self-actualized. Leaders who are ethical stewards do the best they can to balance the need for a company to maintain profits and the ability to glean maximum commitment from their stakeholders through ethical behavior (Caldwell et al. 501). The ultimate ideal of ethical stewardship the authors note require leaders to completely abandon self-interest, in the name of providing for the organization and seeing to its needs. In turn, the leader is nonetheless benefited, as resources and employees are utilized in the most ethical way possible, and so a moral correctness can be achieved along with peak efficiency and productivity.
Being able to honor stakeholder obligations is at the heart of ethical stewardship. In the context of this theory, leaders can earn trust by being able to look beyond the selfish advancement of the self within said organization. Ethical stewards can also make the best use of leadership resources to benefit the whole organization. Human resources perspectives on ethical stewardship place great value on the ability for this attribute to best enhance the leader/follower relationship. Leaders can use ethical stewardship to showcase their own selflessness, demonstrating to stakeholders and coworkers that leaders will put them and their wants and needs first, instead of their own. In this respect, ethical stewardship can be the very key to achieving trustworthiness.
In order to connect leadership, trustworthiness and ethical stewardship into a consistent leadership style, theory and critical thinking must be utilized to combine these disparate concepts. It is thought that, in order to provide effective leadership, it is vital to ensure that your employees trust you, whether truly or implicitly. Equally vital is a leader’s capacity to maintain effective management of the company and its staff, acting as an ethical steward to the company for the sake of stakeholders with a vested interest in said efficiency (Caldwell et al. 502). Trustworthiness can be gained by being a real, effective ethical steward of an organization – this care can translate into a positive leader perception by followers, employees and stakeholders.
While ethical stewardship and trustworthiness are separate concepts, they do not have to be mutually exclusive when attempting to cultivate ethical and effective leadership. The most fascinating component of this is the fact that assessment is extremely subjective; no matter how trustworthy you present yourself to be, and how well you perform, that effectiveness in really cultivating trustworthiness may be less than expected. Followers can easily believe someone is not effective at running the company despite their clear attempts to be trustworthy; this is an example of the mediating lens, which is the viewpoint from which someone else looks at the trustworthiness and ethical stewardship of a leader (Caldwell et al. 503).
This mediating lens is perhaps one of the most frustrating attributes of having such a consistent, theoretical approach to leadership – due to the fallible, unpredictable nature of people, especially in an organization, it is impossible to find a magic formula for ensuring that employees will like you. While these traits are extremely positive, and can absolutely result in the cultivation of a good leader, that leader may not be perceived as effective by his audience. Leaders can seem trustworthy – something done by showing integrity, ability and benevolence, as previously mentioned – but fail to exercise ethical stewardship to back up these impressions. Conversely, holes in perception can also bring about a lack of faith in competent leaders’ abilities to lead; leaders themselves can run into serious doubt, since not many people trust them given the mediating lens. To that end, I am fascinated and concerned with how well a linear behavioral model would work to create the perfect leader; even when trustworthiness and ethical behaviors are emphasized, a linear response may not be found. This can certainly be one of the most aggravating things about organizations, as they are so unpredictable – even the best leader may not be successful at cultivating good trustworthiness due to the mediating lens.
That being said, even though doubt can exist as to the effectiveness of these traits because of this coloring of perception of performance, it is still a good idea to provide an ethical basis for good leadership. According to Caldwell et al., "Honoring a model of leadership that rises to the level of ethical stewardship can enable businesses to build trust, improve profitability, and achieve more effective results long-term" (509). Even if the mediating lens somehow clouds a worker or stakeholder’s ability to see how effective one’s leadership is, leaders should still attempt to keep these values in mind as they lead – this can lead to a trustworthy, ethically consistent leadership style that will certainly have an effect on their followers. While it is not a guarantee that trustworthiness will be gained, it is worth it to make the effort.
Article 2
In Rowold and Schlotz’s “Transformational and Transactional Leadership and Followers’ Chronic Stress,” the authors discuss the difference between transformational and transactional leadership, as it is connected to the chronic stress of a leader’s followers. Here, the chief differences in transformational and transactional leadership are explained in detail – in essence, transformational leaders “emphasize higher motive development, and arouse followers’ motivation and positive emotions by means of creating and representing an inspiring vision of the future” (Rowold and Schlotz 35). Transformational leaders are said to possess a number of transformational factors that facilitate the kind of cooperative and interactive relationship they wish to have with their followers. For instance, inspirational motivation is the ability to articulate and represent their vision for the company, giving clear direction to motivate workers to perform admirably. Transformational leaders are also said to have idealized influence on their workers, using charisma to influence people to like him or her, and acting upon the values their vision espouses. Intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration and more are also factors of the transformational leader, encouraging their workers one at a time to cultivate themselves to their full potential.
Transactional leaders, on the other hand, engage with their followers on an “exchange system of well-defined transactions” (35). Rewards and punishments can be highly associated with transactional leadership, as this kind of positive/negative consequence is the way feedback is administered in such a relationship. Transactional leadership factors mostly involve contingent rewards, with task-oriented leadership that rewards followers for fulfilling specific tasks (36). That being said, transactional leaders all seek to correct divergent behavior when deviations in the rules are found in active management-by-exception.
Both of these leadership styles are measured in terms of how they affect the chronic stress of followers, the authors hypothesizing that transformational leadership will have a more positive effect on workplace stress than transactional leadership. The outcomes measured include “employees’ satisfaction, subjective and objective performance indicators” and others (37). Following an experiment in which questionnaires are administered to subjects, the results indicate that certain elements of transformational leadership factors (including individualized consideration) helped to alleviate chronic stress in followers. While followers were still held to a high standard of performance, leader influence and help in the performance of tasks helped them accomplish their duties with a minimum of perceived chronic stress. Transformational leadership is shown to reduce stress by helping the follower in question improve their individual strengths through their higher involvement in follower welfare and the “communication of a long-term vision which is based on higher-order values and commonly shared goals” (43).
Transactional leadership, on the other hand, was shown to highly indicate for chronic stress. Most importantly, management-by-exception passive leadership styles serve to alienate workers, leaders only coming out when something goes wrong and leading to only negative feedback being given to followers. To that end, this kind of leadership style is shown to be most conducive to workplace stress; while a laissez-faire approach is also shown to reduce workplace stress, it is incredibly unhelpful for motivation and reduces productivity. To that end, transformational leadership styles “seem to enhance performance without increasing stressor load on the subordinates” and offer the most well-rounded leadership style for motivating workers and reducing stress (44).
Application to Organizational Behavior
I find myself very connected to these ideas of trust and leadership being closely connected; the clear, adroit manner in which these concepts are linked to Caldwell’s model of leadership makes this evident. That being said, there are a lot of leadership types, some of which may not depend as much on trust (or at least linked to it). For example, transformational leadership has a high correlation to trust, given the connection between trustworthy behavior and employee satisfaction with leaders who do that.
Given these attributes of leadership, I plan to use a lot of these traits in cultivating solid relationships with my followers in whatever organization or organizations I end up leading. Leadership, in essence, can be defined as the ability to make best use of your resources and the people within your group – this is done most effectively by forming solid relationships. Collaboration is key to getting any collective effort accomplished, covering for everyone’s weakness through the strengths of others, and finding the right balance of skills and motivation that works best. No two leaders or organizations have the same strategy for clear, effective leadership, since each group is different; every team members’ wants, needs, strengths and behaviors have to be considered when interacting with them.
While the leader is in charge of final decisions, their ideas are not the only ones; followers are just as responsible for contributing to the creative and decision making pool as leaders. In order to best cultivate these traits in followers, transformational leadership should take place; this is the best way to maintain good followship, in addition to ethical stewardship and trustworthiness. Transformational leaders have the goal of energizing and exciting their workers for the forthcoming task, increasing their morale and productivity. With transformational leaders, they are concerned with worker welfare to an extent not found in other types of leaders – this allows them to cultivate maximum trustworthiness, as the follower places their trust in the leader to turn them into a better worker and maximize their potential. Followers in successful transactional relationships do not want to just do their job, but accomplish the goal of satisfying their leader.
I plan to use this information to become a better leader in my current and future organizations, to better motivate workers and cultivate my own legitimacy and effectiveness as a leader figure. I believe these are the best ways to facilitate an ideal organizational culture; behavior should be focused not only on the work, but on the delicate and complex relationship between worker and leader. Leaders should be focused not just on improving the effectiveness of their workers, but on earning the trust of said workers. This has the cumulative effect of making their own workers be more invested in the leaders that tell them what to do, and invest them further in the organization as a collective. By behaving like a transformational leader, I can cultivate good followship, ethical stewardship and trustworthiness, and create better work outcomes as a result. While I will also be acutely aware of the mediating lens, knowing that I will never make everyone happy all the time, I know how to best direct my efforts nonetheless to become a good leader. All organizational behavior is contingent on having an effective, trustworthy, ethical leader, and so this must be my ultimate goal in organizational leadership.
Works Cited
Caldwell, C., Hayes, L. A., & Long, D. T. “Leadership, trustworthiness, and ethical scholarship.” Journal of Business Ethics 96 (2010): 497-512.
Rowold, J., & Scholtz, W. “Transformational and Transactional Leadership and Followers’
Chronic Stress.” Leadership Review 9 (Spring 2009): 35-48.
