The Ethical Advantage Of Servant Leadership |
Posted: September 29, 2017 |
Anytime a leader acts unethically either in the public domain or in private, the act is often met with surprise and shock. This is because the ethical behavior of leaders has a very important effect on the behavior of others, be it in an organization or in the society at large. This is why our leaders must learn to set good examples and avoid setting bad precedence as the effect of such actions are enormous. The desire for ethical leaders There is a general demand for leaders worldwide to behave in an ethical manner. In survey carried out by James Kouzes and Barry Posner in which they interviewed about 75,000 people globally, while searching for the qualities they admire in a leader. The interview was conducted over a twenty-year period and the result showed most people wanted a leader who is truthful, ethical and principled. There are a lot of leadership theories that make a whole lot of sense without really delving into ethics. This gives room for another question; how and where do leaders learn to lead ethically? Leaders can learn about values and good character from families, religious faith, schools and in some rare cases society. On the other hand, learning about leadership is a different kettle of fish entirely, as they could learn about leadership but not learn anything about ethics. They usually learn about ways and skills on how to get people to work for them. These skills and methods can be put into good or bad use. Bernard Bass, once argued that transformational leaders could either be heroes (good guys) or villains (bad guys). A typical example would be Gandhi and Hitler. Other leadership scholars are of the opinion that a lot of research has been focused on leadership while neglecting ethics. On the bright side, there is a concept about leadership that involves ethical considerations. This kind of leadership is known as the servant leadership. A major difference between servant leadership and other leadership theory is morality. Servant leaders are known to display a high level of morality and integrity which they encourage amongst their colleagues. There are four operating principles that guide servant leaders in their daily decision-making routine. There are; 1. Serve people. 2. Help people grow. 3. Exercise foresight. 4. Care about everyone the organization touches. The principles listed above are both ethical and also very effective, this is because they encourage top performance and also very high organizational outcome. Servant-leaders do not get to choose between ethics and success, for them it is a combination of both factors. Servant-leaders tend to focus on serving people, the keyword here is ‘serving’. They are also involved in growth and searching ahead for the benefit of people, and also paying close attention to the needs of everyone involved. These principles are both ethical and effective. If we seek to enhance both the ethics and the performance of our organizations, I think it is high time we start modelling and teaching servant leadership to our current crop of leaders as well as our future leaders.
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