Authentic leadership and

Ethical leadership
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................1

Discussion..................................................................................................................................1

Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6

References..................................................................................................................................7
Introduction
Authentic leadership is an approach, which emphasizes building a leader's legacy through
maintain honest relations with followers so they value the leader's input and helps to build an
ethical foundation. Authentic leaders are positive people who promote openness and truthful
self-concepts. On the other hand, ethical leadership is a type of leadership that establishes a
code of conduct that is appropriate and acceptable in every area of their life. This leadership
helps to adopt changes that are commonly spread in the corporate world and increase
competition (Lee et.al. 2019). The present report will discuss authentic and ethical leadership
that is essential for the organization's success and these leaders play a crucial role to
implement changes. This leadership style helps to develop a strong brand image and enhance
the work culture to get sustainability. Further, the report will describe the external leadership
positively affect the external image of the company. Thus, the concept of leadership is
discussed widely by using two different leaders’ examples.

Discussion
Authentic leaders are dedicated to the organization and for their work as they are the spirit of
teamwork and spread loyalty across the organization. Resulting, they can increase
extraordinary production by maintaining high morale. Thus, authentic leaders are genuine,
self-aware, and transparent. According to Hunt, (2017) they motivate loyalty and trust among
the workforce by showing their ability and skills. It helps for employee's satisfaction and they
feel comfortable sharing their ideas and suggestions. However, in near future, authentic
leaders become an example for every organization as they have the ability to influence
employees and attract talent. It can be done to being honest and truthful about every task
which encourages entire staff to follow the same way and modify their way of thinking.

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Figure 1: Four component of authentic leadership

Source (Vaynerchuk, 2018)

An authentic leader builds an honest and genuine work environment as based on these
characteristics, authentic leadership theory includes four elements such as relational
transparency, self-awareness, internalized moral view, and balanced processing. Relational
transparency explains that leaders believe in open communication and do not hesitate to
accept their mistakes publicly. The way they behave in society is the same way they behave
in their home and office. It will encourage their workforce to follow transparency and
recognize their mistakes. Hence, accept weaknesses will enable their strengths by working on
them (Vaynerchuk, 2018). They acknowledge the importance of maintaining a work-life
balance. Thus, their open communication will improve the employee's ability to be confident
and sharing their ideas and suggestions.

Further, is self-awareness that refers to a person's strengths and weaknesses. It enables them
to work on their weaknesses, so they can convert them into strengths. Authentic leaders share
their experience with their employees so feel them comfortable. Moreover, sharing a leader's
characteristics with employees makes them feel motivated. Authentic leaders solve their
employee's problems and improve employee engagement. Employee engagement helps to
increase productivity and engaged employee are more profitable as compared to other
employees. Moreover, internalize moral views, means they maintain their attitude according
to moral values. It helps to maintain ethical behavior and gaining a competitive advantage as
it helps to boost the decision-making process. Authentic leaders are openly expressing their
internal value which enables to control resilience from employees. They accept their mistake

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in front of their team without hesitation and it builds loyalty among them. They create a
culture that assists the workforce to contribute their best as per their ability.

Finally, balance processing helps to implement transparency: it means they consider the
suggestions given by other team members. As per the Cho et.al. (2018)authentic leaders take
every team member's suggestion and consider reasonable suggestions. It establishes
employee engagement and loyalty across the organization. Sharing multiple ideas helps
leaders to choose the best idea which has a positive effect on the productivity of the
organization. Further, balanced processing characteristics of authentic leaders enable them to
make the appropriate decision. Thus, authentic leaders’ models improve productivity,
honestly, employee engagement, and ensure employee’s well-being and emotions are
properly maintaining.

Authentic leaders are fearless to share their failures and mistake comfortably publicly. For
example, Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks that they did a wrong decision during the 2008
recession, which leads to a huge loss of the company and its image. Their teammates praise
his brave step and help him to reduce the effect of loss. Hence, authentic leaders discuss with
their team members about its hardships and the way they overcome with that situation. For
another example, Oprah Winfrey comfortably shares his traumatic childhood and how he
overcomes this. It shows Winfrey's level of motivation and inspires his employees to fight
against their problems. The examples of authentic leaders describe that it is important to
engage with the employee so they can openly share their perspectives and suggestions (Iszatt-
White et.al. 2019). It helps the leaders to assign work according to their skills in order to
improve productivity.

On the other hand, ethical leaders demonstrate common behavior to achieve goals, and these
behaviors are considerable for all areas of life. In other words, a leader sets some ethical
beliefs and values which have to be followed by employees. They often set an example; it
means they establish that 'actions speak louder than words. They practicing ethically,
honestly, selflessly, and truthful, and these characteristics help them to gain respect from their
followers. They generally concentrate on ethical issues and those elements which can affect
organization and society. Additionally, ethical leaders have sound communication skills, and
they interact with their followers in many different ways as they establish formal and
informal communication. Their communication style influences their followers and motivates
them to without any hesitation. The ethical leader has enhanced listening power as they listen

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to every employee's problems and try to resolve them along with, encourage their employees
to speak freely.

It is the main point that explains the similarity between authentic and ethical leadership. Both
types of leaders encourage open communication and also comfortably communicate with
their employees without the following hierarchy (Hendrikz and Engelbrecht, 2019). It can be
said that a good relationship among employees needs to improve their engagement with
leaders and the organization. These kinds of leaders try to improve employee engagement as
it is essential to winning their trust and it increases productivity as compare to disengage
employees.

The ethical leader creates positive work culture by maintaining a positive relationship with
employees. It is based on three-level, which include individual, teams, and the entire
organization. Establishing positive work culture enables to provide well-being of the
employees. As they inspire them with examples, they have the authority to affect employees
by convincing them to follow the same. It is evident that people usually get influenced by the
environment, and they contribute to enriching the work environment. Another element that
can affect the practice of ethical leadership is the energy of the team (Sidani and Rowe,
2018). It is because ethical leaders ensure high collaboration among teammates that improve
morale in the workplace. It helps to enhance the whole organization's performance.
Additionally, the ethical leader gives respect to everyone and develops that kind of culture
where everyone respects each other which allow people to listen to every person's
suggestions.

4-V’s model of ethical leadership: The theory assists in supporting the interior faith and
principles in response to the external reason and manners. The 4 V’s of the model states the
vision, values, voice, and virtue. These are the aspects that assist in creating a strong ethical
leader. A leader needs to understand these core values that he can apply in all aspects of his
life and also implement in the organisation. Further, the value’s main aim is improving the
self-knowledge of the leader by following ethical values and beliefs. With these values, an
ethical leader can influence the team members efficiently. Generally, the value is based on
the vision statement of the firm that reflects the individual’s beliefs and values. Further, as
per the view of Sidani and Rowe, (2018), vision must be effectively explained so that the
strategy can be implemented successfully in the organisation. It will allow the management to
achieve the vision of the company effectively keeping the interest of the employees high.

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Figure 2 4-V's of ethical leadership

(Source: Toolshero, 2020)

Moreover, the next element of the model is a voice that states the voice of the employees and
management must be clear that allow the prospect to roughly understand the vision statement.
It is important that helps the employees to accept the different procedures and concept to
attain the objectives. The last V of the model is a virtue that states the behaviour of the leader
and assists them to do certain tasks and act appropriately at the workplace (Tololshero, 2020).
However, all the four elements are linked to each other that allow achieving the goal
effectively and efficiently.

Further, the accurate example of a leader that performs as per ethical leadership is Amy
Fuller. He is the Chief Marketing Officer at Accenture. The employees that are part of the
disability society raises the concern related to the hiring of such people. Hunt, (2017) stated
that only 34% of US people are being employed that are disabled. The main mission is to
recruit an ethical leader and it is proved that the companies with disabled employees are
performing much better. In the four years, 28% of income is increased after executing ethical
hiring. They believe that employees must be hired based on their skills and capabilities, not
their physical abilities (Hendrikz and Engelbrecht, 2019). The response was incredible as
there were many other companies implementing disability inclusion in the workforce. They
are focused on more ethical hiring and exposed benefits for workers, clients, and businesses.

The instance provided above assist in understanding that the execution of the best practices of
ethical leadership that allows advantages to the company and its employees. Within a few
years, the organisation will adopt the concept of ethical and authentic leadership that is

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effective in increasing the trust level of the employees. Both authentic and ethical leadership
are concerned with integrity and validity that allows in improving decision-making and
productivity.

Conclusion
The analytical framework of the report has summarised that having ethical and authentic
leadership is crucial for an organisation to attain future growth to stay competitive in the
market. The report has concluded various leadership models and styles that many
organisations are adopting as per their requirements. It can be stated from the report that,
authentic and ethical leadership is highly required for an organisation’s culture and success.
Further, authentic leadership is comprised of truthfulness, self-awareness, and the realness of
a leader. These traits are essential that assist in improving employee engagement. Also, the
report has concluded that ethical leadership is focused on following a set of values and beliefs
in communicating the information. The report has also analysed it using an example that
helps in making a decision that helps in keeping society and organisation in mind.

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References
Books and Journals

Hoch, J.E., Bommer, W.H., Dulebohn, J.H. and Wu, D., 2018. Do ethical, authentic, and
servant leadership explain variance above and beyond transformational leadership? A meta-
analysis. Journal of Management, 44(2), pp.501-529.

Lee, J.J., Cho, J., Baek, Y., Pillai, R. and Oh, S.H., 2019. Does ethical leadership predict
follower outcomes above and beyond the full-range leadership model and authentic
leadership?: An organizational commitment perspective. Asia Pacific Journal of
Management, 36(3), pp.821-847.

Hunt, E.K., 2017. Humane orientation as a moral construct in ethical leadership theories: A
comparative analysis of transformational, servant, and authentic leadership in the United
States, Mexico, and China. International Journal on Leadership, 5(2), p.1.

Cho, J., Lee, J.H., Baek, Y., Pillai, R. and Oh, S.H., 2018, January. Ethical leadership and
follower performance above and beyond the full-range leadership model and authentic
leadership. In 78th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, AOM 2018.

Iszatt-White, M., Whittle, A., Gadelshina, G. and Mueller, F., 2019. The ‘Corbyn
phenomenon’: Media representations of authentic leadership and the discourse of ethics
versus effectiveness. Journal of Business Ethics, 159(2), pp.535-549.

Hendrikz, K. and Engelbrecht, A.S., 2019. The principled leadership scale: An integration of
value-based leadership. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 45(1), pp.1-10.

Sidani, Y.M. and Rowe, W.G., 2018. A reconceptualization of authentic leadership: Leader
legitimation via follower-centered assessment of the moral dimension. The leadership
quarterly, 29(6), pp.623-636.

Online

Vaynerchuk, G., 2018. My vision of leadership. [Online] [Available Through]:

Tololshero. 2020. Ethical Leadership. [Online] [Available Through]:<

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