Leadership Traits & Ethics

Traits & Personality

Traits

  • Distinguishing personal characteristics

Personality

  • Combination of traits that classifies an individual's behaviour
  • Affect behaviour, perceptions & attitudes
  • Understanding personalities help to explain & predict others' behaviour & job performance

Big 5 Model of Personality

Surgency (Dominance)

  • Leadership & extraversion traits
  • Want to be in-charge

Agreeableness

  • Getting along with people traits
  • Sociable, friendly

Adjustment

  • Emotional stability traits
  • Stable = Self-control, calm, good under pressure

Conscientiousness

  • Achievement traits
  • Responsible & dependable

Openness to experience

  • Willingness to try new things traits
  • Seek change

Reasons for leader's derailment

  1. Bullying style
  2. Cold, aloof, arrogant
  3. Betrayed personal trust
  4. Self-centered
  5. Specific performance problems
  6. Overmanaged

Theory X vs Theory Y

Theory X (Control)

  • People are lazy
  • Dislike work
  • Do as little as possible
  • Requires close supervision
  • Coercive, autocratic leadership

Theory Y (Support)

  • People are motivated
  • Get satisfaction from work
  • Will do what is right for organization
  • Participative leadership

Pygmalion Effect

  • Leaders' attitudes, expectations & treatment of employees explain & predict behaviour & performance
  • Effective leaders set clear standards
  • Effective leaders expect the best from their followers
  • Leaders believe they can achieve the best, followers can

Self-Concept

  • +ve & -ve attitudes people have about themselves
  • Self-efficacy: Belief in one's own capabilities to perform in a specific situation
  • Both closely related to self-confidence, belief that one can be successful

Factors influencing Ethical Behaviour

Traits, Attitudes & Ethics

  • Related to individual needs & personality traits
  • Unethical behaviour: Emotionally unstable, external locus of control

Moral Development & Ethics

  • Preconventional: Based on self-interests
  • Conventional: Based on expectations of others
  • Post-conventional: Based on moral principles regardless of leader/grp ethics

Situation

  • Highly competitive situations
  • Unsupervised
  • No formal ethics policy
  • Unethical behaviour is not punished/rewarded