ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
1
Ethical Leadership
Kana Tanioka
E10893322
Emporia State University
March 12, 2015
1
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
2
Ethical Leadership
A positive attitude helps us deal with life’s daily affairs more easily. It brings
optimism into our lives and makes it easier to avoid worries and negative thinking. It will
bring constructive changes into our lives and make us happier, brighter and more successful.
A positive attitude allows us to see the bright side of life, become optimistic, and expect the
best. It is certainly a state of mind that is worth developing.
A positive attitude can change one’s whole life and lead to happiness and success. If
we look at the bright side of life, our social life becomes bright and filled with light. We can
see this light affecting not only us and the way we look at the others, but also affecting the
people around us. In this paper, I will write about my experience of how a leader’s attitude
and his or her relationship with the group members affected the motivation and the
productivity of the group.
I participated in a big project in a business class in my university in Japan. The project
consisted of five teams of eight students, each representing a small company, and they
competed against each other. Each company made its own policies and produced, sold, or
traded its own products. All companies had the same amount of money in the beginning and
we could buy materials for our products. My company produced cars, so we needed to buy
materials to produce a car. We were given a Japanese map and could buy a land for 10,000
dollar in any of the 47 states. The company that made the most money and had the largest
2
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
3
land was the winner and the most successful company. This competition lasted a month and it
was a long and big project.
First, my company had to decide who would be the president of our company. One
girl was elected as the president of my group because she was really motivated and smart. As
it turned out, she was really good as our leader because she researched about our company’s
policies and benefits faster than anybody else. We were happy about having her in our group.
She was also good at encouraging a group member who wanted to quit the group. When a
group member wanted to quit the class because the class was not her major, the leader asked
the member to think in a positive way of how winning the competition would make her feel
good and boost her confidence in her ability. She encouraged her and she ended up staying
with the group. The group members who heard the conversation also felt motivated to finish
the project. I believed that a leader’s attitude and action could positively affect the group
members’ behaviors. The leader’s positive thinking made us more motivated. Good attitude is
active and productive and motivates us to do what we can to improve the mood. A negative
attitude in a group will affect more than just the person, it will contaminate everybody in the
group. I believe that it is important to have a person with positive thinking as a group leader
because a leader with positive thinking can be a deciding factor in whether that group
succeeds or not.
Because this project was to last a month, after the first two weeks, we started to
3
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
4
prepare for our next steps. We divided people into two groups, one is for presentation and the
other for research. I was in the presentation group with the leader. We often got together and
went to the leader’s house to prepare our presentation. Of course, four of us became closer
than before because we talked about our private lives too. Our team members became closer
with each other than the research members did.
After we studied together several times, our leader planned to have lunch together
with the research group members to exchange opinions, monitor our progress, and talk
together with all of our team. After our lunch meeting, the leader identified group members
who work effectively and she started to talk to them more often than persons who did not
work well. I was identified as one of the hard workers. Even though she asked me to do a lot
of tasks which I felt I could not handle at the same time, I was motivated to take on the tasks
after she encouraged me. I decided to work with a person from the research group because we
both were asked to do extra work. We were tired and the tasks were challenging, but
somehow we were happy to do the tasks.
I first did not realize that she really cared about her grade, but I could see later from
her attitude that she liked hard workers more. Her attitude was getting stronger after the
second week and the relationship in the group became uncomfortable. The hard workers that
she liked became the in-group and the people who were not close with her became the outgroup. The out-group members started to lose confidence and motivation to do the tasks.
4
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
5
Prior to this, our team worked very hard at preparing for the presentation, doing research, or
trading. However, I started to hear group members complained about our leader after the
middle of third week.
Our group initially led the competition, but I predicted that we would eventually lose
to the second group because they had a good working relationship. Our leader was worried
because she thought she had the responsibility to make our team to win. She told me that her
mind had changed within those three weeks. She thought of the project just as a class project
at first, but after three weeks she felt that she really ran her own company. She felt more
responsibilities as a leader as time went on. That feeling made her become really strict with
the group members in the final week. She became too focused on the grade and did not see us
as individuals. Eventually, the second group at the third week won the company competition.
This experience exemplifies the Leader-Member Exchange Theory (LMX). As
Muchinsky (2011) explains, this is a theory of leadership based on the nature of the
relationship between a leader and members of the group he or she leads. In-group members,
such as the group members who were closed to a leader, go beyond their formal job duties
and take responsibility for completing tasks that are most critical to the success of work
group. Out-group members, group members that are not closed to the leader, do the more
routine tasks and have more formal relationship with leader.
All in all, I mentioned above, I learned a leader’s attitude is important to be successful
5
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
6
group because that affect group member’s motivation and the productivity of the group.
However, if the leader treats group members differently, some of group member lose their
motivation. If I were treated differently, I would lost my motivation and could not work
effectively. I firmly believe that if the relationship between leader and group member is good,
that can avoid worries and negative thinking. Moreover, the group can have positive thinking
when members can communicate each other well. A positive attitude brings us to see the
bright side of life and successful life.
6
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
7
References
Muchinsky, P. M. (2011). Psychology applied to work (10th ed.). North Carolina:
Summerfield, Inc.
7