Steps to Ethical Leadership

Question: Discuss about the Steps to Ethical Leadership. Answer: Introduction to Leadership "Leadership" is such a nature of a specific person that isolates him/her from the accessible gathering, making him/her a pro-active among others comparatively and extraordinary person that adds to the prosperity of that particular gathering. Leadership is also all about installing the limit for significance in individuals and practices of an association, and decoupling it from the identity of the pioneer(Green, 2014). There are different types of leaders around this world, having different types of leadership traits and styles, every leader has their own approach so as to how to present themselves in front of their followers so that they can bring the best out of them, which will contribute to their specific organization or society accordingly. Some might be strict in nature giving their followers a disciplined and punctual image of themselves, or some leaders might even be very cool, outgoing and easy to approach in nature with their followers, in order to make them comfortable and easily approachable. Whatever the style is, if that specific set of leadership structure is bring prosper to their organization or some kind of project or work, along with his/ her followers being happy about their leader then I consider that to be a very successful leadership structure, but note that the leadership style must be ethical for the group, for himself and for the organization as a whole(Brooks, 2013). There are many people who have attempted to be the leader of a specific work or a project r may be even an organization, but they have failed immensely, and the reason why? Basically, they didnt have the right idea or concept of what leadership actually is. Leadership is the capacity to comprehend and use your characteristic abilities, as well as viably influence the regular qualities of your group to fulfill the mission(Helmrich, 2016). Its about engaging with your team and making them feel like they are worth something and motivating them with your capability of leading(Oehler, et al., 2014), by listening to their wants and needs and considering them in order to help them feel comfortable and be motivated accordingly rather than trying to control the whole team, and direct them only in terms of your point of view, not listening to a single word or feedback of them and just doing it on your own way. Thats the one thing that most of the unsuccessful leaders forget to do. There is a huge difference between leaders and managers(Linfield, 2013). There is actually a list of people, who have been voted as the most unsuccessful leaders till date for their money motivated actions, stupidity actions, and unethical actions, they are mentioned below: Thakshin Shinawatra Yingluck Shinawatra Adolf Hitler Hun Sen Kim Jong Il Kim Jong Un Saddam Hussain Pol Pot Somachai Wonsawatt Joseph Stalin (Tens, 2016) These, people are just some of the people who misjudged the idea of leadership and, became so much unsuccessful on being a leader that most of the people around the world has nothing but hatred for them. Every country, society, or an organization needs a leader. Without a leader that specific organizations work will get complicated, complex and they will eventually be lost with no definite motive or so(LeadershipCentral, n.d.). A leader provides a certain and objective to the organization to attain some specific goal successfully. Especially in an organization, leader plays a huge role in properly guiding and directing the whole team into gaining the goals and objectives effectively and efficiently. Some of the important role of a leader in a working environment are: Providing guidance Building Morale Fostering creativity Promoting values(Joseph, n.d.) Gail Kelly Gail Kelly is a very successful business woman, who has been able to be recognized as one of the most influential leaders. She is an Australian businesswoman who was born in South Africa. She was the previous (CEO) of Westpac, venturing down from the part on 1 February 2015. She was supplanted by Brian Hartzer, beforehand Westpac's monetary administrations boss executive. In 2002, she turned into the very first female CEO of a noteworthy Australian bank, starting 2005, was the most generously compensated lady in an Australian enterprise. She took on the position of CEO at Westpac in 2008(TheAge, 2005). As of 2014, she is recorded as the 56th most powerful lady on the planet by Forbes. However, this success was not always there, she had to go through many ups and downs in her life to get to where she is now. She first started teaching at South Africas government school, but had very less passion towards it. She taught, but only for the sake of working, this wasnt her piece of cake as she had no passion or some kind of drive to keep her going. Her bank journey started from Nedcor bank where she started only with an acceleration training programme, then she was the head of human resource, and then went on to gain various different post titles in this bank. She then moved to Sydney, and immediately applied to major banks there and got positioned at a senior post at a Commonwealth bank, due to the commendable job at this bank she then got appointed as the CEO of St George Bank. Her work brought a noticeable amount of profitability. With the award for best Financial Services Executive in 2003 and 2004 she got pay rise along with indefinite extension of contract. Then after some time of on and off controversy about her returning to Common-Wealth bank after the retirement of CEO David Murray AO , she stated that she would be faithful to St. George as there were lots of commitment that she made with them. But eventually in 2008 of August 17th she resigned from St. George to take over the CEO position of Westpac. When she first joined this bank it was at the edge of financial crisis, this company needed much nurturing and care in order for it to be successful in the market. She launched a five year program to reshape its technology(Review, 2014). She also focused on provision of excellent customer service Money profit expanded to $7.6 billion in 2013-14 from $3.1 billion in 2006-07, mirroring the solid development of the considerable number of majors with the exception of National Australia, yet at the same time beating her adversaries.(Review, 2014). After all her contribution, Kelly decided to resign on 13 November 2014 from Westpac. Currently she is hugely involved for the betterment of the society, hugely focusing on women empowerment. Presently, she targets for half of the bank's top administrators to be ladies by 2017. Through, this short biography of the great Gail Kelly, we already can get a gist that she is a very intelligent human being with great leadership skills. The amount of improvements and profitability that Gail Kelly brought into various fields that she has laid her hands on, are seriously outstanding, and this is a huge quality or trait that an individual with good leadership instinct has. A leader is somebody, who shows others how its done and has the trustworthiness to make the best decision notwithstanding when it is not prominent. A decent leader has constructive impact over others, rousing them to improve as a man and case for others to display their life against, too. And this is who Gail Kelly was, she was a huge influencer, and a great leader overall. Evaluating and analyzing the personality trait of Gail Kelly When an individuals intellectual processing, evaluating and analyzing capacity is very impressive, then that person can be considered as and intelligent individual. However, as I mentioned before, this factor consists of various controversies of people discussing about weather is this intelligence inherited form birth or is it something that can be later nurtured or learnt from training or our surroundings. This, controversy seems to be limitless as there are various possibilities to it. No matter what the ultimate conclusion is, the one fact that is sure is that, the successful leaders or personalities tend to be on the more intelligent side rather than the less intelligent one, like Gail Kelly herself. There are various interrelationships between intelligence and leadership(Judge, et al., 2004). And to break this down even further, intelligence and leadership has different theories which support its content. Lets first have a look at these three theories and then correlate with Gail Kelly. The 3 theories are: The triarchic theory of intelligence: This theory concentrated on pioneer's critical thinking capacities. It clarifies the procedure of a pioneer in 'taking care of complex mental issues, for example, how data is consolidated', its blend, and 'what suppositions and blunders are made' to come up with new corrective arrangements. There are further 3 more core intelligence included in this theory they are: Analytic Intelligence: It is ability of a leader to read and then decode the environment happenings intellectually. They are very good at connecting the issues even when they are irrelevant to one another. Practical Intelligence: This is all about being practical in the presented situations and conditions. The leader will have the capacity on how to handle different scenarios like a pro. Creative intelligence: Creative intelligence is all about how much of innovative content can a leader produce in order to bring in new change or evolution to that certain area. Cognitive Resources Theory (CRT): This theory states that when there is high or low impact stressful environment people tend to act differently on those situations. And specifically leaders with high experience and high intelligence will act efficiently under those situations i.e. under massive or low pressure. Emotional Intelligence (EQ): This focuses on the emotion or sentiments aspect of the leaders and how they tend to impact the followers of the leaders. There an ability model under this theory that projects 4 abilities they are: perceiving emotions, managing emotions, using emotions, and understanding emotions. There is another five factor model or mixed model that compliments this model which includes: Self s awareness/intrapersonal skills Self s regulation/adaptability Motivation Empathy Social/interpersonal skills Stress management. After briefing about all these mentioned attributes, we can now relate and compare these attribute with Gail Kelly. Gail Kelly had an experience of working under huge banks, where she proved that her critical thinking capacity was very good. As mentioned before, when she first came to work for Westpac the company was facing a huge financial crisis and it definitely needed some guidance in order to get back on its game. And later it actually did because of major contribution of Kelly. The organization gradually started to bring more profit, because of Kellys well planned plans for the organization which she implemented efficiently as she was really aware about the situations and she knew the exact right time to take her plans into actions(Verrender, 2014). This proves that Kelly had a very good analytical ability as she was correctly able to analyze the problems of the organization properly. She even proved that she had the abundant amount of creative intelligence as she derived vario us successful agendas and plans to improve the bad situation of the organization and finally she proved that she also had a practical ability as she immediately reenacted on those problem areas by implementing the planned out strategies for the company. During all of these process it is definite that Gail was under a massive pressure, on top of that she is a mother of 4 children. By balancing personal life and her work life under that huge pressure but no matter the pressure she took all these works responsibly and managed it really efficiently, which relates to the CRT. She set her name by being the first woman to be a CEO of Australias major banks, she had a huge responsibility as a role model to all the working women of Australia. Keeping this thing in her mind she undertook woman empowerment really seriously and worked hard to aware people about it and also mane a gender benchmark to accomplish, to make 40% of workers in benchmark all woman. She is still giving her best to contribute to the woman empowerment. She also focused on, how the customers of their organization can be catered with a good value. She has also stated in an interview that the priorities of a business person always must be their family, they should not compromise anything in this world for their familys happiness. Which clearly states her emotional stability and how it motivates the society to good, all of her followers have a positive impact about what she does and say which motivates them to do good to the society and maintain their priorities as well. Conclusion After all these evaluations and comparisons, we can conclude by stating that Gail Kelly was an individual with a really good and impressive leadership qualities. She had every qualities that a good leader need no have i.e. being optimistic, being bold, being passionate about your work, being generous, choosing the right team to work with, and having a futuristic vision(Herald, 2014). Whatever values and priorities that she carried till date were all ethical and for good reasons, so in my opinion if I were on her shoes, I would not do anything differently because, as a leader everything that you do must be for a good motive and must be for an ethical purpose, which in fact Kelly followed very whole heartedly. So, I would also follow her footsteps, to accomplish whatever she has accomplished till date. All in all Gail Kelly was an amazing role model and a great leader comprising of great leadership capabilities and very surely she will forever be remembered as a champion of the corporate world(ABC.net, 2014). References ABC.net, 2014. Gail Kelly. [Online] Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-17/gail-kelly/5896190 [Accessed 5 September 2016]. Brooks, C., 2013. 7 Steps to Ethical Leadership. [Online] Available at: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5537-how-to-be-ethical-leader.html [Accessed 5 September 2016]. Green, P., 2014. Agile and Leadership Turn the Ship Around. [Online] Available at: https://blogs.adobe.com/agile/2014/10/10/agile-and-leadership-turn-the-ship-around/ [Accessed 5 September 2016]. Guide, M. S., n.d. Importance of Leadership. [Online] Available at: https://www.managementstudyguide.com/importance_of_leadership.htm [Accessed 5 September 2016]. Helmrich, B., 2016. 33 Ways to Define Leadership. [Online] Available at: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3647-leadership-definition.html [Accessed 5 September 2016]. Herald, T. S. M., 2014. Westpac CEO Gail Kelly's seven lessons for life and business. [Online] Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/business/westpac-ceo-gail-kellys-seven-lessons-for-life-and-business-20141112-11ljh4.html [Accessed 5 September 2016]. Johannsen, M., 2014. Types of leadership style. [Online] Available at: https://www.legacee.com/types-of-leadership-styles/ [Accessed 5 September 2016]. Joseph, C., n.d. Importance of a Leader In a Team. [Online] Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-leader-team-52168.html [Accessed 6 September 2016]. Judge, T. A., Ilies, R. Colbert, A. E., 2004. Intelligence and Leadership: A Quantitative Review and Test of Theoretical Propositions. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 89(No. 3), p. 542552. LeadershipCentral, n.d. Importance of Motivation. [Online] Available at: https://www.leadership-central.com/importance-of-motivation.html#axzz4JeSnFk3n [Accessed 5 September 2016]. Linfield, L., 2013. The Big Difference Between Leaders and Managers. [Online] Available at: https://www.eremedia.com/tlnt/the-big-difference-between-leaders-and-managers/ [Accessed 5 September 2016]. Mclead, S., 2007. Nature vs Nurture in Psychology. [Online] Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html [Accessed 5 September 2016]. Oehler, K., Olszewska, M. K. Stomski, L., 2014. What Makes Someone an Engaging Leader. [Online] Available at: https://hbr.org/2014/11/what-makes-someone-an-engaging-leader [Accessed 4 September 2016]. Review, T. A. F., 2014. How Westpacs Gail Kelly changed the face of banking. [Online] Available at: https://www.afr.com/business/how-westpacsgail-kelly-changed-the-face-of-banking-20141113-11lobv [Accessed 4 September 2016]. Tens, T. T., 2016. Top Ten Worst World Leaders. [Online] Available at: https://www.thetoptens.com/worst-world-leaders/ [Accessed 4 September 2016]. TheAge, 2005. CEO who gave birth to triplets. [Online] Available at: https://www.theage.com.au/news/business/ceo-who-gave-birth-to-triplets/2005/07/02/1119724845747.html [Accessed 4 September 2016]. Verrender, I., 2014. Above all, Gail Kelly was the master of good timin. [Online] Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-17/verrender-above-all,-gail-kelly-was-the-master-of-good-timing/5896068 [Accessed 4 September 2016].