Anh Nguyen
Professor: Michael Magreta
MGT 430
May 17, 2015

TERM PAPER 1

Leadership is the ability to inspire or influence others towards the leader’s goal. If someone has followers, they are leaders. Management literature mostly focuses on the characteristics of the leader - it asks, "what make this person a leader", rather than "whom do these people choose to follow".
Ethics refer to the desirable and appropriate values and morals according to an individual or the society at large. Ethics deal with the purity of individuals and their intentions. Ethics serve as guidelines for analyzing “what is good or bad” in a specific scenario. Correlating ethics with leadership, ethics are all about the leader’s identity and the leader’s role.
Ethical theories on leadership talk about two main things: (a) The actions and behavior of leaders; and (b) the personality and character of leaders. It is essential to note, “Ethics are an essential to leadership”. A leader drives and influences the subordinates / followers to achieve a common goal, be it in case of teamwork, organizational quest, or any project. It is an ethical job of the leaders to treat their subordinates with respect as each of them has unique personality. The leaders build and develope an ethical environment in an organization as they have an influential role in the organization and due to the fact that leaders have an influence in developing the organizational values.
An effective and ethical leader has the following traits: Dignity and respectfulness, Serving other, Justice, Community building, Honesty. In psychology, the Big Five personality traits are five broad domains or dimensions of personality that are used to describe human personality, the five-factor model (FFM). The five factors are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism; for example, extraversion includes such related qualities as gregariousness, assertiveness, excitement seeking, warmth, activity, and positive emotions. The Big Five model is able to account for different traits in personality without overlapping. Empirical research has shown that the Big Five personality traits show consistency in interviews, self-descriptions and observations. Moreover, this five-factor structure seems to be found across a wide range of participants of different ages and of different cultures.
Motive Profile is a set of traits that match up to the “typical” effective leaders. They tend to have a high need for power, a moderate need for achievement, and a lesser need for affiliation. Power is the fuel of accomplishment. Leadership is Power. There are two types of power: Socialized Power and Personalized Power. Socialized Power: Used for the good of one’s self, the group, and the organization. Personalized Power: Used for selfish reasons and contrary to the good of the group and organization.
In the continuing quest to find the one best leadership style in all situations, researchers attempted to identify the differences in the behavior of effective leaders versus ineffective leaders. Although the behavioral leadership theory made major contributions to leadership research, it never achieved its goal of finding one best style. Unfortunately, no leadership behaviors were found to be consistently associated with leadership effectiveness. The leadership behavior theory paradigm lasted nearly 30 years. Today, research continues to seek a better understanding of behavior, and more importantly, to predict behavior.
Behavioral theories of leadership are classified as such because they focus on the study of specific behaviors of a leader. For behavioral theorists, a leader behavior is the best predictor of his leadership influences and as a result, is the best determinant of his or her leadership success. Leadership style is the combination of traits, skills, and behaviors leaders use as they interact with followers. Although a leadership style is based on traits and skills, the important