Leadership, Trustworthiness and Ethical Stewardship Essay

Ethics is the guiding force in any respectable organization. With a moral compass, especially in the leadership of organization, a company can become compromised and fall into a quagmire of legal issues, a tarnished reputation, and devaluation of company stock if it is a publically traded company. In pursuit of examine my own ethical lens I will analyze the ethical traits of an admired leader, my own traits as exhibited in the Ethical Lens Inventory, and how I make a decision concerning a particular ethical dilemma.

We all have studied great leaders and when asked, we can cite their names and quote them in an instant. However, most certainly, we can also think of someone we would describe as a bad leader. The common trait among the bad leaders that I have worked with was their lack of trustworthiness. These leaders were deemed untrustworthy because they would tell people what they wanted to hear, not the truth. They would articulate one thing to one employee and something else to another employee. They would pass their employee’s work off as their own. And they would exclude team members from important meetings and decisions. Therefore, as a result of these negative behaviors, no longer was I able to grant them the benefit of the doubt and I

An ethical audit is important to establish the company’s current weaknesses and strengths concerning how it conducts itself in an ethical manner. An ethics audit will involve evaluating the company’s standard of ethic, it ethic climate, and how well the company’s employees follow ethical standards. One of the first things to evaluate in an ethics audit is if a company has a written code of ethics and how comprehensive it is. Moreover, the written code of ethics should apply to everyone in the company from the top down with a clear zero tolerance policy in place for ethics violations. Included in a comprehensive ethics code should be a method for

Organizational trust can be defined as “the extent to which one engages in a reciprocal interaction and a relationship in such a way that there is willingness to be vulnerable to another and to assume risk with positive expectations and a degree of confidence that the other party will possess some semblance of benevolence, care, competence, honesty, openness, reliability, respect, hope and wisdom” (Kutsyuruba & Walker, 2015, p. 109). When there is trust in an organization, it is more likely that it will be a successful, safe and respectful working environment. This is because employees will feel valued and want to put their all into their job.

According to Harvard Business school professor Amy Cuddy along side fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick in the book, “Presence” that says people quickly judge you on two criteria when they first meet you: 1) Can I trust this person, and 2) Can I respect this person. Per Dr Cuddy, “"From an evolutionary perspective," Cuddy says, "it is more crucial to our survival to know whether a person deserves our trust. It makes sense when you consider that in cavemen days it was more important to figure out if your fellow man was going to kill you and steal all your possessions than if he was competent enough to build a good fire. ”The foundation of all relationships, especially in business, is trust. To build teams with a common goal a trustworthy leader can have greater influence and effectiveness to the commitment of the team goal. Trust leads to better communication, ability to inspire, influence, and create real change. One of my personal greatest challenges is working on trusting others. If I as an individual am seeking the trust of others, I myself, must learn to trust others first in order to become a highly effective leader.

Dearborn established that trust is clearly a valuable element for successful collaboration among work groups in businesses such as HCOs (Dearborn, 2014). In order to operate as a successful HCO, it is imperative for businesses to form trusting relationships between HCO members at each echelon. In order to accomplish this objective, Dearborn explained that leaders must initially establish trust at the organizational and individual levels (Dearborn, 2014). Next, it is essential to communicate effectively and with mutual respect (Dearborn, 2014). Lastly, Dearborn emphasized that leaders need to be genuine and honest to form associations which will allows members to feel appreciated, responsible, and accountable (Dearborn, 2014). The following narrative will compare and contrast the impact of trust on two HCO work groups. Each of the examples provided presents opportunities for HCOs to learn valuable lessons and offers guidance for continued growth into successful corporations with high levels of organizational trust.

Trust is treated as a global construct and examined its central role as a mediator in the relationship between transformational leadership and followers’ work outcomes. We can examine the trustworthiness of both leaders to see if their followers believe in them. From former work of Donald trump, he was thought to have been cheating his employees. Also we can look at loyalty within both candidate’s pasts. Having a divorce can mess with the integrity of both candidates. Not being able to be in a committal relationship can show a misstep in the loyalty of a leader. There were also allegations of Hilary Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, having an affair. Yet she stayed with him. It shows her loyalty but also questions her self-image and

The problem to be investigated is what are the ethical concepts of leadership, trustworthiness, and ethical stewardship and how are they correlated. Many interpretations of the terms leadership, trustworthiness, and ethical stewardship have been developed by scholars and researchers. However, the meaning of these topics as they relate to business organizations and business ethics need to be explored and more importantly, a discussion is necessary of how these topics interact or correlate with one another. This paper will explore these topics with first providing my opinion of each topic followed with a discussion of current research regarding each topic. This is followed with an examination of how these topics are correlated and the

It is only during moral lapses and corporate scandals that interest groups and the broader public ask themselves the fundamental ethical questions, who are the managers of the organization and were they acting with the ethical guidelines. For a long time, the issue of ethics was largely ignored, with organizations focusing on profit maximization. However, this has changed, and much attention is now focused on ethics management by researchers and leaders. The issue of ethics has arisen at a time when public trust on corporate governance is low, and the legitimacy of leadership is being questioned. Leaders are expected to be the source of moral development and ethical guidance to their employees.

Building trust in a business is vitally important to the success and how the business is viewed by its employees, consumers, investors, and the community in which they operate in.

Greenberg does not emphasize values as the foundational factor that Bowles and Blanchard do. He presents values that are shared among employees as a building block to trust. In his construct, Greenberg teaches that trust requires an understanding and appreciation of the other which requires spending time discussing common interests and objectives. (Greenberg, 2010 p197) Other trust building characteristics of managers include always meeting deadlines; following through as promised; and engaging in prosocial behaviors. (Greenberg, 2010 p198)

When we are referencing organization there are two concepts that standout which influence the direction and health of the people of the company and these are Trust and Leadership. It seems trust is something that is lacking when it comes to dealing with many corporate leadership these days. According to Robbins & Judge in Chapter 13 the definition of Trust is “Trust is a positive expectation that another will not-through words, actions, or decisions-act opportunislically” (Robbins & Judge 2009, p 423). The key word would be “opportunislically”, there are many different types of leaders those that are genuinely looking out for the business so it becomes successful and in turn create an environment of trust among the employees and in the industry. Then there are those who ultimately have a self-interest at the cost of people livelihood.

Several years ago I worked for a small metal fabrication company. The company specialized in oilfield related fabrication work. I had accepted the position as a job estimator because the company was closer to home compared to where I was currently working. The hierarchy of command was only two layers, the owner and his step son. The owner was in his mid forties and the step son was in his early twenties. During my interview the owner and his son they stressed how urgently they needed me start. When I resigned from my current job I departed immediately and therefore I told my new employer I could start the next day. When I arrived at the new company the next day nothing was ready for me. I had any empty office, no computer and had

In order to effectively win the trust of organisational management and the team members, the leaders adopt the role of steward and focus on the ethical conduct. Since it is impossible for them to gratify every body all the time, by putting organizational interest ahead of their personal interest and following the ethical conduct, they succeed in increasing the acceptance of their decisions. Even though management or team members may disagree with their opinions and initiatives, they still keep on believing that the decisions taken by the leaders are ethical and will be in favour of the organisations and team members. They may not see the immediate impact but the long term consequences may become favourable. This repute and notion gives the

“Trust is defined as the willingness to be vulnerable to a trustee based on positive expectations about the trustees actions and intentions” (Colquitt p. 205). Trust is one of the biggest aspects in the organizational realm. In order to instill proper work ethics, you must trust that your employer is instilling the correct values, and vice versa, you must trust that your employees will carry out those work ethics when not being monitored closely, or in other words “Integrity, defined as the perception that the authorities adhere to a set of values and principles that the trustor finds acceptable” (Colquitt P. 209). Without trust, a company cannot stand strong.