Ethical Leadership and Moral Development - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Ethical Leadership and Moral Development. Answer: Introduction In the world today, businesses form part of entrepreneurial activities. These activities involve the relationship between leadership and people. The question is who is a good leader and what good leadership means? This template will try to answer the questions. Diagnostic Tools in Moral Development For me to do and make right decisions, the following tools will help me diagnose myself and build on moral development: MCI score Value score Self-assessment questionnaire decision-making score reflection observation This technique involves measuring and alignment of the total score. A high score means consistency with goals and moral values. A low score shows how inconsistent you are with your behavior, actions, and goals. This technique helped us to arrange our ethic values in order of importance (Shull, 1958). From the course on management, I learned that leadership is the act of being effective, technically good and morally upright. To achieve this, I discovered that ethics form the basis of effective leadership. This has helped me to be an ethical leader in making rightful decisions. In this essay, as a leader, I have learned requirements of the ethical leader as one who admits failures and mistakes, responsible for personnel decisions, act in consistency with values, principles and beliefs, honesty and role model. Having Personal ethics translates to successful leadership that leads to a more ethical business and more social responsibility (Bennis, Jagdish, Lessem, 2000). Pace Self-Reflection (SLPS) Tool This tool measures skills, personal strengths, and professional development. Before serving a customer, we need to reflect rate skills as strengths and develop a need for action. The outcome aims at building morale and leadership development (Conger Riggio, 2007). To have a good ethics, values consistently develop from each another and are arranged based on reliance and complexity management. To understand more, the lecturer compared ethics with climbing a four-story house where one begins from the ground floor to the fourth floor. The most important value begins on the first floor and good values end on the last floor. After knowing this it will help me on developing each value in order to be a good ethical leader (Ciulla, 2004). This technique shows our preferences this shows the importance of one value in relation to another. The results show a comparative score between persons. They include: Theoretical value score aims at discovering the truth. It involves facts and discovery of why and how something is important. This will help know why we should put moral development is more important than the rest of the values Social value measures the relationships we have with This promotes culture sharing for the benefit of the organization (Price, 2008). Spiritual value measures religious beliefs in relation to self-awareness. This will help us do things according to norms of the society. Values and beliefs guide ones life and impacts on ones goals and conduct to develop ethically. On the other hand, admitting failures and mistakes, taking responsibility for personal decisions, honesty and role model are the outcomes one wants to achieve. I learned that one must develop a list value in relation to importance depending on the uniqueness of each person (Sergiovanni, 2007). This will help me analyze important needs in my organization develop them in order of importance to achieve my goal and organizations success. Principles guide values and allow them to act. Once you assign a principle to a value then you develop into the next level of development e.g. if your value is honesty, the principle is that you must tell the truth alway (Hamilton, Madison, Jay, 2008)s. Transparency Self-awareness Balanced processing Moral perceptive By analyzing scores self-awareness and Transparency are strong leadership with a score of 20 compared to Balanced processing which scored 18 then lastly a weak leadership of Moral perceptive with 15. From my understanding, the next step in ethics is moral development, which involves choosing among right and wrong. Moral development is due to growth life and experiences we get (Knapp Carter, 2007). They develop through socialization to make decisions in relation to knowledge of what is wrong and right e.g. being a good role model. Morals must be incorporated by comparing with values, principles, and beliefs. This helped me to establish the required traits that will assist me to achieve my goals as well as the business e.g. developing virtues that will help me to know the right thing and doing the right thing. Virtues require a commitment to ethical conduct (Guy, 2002). I learned that Ethics is a process that incorporates values, principles and beliefs, virtues and morals. This will h elp me to understand that being a good leader I need to complete the ethical process. I can do this by developing an ethical theory to enable analyze a problem and understand morals, virtues, values, and principles that guide their beliefs and actions. I need to revisit the process of moral development in order to understand and relate each value to a successful ethical leader. These virtues include integrity, gratitude, courage, passion, and intelligence and are affected by pride, self-interest, and vanity (Lozano, 2007). Reflection and Evaluation Decision-making involves description, reflection, and prescription. Decision -making a template is important to leaders because of the complexity and challenges faced. A leader should collect information on the problem this forms a basis for accurate analysis. Secondly, define the problem. Thirdly, way the alternative solutions and lastly, find an appropriate decision for action. One needs to analyze the consequences before making a decision (Holland Skinner, 2002). A good outcome involves evaluation and reflection of certain decisions. Doing the right thing is not complete minus reflection. One has to know and understand the reason for making the right decision before and if he needs to make the right decision in future. It is clear that without reflection, ethics becomes a habit and with reflection, ethics forms the basis for the choice of a decision. When I develop strong self-ethics, am likely to make better ethical decisions by respecting norms of the society. Present ethical standards are due to past events. The challenge is that we have no time for reflection and this impact the speed with which we make decisions (Holland Skinner, 2002). From Skinner theory, I learned that a person could accept or reject ethics through observation and imitation. This is because people develop and learn through observation and imitation. We learn the culture, fashion, and language and thereafter we automatically act these behaviors (Knapp Carter, 2007). The way we bring up children influences how they will act in future as future leaders. This shows how observation is a key technique. What we see today we will act in future. The challenge is our leaders act unethically because they act differently from what they say. Therefore, for us to be ethical leaders and improve the society we must act ethically (Hamilton, Madison, Jay, 2008). Conclusion To conclude, we need to understand the importance of ethics, moral development, motivation and role modeling for decision-making makes as a good leadership. Leadership is the act of being effective, technically good and morally upright. A good decision-making involves description, reflection and prescription due to complexity and challenges faced. A leader should collect information on the problem to form a basis for accurate analysis. Therefore we need to reflect rate skills as strengths and develop a need for action Secondly, define the problem. Moral development is due to growth life and experiences we get. They develop through socialization to make decisions in relation to knowledge of what is wrong and right. Thirdly, way the alternative solutions and lastly, find an appropriate decision for action. One needs to analyze the consequences before making a decision. I suggest that as leaders we should embrace ethical values for moral development as well as organization success. References Bennis, W., Jagdish, P., Lessem, R. (2000). Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics, and Ecology. Cambridge: Massachusetts. Ciulla, J. (2004). Ethics, the Heart of Leadership . Westport: Connecticut: Praeger. Conger, J., Riggio, R. (2007). The Practice of Leadership: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass Inc. Guy, M. (2002). Ethical Decision Making in Everyday Work Situations. New York: Quorum. Hamilton, A., Madison, J., Jay, J. (2008). The Federalist Papers. Redford Virginia:: Wilder Publications. Holland, J., Skinner, B. (2002). The Analysis of Behavior: a Program for Self-Instruction. New York: McGraw-Hill. Knapp, J., Carter, J. (2007). For the Common Good: The Ethics of Leadership in the 21st Century. Westport: Connecticut: Praeger. Lozano, J. (2007). Ethics and Organizations: Understanding Business Ethics as a Learning Process. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic. Price, T. (2008). Leadership Ethics: an Introduction. Cambridge: Massachusetts:Cambridge UP. Sergiovanni, T. (2007). Rethinking Leadership: a Collection of Articles. Thousand Oaks, California:: Corwin. Shull, F. (1958). Selected Readings in Management. Homewood: Illinois: R.D. Irwin.