Good relationships at the workplace play an essential role in forming a positive environment for the employees, which includes communication between leaders and subordinates. An atmosphere of mutual trust and respect improves the employees’ perception of the work process, and it is also a vital component of efficiency. Yukl et al. (2013) state that, as a rule, ethical leadership, which aims at building a higher level of trust between an employee and a manager, leads to more effort on behalf of the former. According to research conducted by Yukl et al. (2013), there are three categories of leadership behavior that affect employees’ performance. First, the task-oriented group comprises challenging objectives, clear roles, and efficient coordination. Secondly, relations-oriented managers focus on such psychological aspects as praise, recognition, and motivation. Lastly, there are change-oriented behaviors, which include future strategy formation and continued collective learning (Yukl et al., 2013). In my opinion, the second kind of behavior is the most important one in terms of trust, as it is vital to make an employee feel valued and recognized.
Nevertheless, several descriptors mentioned above may be difficult to discern without a close analysis of the situation. I suppose that relations-oriented behaviors are somewhat evident because they directly affect communication within the team. At the same time, if the task-oriented category of descriptors is implemented correctly, it brings quick results, which is not the case for the third category. The behavior of change-oriented managers might be effective in the long run, but it may have a significantly smaller immediate impact. This pattern is not suitable for all teams and situations, as some employees may not see the bigger picture, thus ending up being frustrated by stagnation. It might be wise to implement a combination of several strategies at once. For example, if a team member gets enough praise and motivation, he or she will be more perceptive to the management’s long-term strategy.
Ethical leadership is an important parameter of a well-functioning team, so, naturally, it was the subject of theoretical and practical studies. According to Yukl et al. (2013), there exist three instruments that were designed specifically to measure ethical leadership. The Ethical Leadership Survey (ELS) was conducted in 2003 to determine the primary features of ethical leaders in their subordinates’ eyes (Yukl et al., 2013). This research led to the creation of the ten-item Ethical Leadership Scale. Besides, The Perceived Leader Integrity Scale includes 31 items that describe several kinds of unethical behavior with four response options, which indicate how well the questions represent the team’s manager. Finally, there is the Ethical Leadership Work Questionnaire created by Dutch researchers (Yukl et al., 2013). It comprises thirty-eight items with the seven-point response format, as well as seven subscales, among which Yukl et al. (2013) consider fairness, integrity, and ethical guidance the most important ones. While each method is limited in some way, these are the instruments that allow direct measuring of ethical leadership in the professional environment.
As far as my personal experience is concerned, I have dealt with both types of leaders, according to my perception. In the first case, the manager set clear and attainable goals, but he was quite detached on a personal level. Even though the team sometimes worked on challenging tasks, its members hardly ever received praise, which ended up being detrimental to the workplace atmosphere. The second leader that I met paid much attention to the psychological aspects of our work. Despite some errors that occurred once in a while, I felt support and desire to make improvements, which made me think of my manager as an ethical leader.
Reference
Yukl, G., Mashud, R., Hassan, S., & Prussia, G. E. (2013). An improved measure of ethical leadership. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 20(1), 38–48.