A634.3.4.RB – The Harder They Fall

According to Yukl, (2012), Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree on the ways to accomplish objectives and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to achieve shared goals (p. 7).  To be able to analyze and assess the effectiveness of and different approaches to leadership, it is of the utmost importance to discuss various ways of how leadership is defined. 

Yukl (2012) indicated that leadership has many modes of denotation for different individuals. Therefore behavioral scientists and practitioners believe that leadership is a vital phenomenon that can be defined in various ways.  Many organizations, may it be a not-for-profit, private businesses or governmental, benefit greatly when their workforce can collaborate to achieve organizational goals and have the capacity to get to know each other and understand how to work cohesively. 

Different studies conducted by psychologists indicated that an individual’s ethical behavior is impacted by an individual’s moral judgment and perception (Andre and Velasquez, n.d.).  Tiatorio (n.d.) stated that ethical conduct or behavior in its purest form is a balance between self-interest and group responsibility, predominantly a behavior learned to stand in contradiction to an instinct.  Ethics is that of our moral beliefs that conform to the way we live and the way we create our world through the choices we make every day and most specifically, it is the epicenter of our existence. 

What defines success or failure of today’s organization is the effectiveness and efficiency of the overall behavior of an organization.  To be globally positioned with a competitive edge, it is imperative that organizations embrace change to satisfy the needs of their customers and stakeholders and retain highly skilled employees.  The organization’s leadership has an empirical need to identify a new set of desired ethical behaviors and develop a strategic plan that collectively leads to organizational behavior that is effective, ethical, and efficient to achieve its stated goals and improved organizational performance. 

We are living in a generation of risk and unsteadiness that contributes to a more profound sense of uneasiness from the organizational C-Suites.  The uncertainties of global innovation and change effectuate a significant dilemma when strategic making is involved.  This is so for a simple reason that the traditional pathway to the strategy may lead to the extent of a predictable and stable world (Reeves & Deimler, 2011).  In today’s global environment, organizational leaders cannot just be focused on traditional strategic initiatives but must focus more on their abilities and capabilities to be adaptive to change and be able to read and act innovatively, morally, and ethically on those changes.

One organization that I am proud to have the opportunity to work for is Adventist Health System.  Adventist Health System is a faith-based national healthcare leader that focuses on serving the community with Christ’s healing ministry and incorporates Christian values at every level of service.  As a cutting-edge healthcare organization, Adventist Health System’s reputation for healthcare excellence is well known nationally and rates as one of the highest in employee engagement and satisfaction (Gallup, 2015). 

The executive leadership of Adventist Health System has focused on creating an environment that reflects high moral and ethical standards in care in meeting the current and future needs of their patients, employees, and the dynamic changes in healthcare in the nation.  Proactive in stance, Adventist Health System has been developing a campaign that can launch a new paradigm in healthcare in the 21st century (https://www.adventisthealthsystem.com/page.php?section=about). 

At work, becoming an efficient and effective leader comes with different challenges and benefits.  Improving communication, promoting and driving the practice of high ethical and moral standards of behavior, enhancing transparency, and building trust, and strengthening collaboration within my organization nurturing a culture of innovation and a collaborative team is of utmost importance to me.  Promptly recognizing and addressing the issues at hand is of significance for my team within our organization to be cohesive.  Fostering a group to challenge each other positively and ethically can also be of importance in building a stronger, creative, innovative and morally driven team. 

Personally, I have maintained and developed more with the standards of reasonableness, reliability, ethics, loving and spirituality.  By consistently practicing and leaving those standards in my life enhanced who I am today.  I am a good daughter to my mother, an excellent mother to my four children, a good sister to my four siblings, a good friend and an excellent wife to my beautiful and loving husband, and an outstanding employee to the company wherever God leads me to.

I have discovered that my decision-making has always been tied to my personal moral and ethical values.  I have always believed that everybody deserves to be extended the benefit of the doubt.  So, when someone says hurtful things to me or mistreat me, my first instinct is the person must be experiencing some personal issue and is not thinking right. 

Some may think that I am just too naïve to see or accept the reality that the individual only plainly does not like me and naturally mean-spirited.  For me, I have made a decision to always give someone the benefit of the doubt and be forgiving, regardless.  I live my life by the golden rule.  “Do unto others what you want others do unto you.”

My journey as a human resources leader and through the influence of my mother’s ethical standards of behavior has helped me developed and improved my skills and ability to be an excellent coach, friend, employee, wife, mother and a trustworthy and respectable leader and ethical member of my community, and the society as a whole.  It has made me emerged to be a significant contributor in shaping our workforce, community, organization and the globe as a whole and continuously helped me to gain the experience of better understanding and to assess how the future tends to emerge and most especially by being open to new moral and ethical possibilities and new opportunities.  As Flatt (2017) stated, futures are inevitable by nature. 

Conclusion

To withstand the ethical and moral dilemmas could bring, leaders have to practice adaptability and have the willingness to empower and support others to lead and at the same time guiding and driving them effectively, efficiently (Obolensky, 2014) and ethically.  Although, the enemy of adaptability is a strategy to a certain extent is partially correct.  Porter (1996) described strategy as the development of a valuable and a distinctive position that constitutes a variety of activities. 

Our global industry has become an innovative environment that may require unethical and immoral decisions from executive leaders to survive.  More than ever, leaders of organizations, mid, large or small must endeavor for excellent ethical ideas that are new and unique, allowing and empowering everyone’s involvement and participation in the process of change.

Leaders and stakeholders like Peel of any organization should at all times maintain ethical and moral consciousness and cannot forget that they are a channel or driver with which ethics can integrate to members of society.  By holding each other to a higher ethical and moral standards, we, as a society as a whole, set up a higher level of the fundamental human interactions.  By doing so, we embark on rebuilding a culture of ethical and moral responsibilities and accountabilities.  Every one of us is in one way or another, are leaders whether leading a student as an instructor, a child as the mother, a father, grandparents, or elder siblings, and a unit as an organization or a government employee.

References

Andre, C. & Velasquez, M. (n.d.). Can ethics be taught? Retrieved

            from https://legacy.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v1n1/taught.html.

Flatt, J. (2017). Our future: What story will we share? Australian Journal of Herbal

Medicine, 29(2), 59-62. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1953802237?accountid=27203

Kramer, R.M. (2003). The HARDER THEY FALL. (cover story). Harvard Business Review        81(10), 58-66.

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership (2^nd ed.). London, UK: Gower/Ashgate.

Porter, M. E. (1996). What is strategy?. Harvard Business Review, 68(4), 104-112.

Reeves, M. & Deimler, M. (2011). Adaptability: the new competitive advantage. Harvard

Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2011/07/adaptability-the-new-competitive-advantage.

Tiatorio, A. (n.d.). What is Ethics? Retrieved

from http://www.ethicsineducation.com/intro.htm (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Yukl, G. (2012), Leadership in the Organization (8^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice.