Ethics and Leadership Application

Introduction

This essay significantly reflects on workplace decisions wherein I participated. I was with Singapore Police force for my national service liability, attached to the specialist unit namely Singapore Police Coast guard as a patrol officer. After several months of intense training and on job training, I had to lead a new team of national service officers on their job scope and also handle their discipline issues. The job requires us to conduct screening on individuals, sea vessels and also motor vehicles as we do both sea and land patrol and also to attend to those calls of emergency. There were times where our integrity was put to task and intense obstacles to overcome while performing our duty. Leadership is a manner or series of movements directed in the direction of group dreams and goals; it is a consistently verified sample of behaviour with positive specified goals.

This essay analyses the ethical leadership skills and how I could have done it differently. The development of leadership abilities is significant on the grounds that they help to accomplish both individual and professional achievement. In the meantime, frequently individuals face challenges with the improvement of their leadership aptitudes and capacities. In such manner, it is essential to concentrate on the advancement of a compelling leadership style that can help a person in their profession and self-improvement.

Description of Leadership Experience 

I was under the management of team leader Inspector Royston Tan, he appointed me to take care and lead a group of newly joined national service men with briefs of the job and get through how is it done. Insp Royston delegates tasks in a way to handle the multitude responsibilities in the work setting. Meetings are often called for before the shift commences to update the whole team of recent cases and also compliment those officers whom has made some accomplishments. Insp Royston’s listening capabilities have been superb, in that he by no means missed any single factor of records being associated with him. From that information, he was able to clearly synthesis. He regarded every chunk of data as a potential contribution to what the crew was looking to obtain, and become aware of the issues and demanding situations along the way. He was able to accomplish this with the assistance of the crew, wherein it should additionally be mentioned that teamwork is an important element of leadership and management, which need to be considered in the leadership to be successful. The briefings he conducts includes all together with both regular officers and national service men. After the briefing or at some time before, I will be given a task sheet to deploy the officers under my care. I will have to prepare and brief them before they commence their respective duty at sea patrol, land patrol or station duty. I considered Insp Royston as my role model and I wanted to follow some of his management skills to implement and improvise in my own leadership skills.

Theoretical Insights/Level of Analysis

Ethics of rights and justice is what I practiced with my team and it was also which I considered Insp Royston followed too. Ethical values in an organizational setting are emphasized and reinforced more often than not via values-primarily based management, that can be described as a relationship between leaders and colleagues, primarily based on shared, internalized values, which might be acted upon by the leader. Values are the general ideas that guides the actions and not an action on its own. They may be codes which underlie the sanctions or punishments for some selections of behaviour and rewards for other. Ethics of rights would be to make sure that basic needs and entitlements of the officers are met in a fair manner and justice would be to make sure that to distribute fair benefits and costs without any form biases or favouritism and everyone to be equally treated.

Limitations did follow having those practiced like difficulties in balancing conflicting rights and difficulties in measuring benefits and cost; lack of agreement of fair shares. Examples would be the officer’s ranking measures and rewards for accomplishments. Most officers might have put in equal effort and time into being the best in performance, operational means and handling cases with best of knowledge and integrity but not everyone is promoted or rewarded due to the quota system. This resulted in demoralizing the officers of both regulars and national service men to perform. For those national service men under my care, this heavily affected them and they became negligent and had discipline issues. Absence without valid reasons, getting into arguments and challenging the authority was among those issues. It got very challenging to handle them and to get them under control. I talked to my team leader Inspector Royston about the situation and he was aware of what was going on, he advised me to talk to them again and he also gave me a time frame of two weeks to resolve and if the problems still persist, he might have to take action against those with discipline issues. For any national service men whom goes through any form of investigation based on the severity due to any disciplinary issues during their obligatory service period that might be written under their records. Having those records would lead to delayed or no promotions and might deter the chances of signing with any government agencies as a career choice. Temporal immediacy is what my team had to understand. The time frame between their act and the consequences the act produces is much quicker than what they could expect and it is a lasting one. That required me to act immediately to get the situation under control. I did not want to use intensive coercive measures to get them in track as using unnecessary authority or force might cause the situation to get even worst but instead, I wanted to use some influential means to get them to understand how important their service is. Enabling them by providing guidance, clarifying responsibilities, easing role stress which makes them more effective in what they do.

I had to revaluate my means and approaches as a leader to better understand them. Serving my team with servant leadership’s approach seemed to be the most applicable and appropriate mean to get the situation under control. Servant leadership approach consists of:

Listening

As leaders, they are traditionally known for his or her communication and decision-making skills. Although these also are vital capabilities for the servant leader, they want to be bolstered through a deep dedication to listening intently to others. The leader seeks to pick out the desire of a collection and enables to clarify so as to. To also listen receptively to what's being stated and unsaid.

Empathy

The servant leader strives to apprehend and empathize with others. People want to be prevalent and recognized for his or her unique and unique spirits. One assumes the best intentions of co-people and colleagues and does not reject them as humans, even if one may be forced to refuse to just accept any form of behaviours or performance. The most successful servant leaders are those who have grown to be skilled empathetic listeners.

Healing

The recuperation of relationships is a powerful pressure for transformation and integration. One of the first-rate strengths of servant leadership is the potential for restoration one’s self and one’s relationship with others. Many human beings have broken spirits and have suffered from a diffusion of emotional hurts. Although this is a part of being human, servant leaders understand that they have a possibility to assist with the best of their capacity.

Awareness

General recognition, and in particular self-awareness, strengthens the servant-leader. Awareness helps one in knowledge troubles regarding ethics, power, and values. It lends itself to being able to view most situations from a more included, holistic role.

Persuasion

The other characteristic of servant leaders is reliance on persuasion. The servant leader seeks to convince others, as opposed to coerce compliance. This particular detail offers one of the clearest distinctions among the traditional authoritarian version and that of servant leadership. The leader is powerful at building consensus inside the team.

Conceptualization

Servant leaders searching for to nurture their competencies to dream the greatest desires. The capacity to study a hassle or an organisation from a conceptualizing attitude method that one ought to suppose beyond daily routines. For many leaders, that is a function that requires area of practice and discipline. The conventional leader is tasked by means of the want to gain brief-time period operational goals. The leader whom wants operate like a servant leader, have to stretch his or her questioning to embody broader-based conceptual thinking. Within organizations, conceptualization is, through its very nature, a key operation of the management of the police force. Unfortunately, higher managements can every so often emerge as involved in the daily operations which is something that must be discouraged—and, therefore, fail to provide the visionary concept for an organization. Managements want to be normally conceptual of their orientation, staffs want to be primarily operational of their perspective, and the most effective government leaders in all likelihood want to expand both views within themselves. Servant leaders are to search for means to balance the stability between conceptual thinking and daily operational approach.

Foresight

Closely relatable to conceptualization, the capability to foresee the likely final results of a situation is hard to define, but simpler to identify. One knows foresight upon experience. Foresight is a function which enables the servant leader to understand the lessons from the past, the realities of the prevailing, and the probable effect of a choice for the future. It also has deep roots within the intuitive thoughts. Foresight is largely unexplored in leadership theories, but one which deserves close attention.

Stewardship

Servant leadership acts like stewardship, assumes first and most important a dedication to serving the desires of others. It additionally emphasizes the use of openness and persuasion, in preference to control.

Commitment to the Growth of People

Servant leaders consider that human beings have an intrinsic value beyond their tangible contributions as employees. As such, the servant leader is deeply committed to elevate the growth of everyone individually within the team. The servant leader acknowledges the important responsibility to do everything in his or her power to nurture both personal and professional growth of employees and officers. In practice, this could encompass (but isn't always restricted to) concrete moves inclusive of making funds available for personal and professional development, taking a personal interest in the ideas and hints from absolutely everyone, encouraging worker involvement in decisions, and actively helping laid-off personnel to locate other positions.

Building Community

The servant leader senses that a good amount deal has been lost in recent human records as a result of the shift from local communities to huge institutions being the important crafter of human lives. This attention causes the servant leader to search and identify the ways for rebuilding the community among those whom works in a given institute. Servant leadership suggests that, it is indeed possible to create true community among those who work in businesses and other institutions.

With the practice of servant leadership and operant conditioning as a motivation, it showed progress with better behaviour among the officers. Operant conditioning bureaucracy an affiliation between conduct and an effect. On general terms it is the association between two stimuli. Changing rewards and punishments to change behaviour. The operant approach is to utilize reward, punishment, contingent rewards and punishments, non-contingent rewards and punishments and extinction to change the course, depth, or patience of behaviour. These principles aids to improvise followers’ motivation and performance by clearly specifying those behaviours which are important and what followers consider to be punishing and rewarding.

Reflection 

The ten characteristics of servant leadership are by no means exhaustive. However, they do serve to speak the strength and promise that this idea offers to folks who are open to its invitation and assignment. Applying the proper leadership approach with good team bonding and understanding, it is to be success is what I learned through the experience. Excessive usage of authority or power to influence may cause severe damages rather than good. Instead being compassionate with good listening skills and assist to help where it is possible may create trust and assurance in the leadership. Rather than just being a leader whom commands to get the work done be the leader whom get down to work together with the team himself or herself to show how is it done and using theories like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to better understand the team and individuals will get the situation under control and create better effective workers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, applying servant leadership with process theories like empowerment, operant approach and goal setting gets the team to be motivated and perform better each time. Setting goals has the Pygmalion and golem effect, to improve individual or team performance by setting high but achievable goals to express confidence in them. Operant conditioning is to reward and punish accordingly with appropriate considerations which aids to craft a better behaviour. The current rewarding system with quota might have to be changed in order to better facilitate performance rewards.

By empowering followers by task such as delegating leadership and decision making down to the lowest level possible boost individuals’ confidence and determination. With proper modification and understanding of leadership application of approaches and theories, it will lead to successful leadership.

Using the Myer Briggs type indicator (MBTI) to evaluate the four basic preferences, which are:Extraversion – Introversion: dimension which is concerned with where people the energy from.

• Sensing - Intuition: dimension which is concerned with how people look at data.
• Thinking – Feeling: dimension which is concerned with considerations a leader is concerned about with before making a decision.
• Judging – Perceiving: dimension which is concerned with the amount of information required before a decision is made by the leader.

Having to consider all these four dimensions by putting forward the followers before leaders themselves, enhances the leader’s capabilities to better provide and sustain a team with good performance and team unity. Practising these means proved me success and we as a team won the best performing team of the year for two consecutive years. Nevertheless, the room for improvement is still there like by providing fresh leaders with official leadership courses as I was trained to be a leader mainly by coaching and appreciating individual officer’s initiatives and evaluating performance on the daily basis to provide guidance and to relief some stress off the officers. 

References

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