Regardless of political stripe, feelings toward authority, or opinion about our many institutions; it seems impossible to escape the public debate that regularly includes discussion of the values and ethics of those in power. Trust in leadership and institutions is at historic lows. A number of recent studies (e.g., PwC, HBR) suggest that a majority of workers do not trust their managers or work organizations, with a majority of CEOs concerned that this pervasive lack of trust is a significant threat to their business. A recent meta-analysis of peer-reviewed scientific articles on leadership styles confirms that the field of leadership research has recognized the need for and had shifted to more of a moral focus. This shift is most noticeable in the uptick in research focusing on specific leadership styles that focus on how leaders ought to behave toward others, such as authentic, ethical, and servant leadership styles, with the latter appearing to be getting the most traction in the discussion as of late. Servant leadership is an approach in which the leader is believed to act in the best interest of their team members, care about each team member’s needs and personal growth, and build long-term, trusting relationships by showing genuine concern. This is one of the few styles in which the leader truly puts the needs of the employee first (above both organizational goals as well as the leader’s own self-interest), and is defined by an authentic concern for followers’ growth and development. The approach is fueled by social exchange theory (relationships are driven by the costs and benefits assessed by both parties), the norm of reciprocity (social ‘rule’ that drives us to reciprocate the action of others) , and procedural justice (fairness in the process). This approach appears to make the leader-member dyad more of a partnership. Servant leaders affirm the strengths and potential of team members, as well as provide extensive developmental support, and team members reciprocate by exerting extra effort and engaging in organizational citizenship behaviors.
Perhaps most telling about why the servant leader approach has enjoyed more popularity of late is the emphasis on personal integrity and internalized ethical standards that guide servant leaders to serve as role models. When executed effectively, this style of leadership conveys the importance of personal integrity, honesty, and fairness to the team, which promotes authentic and problem-driven communication, as well as a sense of deep-rooted values and purpose to make a positive difference in others’ lives through service.
While servant and authentic leadership styles have received increased attention in recent years, transformational leadership has been the most researched and aspired to (perhaps too often more conceptually than in reality) approach in the recent past. This style dictates that the leader focus on understanding followers’ motives, satisfying their needs, and treating them as whole human beings. Leaders that engage in this style bring their leadership game well beyond the traditional transactional behaviors of clarifying what followers need to do to be rewarded for their effort, monitoring performance, and taking corrective action if performance fails to meet standards. Those who are successful at applying the transformational approach are able to stimulate followers’ intrinsic motivation by getting them to take personal ownership of team and organizational goals, driven largely by the following five dimensions of the leader’s behavior:
- Inspirational motivation – the degree to which leaders inspire and appeal to followers by setting challenging goals communicating optimism regarding goal attainment.
- individualized Consideration – the extent to which a leader attends to the needs and concerns of followers by providing social and emotional support. This might involve mentoring followers, maintaining frequent contact, encouraging followers to self-actualize, and empowering them.
- Intellectual stimulation – the extent to which leaders engage in behaviors that cause followers to challenge organizational norms and their assumptions, think creatively, take risk, and participate intellectually.
- Idealized Influence (Attributed) – refers to the socialized charisma of leaders and whether they are perceived as being confident and committed to high-order ideals.
- Idealized Influence (Behavior) – refers to the charismatic actions by the leader that are based on values, beliefs, or ideals.
At first glance, leaders who aspire to the transformational approach have similar goals to that of servant and authentic leaders, and there is recent research to suggest that they often result in similar outcomes (e.g., follower job satisfaction, satisfaction with leader, individual & team performance). To be sure, the first three dimensions of the transformational approach focus on followers’ needs (e.g., motivation, stimulation, social/emotional support), and are likely to result in the leader being perceived as acting in the best interest of team members, caring about their personal growth, and building long-term, trusting relationships. The fourth and fifth dimensions listed, both Idealized influence (attributed & behavior) addresses the ability to get followers to emotionally connect their own self-identity with the collective identity of the team and organization. It is the ability to foster a sense of pride that followers feel by being associated with the leader, the organization, and the values they espouse. This is consistent with what most would hold as intuitive feelings about charismatic leadership. At its best, this type of charismatic leadership drives followers to sacrifice their own self-interest and devote exceptional effort to the causes advocated by the leader.
On the surface, however, it appears that the typical motivators of the charismatic leader are inconsistent with the changing expectations that are driving the popularity of the servant and authentic approaches. After all, charismatic leaders’ behavior is often influenced by dominant personality traits, self-monitoring, impression management, motivation for social power, desire to persuade others, and motivation to attain their own personal self-actualization. Not only are these types of egocentric motivators antithetical to the servant leader model, but they also significantly contribute to the cynicism that we find today regarding the intentions of leaders, organizations, and institutions.
In this environment of skepticism, how can a servant leader effectively leverage idealized influence to emotionally connect followers’ sense-of-self to the mission and collective identity of the team and organization? The answer likely lies in the assumptions about followers that underpin the leader-centric theories of such as the transformational and charismatic models. In these models, followers are considered passive recipients of the leaders and organization’s goals and values, rather than viewing followers as autonomous agents who are quite active in defining and validating the roles of both leadership and followership. leaders are much more likely to get followers to emotionally connect (rather than just comply/conform) to team goals and values if they are able to decode the dynamics that drive how followers develop their own personal values. That is, alignment of personal and organizational values is a two-way dynamic process that is strengthened significantly when approached as a two0-way dynamic process how followers interpret the ethics and values of goals and approaches .
A critical factor is how followers’ interpret that behavior in a given context; and there a number of broad, individual difference variables that likely impact followers reaction to various leadership styles. A leader may be satisfying and motivating to some followers, and dissatisfying and demotivating to others, even if the that leader interacts with each in exactly the same way. Individual preferences are often driven by followers’ perceptions in both the similarity they perceive between the leader and themselves; and the degree to which a leader will fulfill certain individualized needs. There are a number of follower characteristics that play a role in determining the degree to which they find the values and behavior of a leader a source of immediate satisfaction or instrumental in some future satisfaction. For example, those followers that have a strong need for affiliation prefer supportive leadership behaviors. Those that score higher on authoritarian scales are more likely to respond favorably to directive behaviors, as this pattern of leadership behaviors fulfill a stronger preference for structure.
The implication is to actively strive for consistency between what leaders’ and followers’ value with respect to end states (i.e., living a comfortable life, gaining social recognition, maintaining close friendships, ensuring family security), and the means (i.e., being ambitious, open-minded, courageous, responsible, and exhibiting self-control) by which those end states are realized. To be sure, conflict is much more likely to occur when terminal and instrumental values of leaders and followers are incongruent with each other, and research confirms that satisfaction tends to be greater when there is consistency between leaders and followers in four core values: 1) achievement, 2) helping and concern for others, 3) honesty, and 4) fairness. Other potential incongruencies that practitioners and researchers have identified recently include harm to/rights of individuals versus overall utility; fairness versus self-interest; and the factors that drive altruism and social behavior.
There is compelling evidence that sensitivity to categories of values can be viewed as critical for surviving and thriving in social groups such as work organizations, with this pattern seemingly holding up even across species. Humans, at our core, are social beasts, and we appear to be ‘hardwired’ for sensitivity to certain ways of interacting. Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) (Graham, Nosek, Haidt, Iyer, Koleva & Ditto, 2011; Haidt & Graham, 2007) is especially well-suited for framing values congruence within the context of social groups such as work organizations. MFT posits that there are five intuitive systems from which individuals’ moral feelings and ethical behavior arise:
- Harm/Care
- Fairness/Reciprocity
- Ingroup/Loyalty
- Purity/Sanctity
- Authority/Respect
There is much evidence to suggest that everyone will be sensitive to all of these moral systems. However, there are individual differences with respect to how they are rank ordered. That is, one might be more inclined to interpret behaviors related to providing care to and protecting from harm those who are vulnerable as generally more important than exhibiting loyalty to one’s ingroup. One would undoubtedly interpret behaviors reflective of either of this categories as positive (and violations of any of the value categories as negative). However, all other things being equal, the intensity of the emotional reaction is likely to be stronger one over the other, depending on their personal relative weighting of the categories. Therefore, it is quite useful for leaders to ‘tune into’ the intuitive systems that seem to be most prevalent in how an individual or team perceives the right things to do, and the right ways to do them.
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