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Assignment states about Leadership a critical aspect in deciding the ultimate organizational success or failure

Home, - Authentic Leadership and Implications to Employee PsyCap

INTRODUCTION

Leadership is very critical and plays a vital role in deciding the ultimate organizational success or failure. Effective leadership is very much required for organizational efficiency and effectiveness in operations.  A right leader is one who can induce trust, empathy and can draw collaboration from his organizational employees. When the leader of an organization is effective and if he possesses the required honesty and attitude to remain empathetic towards the employee concerns, they he can do moderation of the employee psychological capital and can bring forward effective organizational functionality into practicality. Such authentic leadership can materialize better achievement of the organizational objectives and will contribute to increased individual and collective organizational performance improvements in general. The following part of the write-up will discuss about the relationship between authentic leadership and the employee psychological capital with reference to the evidences available from literature. Also the relation of the authentic leadership with the mediating role of leader Member exchange and subsequent consequences to the employee psychological capital is presented in the discussion. The focus is employed on the topics like the type of the efforts needed to grab the employee psychological capital by an authentic leaders and how they vary from type of the employee to the other. Like the differences in the management procedures of the authentic leadership for psycap of professionals and administrative staff, the impact of the same on the blue collar employees as well as the white collar employees discussed in the report. Further there is also focus on aspects of variation of the psycap management procedures for generational cohort differences. The impact of the emotions of the managers and leaders on employees and their emotions, their relations between each other and to the final organizational performance are some of the aspects discussed in the same context. Authenticity is the major objective of the leadership development and evolution process. Authentic leadership has evolved in the course of continuous development of the interpersonal and intra personal relationship between the leaders and the followers in general.  LMX (Leader-member exchange theory) postulations emphasizes some of the key traits that are evolved during the development of the most authentic and reliable leadership (Chaurasia and shukla, 2014). An integrated approach of the authentic leadership practices with mediating roles of Leader and member exchange programmes ultimately resulted in the development of the employee psychological capital.  A true or positive leadership impact will be same and uniform and all the 4 key elements of the employee psychological capital viz., hope optimism, self efficacy and resilience (Luthans et al, 2006).  The essence of positive leadership is to impact positively the employee morale and by doing so ultimately to work on to improve better employee engagement and this inturn will work to improve the overall organizational performance along with each individual performance and their satisfaction levels.

 

Employee psychological capital & relation to Authentic leadership and LMX – Discussion in the context of diverse employee groups

Employee psychological capital basic nature is same and they expect hope, optimism, self efficacy and ofcourse resilience. However the expectations to achieve the same will be different. This depends on the particular employee and their domain of operations. The expectations of a blue collar employee are different from a white collar employee. A professional expects a different type of response and consideration from that of a administrative support. Hence authentic leadership need to be one with multi level and longitudinal functionality to meet the expectations of each of these employees. Employee psychological capital development interventions need to be focussed on the facilitation of the improvement of the skills for professionals in any organization, When employees  are provided with certain type of skills that are very much required for employees to move up the career ladder and to get into the seniority positions, when awarded with they will be most satisfied and normally such leaders who promote these facilitations will be considered more positively  and their interventions are often received positively. Hence an authentic leader normally will focus on skills and interpersonal communication and training for professionals as well as for administrative staff. However the concerns of the professional staff often emphasizes the flexibility in getting the work, promising of the rewards for the work achievement. Promise and scope for better development as well the need for the development of the work ethics that encourages the professionalism in the workplace. Professionals in the organization; will look for such trust and promise from their leader to get complete engagement and dedication for the organization. The true leader will focus on these aspects of the organization. Administrative staff will look for better empowerment, significance in decision making and importance in strategic planning etc to get themselves into the organization. A true leader will normally include these concerns and make them part of the organizational promotion and decision making for the sake of improving their psychological capital in the organization.   Authentic leader in both these instances will focus on transparency, authenticity in dealing, focus on the formulation of genuine relationships and also will work on to cultivate planned interventions with proper training. Openness, transparency and legitimate interactions are some of the several aspects that work for the organizational promotion. Avolio and Gardener (2005) indicated authentic leader will establish transparent operational modules and remains open and approachable for all the key stakeholders they are dealing with. Leader member exchange is often considered to be a potent mediating tool that can enforce the necessary communication between the leader and members on a firm ground that will work for the betterment of the gratitude and appreciation. Such traits will result in ultimate hike of psychological capital. Dialectic communication often paves way to clear the confusion between the leaders and followers. This will provide more enthusiastic and creative work environment in the organization. Authentic leadership will contribute to the creativity of the employees and LMX will contribute to enhancement of the impact of the leadership on the creativity(Rego et al.,2011) of the employee in the organization. 3600 feedback will be considered by authentic leaders to change and mends their ways of dealing with things irrespective of the target audience, viz., professional, administrative staff, young, old, blue collar or white collar employees. Authentic leaders will evaluate themselves like how they evaluate others and will work on to develop procedures and formats to get total attachment and dedication from the employees. There is sufficient evidence available in the literature to emphasize the fact that the parenting styles, attachment styles, gender and temperament of the leaders will work for the improvement of the ultimate objectives of the performance rating of the employees(Walumba et al,2011).  Gardner(1990) indicated that by mid 21st centuries, people will look back the current leadership styles as primitive. It may be true, the authentic leadership at present is in several ways different and distinct from traditional ways and forms of leadership, the new leadership models are expected to change further the practices, however still the underlying core concept of bringing out the employee involvement in the interventions, building their trust and motivation will essentially remain the same and conceptually they will not change in essence( Cerovic et al,2016), Only the procedures and prevailing environment will call for changes in the system dynamically and these changes are essential for leadership development theories.  Authentic leadership do have impact over the job satisfaction and empowerment of the employees will play a key role in enabling the same. LMX is one distinct and powerful mediator in enabling such empowerment. Hence an integrated approach of authentic leadership(Clapp-Smith et al,2009) along with LMX will work for the betterment of the job satisfaction and performance of the employees in general.  Structural empowerment is the key constraint which will work for the development of the employee engagement and this inturn will also work for the job satisfaction and performance upliftment. Authentic leadership will work on to create such empowerment in the organization by LMX, transparency, openness, honesty, trust, empathy etc(Wong et al.,2012). Blue collar employees and white collar employees will look for different expectations in the organizational context, blue collar employees expects returns for work, better rewards and incentives for better work, better job progress opportunities, unfair treatment, respect to work are some of the aspects that will promote employee psychological capital in these stakeholders(Wang et al,2014).  White collar employees will look for aspects like better working environment, work culture without discrimination, job security, allowances and incentives for medical and family benefits, job growth opportunities, job development and career development aspects etc. Authentic leader’s assurance and steps in this direction will make them more attached for the organization. Similar for diverse ethnicities, their concerns typical to their particular race or nationality need to be considered. For example oppressed races look for an assurance that mitigates racial suppression and discrimination in the workplace. Equal opportunities and better and unbiased policies are their normal expectations, True leader will just share the vision with all the ethnicities and expects the best outcomes from all of them. A generational difference also is a powerful consideration that differentiates the expectations of the employees.  Newer generations will look for freedom at work, technology scope, zero discrimination and normally remains result and benefits oriented. Older generations look for dignity, recognition, job security etc(Wong et al,2008). Hence a right or true leader will take up appropriate practicum enforcement on one to one basis based on their priorities for encashing better employee psycap. Also the type of interventions is expected to be considerate to the prevailing environmental factors. They will play a key role in impacting the type of the interventions, the content and decision that become part of the process.

Emotions and their role

Emotions do play an important role in the organizations. Leaders and managers emotions are very much significant to the emotions of the employees. When they are positively oriented, it is much likely that employees also will get positively charged and their emotional engagement will work on to provide better performance outcomes to the organization. If the employee is not competent enough to understand the leader’s vision or emotions as well if the leader is not equipped to influence the employee’s emotion then the results will not be very much encouraging. EQ of both the leaders, mediaters (managers) and employee are related and are significant for organizational outcomes in general. Kaplan (2014) emphasized the need for coherence in the emotions of the leaders, managers and other employees of the organization. He also indicated the versatility of LMX in bringing forward coherence in all these stakeholders and to promote uniformity in emotional collaboration.

Conclusion

Honesty and trust are pillar stones of the authentic leadership , when they are coupled with right LMX and constructive attitudes, the results will be amazing. Employee will get their emotions stimulated and they will contribute to the betterment of the organizational performance and efficacy. Further it will promote the necessary positivity in the employee for taking up new hopes and optimisms. Though the exact procedures and the strategies, that authentic leader need to take up will differ from case to case and context to context, the sole ideology of extending partnership and collaboration in decision making along with the promotion of the trust and mutual collaboration will remain the same and work for the betterment of the individual and organizational performances. The spirit and underlying drive is same irrespective of the particular stakeholder dealt with in the organization, however the objectives of the proponents remain the same. Improved individual and collective organizational psycap will contribute for better engagement and will contribute for better organizational performance and objective achievement in general. The ultimate benefits of improving the hope, optimism, resilience and self efficacy will provide great opportunities of growth for the organizations. They will work for the betterment of the organizational performance, improves the functionality of the organizational flexibility and progression. Individual level, employees will become more flexible to change and accept the challenges and makes the organizational framework ready enough to excel and achieve its ultimate objectives. 

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