What Makes A Great Leader ANYWAY???

When looking into what traits that make leaders effective at motivating their workers to produce at high level and to enjoy their working environment, I analyzed three articles that address growing leaders, incorporates ethical leadership, and strives to ease the stressors of the job through servant leadership.  

Lu Bostanli (2023) discusses in her research how leaders that use exemplary narratives can promote wise thinking in leadership and those within the organization.  These types of leaders possess the wisdom that allows for cognitive processing and have a superior problem-solving ability in times of stress.  Her study focuses on how reflecting on narratives of exemplary wise leaders can promote wise thinking in leadership (Bostanli, 2023).

The conclusions or findings made in her research found that a leader’s ability to compromise, have intellectual humility, and acknowledge the perspectives of others contributed to the success of their organization.  See Chart Below: 

When leadership implements a narrative-based approach using the aforementioned factors, the morale of workers is higher and productivity is higher.  Factors such as:  change and uncertainty; prior knowledge and experience: and sample size can create variations in data.  

Jensen, D. C., Hansen, A.-K. L., Pedersen, L. D., & Andersen, L. B. (2023) research analyzes the relationship between span of control and public managers' ethical leadership in maintaining a higher morale in the workplace.   Span of control is defined as the number of people supervised by a manager,  the more employees subordinated to a leader (Jensen,  et al., 2023).  The moral manager aspect of ethical leadership concerns the leader's proactive efforts to influence and encourage employees' ethical behavior  (Jensen,  et al., 2023).

 This study used a mixed methods design to understand whether span of control and ethical leadership are associated in highly professionalized organizations.    Each leader's self-perceived level of ethical leadership using a qualitative research model.  Quantitative data was collected using an abductive logic, where the initial coding was informed by broad predefined codes, reflecting the theoretical concepts of the article, such as "ethical leadership," "moral manager," and "span of control," (Jensen, et al., 2023).

Conclusions and/or findings made were that there is no relationship between span of control and the two aspects of ethical leadership.  This suggests that span of control is not a critical structural condition for intending and perceiving a high level of ethical leadership in highly professionalized contexts (Jensen, et al., 2023). 

The argument presented by this study is that leaders cannot dictate how employees should behave, they need to use more persuasive types of leadership; it is possible to promote "the moral professional" instead of only the moral person  (Jensen, et al., 2023). 

Li, F., Chen, T., Bai, Y., Liden, R. C., Wong, M.-N., & Qiao, Y. (2023) attempt to use a dual-path model delineating the psychological processes underlying the energizing and draining effects of this constructive yet demanding leadership approach on leaders.  These researchers analyzed the energizing and draining mechanisms underlying the double-edged effects of servant leadership (Li, et al., 2023). 

Using a mixed methods model, this study looks into when the benefits of servant leadership do not come at a cost to leaders, mental health concerns that are important for fulfilling and effective organizational functioning, and the energizing and draining mechanisms underlying the double-edged effects of servant leadership on leaders’ psychological strain and job performance (Li, et al., 2023). 

Conclusions and/or findings revealed that leaders who engaged in servant leadership satisfied their psychological needs which reduced the leader’s psychological strain but did not affect leader job performance (Li, et al., 2023).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JyKB1FHwPb3MGPZnKG6aK3NXjfz937S-/view?usp=sharing 

References:

Bostanli, L. (2023). Narratives for wise thinking in leadership: An experiment on the influence of wise leader exemplars’ narratives on wise thinking in leadership. Psychology of Leaders and Leadership, 26(2), 115–126. https://doi.org/10.1037/mgr0000141.supp (Supplemental). https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=psyh&AN=2023-71413-001&authtype=sso&custid=s9008876&site=ehost-live&scope=site&custid=s9008876&authtype=sso.

Jensen, D. C., Hansen, A.-K. L., Pedersen, L. D., & Andersen, L. B. (2023). Span of Control and Ethical Leadership in Highly Professionalized Public Organizations. Public Personnel Management, 52(2), 191–217. https://doi.org/10.1177/00910260221140398. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=ccm&AN=163764890&authtype=sso&custid=s9008876&site=ehost-live&scope=site&custid=s9008876&authtype=sso

Li, F., Chen, T., Bai, Y., Liden, R. C., Wong, M.-N., & Qiao, Y. (2023). Serving while being energized (strained)? A dual-path model linking servant leadership to leader psychological strain and job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(4), 660–675. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001041. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=psyh&AN=2023-00720-001&authtype=sso&custid=s9008876&site=ehost-live&scope=site&custid=s9008876&authtype=sso.