The relationship between Authentic leader, Leader-Member Exchange, and Psychological Capital

Positive leadership is critical in organizational management especially with regards to employees. Employees form the greatest asset of any organization and hence the leadership approach applied by the organization’s management is a key contributor to the general performance of an organization. Kelloway, Weigand, McKee and Das (2013) notes that positive leadership emanates from an approach which realizes a positive connotation to an organization and concentrating energy in building a positive capacity of one’s organization.  Positive leadership entails focusing on the positive capabilities of your workforce and realizing their potential in various degrees. Positive leadership calls for a deliberate effort by the organization to implement programs, approaches, and strategies that are centered towards the creation of a more positive experience at a work environment.

Positive leadership is rooted in moral values and ethical coexistence which is more central to human capital growth. The rationale for positive leadership is ethical values assuming that every individual will do their best when intentionally an organization through its management is able to bring out their best through working around attributes that motivate the application of best capabilities (Avolio and Gardner, 2005). The gist is to inculcate a respectful, transparent and supportive culture at the working environment. A positive leader should, therefore, be available when needed, encourage workforce, be central to people’s growth, development and wellbeing, help the workforce be involved and co-own success in the organization and being keen in assisting your workforce to reach their full potential (Purvanova, Bono and Dzieweczynski, 2006).

Authentic leader

  Authentic leadership is a type of leadership in which a leader and or other people in the management system carry out themselves in a real, sincere and genuine manner which is reflective and in accordance to whom they really are. An authentic leader is at the helm of inspiring trust, encourage employee loyalty and inspire output productivity in line with the company missions, visions, and objectives.  

Wang et al, (2012) observe that an authentic leader is characterized by a sense of self-awareness, clear behaviors, and openness. Authentic leaders are open to sharing of information necessary for strategic decision making, keen to indulge other people’s inputs and also ready to openly disclose their motives, personal beliefs, and concerns. Wang et al (2012) further note that authentic leaders are keen to the development of their followers by inculcating in them the sense of positive psychological wellbeing which in essence is critical to the overall performance of the follower.

In a working environment, an authentic leader would be central to the achievement of a company’s objectives by aligning the company’s missions and visions with their overall objective. The central focus in this perspective is to ensure that the goals of the organization are efficiently achieved without deviations which would otherwise prove to be costly. They achieve this task by recognizing the effort of others in relation to the set objectives and putting the interest of the organization ahead of their own. Authentic leaders show directions with their heart and not mind. They do not shy off from experiencing emotional imbalance and to openly communicate their emotions and beliefs to their immediate employees. As a matter of fact, direct communication of emotions, feelings, and beliefs to the people reporting to you is a sure way of ensuring success in the outcomes one desires. This direct communication of beliefs is however done with consideration of how it is perceived by the recipient.

Authentic leader

Tied to open and direct communication, authentic leaders embrace transparency. The transparency in this scenario is tied to how the leader behaves while at work and his/her real-life behavior. Such a leader will portray and project the same image when with people in the public or when alone in his own confines (Leroy et al, 2015). Transparency is also linked to the manner in which the leader communicates his findings to his juniors and other company’s stakeholders. In all these interactions, an authentic leader should act in a manner which upholds empathy coupled with directness, with a central focus in bringing success.

The roles of an authentic leader are somewhat directly linked to the leader-member exchange approach. The leader-member exchange traces its roots since inception as a “vertical dyad linkage theory” (Liao, Wayne, Liden and Meuser, 2017). The proponents of this theoretical framework point out that it describes the relationship of leaders to their subjects in a way that analyzes how leaders ought to maintain their leadership position through a number of exchange agreements with these subjects. The level of the leader’s relationships with the followers as a whole is viewed separately as individual relationships.

According to Liao, Wayne, Liden and Meuser, (2017), leader-member exchange identifies how leaders and their subjects develop and maintain relationships and explore how these relationships may act to build or break an organization. A classic example of this framework is having two sets of employees; one set is at the heart of a leader because they undertake their responsibilities as per the desires of the leader, as a leader, this team is really valued and more challenging tasks are sent their way for exposure and development. The second set of team members are those who do not really work to the expectation of the leader, they are less recognized and the leader is not so keen about their growth and development. This leadership behavior has a lot of demerits in the face of it all, an authentic leader would overcome this temptation and focus in helping his/her team grow in wholesome without discrimination of whatever magnitude to promote a harmonization of practices towards the common goal.

Leader-member exchange approach takes three stages; role taking, role making, and routine. In the role taking the stage, new team members who join a team are carefully assessed by their leaders in terms of their skills and abilities at their disposal. The role making stage is the second stage which is critical to relationship building. Managers use this stage to gauge the performance of their team members. A subconscious classification then takes center stage in the manager’s/leader’s mind where leaders tend to classify their team members in either in-group or out-group (Liao, Wayne, Liden and Meuser, 2017).

In-group category are those members of a team lead who subscribes to the ideologies of the leader and work in line with the directions and desires of the leader. This team is given a lot of the manager’s time, more projects and challenging tasks aimed at developing their skills further, they stand to benefit tremendously from the manager’s point of view. The out-group category is those team players who cannot find the edge in line with what the manager wants. The team is often subconsciously discriminated against by the manager or team leader who often will not give challenging tasks to them and impose restrictions on what pieces of the assignment this team can tackle.

Leader-Member Exchange

Finally, the routinization stage sets in, in this stage, there is a building of a routine between the working teams where the in-group category continues in their pursuit to win the manager’s trust even further to win favors in return. The in-group works hard to continue enjoying their manager’s trust, respect, and empathy. The out-group is definitely without doubt demoralized and the relationship between them and the leader continues to deteriorate and dwindle each second (Wang, Chen, Eisenberger and Fosh, 2018). The rationale therefore in Leader-member exchange is to have leaders embrace leadership skills that enable them to accommodate each member of their team irrespective of their output. Leaders should be focused on developing their team members by encouraging harmonious coexistence with each team member without necessary treating others any lesser.  

Avey (2014) defines psychological capital as the positive development of an individual’s psychological state of mind. The positive development of the psychological state of mind is achieved through having higher levels of Hope, Self-Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism often summed up as HERO. Luthans et al (2007) note that these traits are developable. It is critical that different types of employees in an organizational setup are developed in terms of positive psychological build up. This is achieved by building the four states of psychological mindset. Ruderman and Clerkin (2015) note that in developing members of your team, the actions of the leader should depict giving hope to the people under your leadership.

Hope as the first approach to building psychological capital refers to the ability of your team to persevere the conditions and challenges that they face both at work and outside work and align their will to the goals of the organization. Leaders should be at the helm of building hope in their members because without which the team will be disintegrated because individuals will develop a negative attitude towards their whole life due to psychological torture (Story et al, 2013). Ruderman and Clerkin (2015) also assert that efficacy as the second element of building psychological capital refers to the confidence that one as a leader inculcates in his/her team. Building confidence in your team is important because the team members will have the courage to handle tasks that are challenging and to focus their whole efforts in achieving good results. Efficacy can be built in a team by ensuring sufficient communication, encouraging cooperation and cohesion. Teams with a higher level of self-efficacy will always experience much of individual efforts directed toward team goals.  

A motivated team will always be resilient. Resilience is the third element of psychological capital build up. It refers to the ability of a team to always bounce back into action with vigor even after a team experiences a problem that sets them back. Good balance of an individual’s psychological state of mind is necessary to build a team which has the desire to go past what they can achieve even when they face myriads of challenges and setbacks. Constant motivation, communication, and encouragement is critical for creating a resilient team.

A hopeful, efficient, and resilient team is not complete without the ability to remain positive and assess the future in a positive mindset. This is optimism. A psychologically balanced employee looks at the future with optimism and is always focused to make the future of his/her tasks brighter and achievable even when at heart it is evident that the future may have hurdles. Optimism beats boredom as a result of a disturbed state of mind.

Bambale, Kassim and Musa (2016) observe that emotions of leaders at a work environment have direct effects on the employee and outcome of tasks and processes. Emotions are, however, classified either as positive or negative. A positive emotional dispensation is productive in terms of employee performance. Negative emotional dispensation, on the other hand, have negative impacts on employee performance. Leaders who do not appreciate their team effort and are always negative and nagging their subordinates will cultivate negativity in their team members.   

Leaders who are emotive are not keen on the motivation of their subordinate staff. Motivation forms a basic requirement of building emotional intelligence of the employees and their overall psychological state of mind. Employees who are motivated have a higher level of productivity as compared to their unmotivated counterparts. Leaders, therefore, ought to consider having emotional intelligence in themselves in order to determine best approaches of motivating their staff. It is also coherent that leaders understand and treat their employees fairly without a direct show of favor to some group of employees especially those who work in line with the ideologies of the leader.

Communication breakdown and/or misconception is highly likely when a leader is emotional. The breakdown in communication or misconception due to vices such as fear and unapproachability will likely affect task completion and quality. This, therefore, will lead employees lacking in the elements of psychological capital. Employees will lose hope, turn inefficient, lack resilience and finally become insensitive of possibilities of the future, pessimism. Therefore, leaders need to develop emotional intelligence when handling a diversified team of employees in order to achieve a balanced psychological state of being in their employees.

References  

Avey, J. (2014). The Left Side of Psychological Capital. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 21(2), pp.141-149.

Avolio, B.J. and Gardner, W.L., (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. The leadership quarterly, 16(3), pp.315-338.

Bambale, A., Kassim, S. and Musa, L. (2016). Effect of Emotional Leadership on Employee Performance among Staff of Tertiary Institutions in Gombe. Journal of Resources Development and Management, [online] 19(ISSN 2422-8397), pp.23-26. Available at: https://www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/JRDM/article/viewFile/30218/31034 [Accessed 27 Nov. 2018].

Kelloway, E.K., Weigand, H., McKee, M.C. and Das, H., 2013. Positive leadership and employee well-being. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 20(1), pp.107-117.

Leroy, H., Anseel, F., Gardner, W.L. and Sels, L., (2015). Authentic leadership, authentic followership, basic need satisfaction, and work role performance: A cross-level study. Journal of Management, 41(6), pp.1677-1697.

Liao, C., Wayne, S.J., Liden, R.C. and Meuser, J.D., (2017). Idiosyncratic deals and individual effectiveness: The moderating role of leader-member exchange differentiation. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(3), pp.438-450.

Luthans, F., Avolio, B., Avey, J. and Norman, S. (2007). Positive Psychological Capital: Measurement and Relationship with Performance and Satisfaction. Personnel Psychology 60, 60(NE 68588-0491), pp.541-572.

Purvanova, R.K., Bono, J.E. and Dzieweczynski, J., (2006). Transformational leadership, job characteristics, and organizational citizenship performance. Human performance, 19(1), pp.1-22.

Ruderman, M. and Clerkin, C. (2015). Developing Leadership by Building Psychological Capital. [ebook] pp.1-12. Available at: https://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Developing-Leadership-By-Building-Psychological-Capital.pdf [Accessed 27 Nov. 2018].

Story, J., Youssef, C., Luthans, F., Barbuto, J. and Bovaird, J. (2013). Contagion effect of global leaders’ positive psychological capital on followers: does distance and quality of relationship matter? The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(13), pp.2534-2553.

Wang, H., Sui, Y., Luthans, F., Wang, D., and Wu, Y. (2012). Impact of authentic leadership on performance: Role of followers’ positive psychological capital and relational processes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, [online] 35(1), pp.5-21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1850 [Accessed 25 Nov. 2018].

Wang, Y., Chen, C.C., Lu, L., Eisenberger, R. and Fosh, P., (2018). Effects of leader–member exchange and workload on presenteeism. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 33(7/8), pp.511-523.