Authentic Leadership

This type of leadership originated in the 1960s as a way of describing how different organization reflects their authenticity in delivering their services. Authentic leadership is a kind of leadership that involves building the legitimacy of leaders through the honest and pure relationship with the members/followers who give value to their input and have an ethical foundation background (Gardner et al 2011). This kind of authentic leaders are said to be positive and demonstrates truthful self-concepts assuring and promote openness.

Through trust building and enthusiastic support generating from their subordinates, authentic leaders have the capability to improve both individual and team performance such an approach has been embraced by the number of leaders and leadership coaches who comprehend the authentic leadership as the model of leadership which emphasize profit and sharing of price over people and ethics. This kind of leadership is a growing area of study in academic research in which most authors have found it to be an interesting and involving type of leadership (Rego et al 2012).

This is a type of leadership in which the leaders form two groups which include; an in-group and an out-group. The in-group members are offered more responsibilities, high number of rewards and a lot of attention. The out-group members have less latitude in their roles with less attention and fewer rewards allocated to this group (Pellegrini et al 2010).The Leader-member exchange leadership gives the suggestion that leaders should develop an exchange in their duties with their subordinates. This suggestion influences the subordinates’ responsibility, decisions making, and gives access to resources and performance (Avey, Reichard, Luthans & Mhatre 2011). Through such implementation, positive-employee experiences are promoted hence making it easy for the managers while replacing predecessors in the organization.

In the latest version of the leader-member exchange, an explanation is given on how the vertical dyadic-workplace has influenced and affected performance in both self-selection of the apprenticeships in the leadership. The apprentices who completely finish the program are said to have attained strong emotional attachments. This reflects their description in relation to others and trust in character. Such positive characters attained assure how productive the apprentices will be to the organization/companies (Ladkin & Taylor 2010).

Psychological capital is defined as a positive and developmental individual condition characterized by optimism, hope and high efficacy. Employees’ psychological capital has been conceptually and empirically demonstrated to have a relationship with the performance of the employees (Giallonardo et al 2010). However, the great part of this work has relied on cross-section designs in examining these relationships. The study has been using longitudinal Data from the large financial service companies/organization in their research.

Leader-member Exchange Leadership

Latent-growth modeling discovered the statically significant change of individual in the overtime of psychological capital. The change was compared and related to change in two types of performance outcomes namely; supervisor-related performance and financial performance. In combination, these results give a highlight on the employees’ psychological capital impact on a subjectively and objectively measured performance over a duration of time. The evidence was given on practical guideline based on the selection by the human resource, development and performance management. In general, the psychological capital demonstrates its importance in performance by providing additive value to more established positive-behaviors of the employees (Ladkin & Taylor 2010).

Psychological capital generally tries to give understanding on how the human and social capital affects competitive advantage through investment. In building psychological capital for different employees a physiological capital measurements are obtained. This helps in describing the status of different employees (Walumbwa, Mayer, D. M., Wang, Workman, & Christensen, 2011). The Psychological capital questionnaire is one of the valued and widely recognized scale for Psychological capital (PsyCap) measuring. PCQ is designed as a wide measure involving items from published scales which consist of; optimism, resilience, hope, and self-efficacy. PCQ can be used in workers and managers samples with its items tied to the workplace (Çetin 2011).

The concept of psychological capital is said to be equally valued and of greater importance for coaches and leaders. There are four major components of PsyCap which describes how organizations can build the PsyCap in their employees. The components include; hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism (Bouckenooghe et al 2015).

A hopeful thought reflects that belief of finding pathways towards desired goals and attains motivation in implementing those pathways. Hence, hope helps individual in finding willpower and way power which leads to positive emotions making someone attains and meet the desired goals. Hope is developed and by implementing and enriching several components. For one to attain hope should involve goal setting and perceived ability as the concept of hope is completely based on what an individual wants to achieve (Bouckenooghe et al 2015). The goals should be measurable, specific, attainable and time-based.in an organization the goals should be less complex for the employees to achieve. Also gaining hope one should be motivated. This keeps someone strong and focused even when some pressure tries to divert him/her from achieving (Vigoda?Gadot & Meisler 2010).

Self-efficacy describes how people believe in their capabilities with the aim to produce a positive result. The level of confidence and effort toward success is determined by how one feel, think and motivates her/himself hence. The higher the efficacy expectancy the harder the person appears towards achieving desired goals. In strengthening the efficacy one should focus on past success and experiences which act as the best way of increasing the level of self-efficacy. Through this individuals appreciate success made in past rather than imagining (Simons & Buitendach 2013).

Psychological Capital and its Four Major Components

Copying other people positive actions also aids in boosting the level of efficacy. Employees may copy those related tasks undertaken by other employees in or outside the company hence improving their methods of goal achievements. Such imitation helps employees to improve their efficacy. Leaders should create situations for success (social persuasion) of their employees which also improves the self-efficacy. Such situations are created by placing employees in places where they are likely to perform better. Some leaders ignore this and place their employees in premature situations which result in failure. Self –efficacy can also be promoted by reframing negative experience. This re-energize employees’ capability and help them in absorbing tension and stress created within the task solving process (Vigoda?Gadot & Meisler 2010).

This is said to be the capacity to rise again from adversity and become stronger from overcoming negative events. Some task in an organization may create the negative condition for the employees and with resilience one is capable to stand again and focus on achieving the goals. For an employee to develop resilience he/she should be prepared to face and accept reality. Employees should stop imaging of positive success and try to deal with the current situation which helps someone in absorbing pressure created negative results (Simons & Buitendach 2013). Also searching for meaning when facing a fate that cannot be changed develops resilience in employees. Such aspects help someone get the purpose for everything rather than always complaining about the failure.

Being improvise also strengthen one’s resilience. With this one has the ability to deal with the current situation with whatever he/she has at hand. Improvise should be greatly demonstrated by leaders as they are the role models for their employees (Vigoda?Gadot & Meisler 2010).

This can be defined as a positive quality making process that aids achieving success currently and days to come (future). Individuals with a low control external locus tend to internalize events and obtain the credit as they believe that for a good thing to occur one should work for it. Optimists believe that good things will be obtained in their future no matter what occurs.

Optimism can be developed by exercising towards approval, appreciating the current moments and viewing the future as the source of opportunity. The way employees assess past events have a major effect on future prediction making process. Optimism is a technique that helps coaches, employees and leaders in achieving vision-change and should be implemented in therapy and coaching session (Vigoda?Gadot & Meisler 2010).

Building Psychological Capital for Employees

The above-discussed concepts of psychological capital help in building psychological capital for various employees in an organization.

Administrative employees are those workers who offer supervision of an organization and they also help in organizing and planning routine duties. Professional employees are those that undertake the specified professional activity and have knowledge and skills required to undertake their specified role. In building the psychological capital for both employees there should be the difference in the way of achieving the four concepts of psychological capital. In building hope and efficacy, professional employees should be given less complicated condition compared with the administrative employee (Walumbwa et al 2011).This is because the duties carried out by the professional employee may vary with time. For the administrative employee the tasks almost remain constant hence it may be more complicated in setting fixed goals for the professional employee than in administrative employees.

Resilience and optimism play a key role in the psychological capital of these employees. Resilience as discussed above it aid in overcoming a negative impact. Taking an example for an organization that deals with system management and repair, professional and administrative employees are to show resilience in their work. Developing resilience for these employees differs (Bouckenooghe et al 2015).In such an organization the professional employee may be one who repairs the whole system in case of the failure while the administrative employee gives an outlook on the work done. Hence, to attain and build resilience the professional employee should be given a big allowance compared with the administrative. This because it takes time for the professional employee to identify the major cause of the failure while the other employee only needed to administer the work (Bakker 2011).

Administrative and professional employees can also be described using their ethnicity which is a social group with a common and distinctive culture. When developing the psychological capital when ethnicity affects the administrative and professional sectors, the organization should consider the employees’ social character. Taking an example of Muslims and Christianity, the two gives thanks to their God on different days hence their social beliefs should be valued by the organization (Walumbwa et al 2011). This will uplift that self-belonging to the company and as a way of appreciation, they deliver toward the company goals achievement in full. Generally, this boosts both hope and efficacy (Avey, Reichard, Luthans & Mhatre 2011). The company also should not favor some group of people due to their ethnicity hence every employee should be exposed to an equal and fair working condition. Some companies have declined financially and service offering as they have been affected by ethnicity discrimination.

Administrative and professional employees can also be grouped on basis of white and blue jobs. This defines the condition of professional and administrative employees on basis of wages where those taking hard jobs are les paid (professional employees). In blue collar jobs, the employees perform the job manually and get an hourly or daily age which is based on the performance of the work while white-collar employees do clerical work and draw the monthly salary at a fixed rate (Bouckenooghe et al 2015). Trying to understand the two types of employees there is a big difference in their working background and exposures hence a better method should be used in building their psychological capital.

Emotion can be said to be either negative or positive. Negative emotion in employees will result to decline in the organization while positive emotions promote growth in the companies. The kind of the emotions in the employees is determined by the way the organization treats them and kind of working condition provided to them by the organization (Delgado?García & De La Fuente?Sabaté 2010). Some organization tends to mistreat and underpay their employees which leads to low performance in their works. Other companies discriminate against some employees due to their ethnicity which also affects emotions negatively. To influence an employee’s emotions positively, fair and considering working conditions should exist in an organization. This will lead to a positive impact on the workers and in general the entire organization. Well treated employees are less affected emotionally hence they give their best to every task they undertake in the organization. Generally, emotion can be said to have either a positive or negative impact towards the performance of the employees (Bakker 2011).

For those successful organization, the employees are treated equally on the basis of their level .Also the relationship between different employees is well described in such an organization where everyone is expected to respect the other despite their working-class. The relationship among employees also determines the kind of emotion created in them, therefore, a well and respectable relationship facilitate collaboration and high performance in the whole organization (Delgado?García & De La Fuente?Sabaté 2010).

Generally, motivation affects all the four components of the physiological capital in all the employees. For example, for hope to be build the employees should be motivated towards the company goals and achievements. For self-efficacy to be strong one is needed to have that motivation which aids him in accepting whatever the effect and rectifies on the task mistake.

Conclusion

Much existing organization tends to put a lot of pressure on leadership forgetting about the psychological capital condition of the employees. The growth of an organization is determined by the kind of leadership and psychological capital in the employees. An organization may choose either authentic leadership or Leader-member exchange leadership but what matters is the kind of performance it effects on the organization performance. Shifting from one leadership to another may sometimes be of good use in trying to check which type of leadership favors your organization in its performance (Walumbwa et al 2011).. Each type of leadership has its own privileges and disadvantage and also affects different organization different as it may be ruin to a certain organization and at the same time be productive for another organization. For example, Leader-member exchange leadership makes it easy for the managers when replacing different appreciates as everyone has an idea about different departments.

References

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