27 Human Values and Leadership

1.      Learning Outcome

2.      Introduction

3.      Some terms and their meaning

4.      Traits of a good leader

5.      Qualities of a creative leader

6.      Creation of ethical leaders

7.      Leadership in Bhagwad Gita

8.      Leadership of Lord Krishna

9.      Role of leader in the organisation

10.  Summary

1.    Learning Outcome:

After completing this module, the students will be able to:

• Traits of a good leader
• Qualities of a creative leader Creation of ethical leaders Leadership in Bhagwad Gita Leadership of Lord Krishna
• Role of leader in the organisation

2.    Introduction

The growth and future of any organisation hinges in the effectiveness of the leadership in that organisation and this leadership further depends on the infusion of strong value system in that leadership. The efficiency and values of the leaders matters the most in the organisations. Leaders are needed in every business organisation. They are expected to have the technical, interpersonal, conceptual and administrative skills. However, these skills and talents are incomplete unless these are not ethical in approach. The leadership at the top should be committed to the cherished values only then it can further penetrate to the lower levels of hierarchy in the organisation. Therefore, human values are the most important element for a proper leadership. Leaders are needed to exhibit a practice the value based leadership in their actions and thus it helps in building effective and efficient teams for the organisation. The main work of a leader is to lead his or her team so that their performance is best and improved in all manners. Creative leaders are the greatest asset of the organisation. They are proactive and full of solution oriented approach. Creative leaders must be visionary and missionary. Ethical leaders impart values and morals to the functioning of the organisation. That leader is the best who has learnt the art of drawing the different kinds of people towards him and extracting the best from each one according to his qualities and aptitude. Great organisations are built by the great leaders. And the great leaders nurture great values. There is an intricate relationship between vibrant leadership and human values that deeply impacts the organisational decision making and sustainability. A leader has to act as the coach, guide and philosopher for his workers and followers. Another manner to show appreciation is to help people in understanding their own abilities, temperaments and values. Each individual is a unique combination of natural and learned cognitive capabilities. Assessment tools enable people in identifying their skills, temperaments, learning styles and thinking styles. Providing these resources to people will help leader in placing them in the roles where they will be most likely to excel. Leaders need to balance by giving employees time off to attend the urgent needs in their personal lives. Encouraging people to get sufficient rest and relaxation outside work is important part of keeping people from burning out and it helps in stimulating the creativity. People in the creative professions, includes writers, musicians and thought leaders have long recognised the value of rest and relaxation to stimulate their creativity.

3. Some terms and their meaning

Values: The value is the worth of a thing, object or an idea. A value is the belief, mission and philosophy that are meaningful, whether we are consciously aware of them or not, every individual has a core set of personal values. Values can range from the  commonplace  such  as  the  belief  in  hard  work  and  punctuality  to  the  more psychological manner. Each and everything has some kind of value. Values are the basic convictions which are needed in a specific mode of conduct or end state of existence impersonally or socially preferable to an opposite mode of conduct. The values  are  also  known  as  gunas.  Values  as  derived  from  the  India’s  psycho-philosophical  wisdom  literature,  “Values  are  states  of  feelings  or  emotions  that underpin the content of choice or decision and determine the manner of using the intellect or reason for justifying and implementing that choice or decision.”

Value system: A strong value system is must for a strong ethical leadership. When values follow an order in terms of intensity, then it is said to form the value system. It indicates a hierarchy based on ranking of an individual’s values in terms of their intensity. In fact, character is the foundation of all values.

Human values: The human values signify the ideas, actions, and standards which the individuals, organisations and societies find important, desirable and good. They include some concern with human happiness, some with social well-being and some for nurturance. Thus, the word values is intrinsic in nature to human beings during their interaction are identified as human values human values are the sum total of the qualities such as truthfulness, integrity, humbleness, patience, transparency, simplicity, etc.

Leader: A leader is the one who knows that way, shows and walks the way. There is no single trait for the effective leader and no one style is effective in all the situations. The leader must invent him in every situation. Leaders are the ordinary people who are doing extraordinary activities and produce and effective and amazing results.

4. Traits of a good leader

Leaders must have some inbuilt traits in them that help them in the path of leadership. A good leader must have following traits in his personality:

• Visionary Integrity
• Consistency Caring
• Accessibility Flexibility Courage
• Communicate and connect Positive role model
• Inspirational

Moreover, a good leader’s must have some fundamental qualities to lead people. Some of them as follow:

• Equanimity of mind
• Capacity to face adverse situation with strength
• Ability to make the place of work a place of worship Ability to create the environment a corporate family

Thus, it is said that a good leader is also a good reader. Therefore, a leader should always read so that he can lead effectively. A leader should acquire good knowledge of various disciplines, issues and areas which is possible by reading books, reports and other documents. Some eminent leaders like Gandhiji, Nehru, etc. all were good readers. Leader must have its followers also. A person cannot become leader until and unless he has followers. A true leader is of the people, by the people and for the people.

Leaders are different from managers. A leader leads and a manager manages. A leader is much more than a manager. A leader has a vision, values and principles and he relies on ideas and people while manager has operational plans, policies, rules, procedures and he relies on process and system in the organisation. Though all leaders are managers but not all managers are leaders. Managers administer and leaders innovate. Managers’ control and leaders inspire. Leadership and management are closely defined tasks for the betterment of the organisation. Management and leadership move the organisations forward but in different manners. One must inculcate the fine supplementary to each other.

5.   Qualities of a creative leader

Creative leaders are the greatest asset of the organisation. They are proactive and full of solution oriented approach. Creative leaders must be visionary and missionary. For creating a leader of highest creative power, the following four qualities are necessary in a leader:

The yogi- a contemplative man and the quintessential thinker The doer- who execute a plan and idea effectively

A visionary- who have the power to envision future

Transformer- the capability to transform that vision and spiritual dynamism into reality

6. Creation of ethical leaders

Ethical leaders impart values and morals to the functioning of the organisation. That leader is the best who has learnt the art of drawing the different kinds of people towards him and extracting the best from each one according to his qualities and aptitude.

Following are the necessary steps to ethical leading so that the leader can fully lead the organisation in an ethical manner, there is need to establish coherence between the ethical processes and leading sub-processes. It is a four step process that can help in identifying the relationship between the ethics processes and leading sub-processes. These are as follows:

Ethical awareness and leading scanning: Here the leaders become aware about the ethical conduct and begins to devise out the tools for ethical leading. Some of the practices for leading scanning include the stakeholders’ benchmarking of best practices in global and domestic environment.

Ethical judgement and leading formulation and choice: In this stage of ethics; judgement, the leadership develops the leading formulation analysis and choice of the people and processes. The leaders are analysed for the leaders’ traits, skills, conduct and decision making styles.

Ethical intention and leading implementation: Leading implementation entails strengthening of the resources of people and processes through personal selection, performance expectations, appraisal and rewards.

Ethical conduct and leading evaluation and control: These processes include the evaluation, control and improvement of the people and the processes by using a variety of ethics, quality, social, environment audit instruments and performance indicators, etc.

7.  Leadership in Bhagwad Gita

Bhagwad Gita outlines the following methods for the effective leadership:

SAAM (Equality)- Leadership by association, initiating, participating and group decision making. It involves tow way communication, encouraging and welcoming new ideas and positive stroking.

DAAM (Price, Incentive)- Leadership by attraction, by providing right incentives, use restraint in authority, one way communication and in this the decisions are still made by the leaders and they are positive stroking.

DAND (Punishment)- Leadership by direction in detailed instructions on work and methods, one way communication is there and the decisions are also taken by leaders with careful supervision, less concern for emotions and authoritative attitude.

BHED (Division)- Leadership by delegation, handing over of the charge, confidence, in the subordinated. Ability to judge others, right person for the right job. There is regular supervision and the decisions are taken by the subordinates.

8. Leadership of Lord Krishna

The main key elements of the Lord Krishna’s leadership are as follows:

• He knew how to dance and make others dance too Commanding Bhima as per requirements
• Explaining Arjun to rewrite history
• Taking cooperation from Yudhister as a strategy Supporting Nakul and Sahdev in decision making
• He was a warrior, diplomat, dancer, always smiling, secretive, yogi, knowledgeable, just , kind, protector, sarathii, ruthless, and negotiator, all in one.
• Lord Krishna is known for the effective leadership whereas Lord Rama is known for efficient leadership.

9.    Role of leader in the organisation

Great organisations are built by the great leaders. And the great leaders nurture great values. There is an intricate relationship between vibrant leadership and human values that deeply impacts the organisational decision making and sustainability. The major role of any leader in an organisation is explained as below:

Help employees understand their basic needs: All human beings have a set of needs. People have various psychological needs that they expect to be achieved in the life such as respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth and meaning.

When these needs are met in the workplace, employees are satisfied and the organisation thrives. Employees who understand these needs can be on the lookout for ways to meet them and thereby boost their own performance and that of their teammates.

Establishing connection with as many people as possible: Leaders are responsible for effective human resource development of the organisation. Leaders need to acknowledge individuals. Unfriendly behavior only communicates that something is not worth acknowledging. There’s no easier way to help people feel respected, recognised and that they belong to the community than to learn about them and use their names when you speak with them. Ehen leaders model this behaviour, others will follow suit. If you lead a large number of people you can make connections through little things such as maintaining eye contact, say something and acknowledging what someone says to you. To facilitate widespread connections, leaders should make it known that it is okay to take a reasonable amount of time to get to know one another and to get to know your customers.

Treat and speak to employees as partners in business: A leader has to see his employees as his partners in the task of organisational development and effectiveness. In all your interactions with people below you in your organisations’ hierarchy treat them as equals rather than as inferiors.

Help employees in finding the right roles and innovating the self: A leader has to act as the coach, guide and philosopher for his workers and followers. Another manner to show appreciation is to help people in understanding their own abilities, temperaments and values. Each individual is a unique combination of natural and learned cognitive capabilities. Assessment tools enable people in identifying their skills, temperaments, learning styles and thinking styles. Providing these resources to people will help leader in placing them in the roles where they will be most likely to excel.

Educate, guide, coach, inform and listen to employees: Leaders help his people in acquiring  skills,  knowledge  and  traits.  Educating,  information  and  listening  to employees enhance their sense of value. As a leader, if you don’t let people know what you are thinking, if you don’t inform them and hear their view points, then they will definitely assume the worst. When people can’t see the direction in which they are moving then this leads to anxiety. On contrary, when the employees are informed about and are listened then they will be grateful that you recognise them and value their ideas and opinions.

Decentralise the decision making process: A leader decentralised but keeps the responsibilities and accountability with them. Allowing people to make decisions shows them that you respect their abilities and judgement and hat you value them. Companies have learned from experience that decentralised decision making improves morale by giving more control to employees. It also improves the effectiveness when the decisions are made by the people who are closest to the relevant information.

Recognition of work-life balance: A great leader should be of caring and sharing nature. We all have times when thing outside work requires our undivided attention. It may be the health of a loved one or our own health. Leaders need to balance by giving employees time off to attend the urgent needs in their personal lives. Encouraging people to get sufficient rest and relaxation outside work is important part of keeping people from burning out and it helps in stimulating the creativity. People in the creative professions, includes writers, musicians and thought leaders have long recognised the value of rest and relaxation to stimulate their creativity.

10.  Summary

The growth and future of any organisation hinges in the effectiveness of the leadership in that organisation and this leadership further depends on the infusion of strong value system in that leadership. The efficiency and values of the leaders matters the most in the organisations. Leaders are needed in every business organisation. They are expected to have the technical, interpersonal, conceptual and administrative skills. However, these skills and talents are incomplete unless these are not ethical in approach. The leadership at the top should be committed to the cherished values only then it can further penetrate to the lower levels of hierarchy in the organisation. Therefore, human values are the most important element for a proper leadership. Leaders are needed to exhibit a practice the value based leadership in their actions and thus it helps in building effective and efficient teams for the organisation. The main work of a leader is to lead his or her team so that their performance is best and improved in all manners. The value is the worth of a thing, object or an idea. A value is the belief, mission and philosophy that are meaningful, whether we are consciously aware of them or not, every individual has a core set of personal values. Values can range from the commonplace such as the belief in hard work and punctuality to the more psychological manner. Each and everything has some kind of value. A strong value system is must for a strong ethical leadership. When values follow an order in terms of intensity, then it is said to form the value system. It indicates a hierarchy based on ranking of an individual’s values in terms of their intensity. In fact, character is the foundation of all values. A leader is the one who knows that way, shows and walks the way. There is no single trait for the effective leader and no one style is effective in all the situations. The leader must invent him in every situation. Leaders are the ordinary people who are doing extraordinary activities and produce and effective and amazing results. Thus, it is said that a good leader is also a good reader. Therefore, a leader should always read so that he can lead effectively. A leader should acquire good knowledge of various disciplines, issues and areas which is possible by reading books, reports and other documents. Some eminent leaders like Gandhiji, Nehru, etc. all were good readers. Leader must have its followers also. A person cannot become leader until and unless he has followers. A true leader is of the people, by the people and for the people. Leaders help his people in acquiring skills, knowledge and traits. Educating, information and listening to employees enhance their sense of value. As a leader, if you don’t let people know what you are thinking, if you don’t inform them and hear their view points, then they will definitely assume the worst. When people can’t see the direction in which they are moving then this leads to anxiety. On contrary, when the employees are informed about and are listened then they will be grateful that you recognise them and value their ideas and opinions. It also improves the effectiveness when the decisions are made by the people who are closest to the relevant information.

Suggested readings and references

• Pramod Sharma, “Business Ethics and Corporate Values: An Indian Perspective”,Ravintanaya Publications, Shimla
• S.K. Bhatia, “Business Ethics and Corporate Governance” Deep & Deep Publications,New Delhi
• A.C. Fernando, “Business Ethics and Corporate Governance” Pearson Publications
• SB Gogate, “Human Values & Professional Ethics”, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi.
• Harris & Hartman, “Organizational Behavior” Jaico Publication House, 2002