MGMT8270 Chap.6 Ethical, Authentic and Servant Leadership
Ethical, Authentic and Servant Leadership
Three moral approaches
Week 6 groups ethical, authentic and servant leadership as moral approaches. Ethical leadership involves ethical discussion, weighing consequences, setting and reinforcing standards, and behaving appropriately for the context.
Five ethical perspectives, deontology, utilitarianism, relativism, virtue ethics and the ethics of care, supply the standards themselves.
Authenticity, service and coaching
The chapter compares definitions of authentic leadership, its four dimensions, and the sixteen-item inventory used to measure it, along with a social constructivist critique.
It defines servant leadership, its seven dimensions and the signalling chain that decides whether service is recognised, illustrated by an airline that avoided layoffs in a crisis.
It ends with coaching tools, especially GROW, applied to your Development Plan.
Why the moral approaches matter for your work
The Team Presentation must address ethical considerations, and the five perspectives give you a vocabulary for doing that with precision rather than general appeals to doing the right thing.
The authentic leadership scale and its critique are useful material for a reflective task, and GROW gives your Development Plan a ready-made structure for its feedback conversations.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Four dimensions of ethical leadership
- 02
Deontology, utilitarianism and relativism
- 03
Virtue ethics and the ethics of care
- 04
Definitions of authentic leadership
- 05
Measuring authentic leadership
- 06
Servant leadership and its dimensions
- 07
Signals of servant leadership
- 08
Coaching with GROW, OSKAR, FUEL and CLEAR
Worked example · free
Judging a redundancy decision through two ethical lenses
- 1Utilitarianism judges by outcomes: it asks which option produces the greatest overall good and least suffering across all 420 people.
- 1Its known weakness applies here: it can justify harming the 20 regional staff if the total outcome looks better.
- 1The ethics of care judges by relationships and responsiveness to those affected, so it asks what each option does to the people closest to the decision.
- 1Its weakness is a bias towards one's own circle, so the leader should check that care for the regional team does not ignore the wider workforce.
Key terms
- Ethics of Care
- An ethical perspective grounding right action in caring relationships and responsiveness to others' needs.
- Balanced Processing
- The authentic leadership dimension of seeking views that challenge your own before deciding.
- Relational Transparency
- The authentic leadership dimension of sharing information openly and admitting mistakes.
- Servant Leadership
- An other-oriented approach that prioritises each follower's needs and turns concern from self to others and the community.
- GROW Model
- A coaching sequence of goal, reality, options and will that leads a person to commit to action.
Ethical, Authentic and Servant Leadership FAQ
What is the difference between ethical, authentic and servant leadership?
In the seminar's summary, ethical leadership is guided by the norms of the group, authentic leadership by your own moral compass, and servant leadership by the needs of those affected. All three share an ethical core.
What are the four dimensions of authentic leadership?
Self-awareness, relational transparency, an internalised moral perspective and balanced processing. The sixteen-item inventory measures each with four items, and the course asks what such a scale misses and whom it overlooks.
Why does servant leadership sometimes fail to pay off?
Because followers have to recognise the service. Serving that is invisible costs the leader without building trust; observable, costly and repeated service is what makes the signal credible.
Which coaching model should I use?
GROW suits a clear goal and readiness to act; OSKAR suits quick, solution-focused wins; FUEL suits complex situations needing context first; CLEAR suits emotionally charged situations where trust comes before action.
Can authentic leadership be measured fairly?
The course uses a sixteen-item inventory with four items per dimension, but asks you to question it. A scale may miss what matters in some cultures or roles, and being seen as authentic may be easier for some people than others, since others help decide who counts as genuine.
Assessment move
Take one decision you made recently, judge it through each of the five ethical perspectives in one sentence apiece, and note which perspective you actually used at the time. Then rate a leader you know on the four authentic leadership dimensions and note one way the scale might misjudge them.
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