Military Leader Demand Respect Analysis

Should a military leader demand respect or should it be gained? Discuss.

First of all, we need to understand the definition of leader. Leader is someone that can lead his men and even control them. The roles of leader were broad as many things he needs to look after for example the welfare of his men and so on. In terms of respect, it can be gain or it can be naturally. It depends on how the leader express theirself to their men. You’ve got to give it to get it. Gaining respect is a process. You must first build rapport, then develop a relationship — before you get mutual respect. People won’t trust anyone they don’t respect first. Respect is not something that you demand — it is something that you earn — one person at a time. Much
has been written about the “Secret — The Law of Attraction.”1 The secret is — there is no secret. You get back what you give out.

People are reciprocal by nature. Tough decisions carry risks and inevitably not everyone on your team is going to agree with the decisions you make. Handling uncomfortable situations can be difficult — but if you have developed a relationship and established trust with your people — they will take a leap of faith knowing that you have their best interests in mind. No one will trust anyone with whom they haven’t built a relationship with first.

The moral triumphs and failures of leaders carry a greater weight and volume than those of nonleaders (Ciulla, 2003b)2. In leadership we see morality magnified, and that is why the study of ethics is fundamental to our understanding of leadership. The study of ethics is about human relationships. It is about what we should do and what we should be like as human beings, as members of a group or society, and in the different roles that we play in life. It is about right and wrong and good and evil. Leadership is a particular type of human relationship. Some hallmarks of this relationship are power and/or influence, vision, obligation, and responsibility. By understanding the ethics of this relationship, we gain a better understanding of leadership, because some of the central issues in ethics are also the central issues of leadership. They include the personal challenges of authenticity, self-interest, and self-discipline, and moral obligations related to justice, duty, competence, and the greatest good. Some of the most perceptive work on leadership and ethics comes from old texts and is out there waiting to be rediscovered and reapplied. History is filled with wisdom and case studies on the morality of leaders and leadership. Ancient scholars from the East and West offer insights that enable us to understand leadership and formulate contemporary research questions in new ways. History and philosophy provide perspective on the subject and reveal certain patterns of leadership behavior and themes about leadership and morality that have existed over time. They remind us that some of the basic issues concerning the nature of leadership are inextricably tied to the human condition.

This is not to say that prominent leadership scholars have ignored the subject or failed to see the importance of ethics to leadership. What I am saying is that philosophers who specialize in ethics see their subject differently than do social scientists. Studies of charismatic, transformational, and visionary leadership often talk about ethics. In these studies, ethics is part of the social scientist’s description of types or qualities of leaders and/or leader behaviors. From a philosopher’s point of view, these studies offer useful empirical descriptions, but they do not offer detailed critical analysis of the ethics of leadership. The study of ethics in any field, such as business or law, also serves as a critical theory. Philosophers usually question most of the assumptions in the field .My point here is not that philosophy is better than the social sciences, but that it brings out different aspects of leadership by employing different methods of analysis. If we are to gain an understanding of ethics and leadership, we will need both kinds of research and analysis.

.Many things have changed in leadership studies since the early 1990s. Several initiatives are afoot to pull research together. The “full-range leadership theory” consolidates research on transformational and charismatic leadership theories and research with empirical findings on leadership behaviors (Antonakis & House, 2002)3. Also, more scholars from the humanities have entered the field, and more leadership scholars are doing interdisciplinary work. This is a substantial development because the humanities give us a different kind of knowledge than do the sciences and social sciences. The humanities provide a larger context in which we can synthesize what we know about leadership. This context also shows us patterns of leadership that we can use to analyze contemporary problems. The challenge for today’s leadership scholars is how to bring the two together. As C. P. Snow noted in his famous 1959 Rede lecture, there are “two cultures” of scholars, the humanities and the natural sciences.He said the sciences provide us with descriptions and explanations, but we need the humanities for understanding (Snow, 1998). Similarly, in 1962 Bennis observed that the science part of social science is not about the data the scientists produce, “nor is it barren operationalism—what some people refer to as ‘scientism’ or the gadgetry used for laboratory work. Rather it is what may be called the ‘scientific temper’ or ‘spirit’” (Bennis, 2002, pp. 4–5)4. The temper and spirit of science include freedom and democratic values. Whereas the quantity of research that focuses solely on ethics and leadership is still very small, this perspective on leadership is already changing the way some traditional social scientists think about their work.

Whereas some of the leadership studies literature offers descriptive accounts of ethics, other parts of the literature treat ethics as an exhortation rather than an indepth exploration of the subject.
Researchers often tell us that leaders should be honest, have integrity, and so forth. For example, John Gardner makes his plea for ethical leaders in his working paper “The Moral Aspect of Leadership,” later published in his book On Leadership (Gardner, 1987). In the chapter titled “The Moral Dimension of Leadership,” Gardner began by categorizing the different kinds of bad leaders, or what he called transgressors, that we find in history. He said some leaders are cruel to their subjects; some encourage their subjects to be cruel to others; some motivate their subjects by playing on the cruelty of their subjects; some render their followers childlike and dependent; and some destroy processes that societies have set up to preserve freedom, justice, and human dignity (Gardner, 1990, pp. 67–68). Gardner picks an important and provocative place to start a discussion on ethics and leadership. However, he never takes us much beyond
the
“leaders shouldn’t be like this” phase of analysis. When Gardner does get to the meat of the chapter, he offers a series of eloquent and inspiring exhortations on the importance of caring, responsive leaders and empowering leaders who serve the common good. He does not tell us anything we do not already know, but he says it beautifully: “We should hope that our leaders will keep alive values that are not so easy to embed in laws—our caring for others, about honor and integrity, about tolerance and mutual respect, and about human fulfillment within a framework of values” (Gardner, 1990, p. 77)5.

Leadership scholars often concern themselves with the problem of defining leadership. Some believe that if they could only agree on a common definition of leadership, they would be better able to understand it. This really does not make sense, because scholars in history, biology, and other subjects do not all agree on the definition of their subject, and, even if they did, it would not help them to understand it better. Furthermore, scholars do not determine the meaning of a word for the general public. Would it make sense to have an academic definition that did not agree with the way ordinary people understood the word? Social scientists sometimes limit the definition of a term so that they can use it in a study. Generally, the way people in a culture use a word and think about it determines the meaning of a word (Wittgenstein, 1968). The denotation of the word leadership stays basically the same in English. Even though people apply the term differently, all English-speaking leadership scholars know what the word means. Slight variations in its meaning tell us about the values, practices, and paradigms of leadership in a certain place and at a certain time.

History defines successful leaders largely in terms of their ability to bring about change for better or worse. As a result, great leaders in history include everyone from Gandhi to Hitler. Machiavelli was disgusted by Cesare Borgia the man, but impressed by Borgia as the resolute, ferocious, and cunning prince (Prezzolini, 1928, p. 11).Whereas leaders usually bring about change or are successful at doing something, the ethical questions waiting in the wings are the ones found in the various definitions mentioned earlier. In my own work, I have argued that a good leader is an ethical and an effective leader (Ciulla, 1995).Whereas this may seem like stating the obvious, the problem we face is that we do not always find ethics and effectiveness in the same leader. Some leaders are highly ethical but not very effective. Others are very effective at serving the needs of their constituents or organizations but not very ethical. U.S. Senator Trent This distinction between ethics and effectiveness is not always a crisp one. Sometimes being ethical is being effective and sometimes being effective is being ethical. In other words, ethics is effectiveness in certain instances. There are times when simply being regarded as ethical and trustworthy makes a leader effective and other times when being highly effective makes a leader ethical. Given the limited power and resources of the secretary-general of the United Nations, it would be very difficult for someone in this position to be effective in the job if he or she did not behave ethically. The same is true for organizations. In the famous Tylenol case, Johnson & Johnson actually increased sales of Tylenol by pulling Tylenol bottles off their shelves after someone poisoned some of them. The leaders at Johnson & Johnson were effective because they were ethical. The criteria that we use to judge the effectiveness of a leader are also not morally neutral. For a while, Wall Street and the business press lionized Al Dunlap (“Chainsaw Al”) as a great business leader. Their admiration was based on his ability to downsize a company and raise the price of its stock. Dunlop apparently knew little about the nuts and bolts of running a business. When he failed to deliver profits at Sunbeam, he tried to cover up his losses and was fired. In this case and in many business cases, the criteria for effectiveness are practically and morally limited. It does not take great skill to get rid of employees, and taking away a person’s livelihood requires a moral and a practical argument. Also, one of the most striking aspects of professional ethics is that often what seems right in the short run is not right in the long run or what seems right for a group or organization is not right when placed in a broader context. For example,Mafia families may have very strong internal ethical systems, but they are highly unethical in any larger context of society. There are also cases when the sheer competence of a leader has a moral impact. For example, there were many examples of heroism in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The most inspiring and frequently cited were the altruistic acts of rescue workers. Yet consider the case of Alan S.Weil, whose law firm Sidley, Austin, Brown, & Wood occupied five floors of the World Trade Center. Immediately after watching the Trade Center towers fall to the ground and checking to see if his employees got out safely, Weil got on the phone and within 3 hours had rented four floors of another building for his employees. By the end of the day he had arranged for an immediate delivery of 800 desks and 300 computers. The next day the firm was open for business with desks for almost every employee (Schwartz, 2001)6. We do not know if Mr. Weil’s motives were altruistic or avaricious, but his focus on doing his job allowed the firm to fulfill its obligations to all of its stakeholders, from clients to employees. On the flip side of the ethics effectiveness continuum are situations where it is difficult to tell whether a leader is unethical, incompetent, or stupid.As Price (2000) has argued, the moral failures of leaders are not always intentional. Sometimes moral failures are cognitive and sometimes they are normative (Price, 2000)

Those above theories and examples from several researchers were some of the example of what leadership means and how they should earn respect. In relation to military, sometimes not all can applicable as we all know that military is one organization that is differ from certain organizations especially civilians. Civilians would not understand what we do and so on. However, based from experiences, as an officer, we should lead by example in order to earn respect. By doing the same work or thing like what our men do, we will know even better and not easily be monopoly by them.

Last, leadership scholars have just begun to scratch the surface of other disciplines.
History, philosophy, anthropology, literature, and religion all promise to expand our understanding of leaders and leadership. Ancient writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Lao-tzu, and Confucius not only tell us about leadership, they also capture our imaginations. What makes a classic a classic is that its message carries themes and values that are meaningful to people from different cultures and different periods of history. They offer well-grounded ideas about who we are, what we should be like, and how we should live. These ideas will help us understand current empirical research on leadership and generate new ideas for research. In my own work, I have begun to research the history of the idea of leadership. Where did the idea of leadership come from and how has it evolved in various cultures to the way that we think about it today? To really understand leadership, we need to put our ear to the ground of history and listen carefully to the saga of human hopes, desires, and aspirations, and the follies, disappointments, and triumphs of those who led and those who followed them. As Confucius once said, “A man who reviews the old as to find out the new is qualified to teach
others.”7

References

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