Ethical Values Are Good For Business (Part 6)

By Linda Fisher Thornton

In Part 1 of this series “Ethical Values Are Good For Business” I shared the importance of clearing up the confusion employees have in balancing ethical values with bottom line profitability. In Part 2, we looked at the importance of aligning strategy with the organization’s values. Part 3 addressed the senior leader’s important role, and Part 4 looked at using values to guide us in challenging times. Part 5 dug into the trends fueling the values-based leadership movement and their business impact. Today in Part 6 we’ll explore helping leaders grow into the kind of leadership needed for the future.

Only If Leaders Stretch and Grow

Ethical values can drive positive business results, but only if leaders continually learn and apply better leadership, and stretch to grow. With the bar for expected leadership set so high, it will be a continual career-long stretch for our leaders. But leaders shouldn’t be scared off by this, because taking this journey also provides a deep sense of meaning, satisfaction and making a positive difference.

The Leader of the Future is a globally aware, fast-learning, socially and financially responsible leader with amazing digital skills and social media savvy, who is agile, resilient and collaborative, demonstrates exceptional thinking skills, deals well with uncertainty, has connections across disciplines, synthesizes information easily to find meaning, learns quickly and continually, adapts to solving new and complex problems and meeting competing demands, is environmentally responsible, open and transparent, internationally mobile, with a global view and local cultural sensitivity, who cares about others, behaves and leads ethically, holds people accountable while helping to develop their leadership potential, serves as a change agent promoting responsible leadership, values differences, and engages diverse collections of employees, customers and communities in a common purpose.
Linda Fisher Thornton, in Business Leader Future: A Sketch

If you are committed to this vision, learn how to lead this way in the book 7 Lenses: Learning the Principles and Practices of Ethical Leadership. It includes life-changing insights (as reported by readers) into how to think through challenging ethical situations, and how to apply 14 Guiding Principles of ethical leadership in everyday leadership. If you find this resource helpful, bring your leadership team along so everyone is using this kind of positive and deeply impactful leadership.

An Executive Book Club Discussion Guide is available Here.