By Linda Fisher Thornton I was weeding in the garden this week, and I discovered two new weeds that were taller than I was. I started thinking about how quickly things can get away from us, in the garden and in our organizations. There are things we must do to build a high trust workplace. But there are equally important things that we must prevent or weed out for trust to flourish.
Blog
Ethics Isn’t Finite: It’s Evolving
By Linda Fisher Thornton As we strive to build ethical organizations, we must remember that our target is moving. As the world changes, ethical expectations change. It would be easier to develop ethical leaders and build ethical organizations if ethics were a fixed destination. A point on the map. A line in the sand. But it's just not that simple. Ethical expectations are evolving.
Ethics Isn’t “Out There”: It’s Us And Our Choices
By Linda Fisher Thornton Much attention is paid to the tactics of ethics - the ethics codes, compliance plans and such. We can easily begin to think that ethics is something we can see and touch. Something finite. Something written in stone. Something outside of ourselves. But that's not where ethics lives.
The Trouble With Oversimplified Conversations
By Linda Fisher Thornton Sometimes in the rush to make a quick leadership decision, we end up "dumbing down" an issue to speed up the process. "Dumbing down" an issue may make the decision easier to make, but it may also lead us to make choices without considering current information, trends or context. Decisions made that way can cause problems.
250th Blog Post: Beyond the Comfort Zone
By Linda Fisher Thornton In the 200th Leading in Context Blog Post, I wrote about Learning at the Speed of Life. To celebrate the 250th post, I want to reflect on what it's been like to work every day in the stretch beyond the comfort zone.
Can a Toxic Leader Be Ethical? Yes and No.
"Can someone who uses toxic leadership still be an ethical leader?"The answer to this important question is "yes and no."
5 Leadership Development Priorities
By Linda Fisher Thornton The recent post "It's Not About Us" was the most popular post of all time on the Leading in Context Blog. It described how our understanding of leadership has moved beyond a focus on the leader to a focus on creating shared value for others.
Ethics is Contagious
By Linda Fisher Thornton I must admit that I can't take the credit for coming up with the catchy title of this post. A group of attendees at a recent keynote I delivered came up with it as a way to describe what they had learned. And it makes perfect sense. Ethics is catching, and leaders set the tone for the ethics of the organization. What would happen if everyone in the organization followed our lead? Would the organization be more or less ethical? What kind of ethics are people catching as they work in our organization?
Well-Being is Trending
By Linda Fisher Thornton Have you noticed that well-being is trending? It's not enough to provide fair pay and good work conditions any more. People want to participate in something meaningful and work in high-trust cultures where they can flourish. They seek out companies that care about their well-being.
Got Ethics? Are You Positive?
In spite of all the bad news you see in the media about ethics, we don't build ethical cultures by focusing on the negative. Let's face it - thinking about fraud, embezzlement and conflict of interest won't make us better leaders. But that's what many of us are focusing on in our organizations.
It’s Not About Us
By Linda Fisher Thornton You may have noticed that people's expectations of us as leaders have increased exponentially. Consumers are choosing companies that care about their well-being. Employees are choosing companies that do meaningful work and give back to the community. To survive in this new land where ethics is key to success, we must confront the situation with a clear realization that it is not all about us. As leaders, we are not the center of the universe.
Case Study: Overwhelmed
Have you ever gone to your manager to ask for help prioritizing your tasks? Usually we try to avoid it, and do it as a last resort, when we are overwhelmed. It may surprise you to know that how they answer gives us a clue about their ethics and values.
In Conversation About Ethics
By Linda Fisher Thornton This week Realizing Leadership: Everyday Leaders Changing Our World published a cover story interview with Laurie Wilhelm. We talked about what ethical leadership really means, how ethics and trust are related, and how leaders can learn to be more ethical from wherever they are.
Making Decisions Like Global Citizens
By Linda Fisher Thornton Character is important, but leading ethically in the fullest sense requires much more than just demonstrate good character. In this 2 minute video, I describe 7 different perspectives that you may be hearing around the table as you discuss ethical dilemmas in your organization. Instead of being competing perspectives, each one is an important element of the full picture of what it means to lead ethically in a global society.
How Do We Achieve Corporate Integrity?
By Linda Fisher Thornton In the quest for corporate integrity, we must do a number of things well. We need to have clear expectations for what ethical leadership looks like in our organization; we need a congruent system for managing ethics that sends a consistent message; and we need a clear message about what taking responsibility for ethics really means to us. There is an ethics trend away from a "push" mentality when it comes to learning about ethics (making people do it) to a "pull" mentality (making it positive so that people will want to do it). Taking on that "pull mentality" involves creating a positive ethical environment:
Leading in Context 