Sometimes leaders believe things that aren’t true because they haven’t taken time to investigate the truth. In other cases, they may have trusted someone who has misled them. But there’s an even more problematic reason some leaders may ignore the truth – claiming to believe the falsehood may benefit them in a tangible way.
“There is no such thing as ‘alternative information.’ However, when important information is withheld or if the information is false, it can lead to alternative interpretations. And that’s where you can get into big trouble.”
Watch for leaders sharing a falsehood that is a “belief of convenience,” which is a type of unethical leadership. It is unethical for multiple reasons. It is intentionally misleading instead of transparent, is based on an ulterior motive, and has the potential to harm.
Waysthat believing and/or sharing a falsehood publicly could benefit a leader:
Convey a false sense of control in a seemingly uncontrollable or negative situation
Advance an unethical agenda
Get something from gullible followers who want to believe the falsehood
Offer an advantage when regular approaches aren’t working
Distract attention away from other more harmful actions
Watch for these signs that a falsehood is benefiting a leader in a tangible way:
The falsehood is shared in ways that stoke anger in the leader’s followers
The leader continues to promote the falsehood after being confronted with clear evidence that the belief is false
Sharing the false belief has the potential to harm
The leader backs down from the falsehood when it has run its course of advantage and becomes a liability
“A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.”
William Shenstone, Poet, in Essays on Men and Manners
What’s missing when leaders latch onto and share beliefs of convenience? Values. In contrast, ethical leaders know that it’s their job to keep ethical values at the center of their decisions and actions. Ethical leaders seek the truth, and communicate the truth, even when it isn’t convenient.
The Top Post Series for last year on the Leading in Context Blog reflected the ethical challenges of dealing with misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Truth and Misinformation: How To Spot False Narratives
This series addressed the fine points of how to tell the difference between a false narrative and a message that is true. Here’s a highlight quote from each post in the series that provides an overview.
“Creators of misinformation and false narrative will not want you to look beyond the statements made. Their power lies in the reader’s blind trust. In contrast, sources advocating objective truth will encourage you to learn about an issue so that you can see the situation and the value of the proposed solution for yourself.”
“Misinformation and false narrative rely on raw intimidation power (and not truth power). Look for truth power that stands on its own merits and doesn’t need to attack to deflect attention.”
“Misinformation relies on people having an emotional reaction and immediately sharing information with others without taking the time to evaluate its credibility.“
It is clearly our job to stay literate as misinformation becomes more sophisticated and harder to spot. Use these insights to improve your awareness and your ability to spot false narratives.
Of the 52 individual posts published on the Leading in Context Blog in 2020, these 10 were the most popular. See if you notice a theme that connects these new topics that readers accessed most frequently.
If I had to pick a theme for these posts that were most popular in 2020, it would be Ethical Leadership in Divisive Times. This theme reflects our collective struggles as we dealt with acts of racism, conspiracy theories, and blatent disregard for safety measures that were supposed to protect us all during a raging pandemic.
Which post was your favorite? If you have ethical leadership topics you want to learn more about, comment to share your idea!
Each year I raise questions that help leaders stay current as ethical expectations change. Here are three new questions to ponder as we head into a New Year. These are important questions about our ethical intentions, actions and impact that will help guide our choices in the coming year.
What do employees want that would increase their engagement and improve their experience? If we know, why aren’t we doing it? What could we change that would make it possible?
What have we learned during the pandemic that should stay ‘top of mind’ as we head into 2021? How can we leverage that awareness to benefit us and our constituents?
What would it take to emerge from the global pandemic with our values more closely integrated with our practices, products and culture? Ethical integration is a trend that is providing organizations with an edge in challenging times.
As ethical expectations continue to increase, the answers to these questions will help us close the gaps between our current intentions, actions and impact, and what our constituents expect of us.
We’ll remember this year for a long time, and we will tell future generations stories about the challenges we endured as we tried to stay safe and well during a global pandemic.
One lesson we can take away from this experience is the power of connection. We found new ways to connect with others, and we needed that reassurance more often. As we dealt with supply-finding and constant rescheduling and a fear of what could happen to us and loved ones, we called old friends and distant family and created new bonds. We had family game nights. We started new traditions that brought us closer together.
This holiday season, I wish you and yours a time filled with good health and well-being and connection. Take a moment to reflect on the power of connection and how you can continue to tap into its many benefits long after the pandemic is over.
Senior leaders set the tone for an organization’s ethics, but the responsibility for values leadership includes much more than that. Today, I’ll look at the senior leader’s responsibility for sharing clear expectations, and explore other important roles that go well beyond just setting the tone for expected behavior.
Setting Clear Values Expectations
What top leaders do typically becomes the accepted norm for behavior in organizations. So senior leaders need to do much more than keep themselves on the right side of ethics. They also need to ensure that values consistently drive the engine of the organization.
“Few companies set clear expectations for senior executives on ethics and compliance,” stated the LRN report. “Unless senior leaders regularly insist that business decisions incorporate company values, the correct tone at the top will never be set.”
Ben Dipietro, LRN
Championing the Use of Ethical Values
In a previous post, Critical Roles of the (Ethical) CEO, I wrote about these important senior leader roles: Ethical Leadership Role Model, High Level Trust-Builder, Champion For Ethical Values, Ethical Prevention Advocate, Highest Leader Accountable For Ethics, Accountability Consistency Monitor, Ethics Dialogue Leader, Ethical Decision-Making Coach, and Ethical Culture Builder.
The roles I’ve named include many different approaches to setting and monitoring expectations. They show just how broad the responsibilities of senior leaders are when it comes to ethical leadership:
Advocate
Model
Monitor
Guard
Catalyst
Communicator
Coach
These roles include a number of functional categories that require different skillsets. Take a moment to ask yourself this important question – “Are your senior leaders ready?”
Due to the uncertainty and constant change we’re experiencing during the pandemic, every organization should be considering how to adapt to multiple COVID-19 scenarios. Global futurists have already provided us with a variety of possible global scenarios to use in our planning.
Based on data and global input, these robust scenarios will help us prepare for foreseeable outcomes. While we can’t “plan” in the traditional sense, we can imagine possible futures and how the work we do will be impacted by them.
Each organization on the list below provides a unique perspective on possible futures with COVID-19. The formats include a video overview, map and reports. Review these scenarios with your teams and answer the critical questions that follow.
Ask your team to help you answer the following questions:
How will we need to reimagine what we consider to be our “success” in each scenario?
How can we adapt our work to thrive in each possible scenario?
Where are our greatest risks and what can we do now to reduce them?
We could guess what’s going to happen, but we don’t need to. Hard-working global futurists have already done the work. Let’s use what they’ve learned to help us navigate the coming year.
We are already at the end of a challenging year. So much of it has been a blur as we’ve scrambled to reinvent our work and daily habits to adapt to a persistent global pandemic. We are heading into 2021 knowing that our best-laid plans will be quickly undone without warning. How do we survive and thrive in such a risky and unpredictable environment?
“Simply put, we are wondering how to go about restarting the economy; repairing what was broken; and preparing ourselves to cope with a host of urgent social, environmental, demographic, and economic troubles.”
Leadership expectations have changed during the pandemic. During isolation, people have been scrutinizing the ripple effects of good and bad leadership decisions.
The good news is that we’ve learned some things as we navigated our challenges this year. Today I’m sharing 10 Leadership Strategies for Thriving in 2021 thatspan many different leadership roles. Implementing all of them well can propel us forward in the current high-visibility, high-stakes environment.
10 Leadership Strategies For Thriving in 2021
Our implementation of each of these 10 Leadership Strategies will be closely watched by constituents in the coming year. Addressing each of them carefully and plugging any gaps will prepare us for our best chance of success as we head into 2021.
1. Clearly Define Ethics to Guide Company-Wide Decisions
Tell people how you’ll be making ethical decisions. Don’t leave the process to chance.
“Great leaders are… defining the firm’s values concisely, so people have the clarity and guidelines to make decisions.”
Focus on what your employees need. They are the ones keeping the organization afloat and they need your support.
“It’s time for leaders to reevaluate how they are addressing culture, providing support to employees during the pandemic, and refining their strategies to retain employees in the new year.”
Think beyond expected scenarios to what else could happen. We’ve learned this year that ‘standard scenarios’ don’t help us navigate rapidly changing situations.
“While most business plans include typical financially related ‘what if’ scenarios, leaders should consider expanding it to include unusual ones.”
Make sure that health and safety take priority over money in organizational decision making.
“The coronavirus has created a humanitarian crisis, becoming a serious threat to the most vulnerable populations in every community. Protecting the health and safety of employees, partners, and communities will be job one for leaders around the world during the coming months.”
Share the top priorities of the organization and ask everyone to help achieve them.
“Disruptions inevitably lead to an overload of sometimes-contradictory information. In the worst cases, employees are being given unclear or incoherent priorities. That’s why a crystal-clear set of priorities matters in times of upheaval, but is so hard to achieve.”
Aim higher. Doing what people expect you to do won’t be enough when other organizations are doing much more.
“How will my company adapt our resources to address customers’ current and future needs? What are coverage plans for servicing customers? The strongest leaders are determining how they can add more value and consistently over deliver.”
Show that new information and guidance leads to new decisions. Be willing to adapt decisions as things change.
“The emerging approach recognizes that in fast-changing environments, decisions often need to be reversed or adapted, and that changing course in response to new information is a strength, not a weakness.”
Align your message and your actions. Gaps are easy to see and they damage your brand.
“A disconnect between what your organization values on the inside and how it is perceived on the outside can damage customer relationships. Customers have the ability—and the proclivity—to see if you are actually operating the way you say you are.” “Top leaders of the organization must take responsibility for driving alignment.”
Thriving in 2021 will require applying these 10 Leadership Strategies and continuing to adapt to the changing landscape of what “good leadership” means during COVID-19. We will need to focus on clear communication and finding ways to add value while honoring ethics, transparency, and trust.
During COVID-19, I have had to make sacrifices, but I have also had much to be grateful for. Here are some of the many people I’m grateful for this year:
the front-line workers who made sure we had food and supplies
the many health care professionals who managed our testing, treatments and care
the students who adapted to distanced learning and made the best of it under challenging circumstance
the educators who stayed committed to providing an inspiring education during a time when all the rules changed and everything had to be reimagined from the ground up
the parents who were overwhelmed with the responsibility for home learning and yet helped their children and teens move forward in their education
the family and friends who found new ways to stay connected and support one another safely during the pandemic
This message is for them:
‘Thank you for your commitment to helping us all move forward during this difficult time. I appreciate all you have done to make things better, in big and small ways. You made many sacrifices so that others could succeed. You inspire me to do more and be more by your example.”
Take a moment, in this season of giving thanks, to share a message of gratitude with someone who has inspired you during this challenging year.
It’s been a tough year for everyone, and much of the strain has fallen on leaders. They have had much more to think about and juggle than in a typical year, and the stakes have been much higher.
Today I’m sharing a collection of curated resources that will help leaders achieve a leadership reset for adapting to COVID-19. Notice the theme of moving beyond paradox – accepting (things as they are) and reinventing (for the future).
As you review the leadership resources below, look for two or three insights that will help you adapt your leadership to the realities of the lingering pandemic.
Your constituents are counting on you to help them through a difficult time as you manage your own stress, worry and fatigue. Use these resources to identify two to three things you can do differently or better to reset your leadership.
Some people think about ethics as a theoretical concept that lives in procedures and regulations, but they’re missing the point. Ethics is not just an esoteric concept. It’s an actionable responsibility.
Ethics requires moving beyond convenience and concern for self to concern for others.
Our ethics doesn’t live in the codes and manuals… Ethics is in the decisions we make. It’s in the way we resolve the tension between gaining personal benefit and creating value for others… Ethical guidelines are there to help us, but they do not become our ethics unless we choose to follow them every day.
Leaders bear an even greater responsibility for ethical action because they must lead others to ethical performance through their guidance and example.
When an action is convenient and not appropriate, don’t call it leadership. Leadership is about moving beyond concern for self to also consider the well-being and success of others.
As leaders, our ethical values show up when we take action that is grounded in ethical values:
Make important decisions
Choose employees to recognize, reward and promote
Model expected ethics for others to emulate
Treat others with respect and care
It’s in the time we take to teach employees about ethics and values, and the care we take to model ethical behavior so that everyone can see what it looks like in action.
Now is a great time to move well beyond the ethics manual on the shelf and offering ethics training to “check off the box.” It’s time to move from insight to action – from what we know is important to what we actually do every day.
Many of us are on a quest to simplify our lives, reduce our clutter and improve our focus. This is a positive step that can improve our lives, but unfortunately it doesn’t work at all when applied to our decision making.
When situations are complex, it is tempting to oversimplify them so we can move on and make a quick decision. This practice, though, sets us up for poor decision making and ethical mistakes.
“‘Satisficing’ leads the managerial leader to alternatives that tend to be easy to formulate, familiar, and close to the status quo. When one grapples with complex ethical considerations, this approach to decision making may not produce the best solutions.”
Charles D. Kerns, Graziadio Business Review, Pepperdine University
Kern’s term ‘satisficing’ makes me think of sacrificing the complexity of an issue to satisfy our need to move forward. It reminds me of our tendency to want things to be simpler than they really are, because digging into complex issues takes some effort.
This week, take a moment to consider where you might be ‘satisficing’ when you should be clarifying.
This is an edited version of a previously published reader favorite.
“Ethics” Means Acting Beyond Self-Interest
Ethics is fundamentally about acting beyond our own self-interests. Can we be ethical without considering others and acting in ways that benefit them?
Here are some interesting questions and quotes on the subject. As you read, think about the business leader’s responsibility to act beyond the interests of the business and beyond personal gain.
Questions About Ethics, Ego and Acting Out of Concern for Others
1. Is ethics moving beyond the ego to show concern for others?
“While egoism may be a strong motivator of human behavior, ethics traditionally assumes that human beings are also capable of acting from a concern for others that is not derived from a concern for their own welfare.”
“The moral point of view goes beyond self-interest to a standpoint that takes everyone’s interests into account. Ethics, then, assumes that self interest is not the basis for all human behavior, although some philosophers, e.g., Hobbes, have tried to base ethics on self-interest. Their efforts, however, have not been widely accepted.”
2. Can we define ethics based on reason, when reason doesn’t involve others?
“Justice can’t be determined by examining a single case, since the advantage to society of a rule of justice depends on how it works in general under the circumstances in which it is introduced.”
“Thus the views of the moral rationalists on the role of reason in ethics, even if they can be made coherent, are false.”
David Hume, Stanford.edu, quoting from Hume’s autobiographical essay, “My Own Life”
3. If we serve others now, will we benefit long-term?
“Enlightened self-interest is a philosophy in ethics which states that persons who act to further the interests of others (or the interests of the group or groups to which they belong), ultimately serve their own self-interest.[1][2][3] It has often been simply expressed by the belief that an individual, group, or even a commercial entity will “do well by doing good”.[4][5][6]”
“Enlightened self-interest also has implications for long-term benefits as opposed to short-term benefits to oneself.[7] When an individual pursues enlightened self-interest that person may sacrifice short-term interests to maximize long-term interests. This is a form of deferred gratification.”
“The motives which lie behind our behaviors are often mixed and complex. But studies such as these are among the challenges to the long held view that even at our best, we are only out for ourselves. Rather, at our best, we may only be out for others.”
“In some ways, putting the greater good before your own can be thought of as the definition of ethical leadership, since it underlies so many of the other components.” “Ethical behavior reflects a value system that grows out of a coherent view of the world, based on equity, justice, the needs and rights of others as well as oneself, a sense of obligation to others and to the society, and the legitimate needs and standards of the society.”
We are all responsible for acting beyond our own self-interests. In this age of ‘infotainment’ and information overload, we have to know ourselves, know our responsibility to others, and choose to act beyond self-interest and short-term gain.
If we ever forget, we’ll be reminded by ethically-aware constituents that it’s not ethical leadership if we don’t consistently act out of respect and concern for others.
It seems that we’re all getting more in touch with our “inner space” during the COVID-19 pandemic. The extensive time in isolation has given us the time and opportunity to face our truths – our beliefs, our impact and our choices.
Here are 10 trends we’re seeing during COVID-19 that show better self-awareness, other-awareness and moral awareness.
We’re more aware of the importance of science in our lives
We’re more aware (in our households, families and workplaces) that we are “all in this together”and each decision we make impacts everyone else in the group
We’re more aware of how our actions (or inactions) can harm others
We’re more aware of the importance of moral awareness in leadership
We’re more aware of societal economic disparities
We’re more aware of societal racial disparities
We’re more aware of our global connectedness
We’re more aware of what our travel lifestyle does to the planet
We’re more aware of the risks others take for our benefitand well-being
We’re more aware of the importance of taking responsibility for our actions, even under the most difficult and inconvenient circumstances
In my lifetime, I have not seen a time when we have had to come face-to-face with our own beliefs the same way we are having to now. Poor thinking is literally a health risk in these challenging times when failing to wear a mask at the wrong time can lead to illness or death.
Nancy Gibbs, Harvard Kennedy School, says about the impact of the pandemic on our thinking and leadership: “This is real. This has been a moral autopsy. Look for the common humanity. Look for the complexity, get past attributing bad motives to the ‘other side.'”
While it’s always easier to criticize others than to face our own limitations, it’s our own thinking and actions we should be examining now.
I tell my students that if you go through life just reaching for the minimum standard, you end up with a minimum standard life. The good things in life, including success and happiness are more likely to happen when we reach higher than the baseline that is expected of us.
Growth
Growth happens beyond the baseline requirements. If we aim too low, we may be content with a job that doesn’t bring out our full potential. Stretching to grow into a more demanding role, we find out what we’re capable of, and we grow. We become capable of more, which opens up new opportunities.
Opportunity
People are often tapped for new projects and promotions based on their current performance and their willingness to learn new things and take on additional responsibility. Doing these things makes them deeply valuable assets to groups and organizations.
Leadership
Minimum standard leadership doesn’t inspire others to greatness and build great organizations. It just keeps the cogs turning.
Leadership opportunities require stretching beyond the minimum standard because leaders need to do their own work and support the work of others. That means that their most important supporting tasks are evolving, not finite and collective, not individual. Leaders must embrace growth and adapt to change, setting an example for the people they lead and support.
From Minimum Standard Performance to Potential
I have been stretched beyond my comfort zone almost continuously over the past decade. I remember times when I felt like “coasting” because I was so exhausted by change and wanted things to be easier.
Overcoming that tendency to want to keep things as they are is important for breaking out of self-imposed limits on our potential and achievement. Every new opportunity will likely pull us beyond our comfort zone, stretching and expanding what we are comfortable with.
When we break away from a desire to keep things as they are, we are much better prepared to take advantage of all the good that life has to offer. And we are much better prepared to be good leaders.
Linda Fisher Thornton
