Unleash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership
By Linda Fisher Thornton
If you think your customers are separate from your business, you are behind the times. Customers are becoming part of the fabric of organizations in ways that meet their very specific needs. This week I describe 5 powerful trends that are changing the rules of business, and require a heightened ethical awareness.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Last week I wrote about how to prepare for leadership future by staying centered in ethical values. Grounding our work in values is critically important but it’s not enough. There’s much more to being ready for the future of leadership than just staying aligned with positive values. This week I’m sharing a graphic about 5 other variables that need to be in place to build a (positive) ethical culture.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
It would be “easy […] for organizations and leaders to become frozen by the magnitude of the changes under way” (McKinsey & Co., Management Intuition For the Next 50 Years). Success in future leadership requires being nimble and adaptive, flexing with constant change, and being ready for anything.
How should we stay grounded as we avoid crises and manage our way through a maze of increasing expectations?
By Linda Fisher Thornton
During the recent 2014 NeuroLeadership Summit, Jamil Zaki (an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford) talked about an interesting experiment the Stanford Neuroscience Lab did. The team took a large number of Fortune 100 statements of company values and generated a word cloud from them to see which word would appear most often. Which word was it? Integrity was the most frequently used word. This experiment reveals a general agreement that integrity is important, but what exactly does it mean? People may understand it in very different ways.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Why is it so difficult to agree on the right thing to do? One of the reasons we may not agree is that each of us may be using a different definition of what is “good.” Here are 7 different interpretations of what is ethically good, based on the framework in 7 Lenses: Learning the Principles and Practices of Ethical Leadership (2013). Which ones are you using in your leadership?
By Linda Fisher Thornton
We are expected to make ethical decisions in a rapidly changing global society, where there is increasing awareness of what “ethical” means. The question of where ethics is headed has been the focus of my research over the last four years.
I have learned that to be considered ethical, we must consider more constituents, honor more dimensions of ethics, and lead ethically through higher levels of complexity. How do we prepare for that? We reach higher and think longer-term.
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.
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:
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Ethical expectations are continually increasing, and it is not always easy for leaders to keep up with the changes. This week, I’m sharing an assessment to help you answer the question “How current is my message about ethics?”
By Linda Fisher Thornton
If you’ve read the news lately, you’ve noticed that there is a lot of discussion about who is right. Each person has an individual perspective that seems to be right from where they sit. Each group has values and norms that seem right. How can we make sense out of it all? When we need to make a critical decision, and everyone around us is arguing passionately for a different approach, how will we know which one is most right?
By Linda Fisher Thornton
This collection from reader favorites on the Leading in Context Blog will help you explore the scope and dimensions of today’s ethical leadership. As you will see, ethical leadership requires much more than following laws and regulations. We have to take on a global mindset and an openness to learning, and much more.
After taking the Leading in Context website and branding back to the drawing board, this week I’m delighted to introduce the Leading in Context® Website version 2.0.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
There was a lively discussion on LinkedIn in response to my post “Ethics” Means Acting Beyond Self-Interest.” Readers joined in the discussion and came up with some very interesting observations.
Businesses that are proactive and that make ethical leadership a priority will benefit in many ways. Here are three of the many ways that ethical leadership helps us compete:
by Linda Fisher Thornton
On Thursday, I spoke about The Future of Ethics and Business Leadership at the Richmond SHRM Strategic Leadership Conference. My lens was leadership development – how to help leaders be ready to lead ethically in a highly complex, connected future.
Here are some success principles for developing “Ethical Leader Future:”
Leading in Context 