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!
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?”
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.
Leaders focus on the good of their teams, organizations and communities. They work to achieve challenging goals and outcomes and they handle day-to-day crises. HOW they do that is shaped by their mindsets.
What Is An Insider Mindset?
One leader mindset that does not guide leaders to ethical choices is the “insider mindset.” When we think of the word “insider,” we may think of “insider trading” (having an unfair advantage) or “insider information” (possessing knowledge that provides a special advantage). According to Merriam Webster, the word “insider” means “special privilege or status” and has these synonyms: connection, contact, big shot, bigwig, somebody, VIP.
At the core of ethics is thinking beyond ourselves. When we use an insider mindset, though, we place ourselves in the “special seat” and from that point of view it is easier to discount the needs and concerns of others. Applying an insider mindset, it is tempting to ignore the laws and protections that keep us from taking advantage of others.
What Does It Lead To?
Using an “insider mindset” a leader might think it perfectly fine to share “insider” information with a select few in the inner circle for their own benefit. The leader might refuse to share the information publicly even when confronted, since sharing it would take the leader out of the “special seat” and spread the VIP advantage around to everyone else.
Is It Ethical?
Good leaders know that the power of leadership is in its ability to bring out the best in others, which in turn brings out the best in the leader. The leader’s power, then, is not reliant on any special inside information or advantage since it resides in the potential of every member of the team.
An insider mindset has a critical flaw when it comes to ethics. It conveniently “overlooks” the leadership responsibility to protect and serve others before ourselves. It “looks away” from responsibilities that are at the core of good leadership. For these reasons, there is no place for an “insider mindset” in ethical leadership.
Connect Magazine invited me to weigh in on why ethical brand reputation is so important and how brands can build and foster stronger images.
In this article I share practical advice on protecting ethical brands and five top leadership trends I see unfolding in 2020.
It’s worth a read for those who want to use the time during the pandemic to figure out how they can build a stronger company and a stronger brand that is ready for an uncertain future.
“While we would like to think that we are in control of our brand image, it is really shaped by our ethical choices… To build and foster strong images, brands can activate and amplify their values.”
— Linda Fisher Thornton in Connect Magazine
Important questions answered in this Q&A Feature:
Why is it important for every brand to have a strong, consistent image today?
What are some of the ways brands can build and foster stronger images?
What leadership trends do you see unfolding?
What’s the theory behind your “7 Lenses” philosophy?
After reviewing the insights in the feature article, share your own ideas in the comments. You’ll find additional curated resources on ethical brands below.
“While we would like to think that we are in control of our brand image, it is really shaped by our ethical choices… To build and foster strong images, brands can activate and amplify their values.”
Some people may think that the change we are experiencing as a result of COVID-19 is a temporary inconvenience, but it’s much more than that. It’s a wake-up call that we have been living too close to the edge, rushing through precious moments. We have been postponing sustainable practices that can contribute to our wellness and the well-being of the planet. Now that the pandemic has slowed the clock on the daily rush hour and frequent flyer miles, we can see what clean air looks like. Our leadership responsibility, like the air above our cities, is clear.
During a pandemic,successful leaders spend time noticing, appreciating, encouraging, focusing and getting comfortable with leaning and leading into the unknown.
Noticing:
We need to hear the sound of chirping birds,
and notice the gradual opening of summer flowers.
We need to notice neighbors caring about each other,
finding ways to reach out,
and helping each other through challenging times.
Appreciating:
We can appreciate simple things,
like time with each other,
or another day of being well(or getting well).
We can be grateful for those who sacrifice and risk so we can stay well,
and for businesses of all sizes finding new ways of delivering goods and
services to help us through difficult times.
Encouraging:
We can support and encourage each other
because work and life have become more challenging,
and online classes bring additional hurdles to overcome.
Helping each other helps us get through it,
as we change the ways we work and live.
Focusing:
We can stay focused on positive outcomes,
in spite of the continual barrage of bad news that each day brings.
When there is less structure in a work-from-home scenario,
and being an essential worker brings so many risks,
it’s easy to become distracted and fearful.
With so many challenges we must overcome,
we must intentionally focus our time and efforts
on the positive outcomes we’re working toward.
LeaningInto the Unknown:
It takes courage to keep getting up and facing the unknown,
when we don’t know how long this will last.
We don’t know whether or not we will get sick,
and if we do, whether or not we will get well.
Each day is precious.
Leading Into the Unknown:
Leading during a pandemic is moving beyond self-preservation
to guide others to safety.
It’s putting our own mask on first and then assisting others.
While we find our way through this unknown space,
our leadership will determine the outcome for others.
We need to overcome our own fearand shift into sense-making
so that we can guide others.
As messages and data sources conflict, we need to dig deeper
to understand what’s really happening,
and determine the best way forward.
That will be the only way to make sure
that the outcome for us and for others is positive.
What I hope is that we take this new fully-present comfort-with-the-unknown that we are learning with us for the rest of our lives, and when the threat of the pandemic has waned, that we continue to apply it in our leadership as if every day mattered.
Organizations are facing multiple connected challenges. First, they need to prevent ethical mistakes in a high speed, highly transparent business environment. Second, they need to engage leaders in relevant ethical learning so that the principles “stick” and are used to handle real problems. Third, they need to help leaders apply ethical thinking so they don’t just take “best practices” at face value.
“The ‘supply side’ of ethics — i.e., organizations’ ability to avoid ethical lapses — has never been more challenging.”
The important thing to remember is that we are helping people learn HOW to think, not WHAT to think. Paul Thagard, PhD, a Canadian philisopher and cognitive scientist says that “ethical judgments are often highly emotional, when people express their strong approval or disapproval of various acts. Whether they are also rational depends on whether the cognitive appraisal that is part of emotion is done well or badly.” (Paul Thagard, PhD, Ethical Thinking Should be Rational AND Emotional, Psychology Today)
Teaching ethical reasoning is not about teaching what one should do in particular circumstances, it is about teaching students how wisely to make very difficult decisions involving ethical considerations where the answers are anything but clear cut.
If we want to implement ethical decisions, we will need to do our own ethical thinking and not borrow the thinking of others. Approaches considered “best practices” are often used as blueprints by organizations, but that is not always an effective approach when the goal is ethical thinking.
Tony Schwartz, in his HBR article What it Takes to Think Deeply About Complex Problems, reminds us that “managing complexity requires courage — the willingness to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty and let its rivers run through us.” He explains that “the best practice is to not overrely on best practices, which typically emerge from our current assumptions and worldview.“
Replicating best practices is common since it seems to save organizations quite a bit of time and money. The problem is that the “best practice” that earned one organization a desired result may or may not have been derived using ethical thinking. It can be efficient, cost effective and impactful AND look like an amazing shortcut, but that “best practice” may not honor all of our organization’s values.
We need to do the work to apply ethical values to avoid replicating flawed thinking in our organizations. We can’t skip carefully ethical consideration just because an action is described as a “best practice.” To drive this point home, ask leader groups to run some “industry best practices” through your organization’s values to see how well they hold up.
“The question is not “Which one of these perspectives is right?” because they are all important ways of thinking about the goal of leadership. They are part of a bigger view that incorporates many dimensions of leadership responsibility. The question is “How can we honor all of them?”
“These surveys reflect increasing expectations for business leaders – the expectations that we take responsibility well beyond managing our own Profits, to also improve life for People, support the success of Communities and protect the Planet. Profits and Corporate Social Responsibility are no longer seen as mutually exclusive ideals.”
“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“
“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 – the proper time orientation, focus, response, level and complexity.“
“Following this definition, integrity is the alignment of our thoughts, actions and words with our personal values. The tricky thing about integrity in organizations is that integrity is partly internal (what we think) and partly external (what we say and do).”
“Conscious capitalism involves thinking beyond self-interests, demonstrating care for stakeholders at the global level, using a long-term time orientation and seeing the company’s role in the world through a systems view.”
“Many people refer to the “greater good” as an important part of leading ethically, and use different words to describe it. The descriptions they use collectively paint a picture of a responsibility to think beyond ourselves and to work for a better, inclusive society.”
“I believe that the following 14 personal, interpersonal and societal dimensions together form what we think of as authenticity. They involve overcoming the internal and external barriers to living an intentional, aware and ethical life.”
“As you review these reader favorites, think about how you will adapt to changing ethical leadership expectations.”
As you plan for a successful year, keep in mind that ethics is a hot topic for consumers. How well you understand and apply ethical business leadership will have a strong bearing on your success.
It’s time to stop telling leaders they will only succeed if they are “better than” the competition. It’s time for business schools to stop telling students that they are “better than” their peers in the class or “better than” students in other programs. It’s time for teachers and religious leaders to stop telling people they can be “better than” everyone else.
Why is the “better than” message so harmful? It focuses on status and power instead of relationships, trust and collaboration, which represent the real currency for success. It sends the message that we have to “beat out” others to succeed, leading people to use either-or-thinking, not higher level systems thinking which is needed for success in a systems world.
The old message “Look to your left, look to your right. One of those people won’t be here by the end of the year” advocates beating people down and throwing them away when they don’t perform, instead of lifting them up and helping them succeed.
Competent leaders and educators aren’t using or teaching this kind of “better than” language because it’s an unethical message. It leads to unwanted behaviors, undue interpersonal tension and unethical competition.
As we move toward an inclusive society that works for all, the message that anyone is “better than” others undermines our progress and perpetuates old paradigms that can be harmful. The only way we should be using “better than” is in terms of our behavior and performance, not in comparing ourselves to other people. Are we better than we were yesterday and the day before? That’s how we will reach the elusive win.
Today I’m sharing my recent interview with Peter Winick on the Leveraging Thought Leadership Podcast. We had an interesting conversation about my journey including how I got my start, challenges I faced and “growing into” this important work.
Click on the graphic above to hear the Leveraging Thought Leadership Podcast Interview with Peter Winick. The challenges I faced helped me grow and become a more authentic advocate for ethical leadership. Listen in!
Ethical leadership requires growth, a willingness to acknowledge complexity and an understanding of the broader context in which we lead. Use these resources to improve your ethical awareness, learn about how the leadership context is evolving and check for learning blind spots.
There are many changes underway that will impact your leadership and your business this year. Adapting to them will require shifts in direction and focus, while staying grounded in positive ethical values. Get settled in with your favorite morning brew and review these trend reports to see what you can expect in the New Year.
This week’s question is about what defines our ethics – “Is our ethics based on who we are or what we do?” Some people would argue that we have a persona, a manner, that is either ethical or not. Others would say that it is our decisions and actions that define how ethical we are, and therefore our ethicality changes from moment to moment.
Instead of trying to decide which perspective is right, we would be well advised to take our lead from Aristotle. He conveyed in his famous quote “we are what we repeatedly do” that our ethical persona and actions cannot be separated.
Prepare Your Leaders For Ethical Leadership Future – Help Them Learn To See Through The 7 Lenses®.
Learn how ethical expectations are increasing, and what you can do to stay ahead of the curve.
This week I am honored to share with you an Expert Interview that I did for the John Mattone Blog at JohnMattone.com. This interview explores my business journey and includes advice for leaders about learning and applying ethical leadership.
It addresses issues that concern leaders including:
Of the 52 posts published on the Leading in Context Blog in 2015, these 10 were the reader favorites. See if you notice a theme that connects these topics that readers accessed most frequently:
If I had to pick a theme that incorporates all of these favorites, I’d choose the theme “Becoming Our Ethical Best.” If there are ethical leadership topics you want to learn more about in 2016, let me know! Post a comment here or include @leadingincontxt in your Tweet.
Prepare Your Leaders For Ethical Leadership Future – Help Them Learn To See Through The 7 Lenses®.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Linda Fisher Thornton
