Are You An Ethical Leader?
Mark Wager is an international leadership expert who regularly runs programmes in Fiji. He is currently fully booked for his trip to Fiji in May. However, if you would like Mark to train your managers later in the year contact him at Mark@ali.org.nz in order to save one.
The reality is that the more involvement we have, both emotionally and psychologically, the higher the level of personal responsibility. With more personal responsibility our ethics and our decisions create changes for the better, or for the worse.
Proximity - emotional connection - personal responsibility
We all believe we are good people. We want to make the right decision. But what the above scenario shows to be aware of factors that influence our decisions.
The proximity to the scenario, the level of emotional connection to the people involved and the amount of personal responsibility we need to have to alter the scenario.
The closer these factors, the more our decisions are influenced.
This is something that I see in companies when they try to implement change.
Here’s a common scenario.
The senior managers decide change is needed, and these changes will result in redundancies. Because there’s no proximity between the senior mangers and the staff it seems a simple decision. Some people have to leave in order for the company to survive.
The middle managers then get involved and have more of an emotional connection so the decision becomes more difficult.
Finally the lower level managers get involved and they have to actually implement the decision and they feel the most personal responsibility. As a result they either disagree or are at least highly uncomfortable with the decision.
Lose your emotions, but not your humanity
There’s no mathematical formula or quick solution I can give you to make you an ethical leader, because being ethical is about making the right decision, the decision that you know deep down is the right one.
Whether you can make this decision depends on your upbringing, your values, your beliefs which I can’t help you with.
What I can help you with recognise what will influence your decision.
You need to lose your emotions, but not your humanity.
You need to be aware that your emotions are influenced by your situation.
There’s a danger of being too close and being too far removed. Your emotions will be influenced by your emotional connection, if someone you know or like does something wrong.
It’s difficult to address this as opposed to it being done by a stranger.
Your personal responsibility will influence your emotions.
A decision seems easy until you have to make that decision yourself. As the business study showed about half the people see unethical behaviour in the workplace.
They know what’s right and what’s wrong, but actually doing something about it requires something else.
It requires courage. Courage what all leaders require.
To be an ethical leader you need to have the courage to do what’s right and not what is easy.
It’s not enough to be good, we have to have the courage to do good things.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Attributed to Edmund Burke, included by John F Kennedy in a speech in 1961.
frederica.elbourne@fijisun.
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