What are the moral implications of leadership behaviour?
Non-ethical behaviour from the leadership erodes staff morale and public trust in the company. Behaviour at the top trickles down and impacts all staff and sets the tone for the kind of environment that exists in the organization.
In light of the video and article, how can you enable your organization to grow and flourish?
“Strong culture has a big impact on employee behaviour” (BuildingCapacity, 2013). Creating an ethical culture is one way to ensure that an organization grows well. Creating an ethical culture involves six principles: the leader as the role model, defining ethical behaviour, promoting financial management and integrity, ethical training, and an institutionalized ethical culture (BuildingCapacity, 2013).
1. Be a visible role model – be aware of and purposeful in your behaviour as the leader because leader behaviour will define employee behaviour. This is also known as authentic leadership. Avolio & Gardner (2005) define authentic leaders as the following:
those who are deeply aware of how they think and behave and are perceived by others as being aware of their own and others’ values/moral perspectives, knowledge, and strengths; aware of the context in which they operate; and who are confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient, and of high moral character
Authentic leaders are open and transparent in sharing information and decision-making, considering multiple sides of an issue and multiple perspectives (Avolio & Gardner, 2005).
2. Define ethical behaviour in your company – create your code of ethics (the org’s primary values and ethical rules that employees are expected to follow) through discussion and integration of voices at all levels; how you create it (collaboratively) and how you integrate it into everyday activities will determine whether or not it gets followed
3 a). Promote effective financial management (using resources in a principled way) – focus on assessing the effectiveness of your programs and of the organization as a whole; knowing exactly what the outcomes are and the outcome measures that prove programs are effective
3 b). Promote financial integrity – Being aware of and making sure that who you take money from and who you invest with are companies that are in accordance with your values (e.g. if you are working to save the environment but investing in oil companies or taking donations from companies that strip the earth of certain resources). Thinking about how it appears to others.
4. Provide training in ethics – to create a discussion, to clarify acceptable practices, to create a code of ethics (networking is valuable here to learn about how other organizations accomplish this)
5. Institutionalize an ethical culture – measure performance against the code of ethics; incorporate ethical values and transparency into all areas: resource allocation, strategic planning, compensation, personnel—how you hire employees, performance evaluations, auditing, communications, public relations; a decision-making process that is transparent, responsive to everyone’s interests and allows all voices to be heard, even those you don’t agree with; when you are in a situation where you don’t know what to do, be upfront about it and be transparent throughout the process; be willing to ask uncomfortable questions. For example, instead of asking ‘is this legal’? you should be asking ‘is this fair’? honest? (equitable?… You want diversity on your board so that you have a diversity of views and opinions to check your decisions against, not just people who think like you
6. Provide protective mechanisms – need a whistle-blower protection clause in your personnel policies so that employees who are faced with an ethical dilemma or who see unethical behaviour can report it without fear of negative repercussions.
Avolio, B., Gardner, W. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 16, 315-338.
[BuildingCapacity]. (2013, March 29). What is ethical leadership? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks2QGoIq5nA