Leadership

We have all been leaders or have been lead by someone in more ways than one. This week covers whether or not those leaders have been ethical or unethical. Eisenbeiß and Brodbeck(2014), did a cross-cultural and cross-sectoral analysis on ethical and unethical leadership. They wanted to examine the similarities and differences between the eastern and western cultures in regards to ethical and unethical leadership. In the opinion of many it was concluded that unethical leaders mainly lack the skill of decision making. Why do you think this is to be true across all societies. In a nutshell it is important to know that in order to be a good ethical leader, one may have to go against the companies' ethics and go by their personal moral code. 

Going by a book will not tell you how to feel when certain situations arise. There may be a rule at work that says not to feed the homeless. Do you let the guy on the corner outside starve or will you buy him a sandwich? Sometimes you have to do whats in your heart and what you know is right opposed to reading from a manual that doesn't have the ability to express emotion. 

Have you ever ran across a situation where you had a set of rules to follow, however your heart, moral and ethics steered you into a different direction? Think about what it would have done to you had you not followed your heart. How did making that decision effect you at the workplace. Lastly, where there any consequences given by to you by the employer for not following the rules?

A good leader is able to assess a situation and understand what route they should choose and the benefit/cost of the situation. If a situation ever arises where that leader must make a choice you want to be assured that they can do so without little or no supervision. 

Have you ever been in a situation that was lead by ab unethical leader? If not, it has happened to me several times. A good example would be taking advantage of someone and their skills and not compensating them for it. A former general manager of mine made an unethical decision of hiring someone they where romantically involved with. This caused problems within the organization because any special request that the person had it was granted just because they where romantically involved with the boss. Many times my former co workers and myself where inconvenienced to accommodate the outlandish requests. At some moments it was presented as if we had no choice. The issue was not resolved until the relationship ended badly and the employer became spiteful and reported the GM simply because they didn't work out romantically. This resulted in a full investigation, which gave the organization a bad name. 

To avoid situations like the one listed above organizations can do several things.

1. Implement ethical training

2. Ensure best fit of the employers prior to hiring

Following these two steps will minimize the need for a leader to become unethical because they should fit with what your organization is all about. In contradiction to that, we never know what a person is thinking and we will probably never know what a persons personal ethical code it. We could ask, however we would be taking a chance on them giving us an honest answer. 

We want to make sure that if we have to follow someone that we are following the right people. There is nothing worse than following something that can lead to a disastrous situation. We can do this by getting to know one another, asking follow-up questions and just being aware of the person and the actions that they mostly  display. Another great example to see if one is ethical or not is to examine their work ethic. A good ethical leader is one that who not only delegates task, they actually help get the work done. The reason why a good ethical leader doesn't have a problem expecting good quality from their employers is because they are not shy of producing such quality themselves.

The next time that you are lead by someone at work or you are the one leading, take a step back and evaluate. If you are the leader observe how people are receiving the information that you provide. Sometimes observation can give you the answer to many questions!