Ethical Value-Based Leadership Culture
Would you agree with this statement?
“An organisation is only as strong and successful as its employees and teams.”
Would you agree with this next statement?
“An organisation’s employees only work as efficiently and as productively as they are led by the leadership of the organisation.”
Over the years of working within various organisations I have observed how leadership introduce more policies, more processes, more rules of engagement and more performance tools in the hope that it will create an engaged workforce and productive teams. Now, there may not be anything wrong with this thinking, as those things are important. However, when these don’t provide the desired outcome, often times the organisation blames the policy, the process, and management instead of looking deeper at the root of the problem which is most often people’s behaviour!
A simple formula
Effective Leadership (Engaged Employees + Healthy Team Dynamics) = Successful Organisation
emphasizes the multiplier effect of effective leadership on employee engagement and team dynamics, leading to overall organizational success.
What is the secret ingredient?
Ethical Value-based leadership.
Very often organisations have an unspoken culture, which is a working environment of unspoken values, moral principles (ethics) and standards. These qualities are implicitly present and only start to emerge when something goes wrong or when a conflict arises. Then, all too often, an organisation starts to explicitly force these on their employees. Quite simply, it is an underlying value, ethical principle, standard, and work ethic that has been compromised and yet no one knows it exists because it has never been communicated. The leadership of the organisation may not have recognized that this was an important value and therefore never communicated this to the team.
It is becoming evident that compromising one’s values and ethics is what very often leads to employee disengagement, demotivation, poor team performance, conflicts and potential employee burnout.
Simple Solution
- What are the collective values of your organisation?
- What are the collective ethical principles of the organisation’s leadership?
- What standards and work ethic are you encouraging within the organisation?
- What do you base your strategic and everyday decisions on?
Herein lies the potential solution to many of an organisation’s disengaged employees, conflicting teams, poor performance and employee burnout.
What next?
The leadership of an organisation may resist with: “This is good and fine, but once we have these, what next?”
A simple answer is, “Live and breathe the organisation’s values and ethical principles.” Walk your talk and lead by example. The values and ethical principles should guide and underpin everything the organisation does; from designing policies, procedures, hosting meetings, performance management and making all decisions (critical and everyday decisions).
In my view one of the most important documents to create and make visible to all is a document titled “Guiding Principles for Organisational Decision-Making. This document should guide the leadership team in making decisions on behalf of the employees so that decisions may be made in a fair manner based on company values and ethical standards while remaining respectful to the employees’ needs and interests.
In conclusion
Firmly established values and ethical principles provide much-needed support to the organisation’s leadership. They provide a strong grounded foundation for leaders managing employees well because they foster trust, consistency, safety, and security.
If more organisations took the time to create and communicate a strong ethical value-based leadership culture they would create a safe working environment and a strong foundation from which to build up their employees, create healthy teams and succeed as an organisation. The emphasis on values and ethical leadership offers a holistic approach to organizational development. It underscores the importance of aligning policies and practices with core values to foster a more engaged, productive, and resilient workforce.
Values and ethics do change over time because of changes in strategy, industry changes, growth of the business and leadership changes. Therefore, it is good practice to review and revisit the values and ethics every few years to ensure that they are aligned, accepted, and adopted by ALL employees. Values and ethics are to be lived out every day in how all employees work and treat one another so that it is evident to all who they work with – colleagues, customers, suppliers, and all stakeholders.
Last thought-provoking question: What value can your values add to the organisation, your employees, your clients?
I invite leadership to proactively explore how to build and develop strong values-based qualities. I thoroughly enjoy working within organisations to coach and support their leadership to build and develop strong values-based qualities that enhances overall performance and employee well-being. . If you would like to know more about how we can work together please schedule a call.