Leadership and Ethics-The Challenges

The Cocktail of Morality and Ethics
Morality is owned by the individual and ethical standards are owned by the organization and the two should not mix.


Personal morality is just that; personal.


Imagine a fundamentalist Christian with a strong belief about homosexuals. That individual could struggle with sound and legal decisions related to the hiring, promotion and fair treatment of that team member if they do not check their personal morality at the door. Most company’s ethical values would require that that team member is treated equitably and have the same rights of any other team member.


Your personal morality includes the desire to date any other single person in the geographic area. Including team members within the organization. Including high profile community members. Including people you met on the internet. Corporate ethics require you to be above reproach. As a leader you need to set the example for all others in your organization.


The juggling act here is a little complicated and you have to balance your rights with your responsibilities. The short answer is to curb your personal needs and desires for the greater good of following the ethical guidelines of the organization.


The Most Common Ethical Challenges for Leaders


Ethical challenges for leaders come in all sizes and shapes. The most common challenge relates to the appearance of favoritism and the impact of that in the working environment.
Real favoritism is a devastating phenomenon. Favoritism is the open disparate treatment of subordinate team members in favor of another or other team members. Favoritism can suck the life out of a working unit. It will kill morale. It will segment team members against each other.
As damaging as real favoritism is the appearance of favoritism. This most often occurs when a leader attempts to maintain a friendship with one or more of their subordinate team members. It begins as a peer level friendship and then one friend is promoted and they attempt to maintain the friendship.


This never works. It may look like it is working but it never works. People will say things such as “we know the roles at work” or “she respects that I am the boss at work and we never cross over into our personal relationship.” Those statements are self-serving and naïve. No matter how you try, a friendship with a subordinate will cause grief and create an ethical dilemma.
The first thing you must consider is what the other team members see and feel. Regardless of your protests, they will always see an insider and someone who has your ear. Every decision you make will be questioned related to the maintained friendship. Divisions and segments will develop that may not be able to be repaired.


To be effective and to eliminate this ethical challenge, the effective leader rises and separates from friendships at subordinate levels. They leave all questions about equitable and fair treatment behind by closing off the friend level relationships they had at a peer level.


Keeping Your Word and Keeping Your Mouth Shut


In ethical behavior, it is often what you don’t say that matters the most.
Leaders know things. They know things that others do not. They know about the issues of their team members. They know about strategic changes and organizational challenges in their company. They know some deep secrets.


One of the great tests of ethical behavior in leadership is when told not to share information, you don’t share the information. No matter how interesting and no matter how you perceive the information’s importance. Effective leaders are a black hole of confidential information. The data goes in but does not come out.


Many leaders error when they have a trusted person in the organization and share the confidential information with only them. Unfortunately, you lose control of the flow of the information once you share it. Can you say for certain that the information will not be shared? Do you know absolutely if a spouse or another trusted source will not slip?


When asked to keep something confidential, that core promise and your response will largely shape your credibility as a leader.


Over Promised and Under Delivered


Another relatively common ethical challenge for leaders is over-promising and under-delivering. This is an ethical challenge because it affect the leader’s core credibility and their trustworthiness.
Over-promising is providing commitments to team members that cannot reasonably be fulfilled. Sometimes that takes on the form of promising raises, promising promotions or intimating that someone will be taken care of for the duration of their employment. This mistake is frequently done by newer leaders in their orgy to please others and impress their new subordinates.
Under-delivery is similar to over-promising but it is not providing the basic expected elements required of business leaders. Common examples include late performance reviews, not processing vacation requests and not submitting employee names for requested training. Like over-promising, credibility and trust are affected and the choices made are ethical challenge points for leaders.


Doing the Right Thing


The rarest of leadership ethical challenges is when a person faces a crossroad of doing the right thing compared to either the self-serving, expedient or organization’s desired outcome.
Fortunate that it is rare but managers and supervisor report facing this choice set at least once in their career. An example is when your boss demands that one of your subordinates be terminated. You know that she is being railroaded out because she has questioned some of your boss’s decisions in the past. She has not been provided with adequate coaching and there are other team members that should be let go before her.


The right thing is to stand up for the rights of this team member and confront your boss about this demand to terminate her. It is not self-serving, expedient or the organization’s desired outcome.
Another example would be that you are aware of harassment in another department. The victim is unwilling to report it and if you report it, you could face retaliation or even job loss. The right thing is to report the harassment regardless of consequences.


The entire ethical challenge of doing the right thing is about connecting your sense of right and wrong with the ethical values of your organization. Do you want to work for an organization that terminates people unfairly or tolerates harassment? Is it worth standing up for the concepts of right or wrong? Is standing up for others a noble cause or career suicide?


Only you can answer those questions.