17 Steps to a Thriving Ethical Culture
When it comes to promoting ethical behavior in your organization, it’s not just about your own actions. It’s about building an ethical culture in which doing the right thing is not only encouraged but expected, demanded, and incentivized. In such a culture, everybody knows that character counts. They’re committed to pursuing great results (the excellence imperative), but always with integrity (the ethics imperative). The Prevalence of Integrity Problems in Organizations How are organizations doing with integrity issues? Alas, not so good. According to the EY Global Integrity Report 2024 (1): More than one in five (21% of) respondents admit that
How to Prioritize Ethics When Leading People
When leading people, too often leaders focus on performance while neglecting ethical considerations. Big mistake. Many organizations are deficient in their ethical leadership practices. To be truly successful, organizations must not only be excellent but also ethical—and not just now but over time. It’s what we call “triple crown leadership”: excellent, ethical, and enduring. 16 Key Ethical Leadership Practices When Leading People How can you integrate ethical considerations into leading people? Here are 16 key ethical leadership practices: 1. Make a clear and unequivocal commitment to the ethics imperative. That means having an explicit and firm obligation to
How Ethical Leaders Approach Decision-Making
Ethical decision-making is a cornerstone of effective leadership. It influences not only your organization’s reputation but also its long-term success and societal impact. Navigating the complexities of ethical dilemmas is no simple task. Leaders often face pressures, competing interests, and ambiguous situations that challenge their judgment. Unfortunately, many leaders fall short in this critical area. Too often, they crack under pressure, compromise, and sell out. Or prioritize short-term gains. The result? An erosion of trust, which undermines their leadership and harms their organization’s brand. Ways Ethical Leaders Approach Decision-Making Ethical leaders are intentional and strategic about decision-making. Here are
Ethical Leaders: What They Do That Others Don’t
What are the signs of ethical leadership in action—the things that ethical leaders do that others don’t? Ethical leaders pay attention to how their organizations and teams achieve their results. We know from research that honesty is one of the top things people look for in their leaders. And that whether managers are observed to behave ethically or unethically makes an enormous difference on workers. When their managers are observed to behave unethically, workers report feeling much more pressure to behave unethically at work, are much more likely to observe unethical conduct in the workplace, and are much less likely
Business Ethics: How Are Today’s Companies Doing?
Since we’re living in a time of declining trust and confidence in organizations and institutions of all kinds, from Congress and the medical system to televised news and the Supreme Court, it’s fair to ask how we’re doing with business ethics. How prevalent are companies that operate with integrity? What’s the extent of unethical and illegal behavior? How does the picture look not just at the organizational level but also at the individual level, with workers, managers, and board members? Unfortunately, the picture is bleak. The EY Global Integrity Report 2024 is based on a survey of more than 5,000
Leadership, Risk, and Cognitive Biases
Article Summary: What leaders need to know about risk and cognitive biases. Assessing and managing risk is hard enough on its own for leaders, but it’s made even more difficult by cognitive biases. Examples of several cognitive biases and how they can challenge leaders and organizations, plus two techniques for addressing them. +++ When it comes to risk-taking and risk mitigation, leaders need to be aware of the dangers of cognitive biases on decision-making. Esteemed psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his long-time collaborator, Amos Tversky, highlight that humans often have what they call “severe and systematic errors” in their thinking due
The Trump Leadership Playbook–And Why It Matters
Article Summary: It’s no surprise that Donald Trump is an unconventional leader, but it’s less obvious that he’s operating from the leadership playbook of his former fixer, Roy Cohn. And with big implications. Here Gregg Vanourek looks at this topic from a leadership perspective. Updated October 24, 2024. +++ Donald Trump’s approach to leadership is unconventional. To understand his leadership playbook, we need to back up and examine how his former fixer and mentor influenced him. A Fixer and His Client Roy Cohn was famous for being Donald Trump’s “fixer” (well before Michael Cohen arrived on the scene). Since
Toxic Leaders, Susceptible Followers
Article Summary: We have too many toxic leaders in our workplaces, communities, and nations. What are their characteristics? Why do so many people follow them willingly? What makes an environment conducive for them to capture and maintain power? By Gregg Vanourek. +++ As if things weren’t hard enough in our lives, we’re also beset with more than our fair share of toxic leaders. Toxic leaders, according to Jean Lipman-Blumen of Claremont Graduate University and author of The Allure of Toxic Leaders, are: “those individuals who, by virtue of their destructive behaviors and their dysfunctional personal qualities or characteristics, inflict serious
How Workplaces Can Bolster Democracy and Civic Engagement
Do workplaces have a role to play in supporting democracy and promoting civic engagement? Is that a reasonable activity for business and nonprofit organizations, or better left to the government? Leaders, are you dialed in to this issue, or avoiding it like the plague? How to think and go about this? These questions were the subject of a recent event I attended hosted in Denver by CiviCO. The questions are timely and relevant in this current moment of political angst, extreme polarization, and declining trust in institutions of all types across sectors—including government, business, and nonprofit organizations (and especially including
How Leaders Today Should Approach Risk
When it comes to leadership and risk, there’s a Hollywood version that tells a stylized story of maximum risk-taking leading to mind-boggling gains. Think of the way Amazon scaled, transforming from an online book-seller to an online everything-seller—now with about 40% of all U.S. retail ecommerce. Recall how Jeff Bezos talks about their “day one” mentality—always acting like a hungry startup and making quick decisions while jumping on trends. Think of how Google employs its “moonshot” approach. Consider Facebook and its famed “move fast and break things” approach. “The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s
A Painful Leadership Lesson in Managing Risk
There we were, putting our heart and soul into a bold new startup venture with buckets full of promise. We were all in. The air was electric. And everything was about to come crashing down. Our planned new offering was ambitious and pathbreaking. We knew we had our work cut out for us. The scope and complexity of our product build? Massive. Our timetable? Insanely aggressive. And with a rock-solid deadline. What’s more, it required deep, synchronized collaboration across our different departments along with a race to hire the needed talent and get them cracking. To operate as planned, we’d
Get Beyond Your Natural Leadership Style: Learn to Flex
Though you have a natural leadership style, to be effective and masterful you need to learn to get beyond it. Now, that may sound difficult. After all, people have their natural personalities. People enter leadership roles with a disposition that drives them to be either commanding or collaborative, introverted or extroverted, cautious or decisive, relationship-oriented or task-oriented. You can’t change your DNA, and you should be authentic, as leadership author Bill George has written, avoiding the trap of trying to lead like someone else. But you can change your behavior. For decades, managers have relied on a battery of tools,
A CEO Reflects on Using Different Strengths in Different Life Phases
Article Summary: How one CEO used different strengths in different phases of his life as his context and priorities changed. +++++++++++++++ I’ve been reflecting on my strengths lately as I look back on my life and career. I recently used Gregg’s Strengths Search tool. (Gregg is my son and co-author on our book, Triple Crown Leadership.) It’s a self-assessment designed to help you identify your core strengths (the things you’re really good at) and start using them more. First, I highlighted an initial list of strengths I’ve used throughout my life. I realized I’ve used different strengths in different
How Leaders Can Develop Self-Awareness
How self-aware are you? It’s common for people, including leaders, to overestimate their self-awareness. Based on multiple investigations with nearly 5,000 participants, organizational psychologist Dr. Tasha Eurich and her colleagues found that “even though most people believe they are self-aware… only 10-15% of the people we studied actually fit the criteria.” In their survey of 467 U.S. workers across several industries, 32 percent reported working with at least one manager who demonstrated a sweeping lack of insight into how they came across to others. According to the data from Hay Group’s Emotional and Social Competency Inventory, which includes information on
Why Self-Awareness Can Be Hard for Leaders
Many leaders think they have a high level of self-awareness when in fact they struggle with it. For leaders, this can show up in many ways. For example, perhaps you’re not aware that you: are so focused on the next thing that you don’t take time to celebrate your team’s achievements tend to make decisions without spending enough time getting input from your team come across as unclear or too vague or indirect in your communications don’t seem accessible to your team Such things have real consequences. Meanwhile, since you’re not aware of them, they’ll likely fester. Perhaps for a
