What Are the Attributes of the Ethical Executive?

For some time now, I’ve been conducting my own completely unscientific “poll” of senior advisors, asking them, from their experience, to provide up to 10 attributes of executives with integrity. The question I asked was, “What are the characteristics, behaviors, and attitudes of the ethical executive?” I asked each individual for 10 examples. Here’s the list from a superstar mid-30s female:

• Honesty
• Integrity
• Fairness
• Confidence
• Vision
• Ability to view issues through multiple lenses
• Ability to flex communication styles for critical conversations
• Ability to take feedback
• Appreciation/gratitude
• Responsiveness

Then there’s this from a late 40s top-notch consultant:

• Truthful
• Courageous
• Honest
• Respectful
• Compassionate
• Just
• Humble
• Wise
• Responsible
• Reliable

Here’s the list from a Ph.D. college professor:

• Honesty
• Integrity
• Accuracy
• Transparency
• Accountability
• Fair
• Responsible
• Loyalty
• Truthful
• Professional

And, how about this from a late 50s senior agency counselor:

• Honesty
• Moral understanding and conviction
• Uncompromising (re: established standards)
• Versed in acceptable social norms
• Fair
• Unwilling to accept double standards
• Willing to share information (transparent)
• Leads by example
• Believable
• Mature value structure
• Teacher/ethical evangelist

So far, honesty and truthfulness appear on three out of the four lists. Ultimately, I think I’d like to begin creating a roster of executives who meet a great proportion of these attributes, because we only tend to hear about those who succeed or fail in spectacular ways.

My experience is that there are very few lessons to learn from those who fail. The models we need are those who have consistently demonstrated the qualities of ethical behavior, integrity, and credibility as defined by those around them.

What’s your list? Who are your candidates?

Send these to me and I’ll publish them. We’ll create a matrix of ethical executive expectations, and then, the next step will be to ask for nominations of individuals who manage and lead in the space called “integrity.”

For Crying Out Loud

When it comes to errors, goofiness, and the insensitivity of top managers, there must be a part of the business school campus that is intentionally avoided—the school of sensible answers and actions.

Case and point: A health care client recently discovered the presence of a mold in one of its buildings, a species that commonly occurs during construction. In another part of the same building, there have been suspicious deaths, although all of the patients involved were already extremely ill. The patients that expired were cared for by two different physicians, both of whom have indicated that the mold may be to blame.

The crucial issue for management seemed to be, rather than dealing with the mold issue directly, was to spend some time (several hours) discussing and debating what their disclosure obligations were. Here are the questions under discussion:

1. How much of this do we have to disclose and to whom?
2. When do we have to disclose it?
3. What should be disclosed first and what can wait?
4. If new facts arise, when do we disclose this newly found information?
5. Are we responsible for balanced disclosure?
6. What are the limits of disclosure we will tolerate before we close this door?
7. Once we start this process, how long do we have to talk about it and keep providing additional information?
8. Won’t too much disclosure discourage and frighten patients and their relatives unnecessarily?
9. Who should make the disclosures? Should this individual be an attorney?
10. What do we not have to tell anyone?
11. Is it possible that some of the information comes under HIPAA regulations and therefore must be kept confidential?
12. How much of this disclosure is a business decision and how much is a moral decision?
13. Should businesses, even health care organizations, be making moral decisions?

The disclosure dilemma occurs frequently in business life. And the habit of over analyzing seemingly simple situations by management is also too common.

What’s your opinion? What should the rules of disclosure be and under what circumstances?

CEO Sissy Factor

The Trouble Your Business School Buddies and Networks Can Get You Into

Recently, I was having dinner with the leadership of a large industrial company and the dinner table discussion turned to crises, reputation, and other kinds of problems I come across in my work. The CEO, someone I just met, asked a really interesting question. “What common leadership factors or threads do you find that might cause the crises management failures you wind up handling?”

While all crises have unique patterns, this is a Chief Executive Officer asking, and his question is really about people like himself. Here’s what I told him and his assembled managers:

There are three common behaviors among top leaders, it seems to me, that either cause, complicate, or contribute to management failures and make problems or crises worse.

1. Predecessor Paralysis

The CEO defers taking action, primarily because it will unduly embarrass or otherwise reverse or repudiate something a key predecessor has accomplished or put in motion. The thinking is, apparently, that the CEO “wouldn’t want to make their predecessors look silly.”

2. The Staff Straightjacket

The senior staff can’t agree on what an appropriate plan of action might be. They seem torn between neither wanting to offend key players or key peers, nor wanting to put themselves in any particular danger. You’ll hear the refrain, “You’ll make us all look bad, probably for no reason.”

3. The Peer or Pal Sissy Factor

This is when a buddy, peer, or pal calls and says, “Don’t give in to those buggers, you’ll look silly and foolish, and you’ll make it much, much harder for the rest of us. Besides, if you’re wrong about this, you’ll make us all look bad and set a precedent we’ll all have to live up to or live down.”

Bonus: The Jerk Factor

Some years ago, I had a client who pled guilty to hundreds of felonies. I worked very closely with the lawyers and corporate monitors to help this company resolve its issues, and to prepare for their new life and the impact of the guilty plea. We briefed managers on the company’s guilty plea the previous afternoon in Boston, by reading and then explaining the plea agreement.

Even after reading and hearing the plea agreement read out loud, the first question from the audience was for “the real story of what happened.” So I spent a little bit of time talking about the importance of understanding that the plea agreement is the story and the new tough rules, regulations, and sanctions under which the company would be operating for a while. At which point, the new president of the company (who really didn’t like me anyway) stood up and remarked, for all to hear, “Jim, when you are talking, it seems a bit like Sunday school around here.”

I responded by saying, “Bill, if my company just pled guilty to nearly three hundred felonies, I would think a little Sunday school is in order.” He didn’t laugh, although almost everyone else did. He was gone in four months, and I still occasionally consultant with the company after all of these many years.