10 Ethical Expectations Of Leadership

The Roadmap to an Ethical Culture

By James E. Lukaszewski – ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus

This document was originally developed some 20 years ago following an incredibly serious incident involving a very reputable medical product company and their illegal altering of two key medical products, that were sold to the public without FDA approval. A couple dozen patients died and several hundred needed to have the devices that were inserted in their bodies surgically removed and their bodies repaired.

It was, at the time, a disaster for the company. But amazingly, the company hired an ethics expert who I advised. A tremendous number of employees and many stakeholder groups were interviewed to determine just how management should have behaved in this crucial and catastrophic event. The results of a couple of years of work were boiled down into this single powerful page. I commend it to you as a model based on real-life experience for how executives should act in an ethical manner during an ethical crisis, and, well, every single day.

The Roadmap to an Ethical Culture

  1. Find the truth as soon as possible: Tell that truth and act on it promptly.
  2. Promptly raise the tough questions and answer them thoughtfully: This includes asking and answering questions yet to be asked or thought of by those who will be affected by whatever the circumstance is.
  3. Teach by parable: Emphasizing wrong-way/right-way options. Brief true stories, that are people-oriented, in plain language, positive, with self-evident truths, constructive lessons, morals, purposes, and powerful action instructions.
  4. Vocalize core business values and ideals constantly: Many core value statements are ideas thought up on a management golf outing, brought in on the back of a clubhouse napkin, then printed and posted without another word being spoken. The values and ideals of a business should be what employees and others bring to work every day.
  5. Walk the talk: Be accessible; help people understand the organization within the context of its values and ideals at every opportunity.
  6. Help, expect, and enforce ethical leadership: People are watching their leaders; people are counting; people know when there are lapses in ethics causing trust to be broken. When bad things happen in good organizations, it’s those occasional lapses that deepen the troubles.
  7. Preserve, protect, defend, and foster ethical pathways to the top of the organization: Constantly identify, explain, explore, and warn about situations where ethical processes can be compromised, especially among more junior executives who are on upward career trajectories.
  8. Be a cheerleader, model, and teacher of ethical behavior: Ethical behavior builds and maintains trust. In fact, to have trust in an organization requires that its leaders act ethically constantly.
  9. Make values at least equal to profits or personal gain: Most people seem to enjoy working more in organizations they respect, people they trust, and leadership they can rely on.
  10. Value everyone and be respectful: Being respected has a more personal impact than any perk, recognition, accolade, or even raises. Feelings of acceptance and respect are the two principle forces that drive employees back to work every day.

The Lesson

The main lesson of this roadmap is that it is continuously used, reused, explained, and reinterpreted at every meeting, gathering, event, and circumstance where employees and perhaps their families are gathering. Where, the most junior executive or manager in the room steps up and picks one of these pathways and tells a story, solicits other stories from the people in the audience. The habit is developed where one of these values is talked about at every opportunity.

The Script for the Conversations

  1. What are the most important aspects we should consider about this particular pathway?
  2. What are the most interesting things we can think about when employing this pathway?
  3. What are the most memorable aspects of this particular pathway?
  4. What questions does this pathway raise that our organization needs to respond and clarify?
  5. What will be done differently tomorrow based on what we talked about today?

©2024 James E. Lukaszewski

For information on reprinting or for the use of this material, editing is not permitted, contact the Copyright holder at jel@e911.com.