Senior executive staff ranks are full of strong-willed people who choose or learn how to be loyal to a CEO. That loyalty may be situational (by choice or pathological-sucking up).
In the case of the Trusted Strategic Advisor, the relationship with a senior leader is less about blind loyalty and more about a higher level of objectivity and perspective. By keeping perspective, I mean always remaining at some altitude, some constructive distance to ensure that the advice given or taken is truly the most valuable, objective, helpful, and ethical.
The key question for you as the Trusted Strategic Advisor is, what are the indicators that should cause you to question your loyalty, or at a minimum, raise serious questions of those to whom you have provided advice? There are patterns of suspect organizational leadership behavior to look for that, ironically, generally begin inside the top executive ranks.
The presence of even one or two of these indicators in your working environment is a very serious matter. The Federal Sentencing guidelines of 1991 list fifty of what are called Predicate Behaviors, inappropriate activities to look for that signal serious potential trouble. Here’s a sample:
- Lack of tough, appropriate, centralized compliance within areas of the company.
- Leadership that allows supervisors to overlook bad behavior.
- Structuring incentives in such a way that they can compromise the ethical behavior toward the quality of products and services.
- Permitting shortcuts.
- Doing “whatever it takes” to achieve inappropriate business and financial goals.
- Demeaning and disparaging compliance efforts and those doing compliance work.
Establish a Personal Integrity Barrier, Your Own Loyalty Limits
Write them down and be prepared on a moment’s notice to explain those limits. This exercise alone will prepare you to provide a service of extraordinary value to those you advise. Especially if it prevents, helps detect, or deters activities or plans that will be regretted later… or that would cause harm to others.
