In my opinion, ethical leadership is about articulating and substantiating an organization’s goals and ways of achieving them, making sure people put their ego below their firm’s success. An ethical leader’s responsibility is, as per Gnazzo (2011), to ensure that an organization’s values are always kept track of by management at the time of decision-making. A great ethical leader is someone who can foster enthusiasm in employees and help them perform using their potential to the fullest – doing so in the most appropriate and careful ways. Their power is never used in ways that could damage the employees’ self-esteem or make them feel like they are inferior.
People whose values align with what the organization appreciates are deliberately sought out and helped to grow within the company. Ethical leaders create conversations about ethics and emphasize its importance by framing all the activities in ethical terms.
Lockheed Martin‘s ethics program has set a goal of reaching all hundreds of thousands of its employees to draw their attention to the problem of ethics at the workplace. What is peculiar is that ethical leaders tend to their followers – that is, a company’s employees on all levels – as full-fledged participators in developing new possible approaches and solutions to various ethical problems. As stated by Terris (2013), tools created by ethical leaders have to be suitable for people at every corporation level, at every type of job, and of every temper, anywhere in the world. That is no simple task, to say the least, so the most reasonable thing a leader can do is to involve their followers in the training and meeting and learn from them, treating them as equals. An ethical leader is to listen, understand, and guide whenever necessary, showing that everyone’s contribution is valued.
There is no arguing that culture is the face of an organization. Gnazzo (2011) claims that companies with great cultures tend to care about the way they are viewed by their stakeholders. Both external and internal perceptions are of utmost importance, and the organization’s values are to be protected and preserved. That way, when a company states that the quality of its product is to be trusted, its words are substantiated by action. That seems to be one of the things that every organization strives for: it is, without any doubt, essential to know how to present oneself – but no amount of brilliant presentation will help if there is no actual correspondence with the fine words. A person is responsible for ensuring that correspondence is the very link connecting the image with reality.
One thing that is important to understand is that ethics is not and must not be viewed as a concept to simply meet an organization’s legal criteria. As Terris (2013) notes, it is a component that has started being considered as the one adding value to the company’s mission because it does. Consequently, there must be someone responsible for the company’s ethical outlook, just like there are specialists responsible for every other department and area of expertise. That is exactly what the Chief Ethics Officer is supposed to do: according to Gnazzo (2011), their primary role is to connect the culture and compliance. Compliance is made stronger with the presence of a person made to ensure it. The importance of doing the right thing is a cliché value reiterated by every organization out there, whether it is true for them. The Chief Ethics Officer is the person who always is in charge of the company doing the right thing.
References
Gnazzo, P. J. (2011). The chief ethics and compliance officer: A test of endurance. Business and Society Review, 116(4), 533-553.
Terris, D. (2013). Ethics at work: Creating virtue at an American corporation. Brandeis University Press.