Good Leadership Shapes Ethical Business Behavior
Today, there are perhaps more up-and-coming entrepreneurs than ever before. People who have a vision of doing things in a new way, and innovating within spaces that have traditionally been dominated by largely rigid thinking.
In this new climate, the modern entrepreneur often has a much greater sense of ethical investment in the wellbeing of the planet, and in the ways that their business will impact things like sustainability.
But even as the importance of sustainability and eco-consciousness continue to grow, many businesses still drop the ball or fail to be consistent with regards to their ethical promises.
It’s well known that good leadership within the context of any business is highly important and can make a major difference in how likely that business is to enjoy success. Leadership training courses such as lean six sigma certification are sought after for a reason.
Here are some ways in which good leadership shapes ethical behavior within a business — and why you, as a business leader, should take your role and your ethical responsibility particularly seriously.
Leaders largely model the overall level of accountability within a business
Have you ever encountered a business where a culture of non-accountability seemed to pervade the organization? Where everyone consistently passed the buck and refused to accept blame or responsibility for anything?
If you have ever come across such a business, there are a couple of things that almost certainly applied to that situation. Firstly, the culture within that business was almost certainly very toxic and unpleasant to be around, and secondly, the leadership of that business almost certainly modeled that same negative behavior.
For better or for worse, the way that leaders conduct themselves within a business — and particularly with regards to things like their willingness to accept accountability — will tend to shape the rest of the culture of the company in a downstream manner.
If you pay lip service to things like sustainability , but always completely delegate every aspect of a sustainable business practice, and fail to accept any responsibility for how sustainability initiatives play out, then you should expect everyone else in the business to follow the same example.
This lack of accountability does, of course, have implications for just about every aspect of your business — ranging from supplier relationships to the efficacy of marketing campaigns.
As a leader, one of your core responsibilities should be to model accountability.
Good leaders can continuously realign the business with its ethical vision
A major part of the role of a good leader within a business is to maintain a broad overview of things, and to attend to the big picture concerns — particularly with regards to things like the long-term trajectory the business is on.
For this reason, among others, good leaders can and should be instrumental in helping to continuously realign their businesses with the ethical vision those businesses are or should be, aligned with.
As the leader of a business, it’s up to you to ask the right questions, to hold the members of your team accountable, and to stay in touch with your own sense of whether or not things are consistently heading in the direction you want them to be.
Leadership is responsible for the iterative steps a business takes in a given direction, day after day
Every business will tend to advance largely as a result of iterative daily steps in one direction or another — and this understanding is essentially behind the popularity of the Japanese concept of Kaizen in business, which emphasizes continuous small improvements over time.
As a leader in your business, you can ensure that the business continues advancing in an ethical direction, by helping to adjust course when that business takes steps in a direction that proves to be detrimental to broader concerns such as sustainability.
Good leadership can significantly influence office interactions and dynamics
Office culture can either make working for a business into a completely beneficial and uplifting everyday experience, or it can make it into one long-drawn-out struggle.
Good leadership has a lot of power to significantly influence office interactions and dynamics.
Firstly, this is done through modeling good behavior as described earlier. But it is also accomplished via means such as ensuring good channels of communication within the company for things such as raising concerns, in addition to providing a good HR structure for supporting personal wellbeing.
