How to Be an Ethical Leader: 10 Tips
Matteo Grassi
Building AI Agents For Chronic Illness | Psychologist | My mum says I am special
As the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Leadership is a privilege but also a challenge. In order to be an effective leader, you need more than just great communication skills and good values.?
The best leaders are ethical leaders, people who are empathetic, human-centered, and always thoughtful toward others.?
If you ever worked with a boss who ruled strictly with authority, you know how unsatisfying bad leadership feels. Everyone senses when a leader doesn’t care about them, and their lack of interest only demoralizes others and lowers productivity.?
To make a company the best it can be, leadership has to be at its best, too. That’s why understanding ethical leadership is so important. In this guide, we’ve compiled our top 10 tips for being a strong leader who always places people at the heart of what they do.
Ethical Leadership Definition?
Ethical leadership is leading with thoughtfulness, empathy, and consideration. These are people who know how to solve problems in a way that includes everyone and leads to the most beneficial solution.?
More than just managers, ethical leaders are people who are role models. They exemplify all the values a company wants to pride itself on — compassion, kindness, inclusivity, trustworthiness, and more.
Leaders are vital to the success of any organization. They help guide employees toward objectives that benefit the company, and delight customers. Their role may be considered top-level, but everything they do has a domino effect.?
Adopting an ethical leadership approach is the best way to ensure every part of your business is considered and cared for.
10 Tips for Ethical Leadership?
1. Define Your Values
Who are you as a person, and how do those qualities affect your leadership? Ethical leaders are, first and foremost, self-aware. They recognize the importance of introspection, and they aren’t afraid to be honest about things they need to work on.
Defining your values allows you act in a way that’s always honest and authentic. When you know what values mean the most to you, you can use them as guides in all your interactions.
Some example values for leadership include:
The values you have as a leader will also reflect the values you try to cultivate in others. A leader who prizes honesty shouldn’t just speak their truth — they should make space to let others share theirs as well.?
One of the challenges ethical leaders face today is moral relativism. The idea of what’s good and bad has shifted radically, and a more inclusive society can, at times, raise uncertainties about what’s truly right or wrong.
You may worry about offending someone, or fear that your own values don’t mean the same thing to your employees. This is why it's so important to know what qualities are important to you, why they’re important, and how you can align them with your company’s objectives.
2. Create a Culture That’s Value-Based
Company culture is always talked about, but how many organizations really practice what they preach? Some companies treat their culture like a vision board. They write down all the values they’d love to embody but never put them into play.
Culture means nothing if it isn’t backed by consistency. Everyday actions, particularly interactions between leadership and employees, have to embody the values of a strong culture.?
A good culture makes people feel closer to their organization. It humanizes a company, and helps everyone see the person within a position. It can take time to fine-tune your culture, and that’s fine. Keep an open mind, and make sure that you’re integrating things you learn from your employees along the way.?
After all, a culture doesn’t exist without anyone to bring it to life.
3. Hire People Who Fit the Culture?
When a company truly knows its culture, it will also know that not everyone is the right fit for the organization. Cultural fit can sound like a buzzword with little meaning, but it has a lot to do with workplace harmony.
A person who doesn’t fit the culture of a company is not likely to thrive there. They’re more likely to experience challenges, make mistakes, and feel out-of-place among their peers. It’s not a positive experience for them, their team, or the company at large.
A good cultural fit ensures that a person’s values and ethics align with the organization’s. By asking value-based interview questions, you can determine whether a candidate is the right person for the business.?
4. Recognize and Acknowledge Bias
We all have biases. These beliefs operate on a subconscious level, influencing our behavior in ways we often don’t realize until consequences lead to undesirable outcomes. A bias can cause a leader to unintentionally exclude a person from a job. In fact, bias is one of the leading challenges in creating diversity in the workplace.
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Be mindful of any preconceived ideas or stereotypes you have about people based on things like age, race, or sex. These could lead to inadvertent discrimination that deprives great people of opportunity and leaves your organization weaker.
5. Always Take Accountability
When you make a mistake, own up to it. There aren’t a lot of people who will be angry at someone for admitting their wrongs and striving to do better next time. Conflict tends to arise when people feel unheard, and the best way to do that is by refusing to admit when your actions have affected someone.
Leaders are humans, too, and they’re going to make mistakes, no matter how long they’ve been in charge. Humble yourself, and embrace the opportunities for growth that accountability provides.?
6. Think Proactively?
Before you make any decision, ask yourself, “How will this affect the team?” You should also try to place yourself in different people’s shoes, and think about what the decision could feel like from their perspective.
Doing this can help you make decisions with greater foresight and empathy. By considering each person’s potential experience, you can make choices from a place of greater compassion for others.?
The same logic applies to any interactions with customers. The thing is, we’ve all been a customer seeking support for something at some point in time. By tapping into our own experiences, we can become more self-aware and understanding of others at the same time.
This type of proactive thinking helps avoid making decisions that could negatively affect others, and lead to conflict later.
7. Build Social Responsibility Into Your Business Strategy
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) embraces the idea that businesses have a direct impact on the society they operate in. Rather than adopt a standalone CSR initiative that doesn’t influence daily operations, ethical leaders should make CSR an integral part of their company.
The goal of CSR is to create a business that has a positive impact on the environment and people. As a result, it’s a broad concept that can include everything from diversity-driven hiring practices to sustainability efforts.?
A good way to assess your company’s CSR is to ask, “What are we doing?” rather than just, “What do we do?”?
Companies understand what services they provide, but they don’t always consider the impact those services can have on others. Consider impact throughout the entire product lifecycle, from ethical sourcing to green manufacturing.?
Whatever your industry is, CSR is a great way to stay accountable.
8. Prioritize Soft Skills Training
Soft skills are some of the most valuable skills to have in 2023. These qualities help companies run more efficiently by promoting greater understanding, communication, and autonomy. Also known as “core skills” or “power skills,” soft skills help people collaborate more efficiently by teaching them empathy-driven communication and teamwork.
As an ethical leader, you should always assess your own soft skills, and find ways to improve. When you’re designing professional development for your team, think about what skills could benefit them and their colleagues the most.
Some examples of soft skills you may focus on include:
9. Remember to Take Care of Your Needs, Too
Leaders can be so committed to their businesses that their own needs go unmet. While your unwavering loyalty is admirable, it can come with a serious downside. People who are overworked are more likely to burn out. And no one does their best work when they’re feeling completely depleted by their job.
Your ethical leadership style should include self-care, such as eating healthy meals and getting enough sleep. Setting healthy boundaries is also important; it’s great to be dedicated, but you should have a line drawn between your personal life and professional duties.?
When you have boundaries, it’s a lot easier to take care of yourself, and be fully present during work hours.?
10. Focus on Being Kind Instead of Right
Many business owners think that ethics is just the process of following the law. They’re not wrong, but there is so much more to ethical leadership than compliance. True ethical leadership includes social responsibility. You care about the people you work for, the customers you serve, and the community your business exists in.?
While you should never deliberately go against the rules, you should put kindness ahead of personal gain. The best types of leaders know that benefitting people’s lives is more important than looking good or proving themselves to know it all.
If you want to adopt an ethical leadership approach, make sure you’re always considering the people affected by your actions. What can you do today that will make someone’s job easier, or a customer’s experience better??
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2 年Underrated. This stuff comes back to you at some point. And we don’t even realize