Justifying unethical behaviors in people management

Self-conceit is one of the biggest fallacy trait and sometimes the biggest hindrance to ethical people management skills. Self-conceit comes when in the early stages of your people management roles you tend to get away and sometimes be spectacularly successful in achieving your goals. More often than not these goals are to move ahead of your current peers and move one step further in the organizational hierarchy.

As one would say, when you become the Boss there is nothing wrong that you see in what you do for the simple reason it’s you who is doing it and hence how can it ever be wrong. But, guys hold back for a second and think, no one can ever be right, always. Sometimes, it is just a moment of waiting for the real truth to dawn; sometimes as a part of destiny and sometimes because someone else has done to you what you have done to others all your life.

At this juncture when you should reflect back and think whether the things that you did and justified it purely because of self-conceit were themselves ethical in the first place before you raise your finger and point to the mistakes of others because you think you have not been treated fairly. Friends, you write your own obituary the day you try to write the same for others.

There are many ways people justify their unethical behavior in managing people and I would briefly touch a few of them.

1.    You want to eat the cake without actually baking it yourself: Many a times we as managers want to have the full credit of a ethically achieved success without even giving a thought as to how ethical it is and what would the impact be on the team morale.

2.    The (unethical) idea may be yours but you want to tag it on someone else: We tend to make decisions look like it has been taken by a whole lot of team members even though it’s our brainchild.

3.    You interpret words based upon your convenience and not the context in which it was said: Twisting words and actions and presenting it in a context which suits us rather than presenting it in a context in which it was stated or done just because it hurts your interest or gives away the credit to someone else.

4.    You want to achieve something (unethical) but want a different proponent: You find a task to be tough and the means to achieve that task tougher so the easy way out is to bypass compliance and still make it look as if done by someone else just in case the move backfires.

5.    You see your team members as competitor and want to work on Darwin’s Principle – Survival of the fittest: You do not have a vantage point over your team member(s) and the best way to survive and maintain your position is attributing the wrong things to your team member and taking the credit of the good things as your decisions.

6.    You make a (false) commitment knowing fully that it will never be honored: You make a promise to your team fully knowing that you can’t honor it but you justify it as something which was needed to keep the team member’s confidence alive.

Yes, I know there would be many such instances that one can propose and suggest based on one’s own experiences but the fundamental thing remains that whatever may be the reason, justifying an unethical behavior can create a real undesirable environment in what could probably be a very healthy contributing team.