A great leader, not just a good one maximizes own performance and team’s performance. He is persistent in achieving excellent results for the organisation and therefore relentlessly works with key tools including new ideas, new perspectives and feedbacks (internal and external).
With guts, drive and smarts, he engages employees regularly to rev up productivity. Employees must work with all their strength while delivering their best. Team chemistry is critical to success, so the leader takes on the insignia or emblem of strategic collaboration and entrepreneurial craftsmanship. He becomes the astute manager of tectonic shifts in the marketplace.
But his deftness as change engineer may still not deliver the expected results. He boosts quality of deliverables, fine-tunes culture and checkmates negative spirals. But he still needs to know that transformation is a process and not an event or just an occurrence. Transformation is a “build”. It advances through stages with each stage building on each other. Each stage must be “uniquely” managed on its own merit. The management must be painstaking. No shortcuts. No skipping of essentials and no mistakes. Chemistry of entire staff in total team engagement must not experience any downtime because there must be no loss in momentum.
Ethical dilemmas are gaffes or very expensive loopholes. “Ethics” They are the signposts of organisation’s character and behaviour expectations. They must be managed seriously because they may negatively impact harmonious and productive work. They have a Domino Effect. An unethical behaviour generates its own momentum and the chain reaction literally kills collective success.
The leader must therefore pay attention to ethics as a critical decision analysis tool. This organisational character barometer must keep leaders and employees in check. Organisation’s code of conduct and ethics must make them accountable. Ethics must top the scale on the side of fairness, honesty and transparency instead of individual convenience and selfish gains. Employees must become “ethics inner philosophers, always switch-on the bulb of transparency, shine bright with integrity” bring sustainable value to the workplace with their moral compass, and be fair and honest always. The leader must use humility as a critical key to emplace trust and unflinching dedication to the success of the organisation.
As humans, ethics is sub-conscious to us. We are on a day-to-day basis always engaged in ethical decision-making. Ethics in the workplace is about good and bad behaviour as well as actions. As we all know, bad character is an aversion to workplace’s health and culture.
Employees must exhibit ethics by their punctuality and conscientiousness. They must display good character by way of honesty and responsibility. Character defines a person and must not be overlooked. It shapes employees with integrity and resilience. Careers and positions must carry meaning instead of price tags.
Employees work effectively in teams. Teams are more productive and achieve results that are regularly pushing up realization of organisation’s goals and objectives.
The attitude of leaders and followers are critical to the success of the organisation. Attitude speaks louder than words. You may look good in your appearance but this only points colleagues to your behaviour. The attitude in the workplace must be positive always, even in the face of challenges. Good moral and ethics are the choices you make when nobody is watching. They are your micro-moments. They matter and may become big deals.
Leaders at all levels must treat colleagues with dignity. Dignity is different from respect. Colleagues are human beings, they have value and worth. They are priceless and invaluable. The dignity of your colleague makes him vulnerable and capable of being harmed and injured. Do not compromise the dignity of colleagues. This is inappropriate and ruins the trajectory of relationships. Compromising the dignity of colleagues and customers can be very expensive. The power of dignity can be awesome and can “throw spanners” in productive activities.
We must never tolerate an ego-driven way of looking at dignity. You are guilty of egoistic demeanor when you use your own perception to judge others. Always shun using stereotypes to fill gaps. You can never make a positive difference with ego.
The hallmark of a great leader who painstakingly shuns ethical loopholes is refusing to gain leverage over colleagues in the guise of driving productivity. You inadvertently kill highly productive talents in your team. Do not take credit for the high points of others. The leader must always appreciate and commend excellence as well as hard work.
The responsibility of the leader is to enhance value-delivering purpose in the workplace. Delegate and do not micromanage. Take responsibility and ownership of your own mistakes. Mistakes are lessons that enable leaders and followers get better. Leaders’ vulnerability helps authentic growth, development and commitment. Also, the workplace must shun discrimination, bullying and harassment.
Let me conclude with my take on effective communication. It is very important that the leader is an effective and confident communicator. He will be guilty of serious gaffe if his communication is not “focused” or embraced “focal points”. The leader’s address to followers must always resonate and there must be clarity on goals as well as objectives. Colleagues must remember what the leader said and act on them. Therefore, the leader must pay attention to his audience’s knowledge level, attitude, likely resistance points, expectations and motivation.
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