Challenges of Ethical Leadership

Leaders exist wherever the mass is. Even we find leaders in herd of animals or swarming insects. There are leaders in man made world at every unit of existence. Every family has a leader in it. Every community has a leader or leaders to represent its interests and safeguard its rights, like wise every group, industry, club, association, city, town, village, county, and country has, weather crowned or not, leaders at different levels. Even the there are some nations domineer the world by their unmatchable power and claim to be the world leader such as USA, but is not truly ethical in its behaviour. Lets’ understand challenges of ethical leadership at organizational level here.

Today, humane life-span has cut short considerably and developments are taking place at a faster pace. The lust for money and power has thinned the line between right and wrong, ethical and unethical, truth and lie. The negative impact can be observed in the society and environment both, by growing lack of cooperation, compassion, reliance, faith and rise in corruption, crime, pollution and social unrest. Today people do not have faith in their leaders and rather hold them responsible for most of their problems. For example in Canada voters no longer believe that their leaders are honest. And a large part of voters rate them low on honesty and ethical standards. More than half the people surveyed by British Columbia said that government is making their lives worst.

Unethical behaviour has mingled with moral values so much that the new generation can hardly distinguish the two. They learn it at home and school where parents and teachers are practising it, less or more, in day to day life. Likewise it is very much involved at every level in industry among employees and employers both. It has set very much in the ruling system and has infected it so that some countries have even recognized it as a legal activity. For example in Kenya accepting bribe is a legal activity and corruption is something to be practised openly.

“To be ethically competent in today's complex, interdependent world means that we have to integrate certain specific personal and social skills with an understanding of how to build a successful economy while taking care of the natural world on which all life depends.” Says Art Cowie of Institute For Ethical Leadership, Canada.

Ethical measures do have much greater benefits than contemporary beliefs in the long run but there are some common challenges in executing ethical leadership at any level in the society such as:

- Leaders have to put their self-interests aside and think of mutual and organizational interest on priority.

- They have to exhibit truth and honesty in their behaviour so that others can realize it and support it by forwarding same treatment ahead.

- They may have to take some harsh decisions and corrective measures towards others hence may not stay good to all. Some may even inflict hatred for mock of their ethical practices.

- There are some situations when leaders may feel extremely pressured when they have to decide between two things such as Benefits versus Ethics. Sticking with the ethics will only earn you a reputation, though.

- Leaders need to be impartial towards employees and should favour what is right only. This way they will be spared of a lot of manipulation in the organization, but may create some opponents, too.

- There might be situations when leaders would feel left alone for their decisions. These are the tough times which taste your determination and adherence to the cause.

Ethical leaders need to be people-oriented and should be aware of how their decisions impact others. They should come over with their self-serving mentality and serve the society with benevolent interests. Then only ethical leaders will be able to motivate their followers to put needs and interest of group before that of their own. This exercise demands emotional involvement of both the parties towards common goals.

Ethical leadership is very important in organizational communication. Business leaders’ decisions must be equally beneficial for the business and people both. The leaders should have clear ethical values of doing business and make these values known to others in their orbit clearly. It will require them to convey complete and accurate information through all channels on personal, professional, and legal grounds. This way you will be able to respect and admiration of employees and a peace of mind for yourself knowing that you have done right. Dealing otherwise will generate mistrust not only at organizational but social level and may even culminate into a big collapse, too. The burning example of not having ethical leadership in the company is the collapse of Enron which fell from the high of sky because of unethical practices by its leaders.

Ethical leadership can be described as an honest, transparent and trustworthy culture which can help achieve higher and lasting positions for leaders and their groups, organizations, and nations. The world knows of a man called Mahatma Gandhi for this very reason only.

There are many supporters of restoration of ethical values in the society and it is still the most desirable and expected behaviour from others. But, having a larger segment infected with the evil, it gets difficult to stay ethical and honest in this world of competition. The reformation of ethical leadership would need to be introduced from the top first. The ethical leaders would need to present example of ethical behaviour before their subjects and subordinates before they can expect the same from them.

Picture- Trevor Haldenby