Features
Part of Leadership ethics: how decisions reveal values
Leadership ethics mistakes worth avoiding early
Nine pressures that produce leadership mistakes, described from the inside, each with the early sign that catches it and a substitute that costs the same.
Leaders do not usually go wrong by deciding to. They go wrong under a specific pressure, in a way that seemed reasonable at the time and that they would have criticised in someone else.
Nine of those pressures follow. Each is described as it feels from the inside, which is the only place it can be caught, with the substitute behavior that costs about the same and does not compound.
What to take away
- The most expensive mistake is setting a target you privately know cannot be reached honestly. Everything that follows from it is your decision, not the team's.
- Rewarding an outcome without asking how it was reached is the same as instructing the team to reach it any way they can.
- Treating a report of a problem as an attack on you converts a problem into a cover-up, and the second is always worse.
- Deciding alone on anything with an ethical dimension is not decisiveness. It is removing the only check that would have caught you.
1. The target you know cannot be hit honestly
How it feels: the number came from above, or from a plan, and it is what the organization needs. You pass it on and add that you have confidence in the team.
What it does: the team can now hit the number or tell the truth, and you have made it their choice. When corners are cut, the record shows they cut them. It also shows you set the number.
Instead: say, upward, what you believe the number requires and what you will not do to reach it. Say, downward, what the number is, that you know it is hard, and that you would rather hear it will be missed in month two than discover how it was hit in month twelve. Then mean it when month two arrives.
2. Rewarding the result without asking about the method
How it feels: the quarter closed strong. Asking how would sound ungrateful and is not your job.
What it does: it teaches the team that method is not examined, and the next quarter's method will be chosen accordingly. The pillar on leadership ethics covers why incentives beat policies; this is the mechanism at the level of a single conversation.
Instead: ask, every time, in the same tone you would use for any other detail. "Walk me through how that closed." Not as an accusation. As routine. If method is always asked about, it is never suspicious to ask.
3. Hearing a report as an attack
How it feels: someone brings you a problem in your area, and the first thing you notice is what it says about you.
What it does: your face, your first question and your tone tell the reporter what happens to people who bring things. The problem is now yours to conceal as well as to fix, and the reporter has learned not to bring the next one.
Separate the two entirely. Some reports legally protect reporters, as the UK's whistleblowing rules show, so your reaction has consequences beyond the relationship.
In the first conversation, cover the problem, the facts, and what needs doing. Later, alone, consider what it says about you and what you will change. The reporter is not the author of the problem, so treat them as someone who gave you the chance to fix it before an outsider did.
4. The quiet exception for the person who matters
How it feels: the rule is clear, but this is your best person, and the breach is small, and losing them would hurt the team more than the breach did.
What it does: the team already knows about the breach, and is waiting to see what you do. A quiet exception is not quiet. It is the loudest thing you will do all year, and its content is that the rules apply in proportion to your usefulness.
Instead: have the same conversation you would have with anyone, in the same week. If the person leaves over it, they were going to leave over something, and you have kept the team.
Where conduct is serious enough for a formal process, employment law governs it. Follow that process with the people function, not your own judgment.
5. Making it somebody else's job
How it feels: there is a compliance function, a people function, a code of conduct. Conduct is their area, and you have a business to run.
What it does: the team reads conduct from you, not from the function. If you treat it as a separate department's concern, so will they, and the function will find out about problems when the team has stopped caring who knows.
Instead: the function owns the machinery. You own what your team believes. That means the conversations in this article are yours, every time, and cannot be delegated without being delegated away.
6. Announcing values
How it feels: the team should know what you stand for. A statement, a slide, a set of words on the wall.
What it does: it creates a measure of the gap between what you said and what you do, visible to everyone who works for you, updated daily. A leader who never announced values is judged on conduct. A leader who announced them is judged on the gap.
Instead: name three specific things you will not accept and one thing you will protect. Then do those, and let the team draw the values from the record. The record is what they were going to use anyway.
7. Delegating the hard conversation
How it feels: the people function is better at these, or the person's direct manager should handle it, or it will land better from a peer.
What it does: the person learns that you would not face them. The team learns that when it is difficult, you send someone. And the conversation, delivered second-hand, carries none of the weight that made it worth having.
Instead: you have it. You can bring someone from the people function if procedure requires, and often it does. But the words are yours, in the room, and the person hears them from you.
8. Confusing loyalty with integrity
How it feels: the team closes ranks when there is a problem, and it feels like a strength. People protect each other. Nobody talks outside.
What it does: it makes the team's first obligation to itself, and its second to the truth. Problems that should go up go sideways and stop. The person who does raise something has broken the team's real rule, which was loyalty, and is treated as having done so.
Instead: say, and then show, that the loyalty you value is loyalty to what the team is for, and that protecting a colleague from the consequences of a problem is not protecting the colleague. The person who reported is the one being loyal. Act as if you believe that the first time it is tested.
9. Deciding alone
How it feels: this one is on you. Consulting would spread the responsibility and look like weakness. You have the information and the authority.
What it does: it removes the only mechanism that catches the errors you cannot see in yourself. Your reasoning on a decision with an ethical dimension is subject to every pressure in this article, and you are the last person able to detect that.
Instead: on any decision where someone bears a cost so that someone else gains, show your reasoning to one person who will tell you if it is wrong before you act. Running the standard lenses briefly is a cheap way to structure that conversation, and a short introduction to them is enough to start.
The responsibility stays yours, and the check is what makes it defensible. The structure for that check is in ethical frameworks.
Which pressure produces which mistake
| Pressure | Mistake it produces | Early sign |
|---|---|---|
| A number from above | Impossible target passed on | You add "I have confidence in the team" |
| A good result | Method not examined | You feel it would be rude to ask |
| Bad news in your area | Report heard as attack | Your first thought is about you |
| A valuable person | Quiet exception | You use the word "pragmatic" |
| A busy quarter | Conduct delegated to a function | You cannot recall the last conversation you had about it |
| A new role | Values announced | You have a slide |
| A difficult person | Conversation delegated | You are rehearsing the reasons it would land better from someone else |
| A close team | Loyalty over truth | "We handle things internally" |
| Confidence | Deciding alone | You did not write the reasoning down |
The early signs are the useful column. Each is a sentence you say to yourself, and each can be caught at the moment of saying it. The mistakes compound when they are not caught, and the people who pay are usually not in the room; what it looks like from where they stand is the subject of employee ethics.
Common questions
I have made several of these. Where do I start?
With the target. If the number cannot be reached honestly, everything else you fix is undone by it. Say so upward this week.
Is it ever right to decide alone?
On speed-critical decisions with no ethical dimension, yes. On any decision where someone bears a cost so that someone else gains, no, because you cannot see your own reasoning's blind spot and the cost of one reader is an hour.
How do I tell loyalty from integrity in my own team?
Ask what happened the last time someone raised a problem about a colleague. If the team's first move was to protect the colleague from the consequences, the team is loyal. If it was to fix the problem, it has integrity, and it may also be loyal.
