Ethical Leadership

What gets let slide in front of the team becomes their real standard, not the poster.

Key Concept

• Ethical leadership means what you let slide in front of the team becomes their real standard.
• Level 1: What you ignore in front of your team tells them it is okay, like kids copying what parents let slide.
• Level 2: Ethical leadership is like a thermostat - the room settles to what you tolerate, not what the poster on the wall says.
• Level 3: Because teams mirror what leaders enforce, every ignored shortcut teaches the team that shortcut is allowed.
• Level 4: Call out the small slip in front of the team before it becomes the culture - silence reads as yes.
• Level 5: What you let slide in front of the team becomes their real standard - Integrity the team can see beats what you preach on the poster.
• The standard you walk past is the standard you accept for everyone under you.
• Integrity the team can see beats what you preach on the poster.
• Silence in the room is a decision too - people read it as a yes.

Examples

• I stopped the backyard wrestling match when someone was about to get hurt - same fun goal, safer path, even though the kids wanted the rougher version.
• The coach killed the unsafe trust-fall drill when a safer team exercise achieved the same bonding goal - authority used to protect people, not to win at their expense.

Note Relationships