If you manage people, you should resolve to demonstrate ethical leadership every day.
Every. Single. Day.
Some ideas:
- As you read the morning news, share with your team an E&C article that discusses a best practice or the latest scandal, and include your thought on its applicability to your business.
- Send reminders as the E&C training deadline approaches.
- Encourage employees to use the anonymous hotline to report a concern if they are not comfortable speaking with you.
- When appropriate, share disciplinary actions taken against those who violated company policies.
- When appropriate, recognize those who did the right thing to protect the company and each other.
- Explain what conflicts of interests are and what the organization does to avoid them.
- Lead training sessions (don’t always delegate them to Legal or your E&C professional)
- Invite E&C professionals from neighboring companies to share their program with your team. Then share the results of this benchmarking event with the entire organization.
- Talk about a section of your code of ethics at an all-hands meeting.
I could probably add 100 bullets to this list.
The point is: demonstrate the importance you place on E&C.
If it’s important to you – and your team can see it – it’ll be important to them.
The Ethical Leader 