In recent months several high-level leaders have mysteriously lost their way. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund and a leading French politician, was arraigned on charges of sexual assault. Before that David Sokol, rumored to be Warren Buffett's successor, was forced to resign for trading in Lubrizol stock prior to recommending that Berkshire Hathaway purchase the company. Examples abound of other recent failures:
- Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd resigned for submitting false expense reports concerning his relationship with a contractor.
- US Senator John Ensign (R-NV) resigned after covering up an extramarital affair with monetary payoffs.
- Lee B. Farkas, former chairman of giant mortgage lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, in April was found guilty for his role in one of the largest bank fraud schemes in American history.
These talented leaders were highly successful in their respective fields and at the peak of their careers. This makes their behavior especially perplexing, raising questions about what caused them to lose their way:
- Why do leaders known for integrity and leadership engage in unethical activities?
- Why do they risk great careers and unblemished reputations for such ephemeral gains?
- Do they think they won't get caught or believe their elevated status puts them above the law?
- Was this the first time they did something inappropriate, or have they been on the slippery slope for years?
In these ongoing revelations, the media, politicians, and the general public frequently characterize these leaders as bad people, even calling them evil. Simplistic notions of good and bad only cloud our understanding of why good leaders lose their way, and how this could happen to any of us.
Leaders who lose their way are not necessarily bad people; rather, they lose their moral bearings, often yielding to seductions in their paths. Very few people go into leadership roles to cheat or do evil, yet we all have the capacity for actions we deeply regret unless we stay grounded.
Self-reflection: A Path To Leadership Development
Before anyone takes on a leadership role, they should ask themselves, "Why do I want to lead?" and "What's the purpose of my leadership?" These questions are simple to ask, but finding the real answers may take decades. If the honest answers are power, prestige, and money, leaders are at risk of relying on external gratification for fulfillment. There is nothing wrong with desiring these outward symbols as long as they are combined with a deeper desire to serve something greater than oneself.
Leaders whose goal is the quest for power over others, unlimited wealth, or the fame that comes with success tend to look to others to gain satisfaction, and often appear self-centered and egotistical. They start to believe their own press. As leaders of institutions, they eventually believe the institution cannot succeed without them.
The Leadership Trap
While most people value fair compensation for their accomplishments, few leaders start out seeking only money, power, and prestige. Along the way, the rewards—bonus checks, newspaper articles, perks, and stock appreciation—fuel increasing desires for more.
This creates a deep desire to keep it going, often driven by desires to overcome narcissistic wounds from childhood. Many times, this desire is so strong that leaders breach the ethical standards that previously governed their conduct, which can be bizarre and even illegal.
Very few people go into leadership to cheat or do evil.
As Novartis chairman Daniel Vasella (HBS PMD 57) told Fortune magazine, "for many of us the idea of being a successful manager—leading the company from peak to peak, delivering the goods quarter by quarter—is an intoxicating one. It is a pattern of celebration leading to belief, leading to distortion. When you achieve good results… you are typically celebrated, and you begin to believe that the figure at the center of all that champagne-toasting is yourself."
When leaders focus on external gratification instead of inner satisfaction, they lose their grounding. Often they reject the honest critic who speaks truth to power. Instead, they surround themselves with sycophants who tell them what they want to hear. Over time, they are unable to engage in honest dialogue; others learn not to confront them with reality.
The Dark Side Of Leadership
Many leaders get to the top by imposing their will on others, even destroying people standing in their way. When they reach the top, they may be paranoid that others are trying to knock them off their pedestal. Sometimes they develop an impostor complex, caused by deep insecurities that they aren't good enough and may be unmasked.
To prove they aren't impostors, they drive so hard for perfection that they are incapable of acknowledging their failures. When confronted by them, they convince themselves and others that these problems are neither their fault nor their responsibility. Or they look for scapegoats to blame for their problems. Using their power, charisma, and communications skills, they force people to accept these distortions, causing entire organizations to lose touch with reality.
At this stage leaders are vulnerable to making big mistakes, such as violating the law or putting their organizations' existence at risk. Their distortions convince them they are doing nothing wrong, or they rationalize that their deviations are acceptable to achieve a greater good.
During the financial crisis, Lehman CEO Richard Fuld refused to recognize that Lehman was undercapitalized. His denial turned balance sheet misjudgments into catastrophe for the entire financial system. Fuld persistently rejected advice to seek added capital, deluding himself into thinking the federal government would bail him out. When the crisis hit, he had run out of options other than bankruptcy.
It's lonely at the top, because leaders know they are ultimately responsible for the lives and fortunes of people. If they fail, many get deeply hurt. They often deny the burdens and loneliness, becoming incapable of facing reality. They shut down their inner voice, because it is too painful to confront or even acknowledge; it may, however, appear in their dreams as they try to resolve conflicts rustling around inside their heads.
Meanwhile, their work lives and personal lives get out of balance. They lose touch with those closest to them̬their spouses, children, and best friends—or co-opt them with their points of view. Eventually, they lose their capacity to think logically about important issues.
Values-centered Leadership
Leading is high stress work. There is no way to avoid the constant challenges of being responsible for people, organizations, outcomes, and uncertainties in the environment. Leaders who move up have greater freedom to control their destinies, but also experience increased pressure and seduction.
Leaders can avoid these pitfalls by devoting themselves to personal development that cultivates their inner compass, or True North. This requires reframing their leadership from being heroes to beingservants of the people they lead. This process requires thought and introspection because many people get into leadership roles in response to their ego needs. It enables them to transition from seeking external gratification to finding internal satisfaction by making meaningful contributions through their leadership.
Maintaining their equilibrium amid this stress requires discipline. Some people practice meditation or yoga to relieve stress, while others find solace in prayer or taking long runs or walks. Still others find relief through laughter, music, television, sporting events, and reading. Their choices don't matter, as long as they relieve stress and enable them to think clearly about work and personal issues.
A System To Support Values-centered Leadership
The reality is that people cannot stay grounded by themselves. Leaders depend on people closest to them to stay centered. They should seek out people who influence them in profound ways and stay connected to them. Often their spouse or partner knows them best. They aren't impressed by titles, prestige, or wealth accumulation; instead, they worry that these outward symbols may be causing the loss of authenticity.
Spouses and partners can't carry this entire burden though. We need mentors to advise us when facing difficult decisions. Reliable mentors are entirely honest and straight with us, defining reality and developing action plans.
In addition, intimate support groups like the True North Groups, with whom people can share their life experiences, hopes, fears, and challenges, are invaluable. Members of our True North Group aren't impressed by external success, but care enough about us as human beings and as leaders to confront us when we aren't being honest with ourselves.
As Senator Ensign told his fellow senators in a farewell speech in May, "When one takes a position of leadership, there is a very real danger of getting caught up in the hype surrounding that status … Surround yourselves with people who will be honest with you about how you really are and what you are becoming, and then make them promise to not hold back… from telling you the truth."
Instead of a failure of morality, conscious control/will power, leadership or other external structural conditions, these behaviors can be seen as symptomatic. Symptoms of brain-based medical problems -- impaired impulse control, anti-social and compulsive/addictive behavior.
There are both inherited/family brain impairments and those accumulating in later life that drive both impulsive and compulsive behaviors. These same impairments drive some to seek positions of power and celebrity as ways to further the "self-medicating" and externalizing behavior driven by the impairments.
Some of this can be quite destructive. Brain science is teaching us more daily.
When everyone defers to you, when the room quietens as you walk in, you begin to believe that you're just that good, but more than this, that you're infallible. Humble you are not.
It is this last, this sense of invincibility that provokes bad decisions and bad decision-making.
People in this position, by definition will ignore offers of "help," or disdain the "need" to join support groups.
Perhaps truly great and sustained leaders must routinely be humbled in order to maintain their greatness... Sometimes this comes from non-work sources like personal or family health issues -- you can't "fix" an autistic child by putting in more hours and outperforming everyone else. How you embrace this (and your child) is a truer judge of you than your company's quarterly performance.
I wonder how often corporate Boards look at a prospective CEO's track record in terms of how they handled failure and yet maintained employee trust and support, and through that rebuilt their company. This, I think is a better measure of a prospective leader than a constant string of successes.
There seems to be an increase in the number of folks who possess the requisite social skills to create workplace, professional relationships - replete with all the aplomb and niceties that one's needs to master the "rank-related workplace ladder."
These folks are great at relating to their peers, their bosses, their clients, their mentors, their coaches, their followers, their "groupies", and their stakeholders, for example, but when it comes to their relationships outside their professional arena - spouses, partners, friends, etc. -- there is no "there" there.
These same folks fail deeply when it comes to creating and maintaining truly healthy, conscious, and loving and intimate relationships.
Many of these folks have all the "right stuff." They come from "good stock,' attended the "right" schools, played all the "in" sports, engaged in the "acceptable" and revered extracurricular activities, pledged the "right" sororities and fraternities, and received the degree-du-jour and perhaps the post-graduate accolades that now line their walls.
On the way up, they learned how to be egotistical, narcissistic and arrogant. They wear their successes as coats of arms on their sleeves. In their chosen professional field, they paid their dues, moved up the ranks, and climbed the ladder of success -- creating and cultivating the necessary relationships that would support them to achieve whatever it is their ego-driven desires needed to achieve: power, rank, status, control, recognition. And, to be honest, they knew their stuff; they knew their craft.
Being adept at relationships, they used all their tools: false modesty, false intimacy, false trust, cloudy transparency, fake vulnerability, fake charisma, insincere charm, forced gracefulness and the like.
The downside - or perhaps, their dark side - is their narcissism -- their consistent need to be "on", to play the role, to always be in the limelight, to wield their power, to be in control and be the center of the Universe.
Then, it hits. Sometimes in a subtle way; more often, in a not-so-subtle way. One day they wake up and they feel alone. They experience feelings of loneliness and deficiency that accompany the stark realization that "the game is up" -- their mask has worn thin and is disintegrating. Their personality costume covers but a skeleton -- no meat -- and, alas, they begin to experience sadness, depression, self-hate, self-loathing and self-pity.
They discover they really don't know who they are. At home with their partners, at play with their friends, in their life (outside of work) in relationship, they stumble, feel disoriented, disconnected and ungrounded; they feel like a stranger -- emotionally distant, incapable of forging deeper, heart-felt and loving intimacy. They experience estrangement from their spouses or partners, distance from their loved ones, and often end up engaging in superficial affairs, one-night stands, and uncomfortable and clunky liaisons -- all in an effort to find and feel a deeper self that has alluded them.
In reality, they're searching for, longing for, their soul -- long lost, covered over and abandoned. Along the way, they jettisoned their need for true and real friendship, for true and real relationship, for true and real connection -- jettisoned for the sake of ego-driven needs for control, recognition, power and security. They created, then lived out their fictional stories that shored up their egos, but never their deeper relationships. They created and lived their fictional stories, focused on a superficial and immortal "me," but never on true and real friendships and relationships, never on "we."
So now, lost, lonely and unhappy, they don't know where to turn.
Turn inside. That's where they can find their True and Real Self -- the Self that engages in honest, conscious, sincere, healthy and self-responsible relationships. .
(c) 2011, Peter Vajda, Ph.D. and SpiritHeart
When it is in return from anything within or without but essentially for self satisfaction or gratification, then leaders will still ultimately falter, and it only depend on whether the price is right.
Only humans who morally do good only because it is human to do good and not for any self satisfaction, will they not falter. Ironically there are few and far in between and maybe almost non existent except for some saints who largely remain unidentified because of their humility.
So stop asking for the impossible.
Ultimate it is the price (not necessarily money) that drives human instinct
de their mistake, there must have a chance and support in their consideration about the activity which promoted them to do this mistake. Thus, learning on the experience of lost leaders, we could understand the real phenomena of such a problem and to create our further steps on developing people in the right way...
About a dozen years ago I trekked in Nepal and was introduced to the leadership style of the Sherpa. Sherpas have a quiet confidence that allowed me (the "follower") to both feel secure that I was on the right path and to feel free to explore. As several of the comments and the article confirm, these two things don't typically come together in the workplace. I find that it takes a combination of the right "servant" leader, a healthy environment and your own self awareness/confidence.
I have interviewed numerous Sherpas over the years and plan to publish a book to shed more light on this perspective. I welcome your comments.
Onward and upward,
Lee Nadler
lee@sherpamarketing.net
I would not classify rape - understanding in this case that it is only alleged at this point - as a failure of leadership. The Ensign example also is a poor one, I think. He is a politician and the quote from him regarding leadership is self-serving. He is blaming it on 'getting caught up in the hype.' Newt Gingrich said at least one of his infidelities was the result of his hard work caring so deeply about the direction of the country. So if we take him at face value, perhaps we should examine failed patriotism.
I completely agree with you that leaders who lose their way are not necessarily bad people. For every leader that is caught, many others inflict pain and turmoil on employees and families behind closed doors. I don't think they lose their way any more or less than the general population; their behaviors are simply public for all to see and judge. As you mention in Authentic Leadership, we all have a shadow side to which we must be reckoned.
And for every leader that gets caught, there are many others that live solid lives of service and integrity. We do count on leadership to help navigate our families, our communities and our economy and, because of their influence, they are held to account more publically for both their sins of commission as well as sins of omission. Speaking of sins of omission, where are the CEO's influenced by Peter Drucker? Drucker was very vocal against increasing wage disparity within public corporations. (Drucker thought 40 to 1 was reasonable; we are now averaging around 500 to 1 pay disparity).
My main comment: thank you, leaders, for stepping up to lead. You are fallible, prideful, compassionate, self serving and servant to others, fearless and fearful, risk takers and reckless, rational and emotional. Your ups and downs are some of the most circulated stories in the world; look to the scores of leaders chronicled in the Old Testament.
Just like the rest of us, you need others beside you to hold you to account and to be there when you suffer consequences and when you are ready to seek forgiveness. I am a Christian and grateful that there is a saving God to pull us out of our mess!
As Ed Marek commented about the value of servant leadership, I am challenged to be a better servant leader to my family.
It is sad, Joe, to see talent wasted, but I think the tragedy is permeating our entire society; all walks of life are having a tough time making the epic transition from depending on our labor to depending on our brain power. I think many leaders do not know how to control the incredible resource of corporate individualism on the potential scale it could erupt.
Susan, have you read Authority: The Most Misunderstood Idea in America by Eugene Kennedy and Sara Charles? Powerful model of true authority.
Peter, I certainly relate to the spiritual component. I do think spiritual practices can effectively slow down and help a fast paced person who has forgotten to check their world view lately. But it also has the danger of becoming one more prescription to "getting it right." So when we don't then it's, of course, our fault.
Shafeen, I totally agree with you. I listened to a major league baseball player who had determined he was above others since he was pampered and praised from ten years old! Fortunately, for him, he had humbling experiences to pull him back to earth.
Will brain science ever teach us enough to avoid bad behaviors, Elmer? I think not.
I think the press will ALWAYS find some outlier with whom to titillate us; it sells. It is our fault to conclude sensational stories are representative of our country.
Thank you for your compassion and authenticity, Bill.
Dan Heck
Evanston, IL
It is not uncommon for people to adopt a degree of flexibility in their ethics and behaviour, and leadership roles can demand this flexibility more than most - hence we talk of "masks of leadership" and "leadership as theatre".
Therefore some leaders can become very familiar with adjusting their standards - and creating narratives to justify this to themselves and to others.
So not only do leadership positions - with all their associated power and influence - provide opportunities for dishonest or unethical behaviours - they also, in a sense, provide familiarization, facility, practice and "justification" of such behaviours.
Leaders in consequence may invent their own contingent standards - seldom "bad", nor seeing themselves as such - they simply measure themselves by new and alternative sets of standards.
at is negating the fact that you are leading. In life, there has to be leaders and there has to be followers and both positions are equally as important. I appreciate another person's point-of-view, unfortunately, this is not a point-of-view that I can praise.
Dictionary.com's word of the day, pecksniffian, is particularly appropriate today:
The men who do things in the world, the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity.
-- H. L. Mencken, Damn! A Book of Calumny
(a) Look to their followers that they know all answers.
(b) Are capable of taking decisions.
(c) Do not panic.
(d) Lastly immortalized.
These are some but many can be added, this personal glorification and to be recorded in history as the ultimate leader, forces them to have dark sides as they donot want to be contradicted and are not keen to see their failures.
The success in leadership will be there as long as the leader learns to accept failures, disent and lastly has kee observation, learning ability and uncanny reasoning to acccept mistakes for larger good
With that understanding, there is something about leadership,power, authority etc that just derails the custodian of it arising from the "human being" perspective.
Humans have an ego which if unchecked builds into "know it all attitude" and "I am the best asset and smart guy attitude" thus can do anything that satisfies oneself in short term with no remorse, which is myopic.
In my view this is a great disadvantage of leadership that society does not seem to put much emphasis to .In other words leadership builds blindness in people to the extent that you only want hear want to hear and only want to behave in manner that you want to behave until an external force cuts your wings off.
Your program on True North was the most impactful on the AMP, and gave me and fellow-leaders with a framework we could take back and execute on. This piece on "Why Leaders Lose their Way" takes it to the next level. Like always, you hit the nail on the head and say it like it is.
Being a "servant leader" no doubt holds the key. We need to test its portability across cultures, especially in the East, where leadership through servility may be misconstrued as weak leadership. In my view, we need to balance humility with iron-will and the ability to take decisions based on fairness, transparency and trust. Many of us from eastern cultures have a strong religious anchor where we believe most positive outcomes are because of a higher power, and negative outcomes are due to our "karma" or past actions, and therefore has to be accepted as is.
Leaders of today will do well to suffuse your framework of "servant leadership" with a blend of value-based leadership that's underpinned by a belief there's a higher power leading us to fulfill our destinies.
I've discussed this a lot with people in Africa who believe that corruption is insurmountable. It's a very interesting topic and extremely relevant in the world today. I always say this is not isolated to any group of people. Anyone, anywhere, can experience these symptoms if they aren't careful and ask for feedback. I do believe that people aren't inherently immoral, they just lose their way and need to come back down to earth.
We would love, and it would make us feel better, if the ones who made it to the top proved to be super humans, not only in their mental, intellectual and sometimes physical, capacities, but also flawless ethically, not susceptible to the same problems that ail mere mortals like we the servants they lead.
... and then pigs would fly.
+
Mr. Seydl,
I must emphatically disagree with you. Anthony Weiner's wrongdoings speak to his character. If he can not exercise loyalty to his wife, how can his constituents expect him to exercise loyalty to them? What separates good people from bad ones are the morals by which they live, so indeed, leaders who lose their way (especially their moral way) are bad people. I am tired of the "ask forgiveness later" approach to leadership in business, politics, etc. Lives and futures are at stake, and these consequences are far greater than a political career such as Anthony Weiner's.
Thanks for your comment. I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here as I agree with much of what you say, but here goes.
First of all, Anthony Weiner has been doing a lot to improve the lives and futures of his constituents. He has consistently stuck up for the working class in NYC, supporting tax cuts for small business owners and middle-income families and increasing funding for public schools in his district. In addition, he has helped clean up teenage crime in and around NYC in a way that helped crime-doers learn from the mistakes they made and become better people--as opposed to just using juvenile punishment. He has also worked hard to improve public housing facilities in his district, including helping public-housing users receive affordable health-care treatment. Contrary to your comment, Anthony Weiner's constituents had a lot of faith in his loyalty as a politician.
Where I think we disagree is: Whether Congressman Weiner's social media blunder should negate his aforementioned political accomplishments. You'd probably say yes; whereas, I'm a little bit on the fence, because, again, IMO everyone deserves a second chance. But, you're right in that there are no excuses for Congressman Weiner's immoral actions.
All in all, it's a dicey case study, but not dissimilar to previous political blunders (think Clinton, Spitzer, etc...). My only point was that Congressman Weiner must have known his inappropriate actions could ruin his political career, which leads to the question: What was he thinking given the enormous costs at stake relative to whatever benefits he foresaw...
The leaders who ethically fail are generally those who have been on the slippery slope for many years and have got away with their fallacies. It is only that, one fine day, a bigger fall happens.
In case of Strauss Khan, his misadventure with the chambermaid will be his courage to break the law stemming out of his rich experience with other women in the past and getting away without notice.
Madoff, successfully fooled the world with his Ponzi scheme, but before being blown out was much an admired leader in his business.
Kerry cooked Enron`s books for years.
Technically, it is not seduction and ephemeral gains, but a continued practice of exploitation of unseen weaknesses of the system and environment, till it becomes too big to hide.
The conduct of leaders on Sex, Money and Abuse of Power are not those factored in the corporate audit and don`t get reflected in the Balance Sheets of any company. Glossy magazines talks about jet set lifestyles and Top Management considers these obscenities as the invisible perks of the Leaders. These leaders then believe that they are "God's Gift to Mankind"
Corporate misdoings are only the extension of personal misconduct of the Leaders. How many cases of Price fixing gets caught each year in the Industry, how many bribes are routinely paid to secure contracts in the Third World by Multinational companies and this can go on and on.
Leadership failure has to be value driven and unless value audit for person to person takes place within the company , the dark side of human beings will continue to abuse the power vested onto them by the shareholders.
Lastly, I would not agree on Leaders being servant of people they lead. Servants don't lead anyone, they only take orders. This would be a total contradiction of the profile of a leader. Leader is the one leads from the front. He may serve the best interest of the employees, shareholders and the community at large, but serves by conviction and ingenuity and not by power and prestige. As for trappings, it is the same, whether you are a leader manager or supervisor or a professor. Everyone believes that he has his own small empire and its unique power related to his position. Some big and some small, but all of us are in the same boat.
Thanks for writing this - it takes a certain amount of courage to publish this; this is not taken for granted.
http://www.valuesbasedleadershipjournal.com/issues/vol2issue2/power_responsibility_wisdom.php
Secondly, you mentioned how lonely leadership can be. One of the solutions to this is often to come to rely on an ever smaller group of true believers who support you. This can lead to sycophancy and isolation from the real world where the leader becomes detached from the lives of ordinary people. Ex-British senior politician and former Doctor, David Owen, has written an important book on the subject called The Hubris Syndrome. Anyone who has worked closely with senior leaders will recognise many attiubutes of hubristic behaviours that Owen highlights. I commend it to you.
However, having lived abroad for over 10 years, and in different cultures with their own perspectives on subjects like leadership, I suggest that there is one universal idea of leadership. And that is that when a leader takes actions which harm their organization, and by extension the people in it, it is considered to be undesirable.
I see this topic as supporting an earlier topic here about poor ethics in organizations. Considering the dark side of leadership, it serves my previous comments about putting ethical people in positions higher and higher in an organization. And value centered leadership reinforces the idea that leaders must have the right traits when chosen for a leadership position. That will include their ways of dealing with aspects of the position which push or try to compromise them. The, it's lonely at the top, notion shows to have different interpretations of it. Some of them being, the buck stops here; the person at the top has no friends; you must distance yourself from your friends in an organization; and that when you have reached the highest position possible you feel a sense of loneliness for the end of the challenge, which offers nothing higher to strive for. However, the article's idea about it, that the pressure of responsibility on a leader creates feelings of loneliness, ser
ves to show that a leader who does not posses the right traits can in fact be lonely at the top.
The idea of being lonely at the top focuses on the notion that a leader must make difficult decisions, which at times can make them unpopular with people in the organization. Hence, either having lost the sense of camaraderie or possibly the public display of friendships by people in the organization, it is said the leader is lonely in their position at the top. This leader makes decisions which are in the best interest of the organization and the people in it, but they are not always popular decisions. Those who put this leader in their position must accept the responsibility to support the leader in the face of a loss of popularity at times. Without such support this leader risks becoming vulnerable to the traps of popularity, and become at risk of losing their way. That is if they are not taken out of their position for all the wrong reasons, in which case the organization has shown to have a flawed idea of leadership. The leader whose popularity takes a back seat to decis
ions that are good for an organization, is in contrast to the leader who seeks popularity at the expense of the organization's best interests in their decisions -- who, as I suggest in terms of a universal idea, is not a desired leader.
If the questions to be answered from this article answered are, "Why do I want to lead?" and "What's the purpose of my leadership?" -- it is the reply to these questions by those selecting the leader for a position, or their understanding of the answers given by the prospective leader, that offer the chance to put the best possible person into a leadership position. Of course a leader must be introspective, but to avoid a leader losing their way it must be ensured initially that the leader has the right traits.
e in the right direction(s).
who did not vote for him.This higher recognition of duty to the people was an impressive response-time will tell how well this PM executes on his message.
The other theme worth framing up relates to the primal instincts when humans are under duress.There is a view about why good people do bad things that relates to the role the primitive instincts and hindbrain play in going astray. After interviewing a mutiple of leadership team members following major failures or malfeasance one insight I have gained is their response to the question
"how have you dealt with failure before-cover up or hands up approach?".We need to consider in any executive or leadership selection an important legacy-what events in the past have triggered the "fight/flight" reflexes and especially what happened next.Blindness to these reflexes by both the individual and those overseeing this individual can be a sleeping giant,or a more obvious source of risk to any organisation
By the author stating that "...this desire [for more rewards] is so strong that leaders breach the ethical standards that previously governed their conduct," he is taking a a strong position that these individuals were at some point in the past ethical. While this may be the case in a very small minority of instances, I respectfully disagree with Mr. George in that I believe the majority of these leaders were never ethical people with a strong set of morals guiding their decisions. A rat is a rat.
We see it all the time in our work. And the more successful, the more accomplished, the more highly placed the individual, the greater the drive to prevent the exposure of their imperfections. This drive is so powerful it can completely warp the behavior of Type-A high achievers.
One way of addressing this behavior may be to help the leader understand the most critical component of personal, professional and organizational reputations -- credibility. Loss of credibility almost always presages a drastic diminishment of an individual's or a company's reputation.
In our culture, we have something we all recognize as "a stand up guy". [Please excuse my gender imbalance here.] A "stand up guy", when he [or she] makes a mistake, typically reveals it himself, before others discover it, then says without wavering or making excuses: "I'm sorry," "I screwed up," and "I will fix the problem I have caused."
When we describe this behavior model to organizational leaders facing the reveal of some kind of negative news, most understand that following this behavior actually increases their own credibility, thus transforming "embarrassment" into "taking responsibility".
Being the first to take responsibility for a misstep you have created defuses anger, hostility and much of the cynicism regarding your observed behavior.
None of this, however, causes people who lack a moral or ethical compass to behave differently.
But it does give many leaders who are fundamentally right-minded the courage they need to just do the right thing. But first, they must surmount that troublesome "embarrassment hurdle."
That's mostly how they got to their leadership position. And in turn, that means that they tend to be one step closer to making unethical decisions than non leaders. The line they tread is much finer than for a non risk-taker. But by taking risks, they get things done. Mostly they succeed, sometimes they fail. So, do you want a leader who will take risks and get things done, and might in the process make some unethical decisions, or one who will not dare, remain competely moral, and get nothing done.
This is where I particularly appreciate the argument of having an inner moral compass, to combat the increased chance of unethical decisions. It helps the risk-taking leader to also remain ethical.
I think the attention given to the topics of leadership/ethics/values is an indication of there being a problem in these areas. Too many people no longer posses good traits in these areas. What also is a truism, or should be, is the idea that if leaders must be reminded of the pitfalls in the article, and are not already aware of them, they are questionable leaders. Think about it, how can a leader give advice about staying true to one's position and the company if they need to be reminded in a blatant manner as this? It's always helpful to review a topic, but one can easily feel patronized by this presentation of it. And to be positive about it, this information should be focused toward discussions around getting more people to have the values in question. Perhaps a look at hiring or promoting practices, or employee development, as the second part of this topic. If it is true, as comment 50 suggests, that values are already in us and cannot be taught (to adults), I'd say the
next article on this should look at hiring and or promoting practices. The paramount priority becomes what to look for, because it's been conceded that it cannot be taught. I think the worth of good people out there just shot way up.
Once this happens a slight hike in ego leads to autocracy and a 'do not care/bother' approach. And if he is developing business - by hook or by crook - his seniors shower appreciations without going in depth on the ethicality of the steps taken to derive the results. Very often Board members become moot yes men and thereby lead the organisation to its doom..
There has to be a constant vigil on the actions of leaders and no misdemeanour can be tolerated. Once the reaction of the Board is not firm, a chain repetitive process will follow.
Leadership is not everybody's cup of tea. The leader is the super boss who can set good or bad precedents and so needs to be above all human failings. In my view a good boss is one who listens,shares, decides,notices,coaches,stands up (fights for what is right), tells the truth, has a life (serves as a role model) and leaves a long-lasting impact.
Over all, integrity and honesty of purpose are important.
Let no leader get too unbridled to fail/fall and hurt himself as also the organisation!
A little over a month ago at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting I had an opportunity to hear Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger talk about the Sokol affair at length. It is certainly a great example, as you note above. I'll provide a few interesting points from my notes. Buffett said that Sokol's actions were inexcusable, since he violated Berkshire's code of ethics, possibly insider trading rules, and the principles laid out to all of the company's managers. But it was also inexplicable for a number of reasons.
First, Sokol made no attempt to hide his purchase of the Lubrizol shares. Finra routinely lets Berkshire management know of anyone involved in trading of shares ahead of transactions, and Sokol had to know that his trades would show up in those reports. Sokol is also a very rich man, and to take such a step for a few million dollars is perplexing in context. And it also didn't appear consistent with the past behavior Sokol had demonstrated.
On the last point, Buffet offered as an example the incentive program tied to the 1999 Mid American deal, where Sokol was CEO at the time and Gregory Abel was President and COO. Walter Scott, who was Mid American's largest shareholder, suggested a variable compensation program tied to future results. Buffett and Scott agreed that there should be a payout of $75 million based on the 5-year compounded earnings gain.
When the plan was presented to Sokol, and before it was presented to Abel, Sokol's share of the $75 million was to be $50 million. Sokol said the split should be equal, transferring $12.5 million of potential up-side from Sokol to Abel. Buffett could not explain or understand how a very affluent man that would do something so selfless, would less than 10 years later make such an obvious error of judgment. It was as if Sokol thought he was doing nothing wrong in this case. But to not know, or to know and do what he did, was inexplicable.
That, I believe, is the challenge of effectively addressing the problem of occasional amoral actors. They have somehow convinced themselves that the rules do not apply to them.
When asked to analyze these difficult situations to provide strategies to prevent them in the future, the first question I ask is, "What was the perceived pay off?" When I discover what are the perceived desirable outcomes for both the central figure and those who enable them, I can then begin to help heal the parties involved. There are always many extrinsic and intrinsic motivating factors.
This article focuses on the responsibilities of the offending leaders. This is integral. However, always there are many individuals who enable these offenders.
Their participation is the means by which these offenders put their agendas in motion.
While the distinction between serving one's self and serving others is powerful and viable, it requires a leader to have the courage to be transparent. Those without this kind of courage and who get caught, end up in the headlines. Therein lies the core issue.
I perceive the foundational problem exemplified in this dilemma to be one not of loss of moral compass, personality disorder or medical issues. Does the leader have the intrinsically sustained strength to be accountable to those they lead? If not, the results of this lack of courage could be any number of the inter-related diagnoses delineated in the article and comments.
What develops and sustains the intrinsic courage to hold one's self accountable for the impacts on others? Fortunately, there is a preponderance of information on empathy. When one has become so powerful as to be "at the top," the only gate keeper is empathy. Empathy is integral to social and emotional intelligence.
When leaders like Ensign and the others mentioned are finally caught, it is certain over a long period of time, their empathy has been degrading with the inappropriateness of their behavior inversely proportional to their level of empathy for others. Their misdeeds have been increasing in severity and frequency over long periods of time.
What if everyone in a system were given opportunity based not upon their ability to generate money, power and status but upon their level of empathy matched with their ability to motivate and bring out the highest potential in others?
Would these leaders' transgressions have been possible?
If the system were accountable instead of just the leader, would these organizations have allowed these transgressions?
This is especially needed when one is at the top. Some need to stay put the leader onto ground reality - however great we may become, we are human beings. And as an intelligent human being, we are more responsible for our actions than others - and more responsible to create shared value with others.
I would like to draw reference of Eckhart Tolle's book 'A new Earth - Awakening to Your Life's Purpose' when dealing with sensible balance for practicing leaders between 'being a super-power' to being a 'Human Being'.
Human relates to 'form' (what can be seen, possessed, compared and is corruptible) whereas 'being' relates to 'formless' (inner spirit & morals that give ability to withstand tremors of life events and stand upright). If leaders can appreciate that it's 'human' part of them that elevated them to their current leadership position and only 'being' facet that can retain them to that elevation or take them up further, I think the problem could be largely addressed. Playing with children to liven up innocence, keeping free and candid communications open with spouse and trusted friends& learning from failures of others are sure shot ways of avoiding the free fall.
Also, we have to consider that when you are going up into the corporate ladder, the more you climb the most people praise you, you get used to be consider brilliant, excellent, smart,etc. , and that could be addictive for some people.
Then at some point you lose contact with the reality and unless you have people who can get you back down to earth is difficult to keep centered when all you hear is how good you are, how well company is performing under your guidance, etc. and becomes worst when you are at the higher levels, because then basically there are just a few people who will be brave enough to tell you that you are loosing your scope.
As a final point, there is nothing new with these failures, centuries ago there were more excess, more self praising, arogance, etc. it's the way we perceive them and what can we do about it , if not then think about roman emperors ....
I would dare say all of the immoral acts commited were not a first offense. All based the decision to engage in more poor behavior based on the fact they had been successful in that behavior on a prior occasion.
Truly great leaders are truth based. They side with truth even when the facts at hand would point to that being unwise. If those in power would ask if their actions were contrary to principals they knew to be true they then would only be subject to the will to act
acordingly.
One particularly effective technique is to count the number of times in a day, a week, a month or even within a conversation that a subordinate disagrees with you or provides a different perspective for you, the leader, without prompting or without the leader creating a very special circumstance in which the subordinates or team members can disagree.
A proven leading indicator of leadership heading in the wrong direction when the count stays low.
ple who have no ax to grind vis-a-vis her situation in the organisation. All these "learnings" will help in making most of the leaders as good leaders. However the work place environment, profits at almost any cost, and subordinates around taking that as the main focus of their life are the issues which need a strong and ethical leader to re-articulate differently. That the good beyond these will bring greater good for the business. But alas we live from quarter to quarter results and try to better each quarter more by expediency than vision. This expedient way of doing things, compromising and bending the values, spreads across the organisation. Embarrassments are covered, failures get explained by surreptitiousness. Ultimately we may not have institutions which can produce real leaders and institution builders!
It's all nonsense designed to make people who can't actually do the work that is the primary purpose of their organisation, feel better about themselves. In the end it's all about them (despite the rhetoric eg ethic, values) and this is incongruent with the notion of human organisations that are essentially socially mechanisms.
The more enduring principle of being "in charge" is much more useful and not merely semantic. A 'charge' in its original sense is your burden or responsibility. Someone "in charge" still does the primary work of the organisation and is seen by the rest of the organisation as the most valuable ... not the best at ... not the most important ... not the richest ... not the loudest ... not the most persuasive ... not the most powerful ... but a complex intuitive notion of being the same as me but somehow more valuable to our social goal.
Let's make 'leadership' a derogatory phrase, perhaps exchange the 'p' for a 't'.
There is a fairly reliable method of finding out who is actually "in charge" of your organisation. Look who the good people turn to when the 'ship(t) hits the fan'.
If you can still do the primary work of your organisation you are not a leader by this new definition, but you could well be in-charge. It's like a Professor who's very clever but can't teach and therefore, of limited use to even the most novice student who will recognise it from day one.
If I may comment on Leadership - I live in the Philippines, where government leadership is **it right now. The current president, Aquino tries do hard to rid of corruption but there are just people who can't seem to see that they are the villains. It is like that here - Moral bearing is keeping the leaders away, greed has taken so much toll on the leaders.