Leader's behavior traps

- There are ethical traps waiting for every leader at any point. The first one is trying to cushion the blow of bad news or potential bad news and lying as a result, or maybe getting close to lying as a result. I'll give you an example. Let's say that your company is going through, you know, cost reduction or resource action or whatever the common term is that you have in your world. Someone says, "Am I going to be laid off?" And you answer, "I do not have any news that would say "that you're going to get laid off." Now, while that may be technically true, while you know that that may be under consideration, in my view, you're at least partially deceiving the person that you're talking to by trying to cushion the blow, right? Now, there's a number of instances where there's business initiatives and things going on that aren't ready for public consumption, if you will, and you have to respect that, because rumors go and things can get crazy. So, you just can't always share everything. But I think probably the thing to do in an instance like that is to say, "As you know, we're looking at cost reduction opportunities. "That is an active decision in process, "and I promise I will keep you up to date," instead of just saying, "Yes, you're going to be laid off," or, "No, you're not going to be," or implying that you're going to be excluded from that. It's that, that, you know, trying to cushion the blow. I think the thing is just, tell the truth that you can share. The second most common ethical trap is saying X and doing Y. Now, there could be really good reasons for that, all right, because things have changed. There's new information, whatever the case may be. But the folks that are watching you, and if you're a leader, I guarantee you're being watched, even more so than you may realize, they're going to see he said X and did Y. So, you want to be very, very mindful of when that's the case and share that information and share that things have changed so you can bridge between those two actions. Now, another form of the trap is, is you say X, and then in the midst of all the other stuff going on, it's coming across and in and out of your desk, you forget. You said you were going to do something, and Y is not that you did something different, Y is that you didn't do what you said you were going to do. You just have to try your very best not to fall into that and to be able to say, "You know, I just didn't have time," or, "Other priorities came up." Third ethical trap is, I do this because everybody does this, so everybody's doing it, right? You just follow suit. The issue is, sometimes those everybody does it kind of exercise could be borderline unethical, and it varies from industry and industry and place to place. But it actually can taint your image significantly. Now, it may put you at a disadvantage to not do something 'cause everybody else does it or all your competitors are doing it, but in the long run, that stuff will catch up to you. We've talked earlier about your image in the community. What does that do to your image in the community? What did that instance where that comes to light for those automakers, what did that do to their image in the community when they ultimately got the money? Something to think about when you think about the short and long-term implications of your ethical behavior. If an ethical question comes into your office as a leader, please do yourself a favor. Investigate it. Don't tie the source of the information, or don't allow the source of the information to taint you in terms of, I should address this or not. You should address it period, regardless of where that comes from. Now, if you find out that it's not justified, then you maybe have some counseling to do with this person that brings this news forward, but you absolutely want to react to it. It is a very, very deadly trap to discard that because of the character of the person that might bring it to you. So, it's easy to get into your day-to-day work as a leader, and you might forget that these traps are out there, so something I've done is I've created a exercise file that you could use and I would suggest you reference once in a while with these traps and a few others. If you keep them front of mind, you are much less apt to fall into them, should those circumstances present themselves in your office.