In this video, we're going to talk about ethical leadership, specifically how
ethical leadership relates to transparent communication. We're going to
look at a model of transparency and how it applies to organizational settings.
So let's unpack the details.
Hello they're friends. Alex Lyon here. And today we're
going to talk about ethical leadership. Normally on this channel we're talking
about communication and leadership. And this topic is near and dear to my heart.
I wrote about this in my book. I'll put a link to this in the description below
the video. You can also visit it on the website as well if you would like.
Today we'll talk about my bird's-eye view of ethical leadership specifically
about communication, and then I'll unpack a three-part model of transparent
communication that's in that book. First, here's my big picture view on
ethical leadership. Ethics is everybody's responsibility. And it's not just because
it's the right thing to do. Bad decisions are often bad because they are unethical.
In other words, unethical behavior is bad for business. If you look a lot of the
problems that we've seen in organizations over the past 15 or 20
years, a lot of them started internally with bad unethical decision. So it's not
just about doing what's good because we want to do what's good and be good
people. It's because [unethical behavior] is going to also destroy our organizations. So I really
believe that part of this is communication. We often see a tension
between secrecy and transparency in organizations. And on the side of
secrecy, that's where a lot of these problems begin. So I believe and agree
with Matt Seeger and Rob Ulmer, they wrote about this in an article in Management
Communication Quarterly, that leaders have what we call communication-based
responsibilities. They have a responsibility to be informed and get
informed about any of the potential problems that are happening in the
organization, to create an atmosphere where those problems can be identified,
and then solve those problems. so there's my bird's-eye view on transparency in
organizational settings. And now I want to get into this three-part model.
Let's unpack it. So on the flip side of this model of transparency we have this
issue of secrecy. And that's usually a sign of trouble and
usually something you want to avoid. It leads to lots of unethical behavior in
the long run. So let's talk about this organizational transparency model and it
has three parts. The first part is organizational openness. When you have
an open organization, all the compensation, hiring, and firing decisions
are all pretty obvious. Everybody knows the rules of the game, the way you get
projects approved, or maybe not approved. It's all really open people understand
the expectations and that's the kind of organizational openness you want, where
everything is out in the open and plain to see. The processes are not secretive
or hidden. A lot of times if people don't know how things get approved,
how people get hired or get fired, how you get a raise, you end up with a really political
kind of organization that can turn negative. And so you want to create
processes that are really open, and the rules of the game are obvious. The other
part of organizational openness is the obligation to speak about problems that
you see. You have an obligation to talk as Karl Weick said because if you're not
speaking about problems that you see you end up with what Karl White calls
pluralistic ignorance, where you see a problem, something that looks out of
place or odd but you don't say anything about it. And then the next person maybe
sees that same problem but doesn't say anything about it. And everybody knows there's
a problem and no one's speaking. So it's called pluralistic ignorance. And by
speaking about it, by having that obligation to talk when you see a
problem, you puncture pluralistic ignorance. And then the problems can be
identified early and solved so. Organizational openness is a huge part,
to establish this culture in this atmosphere, to lead to more ethical
communication and leadership. The second part of the model is information sharing.
Information should be shared widely because high-quality information leads
to better decision making. If you find that you're in a context where people
are holding back information or leaving specific details out because they want
to get something approved, that's a sign of trouble. That's another type of
secrecy. the reason you want to share information is because if you get all
the information on the table you're much more likely collectively to have a
healthier decision-making process that you can
really move the organization forward. If you're basing your decisions on have
truths, on strategically ambiguous information, you're going to end up with
poor quality decisions. Nilsen, one of my favorite authors, called this idea
significant choice. People have the right to make an informed choice about the
significant issues in their lives and in this case in organizational settings. If
you're going to base information on manipulation on partial information,
you're going to get bad decision-making. the third part of this model is candor.
Every once in a while you're going to have to have a conversation about a
sensitive topic, oftentimes the topic might involve somebody personally. And
here you need a mixture of open and honest communication but you also need a
balance of care and kindness. To me, candor is both of these things. You don't
want somebody who's brutally honest with you. You just want them to be plain
spoken about the issue, to broach the topic so you can solve their problem.
They have to do that with care. You don't want to be the kind of person, and maybe
you know the kind of people, that will end up hurting people's feelings
routinely and say well I was just being honest. Yes you need to be honest and
open. You need to be candid but you also need to do that with care and that way
you can have difficult conversations without fear that you're gonna hurt
people's feelings all the time because you're too brutish in your approach.
Those are the three parts the model. Question of the day. Which one of these
you find most difficult in your particular professional setting? I would
love to hear your comments in that section below the video. So thanks. God
bless. And I will see you next time.