Leadership Development: Team Culture and the Role of Ethics

Leadership matters.  Your team depends on yours; so do your clients.  A couple of weeks ago, we featured a story on how the components of ethical leadership can be applied to individual leadership styles. It received great traction on the Executive Business Builders Network.  Please chime in this week.

The subject of discussion is the role of ethics in building team culture and a respectful, diverse work environment.

When we asked our Executive Business Builders Network members about what ethical leadership means to them, and how they work to apply it in their own leadership practices, one member, Betty-Anne Howard, stressed the need to create a diverse, healthy work environment based on standards of respect and appreciation:

I've been thinking about your question a lot Evelyn Jacks and it's a difficult one to answer. First of all how do you define ethical leadership? Given I grew up poor and my Father couldn't read or write I grew up with a sensitivity to discrimination and was painfully aware of what it meant to not fit in. Thus, I became a feminist & activist for social change because of my social conscience. I have therefore created a culturally diverse team that works together more collaboratively & collectively demonstrating respect and appreciation for each other. This to me is ethical leadership:  creating and sustaining a healthy work environment of respect and appreciation.

Creating an environment based on respect and appreciation strongly requires leaders within the company to set the standard and demonstrate these traits. It also means respecting the input and opinions of all employees, regardless of where they fall in the company hierarchy, and valuing the individuality that they bring to the table. Maintaining the team culture established is slightly more challenging, as often it evolves based on the people working for the company at any given time – developed from the cumulative traits of the people hired.

Finding and maintaining company culture requires asking the primary question – “my team has a culture of…” Which can then be broken down further by asking the following questions, which are excerpted from our Business Leadership, Culture, and Continuity course:

• How would others outside my team or organization answer?
• What habits do we have that are contributing to our culture, how we are perceived, and how do we view ourselves?
• What adjectives would we used to describe how we operate day-to-day (Informal? Structured? Hard-driving?)
• How do our team members respond to change and new circumstances?

Course author, Joanne Sigurdson also weighed in on how respect, appreciation and diversity intertwine with leadership roles:

Certainly ethical leadership means having an appreciation for the diversity of our humankind and the unique talents and experiences each of us bring to this world. For my part, I was taught early by my parents to respect every human being no matter what their lot in life and that there is something we can learn about life from every person on this earth. I think if we take that perspective we realize how important it is to be both ethical and authentic in our leadership and lives.

To add your thoughts to this important discussion, join our Executive Business Builders Network on LinkedIn. Or learn more about developing your own leadership skills with the Executive Business Builder Designation Program.

Because this is a particularly timely issue,  Knowledge Bureau’s 15th annual Distinguished Advisor Conference theme is “The Changing Face of Community: Collaboration with Impact”. This theme addresses the strategic requirements for looking at new issues that shape demographic needs. As tax and financial advisors, this not only means looking at the needs of clients, but of your business’ team culture as well.

For more on this year’s DAC theme and to register early, visit the conference page.

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