By Tim Schneider

The high road in this commandment describes a commitment to and consistency with ethical behavior in the working environment. Even beyond the workplace, it is the application of value sets to daily decision making and interactions with the team being lead. It is also a core competency related to protecting the credibility of the leader.

First, a little background and contrast. Ethics are not morals. Morality is a very personal code of behavior that is individually owned. Morality has fluidity based on social and societal norms that change over time. Imagine for a minute the reaction to Brittney Spears if she appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in the 1960’s. Imagine the lack of reaction if Elvis Pressley appeared on TRL (this is an MTV show for my more experienced readers) and gyrated his pelvis. Society and media will tend to have influence on relative morality and how certain personal behaviors are accepted or not accepted.

Morality is also greatly influenced by upbringing, parents, other relatives of influence, religion, school and geographic region. The most unique aspect of morality is that it is owned solely by the individual. You own your moral values.
By contrast, ethics are a prescribed set of values that are owned by an organization or company. That entity, your employer, tells you what is ethical behavior and what is not ethical behavior. Some organizations do a better job of clarity and communication of these ethics than others but each organization has ethical coding.

When discussing ethics, the word prescribed becomes an important characteristic. If you go to a medical doctor with a hold, he or she prescribes a medication related to that illness and a medication that will, hopefully, cure that illness. Like that doctor visit, an ethical value is prescribed to a particular behavior in hopes of curing or eliminating that behavior. No organization has a crystal ball that will predict all future ethical lapses so they react to inappropriate behaviors by prescribing an ethical value.

To illustrate that point, imagine about ten years ago when internet access become widespread on every team member’s desktop. When an executive walked by someone’s screen and in horror discovered an employee viewing a less than appropriate image, internet use policy was born. The first company wide email inviting everyone over for a Tupperware party begat email use policy. Event occurs and the organization prescribes an ethical value.

Ethics also have another unique dynamic related to people. Ethics and ethical values are only as good as the people that operate within the organization. For every prescribed ethic, there may be a person trying to thwart the value and the system designed to track ethical behaviors. This means to be a truly ethical organization, values must be synchronized to the hiring and screening process of new team members.

Like morals, ethics have a variety of influences. The most common influence in ethics is the industry type. Highly regulated industries such as banking, utilities, public safety, engineering and insurance will often have a much more formal and rigid set of ethical values. They will also frequency have very elaborate systems in place for tracking and insuring compliance with those values. Other industry types often do not have the degree of formality or depth associated with ethics.

Other important influences include the senior leadership team of an organization and their commitment to ethical practices and their personal value set. This influence is most important when it comes to the enforcement of ethical codes and the consistency in which ethical violations are handled. Senior leaders without strong ethical commitments will often make inconsistent judgments related to a violation or even look the other way in certain circumstances while those senior leaders with high ethical commitment will be consistent in judgment and constant in their vigilance.

The bottom line is that you own your morality and the company or organization owns and prescribes the ethical behavior.

Communicating Ethical Values

To any organization and any leader, the biggest challenge in ethics is in clearly and consistently communicating values.

The best run organizations with the highest commitment to ethics use a multi-tiered approach. The first step is the creation of core organizational values. These values become the foundation for all future ethical polices and statements. Usually somewhere between five and ten value statements are enough to describe what is important to the organization and not too voluminous so team members cannot lock onto some key aspects of them. Value statements need to be written and documented in a very simple and straight-forward manner. Use action statements and highlight the most significant word in the statement.

Behind core values is the creation, implementation and enforcement of a code of conduct. A code of conduct is a more detailed listing of both required and prohibited behaviors for all team members. Typically, this is a pretty fluid listing and it is revisited and updated often. An often overlooked dynamic is that an organization can use multiple levels of a code of conduct. There can be one for the entire company and others at department and division levels based on their unique needs or business practices. When the multiple tier approach is used, it is important to make sure the lower tier conduct rules are as strong or stronger than the higher level or corporate level rules.

A key element with a code of conduct is communicating the rules to all team members on a regular basis. Twice a year with an acknowledgement of understanding is a good rule of thumb. For team members to embrace these ethical standards, they must see them regularly.
This next little part is tough to talk about. One of the best ways to communicate and reinforce ethical values with team members is when a team member is terminated or aggressively disciplined for a violation. The myth of secrecy regarding these events is just that. Depending on the organization, within days, hours or minutes, most team members will hear the story of how someone was fired for insubordination. The flow of this story and team talk about it will often serve as important reminders about the importance of ethical conduct.

By contrast, the message sent when it is widely known that someone “got let off the hook” in reference to an ethical lapse is also powerful. The exceptions granted and the leniency given will also tell team members how serious you and your organization regard company ethics.
The most important method of communicating ethical rules to team members is through the example provided by company leadership. Including you, all supervisors, managers and executives, how you “walk the talk” is more powerful than value statements, codes of conduct or policies. Your, and all leader’s, examples are the best method of communicating the commitment to ethics.