Ethics: taught or ????

Ethical leaders need more confidence in principles than in personalities. I was watching an older MSNBC program where they had a town meeting at Columbia University with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and of one of the students at Columbia asked Warren Buffett was this: can ethics be taught to leaders today in business? His response was very interesting, he said, “ethics come from the home, it doesn’t come from the classroom. Ethics and values are ingratiated into who we are from our beginning in whatever form our family took.” He then went on to say;” I really don’t think ethics can be taught; it just needs to be lived.” If ethics is to be truly lived in the corporate world, ethical leaders need to: • Be willing to have tolerance for ambiguity, exposure, and personal loss in order to instill the common good. • Have acceptance of deferred gratification in simple rewards. Leadership should never be about immediate personal gratification. • Take into consideration what others have thought and done before us. Discernment is a phrase that needs to have more weight in leadership today. Discerning possible consequences; discerning pros and cons; discerning what’s appropriate, what’s not; discerning what’s acceptable, what isn’t; discerning if it’s legal or not, is indicative of independence of thought. Take what has gone before us, see what we have, and then discern the lines between that connect them. • Understand that values don’t fluctuate; they are a constant and they are the foundation for the leaders’ persistence and determination. The ethical leader needs to have the ability to face difficulty, uncertainty, or pain without being overcome by fear or intimidated by consequences. In being ethical, not only do you need to discern and assess what needs to be done, but have the fortitude when necessary, to be able to deal with the consequences based on the foundation of those values.

fbucaro

Like you, business ethics and ethical leadership expert, Frank Bucaro has seen the challenges and problems of corporate leadership, particularly over the past few years in regards to poor decision-making, SEC violations, and record breaking financial settlements in a number of different industries. With over two decades of executive training, speaking, writing and with real life experiences, his view and approach to ethics in the workplace is uniquely different. He emphasizes that ethics is a moment-to-moment choice and has little to do with position, titles, personalities or education. Ethics is everybody’s responsibility from the top down. His goal is to help organizations to: a. Strengthen their ethics training initiatives in order to significantly decrease the odds of an ethical/compliance violation. b. Energize, train and motivate employees to understand the value of consistent “high road” behavior as a business advantage. c. Support individuals and thereby the organization by contributing to its success by quality, ongoing values based leadership development. Frank is known for his very practical, slightly irreverent, yet somewhat humorous approach to ethics and leadership development. His conversational style and real life stories connect with his audience in a personal, intense and practical level. Companies such as Bayer Healthcare, BP, ReMax International, EnMax Energy, Danone, etc. have partnered with Frank when they want to proactively stress the message, tools, insights and practical applications that good ethics IS good for business!