Chapter: Leading With Integrity, Values, and Intuition
Shared values tell everyone what the organization stands for and
that its leaders subscribe to a clear and explicit philosophy of
how to conduct themselves in business. Because your organization's
values can influence greatly what employees actually do on the job,
it is important to emphasize to your leaders their individual
responsibility in shaping and enhancing the organization's value
system.
Remind your potential leaders that polls continue to show that the
most successful companies and their leaders place enormous emphasis
on company values. Included in that group are Target, Home Depot,
Kmart, Ben & Jerry's, McDonald's, Body Shop, Patagonia, Whole
Foods Market, Odwalla, Newman's Own, Reebok, British Airways,
Intel, Starbucks, Amazon.com, and even the Chicago Bears! Several
of those organizations conduct social audits and publish statements
of social responsibility.
Forging a Value System
Alert your leaders that they now are going to forge a leader's
value system, and that it will be of critical importance because
they cannot perform in a manner that is inconsistent with what they
believe in, how they see themselves, or what they hold as core
values. To underscore that truth, start by explaining the following
four facts of values-led leadership:
Fact #1: Our values reflect how we see ourselves.
Fact #2: To reach people and touch them, our values must have heart
and soul.
Fact #3: Our values determine how we make our decisions.
Fact #4: Our values determine how we behave and how we spend our
time and money (just take a look in your day planner and
checkbook).
Identify the Organization's Core Values
Have your leaders list the core values of the organization. If none
has been formulated, have your leadership class form a list of its
own. After each value has been listed, ask your leaders this
question: If values-led leadership were a crime, would there be
enough evidence to convict you?
Because your leaders have just learned the importance of reflecting
their values by their behaviors, form two-person teams to describe
on-the-job behavior that correlates with each of the core values
they listed. The purpose here is to take each core value and make
it a real-world experience to which everyone can relate.
Best Company Reputations Stem From Values, Trust, and
Integrity
The September 28, 1999, issue of the Wall Street Journal published
the results of a nationwide survey of more than 10,000 people
asking them to select the U.S. corporation judged to have the
highest character. The research was conducted by Harris
Interactive, Inc., and the Reputation Institute, a New York-based
research firm. The survey measured corporate reputation, social
responsibility, emotional appeal, vision, and leadership. Results
showed that Americans paid little attention to profitability or
stock performance when sizing up corporate character. Instead,
respondents used values, integrity, and trust as measures of an
organization's reputation and success.
Ranking highest in the survey results were Ben & Jerry's
(listed more times than any other organization), Johnson &
Johnson, Coca-Cola, Intel, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Hewlett
Packard, Southwest Airlines, Amazon.com, and FedEx, to name only a
few.
This is a good time to tell your leaders that if they are going to
develop a winning reputation for leadership, they will need to
notice what America's best organizations are doing to set
themselves apart. Remind them that managers in a values-led
organization model the example and don't expect others to do
anything they wouldn't do. When your leaders model this
walk-the-talk style of leadership, their followers naturally will
hold them in high esteem.