Which are most effective : Ethical or Ruthless managers ?
One will see examples of both about us – sometimes within the same organisation. The behaviours can be driven by character/personality or emotion (fear, greed, insecurity). If they do not match the culture of the organisation tension or conflict is likely to arise.
Research published by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) concluded that ruthless leaders are bad for business, whereas those with strong ethics tended to make a more positive contribution to the long term performance of the organisation.
The key findings of the research are as follows :
- Stronger management ethics are linked to better organisational performance
- Almost a third of managers rate their organisation as mediocre or worse on ethical behaviour
- The public sector and large organisations face the biggest challenges
- Managers in growing organisations score higher on ethical behaviour than their colleagues in declining ones
- Junior managers don’t share senior managers’ outlook on ethics
- Coaching, visionary and democratic leadership delivers results
- Ethics helps to engage employees
- Better ethics means happier customers
- Being ethical pays off when it comes to managing risk
The research concluded that these 7 steps should be followed to improve ethics and support better performance :
- Focus on Purpose, Values, Leadership & Culture
- Develop leaders
- Make decisions that are values-based and show you really care
- Harness diversity to challenge ‘group think’ with constructive dissent
- Win hearts as well as minds – engage customers and empower colleagues
- Measure what really matters : escape the unintended consequences of short term targets
- Reward and recognise values-based behaviours
The report also contains tips for individual managers.
Here is a link to the report https://www.managers.org.uk/insights/research/current-research/2014/october/the-moraldna-of-performance
