Meaning Of Ethics-Based Leadership Training
Ethics-based leadership training is necessary for managers, because it guides their actions. It can enable them to make correct choices. Leaders are often caught in complicated situations which require them to think morally. Their decisions can impact behaviors and even force employees to quit companies. Furthermore, they have to take decisions like what should be the actions and who should take them. Leadership training based on ethics can teach the following things:
1. Taking Tough Decisions
For example, leaders often have to take hard decisions to fire people. This can impact the livelihood of these people, and they may often have trouble finding jobs in other companies. So, what should a leader do in such a situation? Even promoting an employee because of their good performance or distributing bonuses are controversial decisions that can land a leader in trouble. When a leader fires people, it affects their image in the company and makes people wary. People can become scared of the leader and become sycophants.
2. Being Rational
See, a leader has to decide based on facts, not emotions, whether they like an employee or not. They have to calculate the risk before firing someone. When ethical training is imparted, leaders get an insight into justifiable behavior. It helps them modify their behavior in the right direction.
3. Inspiring Ideal Behavior
A leader has to become a role model for others and always make correct decisions. People emulate the personality of leaders to get ahead. As such, leaders can’t display incorrect behavior, either by being loud or by hiding things. The leader has to set the correct example for others, which is why they should value transparency. Hence, employees should be encouraged to talk so they can be open about whether they are facing a problem. But the leader should know where to stop as far as transparency is concerned, because employees don’t need to know everything. That is also another ethical dilemma that leaders can learn to resolve after leadership training.
Leaders have to ensure that employees give their best to the company, but it’s also their job to create the right atmosphere in the company. As far as setting the tone of behavior in the organization is concerned, leaders have to think about the organizational values as well their own values too. A leader should be creating a paradigm. This can be done when the leader performs sincerely and respects their work.
4. Reacting To Necessary Situations
Ethics-based leadership training can help leaders navigate through critical situations with ease, which is crucial for them. First of all, they have to prepare in advance for such situations. When they have already thought about a situation, they know how to react to it. Sometimes, reacting to a situation on the spur of the moment is not helpful.
Leaders don’t act impulsively when they know what’s to be done in such a situation. For example, when someone is about to be fired, they should consider in advance whether the situation should be disclosed to the employee so that they can start looking for a job. When leaders act properly in such situations, they also prepare other people on how to face such scenarios. When decisions like firing someone have to be taken, a leader has to evaluate all the evidence. They must gather as much information as possible and judge whether firing someone is right.
Leaders can also consult others before taking a decision. When deciding, a leader must consider whether the change will be taken to easily. If this isn’t the case, then they must ask other people who are in senior positions in the company fro advice, before taking such decisions. People in senior management have often taken such decisions before, and can guide the leader about such unpopular but necessary decisions.
A leader must be bold because sometimes they have to make decisions that place other people in trouble, like losing jobs. That does not mean they can refrain from taking such decisions, but a leader has to do what is in the organization’s best interests. Leadership training teaches a leader to base their actions on logic rather than emotions. Only then can they keep calm about such decisions, rather than bothering about their growing unpopularity due to such decisions.
5. Being Ethical And Not Crossing Legal Limits
Leadership training should train people about a company’s core values, and every business decision must be aligned with these. It teaches leaders not to ignore such values and to avoid having a herd mentality, that if everyone makes such choices, why should they not?
Ethical leadership training is all about making the correct decisions and to not always be thinking about the profits. This is because making any wrong decision just considering the bottom line can affect the company’s image when it gets mired in controversy.
