Fairness in leadership: who decides what's right or wrong?

Introduction

One thing that I struggled with when I first started leading is defining what fair meant. When everyone expects something from your due to your position, how do you decide what to fulfill and what to postpone or redirect?

I would say leaders need to be people pleasers to some extend, metaphorically speaking. You need to ensure that everyone is happy with the direction you are taking, and that on one layer or another, everybody wins. This is why a topic such as last week’s newsletter is so powerful to new leaders - we’re in a constant state of negotiation.

In normal organisational discussions your compass towards a correct approach is easily regulated by the company policies on compliance. Most conversations about ways of working, pay, promotions, or even available positions someone might take are usually detailed and decided at a higher level than your space of influence.

This is extremely useful in accommodating to the role of a leader, as it provides you with a safety net by guarding your choices without feeling that the consequences will all fall on you. This is why it’s of utmost importance to stay aware of the approach towards fairness of your organisation as a whole, and decide to move away from it once it distorts from what you consider expected behaviour.

Just as your organisation can aid your decisions, it can hinder them, too. If you need to adhere to a culture that is based on incorrect values, chance are you may be dragged to perform in the same style as well. Or even worse, and I’m speaking from personal experience, you may have to fight against windmills for the most basic elements of a healthy work environment.

But what happens when you’re performing in a naturally perfect environment, where all policies are curated to the last point? Or even more, what happens when the decisions you need to make are not in any way related to day to day processes, but rather to something more complicated? What happens when real life steps into our work?

Here’s where you need to pull out of your box a new tool: your ethical compass.

Objectives

Subject

Leaders need to understand, first, that compliance and ethics are not the same. Compliance is the letter of the law and ethics is the spirit of the law. They are different although relatable – but not interchangeable. They need to complement each other. So, which comes first, the spirit of the law or the letter of the law?

Compliance is a reactive process and ethics is only a proactive process. What this means is that to be compliant is to do what the law says to do. Being compliant is a reactive choice. Ethics is a personal choice. One must choose to be ethical. One takes personal responsibility for one’s choices.

Leaders need to focus on having a moral compass. In many business schools, ethics is taught as one of the core responsibilities of all managers. In short, your ethical position determines whether people feel safe in your group.

Framework

While ethical situations should be treated on a case by case basis, for the simple sake of providing everyone with equal opportunities, there will always be a common denominator in these rather complicated discussions: yourself.

In order to be mindful of yourself, research points out some moral cues to watch out for:

Not living by what you are preaching

In ethics, actions speak louder than words. Having expectations for certain behaviours from your peers while not displaying them can appear ingenuine and induce mistrust.

Not taking responsibility for your own actions

Do not search for a scapegoat to take the fall when ethical issues appear or when unpopular decisions need to be taken.

Relying on ego rather than knowledge

Is your decision making based on your egotistical views? This will reduce your openness to other options. Looking for suggestions from the ones around us is a sign of thoughtful, positive self-esteem leadership.

Being reactive in the face of difficulty 

To be reactive is to ‘give up’ expertise, knowledge and values at someone else’s will. As a leader, one should remain confident in their products and people in the face of adversity, or remain honest in terms of their limitations.

Training your biases

One of the biggest enemies of sustaining a good leadership style is based on our biases. From our position of power, it is imperative that we can use our ethics compass to identify and reduce the effects of unconscious biases.

Research from Google shows that our subconscious judgments impact the decisions we make as individuals, as teams and as an organisation. Those judgments find their way into the policies and practices we create and enforce, and become perpetuated as a matter of course. According to Google’s research, these biases “can cause people to overlook great ideas, undermine individual potential, and create a less-than-ideal work experience for colleagues.”

As a leader, you should examine your own decisions for biases publicly. By displaying your mechanism of filtering your thoughts for any biases, you will model a system for your teams to follow in future decisions, too.

Before reaching a conclusion, orbitate around questions such as:

1. How would I define the problem if I stood at the other side of the table?

2. Am I confident that this position will be as valid over a long time as it seems now?

3. Could I disclose all the details about my decision to my leader, the CEO, the team, or society as a whole?

For a final safety net, you can take your decision made and apply it over multiple individuals. You can then identify whether the decision stays the same or modifies with every person. What was the cause of you changing your previous action? Are any biases involved in your modifications?

Final thoughts

Even though company ethical guidelines have good intentions behind them, they are not sufficient. What makes ethics so difficult is that not everyone has the same rules: these may be altered by our environment, social space, and upbringing. It is your responsibility to nurture and curate your own ethical compass.

Your ethical compass should dictate what you find ethical and what you don’t. This will create trust for yourself as a leader: the most powerful tool you have to get things done. The actions and the motivations behind them will get your peers’ trust.

Being mindful of your character and your ethics standards remain principal stepping stones in your credibility as a leader.

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Quality content

Today’s quality content brings your probably the most extensive article I have read about unconscious bias in recent times. I initially pondered to share with you the Implicit Association Test (IAT) from Harvard as the main content, which is a verified method of testing your unconscious biases. While I still shared this with you, I have later decided to take a more proactive approach in the final words of this newsletter.

The hardest fight in our ethical compass is tackling our unconscious biases. Unfortunately, too many sources focus on only bringing to our attention which biases we posses. Too few accentuate the fact that unconscious biases can be redefined. Imagine receiving a training programme about your health with no further indications on how you could get better. While awareness is important, learning how to be better is an angle more bias trainings should dedicate time and space for.

I will let Harvard Business Review article speak for itself. It’s a longer read, but I fully recommend you find some time to read it.

This is it for today! Thank you for reading!

Razzmatazz without the matazz.