Notes on Ethics and Leadership

I had the opportunity to listen to Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi give a talk on "Becoming on Extraordinary Leader: Transforming yourself to transform others” at a Manthan event at Saptaparini, Hyderabad. I was really inspired by the way he spoke and decided to take notes for myself. I realized that perhaps others could also benefit from these notes. I am sharing these notes, just to serve as a reminder of what I heard. My intention is to apply my learning from this in my life.

Ven. Priyadarshi started with some history of why business schools in the US began to look at providing ethics training:

·         The financial meltdown lead to criticism of business schools because they are not creating leaders only better managers. It is then that universities started looking at gaps and began to look at what decisions lead to lack of ethics

·         Also because of this criticism, many universities started programs on ethics and initially, these programs were offered so that the university had a better image or for better PR. Early on, business schools only had about three days of “compliance" training in a typical 2-year MBA program.

Some background on how ethics are imparted traditionally:

·         When one looks at overall trajectory of ethics and ethical training, individuals either adhere to ethics as religious rituals or are doing it in dogmatic manner

·         It is also seen that family systems, which were the original way in which ethics were being imparted, are breaking apart.

·         Most schools don't have any ethics training. In places where they do (theoretically) have values education, it is often treated as "free time"

·         Universities had ethics 101 and it's just a boring class where you study history of ethics etc.

·         There are no formal systems for ethics training

·         In professional life, people go through training for learning legal practices but nothing on ethics. One example of that is medical doctors who just learn to legally safeguard themselves.

He went deeper into ethics:

·         Most civic societies have tried to have some systems but no one has tried to train in ethics

·         Mechanisms of prescriptive methods don't work. Places where moral codes and things such as good habits vs. bad habits are dictated often fail.

Then he began asking, why even be ethical?

·         In any complex system one of the ways you build consensus is when people have respect for one and other

·         When any organizational systems are studied, more values if placed on them when people in these organizations are willing to work together

·         He gave an example of a colleague who studied drug cartels. It was found that the cartels are cohesive loyal organizations. They have the highest standards of ethics because they realize that when they move away from ethical behaviour, the result is loss of lives or loss of money

Ven. Priyadarshi began studying ethics out of a curiosity. He began to wonder of how the idea of ethics came into leadership

·         He began asking, how do we utilize ethics? How do we design systems beneficial for humanity

·         He also began wondering, how organizations can be ethical?

·         In organizations, if rules of conduct are created, then there is no buy-in. Usually, the governing boards try to set up some codes, but people in these organizations don't understand why they have to adhere to these codes.

·         What is the impetus that drives an organization to be ethical? Ven. Priyadarshi said that in reality individuals are the ones who inspire others through their behaviour

·         When we seek to bring about bringing change, we need to focus on individuals rather than on changing complex systems

Why is it than an individual should be ethical?

·         No blanket statement can be given on ethics. In a multi-cultural organization, one thing may be ethical for some and unethical for others..

·         He narrated an example. He said “imagine truth is one of your highest values. Imagine sitting in a cafe and having coffee. Just then you see a guy well-dressed running into an alley. Later your see others coming with weapons who show you a photograph of that guy and ask you if you saw him.

·         As an individual your value is telling truth. He then took a poll as to how many will tell truth? He then gave the option of “I haven’t seen that guy” and most people raised their hands for that option.

·         He said that we are often faced with ethical dilemmas and we are presented with challenges where we make value trade offs

·         Usually it’s between telling truth vs. little white lie

·         These are decisions we have to make on a regular basis and our ethics depend on what kind of value tradeoffs we are willing to do

·         Difficult to be absolute in ethical parameters. We have to decide what values we hold at higher priority

·         The notion that we learn ethical behavior from experience is not true.. If we are unethical for one behavior we will be unethical in others

How to be ethical?

• Ethical training is process of deeper transformation. People only ethical if they believe that will lead to a useful outcome that they can live with
• If you are ethical you are happier unethical behaviors leads to anxiety..
• If we have to be ethical we have to recognise what kind of lifestyle we wish to choose.
• Human beings are prone to compartmentalised behavior, for example: we are comfortable to lie in a work environment but expect people at home to be honest. We teach kids to be honest.
• If we as a society believe that unethical behaviour leads to success then why are we teaching kids honesty? Shouldn't we make them masters at lying and cheating?
• We want others to be honest because It's ok for us to lie but we don't want to be lied to
• We first need to acknowledge that our lives are compartmentalized and complex.
• We need to have a sense of more informed decision making
• In the long term, we need to decide what we want to see in society. We can't say system is corrupt because we are the system.
• Change in system is not to be left to future generations. We need to introduce ethical values

·         What does this have to do with leadership?

• Ethics and real change is not about talking for better world it's about changing oneself.
• This change happens one day at a time.
• The risks we take with reorienting our values may be uncomfortable
• Reorienting values is a challenge because most people believe that they are honest and kind.
• It's a challenge of rationalization.
• If you are truly an honest kind individual then it will ooze out of your system and your behavior will also be contagious
• It's important to not give into the stories that I am a kind individual. We need to see our behavior.
• Process of self-transformation becomes the method through which transformation of communities and individuals can happen
• Human beings are reflective by nature and they question themselves
• Most examples we see of good corporate governance can be traced down to good individuals. This works much better than writing a vision and mission statement
• Process of transformation begins with individual and not with groups
• The challenge in transforming oneself to transform the others is that we are too quick to judge others but we seldom look at ourselves
• Because we live in civic society that's contagious, whether you like it or not, you are a role model. Sometimes you are an active role model sometimes a passive role model. It becomes our responsibility to show our behavior. You have to decide what kind of role model do you wish to become. There is always someone who is watching you.
• Ethics are not magic, you have to cultivate. If you go through an assessment you will know where your strengths and weaknesses are.
• One of the challenges of human behavior is that we also seek validation and most times we only associate with people who validate our behavior.

Make sure assessments are not rooted in self-doubt. Leadership cannot be rooted in self-doubt