MORALITY IS A NOT A MEASURE OF LEADERSHIP
One of the most challenging parts of working in leadershipdevelopment is getting people to understand and appreciate that morality is not a measure of leadership.
Leadership is about knowing where you want to take people, creating a vision around that destination and inspiring people to go there with you. Yes, some nuances and contexts shape leadership, but this is what it boils down to for me.
We can learn many lessons about power, and influence, galvanising people and developing followers from those some may consider immoral. Whether we call it bad leadership or any other kind of label, that person was still able to coral a group of individuals towards a shared goal. They are leaders.
Too often, literature and discussion around leadership - especially in the West - demand that leadership be moral or ethical. But, to me, this is more conjecture. It is an ideal not based on reality. Countries, organisations and communities outside that narrative are dismissed as not good examples of leadership based on that assumption. This means we ignore any learnings we can take from their approach to leadership.
Also, who gets to decide what is moral? What is the yardstick? We have seen morality in certain jurisdictions prejudice and harm those who don’t share that same code. Whether that is a dress code in Iran, abortion rights in the US, immigration control in the UK, mandates for war and military interventions across the world, globalisation of companies (and foundations) built to avoid tax, fairness and cheating avoidance in sport, and so on.
Whilst people are clutching pearls and hand wringing around what they deem a less than perfect model of leadership, many people in power and or aspiring to be in leadership are reading books like 48 Laws of Power and The Art of War.
I am all for organisations being conscious or conscientious of how and why morality or ethics can play a role in their leadership DNA, but I never assume it’s a given. I am also of the belief that you cannot teach ethics. It is something to be modelled rather than taught. In the same vein, I believe personal values are much easier to follow and uphold than corporate ones - but that’s another post.
It matters for those who wish to lead or be led to appreciate this difference. This way, we don’t spend copious amounts of cognitive and emotional energy wishing for people and organisations to live up to our expectations of a moral code.
We must see the world as it is but not be afraid to ask questions of others and ourselves.
How would we have led differently?
What lessons can we learn from this?
What are the things we wish to avoid?
There is nothing wrong with having moral or ethical codes in how we lead others, but assuming it is there as a default for leadership serves no one and causes more stress than is necessary.
