Welcome back to Relationships At Work – Your guide to building workplace connections and avoiding leadership blindspots. I’m your host Russel Lolacher
I’m a communications and leadership nerd with a couple of decades of experience and a heap of curiosity on how we can make the workplace better. If you’re a leader trying to understand and improve your impact on work culture and the employee experience, you’re in the right place.
This mini-episode is a quick and valuable bit of information on top of our regular show.
These teeny, tiny shows are inspired by our free weekly R@W Note Newsletter. Which you should totally subscribe to.
Today’s topic:
The Ends Can Not, Should Not, Please Don’t, Justify the Means…
To be a leader, it's important to deliver our product or service; hit our targets; write that report; do that research; make those decisions; etc. all for the prosperity of the organization. And those are all deliverables.
But does the health of the organization and our employees fit into that? Shouldn’t that also be part of the process?
I once had a conversation with a friend who was lauding the great leadership of someone I knew for a fact wasn't a great leader. They were actually in the top 5 of worst leaders I’d ever known. But I was curious. So, I just listened and didn’t contradict my friend. Rather, I just asked, "why do you think this person is a great leader?"
Her response was, "She always gets me what I need when I need it."
That said, a lot. A lot more than she realized.
What I knew was that same "great" leader had high turnover, a horrible relationship and reputation with their teams, and was willing to burnout and bully anyone she had power over to deliver what her bosses needed.
Now how is that great leadership? To my friend, who looked at it from a delivery standpoint, it was. To anyone actually working with that leader, it wasn’t. It was traumatic.
One of the biggest problems we have in addressing the cultures that allow for bad leadership is the belief that the ends justify the means. It can’t. The end should NEVER justify the means. This approach (as the dictionary tells me), is about a desired result so good or important that any method, even a morally bad one, may be used to achieve it.
These are leadership actions with little regard for the wreckage they cause - they can break cultures, destroy mental health, and crush innovation and productivity. People are replaceable. Work needs to get done. I have to make my boss happy.
I mean, who would want to work for, or put in inspired effort for this type of leadership?
As leaders, we must be aware of the impact we have in our pursuit of delivering a thing. Success can’t just be, we did it. Check! We’ll have so may cracks in our culture if we do.
So how can we ensure our organizations don't follow this path? Invest, at least, in these key strategies:
1. Establishing and Upholding Ethical Standards – create, communicate them, live them, treat them as a living document that is upheld and enforced at every level. Add training and discussions on ethical issues to reinforce it. If ethics are a part of the DNA of an organization, then it’ll more easily help highlight what is wrong and what is right behaviour.
2. Transparent Decision-Making Processes - clear communication on the reasons for decisions is essential. Share the criteria used to make those decisions and expected outcomes. Whether it’s in hiring, new policies, reorgs, changing of priorities… whatever. Knowing the what and the why can help build trust, even if teams don’t agree with it.
3. Encouraging Open Dialogue and Whistle Blowing - promote free speech and channels employees can report unethical behaviour without fear of retribution. Make sure psychological safety is in there so employees feel like they can whistle blow. Whether that's anonymous reporting or regular meetings to share concerns. Then, as leaders, show you've heard and understand… then act. Or if you don’t act, refer to my earlier statement on transparent decision-making.
The ends can NEVER justify the means, but in a busy organization that's expected to regularly deliver it can happen organically. Because we’re too busy. We're already moving on to the next thing. Delivering becomes the culture. Which forces our amazing, inspiring and creative people to feel and be treated like disposable, replaceable parts in an assembly line that never ends.
That will kill creativity, retention, innovation… the good things.
Productivity is essential, I know that. You know that. But it should never be at the expense of the soul and humanity of the organization. We know better.
