Tag Archives: Business Ethics

Lousy Leadership, Ketchup Only

26 Aug

hamburger

 A conversation I overheard at my favorite local burger joint today:

John: Hey Steve, great to see you! How’s it going?

Steve: Good. A lot better than when we were working together at ____. (To save embarrassment and a likely law suit, the employer shall remain anonymous.)

John: I hear you– I’m so glad to be gone from that place and out of the control of the owner. You couldn’t trust a thing the man said, or most of his supervisors. The only one you could trust was Bill. He was young, but was smart and you could count on what he said.

Steve: Yea, Bill is great. In fact, he hired on with my new company. We’re working together again, and our new boss couldn’t be more pleased. Bill is still pretty young, but he’s smart and shoots straight.

John: So Bill’s working with you, huh?

Steve: Yep. We’ve got some openings. Want me to put a good word in for you?

The same story, over and over. Employees being chased out by dishonest leadership. I kept thinking how glad the competition must be to have an employer who chases good employees, particularly a young “up and comer”, right into their hands.

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High Potential Employee???

28 Mar

This guy is bringing the sales-per-employee way, way, down…

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“Using Integrity to Repair Trust”

8 Feb

shaking-hands

That was the headline of an excellent article in my hometown newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald. The article reported on a conference called “Aiming Higher”, sponsored by the Greater Omaha (Nebraska, USA) Business Ethics Alliance. The conference brought community leaders and students together to discuss this topic. The article quotes Creighton University professor Beverly Kracher as to why a conference like this is important:

“Everybody seems to lack trust in business as a whole,” Kracher said. “One of the ways to repair that trust is for the public to have good examples. These examples are so powerful they help us all learn.”

This topic of business ethics is particularly important to me this weekend, and I just learned that someone I care about deeply has been affected by the Bernard Madoff scandal. My heart just sank at this news. That sad story has now become quite personal. I am even more upset that his actions have affected how all of us view business and leadership.

Trust in our leaders in many quarters, sadly, has eroded. The hope, from my point of view, is that not all is lost. Our studies of highly engaged workplaces shows that employers with outstanding engagement survey results still present high “Trust In Senior Leaders” ratings. Truth- telling, employee engagement and success in business go hand-in-hand. I think it incumbent on those of who are passionate about great workplaces to continue open dialogue about this topic. The scars of Madoff will not easily be healed– it’s up to us to make that happen.

For excerpts from the Omaha World-Herald of interviews from leaders who participated in this event, Click Here. The full interviews, along with additional information on this topic, can be found at the Business Ethics Alliance web site.

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