Leaders have a responsibility for creating trust and cultivating cultural values
Leaders are the most important and powerful influence on the culture of an organization and are responsible for creating credibility and trust. It is obvious that members contribute more when they are working for something they believe in. Kouze and Posner (1987) put it well:
There is more to work than is commonly assumed. There is rich opportunity here for leaders
to appeal to more than just the material rewards. Great leaders, like great companies and
countries, create meaning.
The aim is to operate organizations in such a way that they achieve stated goals and do so in a manner that is consistent with the higher values of the organizational community. When members have no clear picture of the moral or ethical stance of the organization, they tend to operate at the lowest perceived level.
Creating and promoting institutional integrity becomes one of the most important functions of leadership. Moral and ethical stances need be consistently reiterated and clarified. An example, one of the most pervasive issues in the American workplace today is the justice of corporations paying millions in bonuses to executives and haggling over pennies with salaried and hourly employees. Until this issue is addressed and adjustments made, leaders will have a hard time rebuilding trust and credibility in organizational cultures.
Everyday leaders create symbolic messages to members about the organization's values of justice, fairness, and equality. If leaders fail to express and model these values, members will think that such things are not important. Members express themselves in absenteeism. Over time, members come to replicate the behavior and ethics of their leaders. Like it or not, leaders are teachers.
An analysis of the relationship between ethical behavior and effective leadership reveals that it is a matter of choosing both the ends and the means. A business enterprise must be profitable in order to survive. Service organizations must satisfy consumers' expectations. Government must meet the needs of its citizens. The ends are the very reason for existence of the enterprise. In our case it is to learn and grow spiritually, on our own paths, but ending at the same point.
At the same time, the means by which they achieve those ends are increasingly important. Placing value on short term gains at the detriment of long term results ends in disaster. The demise of a church is a tragedy because it affects the lives of its members. Members depend on the responsible decisions of the organizations leaders. At the core of all church decisions are moral and ethical principles. Failure to clearly state and uphold high standards has grave consequences.
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