Moral Purpose and Leadership Challenge

Leaders must foster the trust of those who will follow the vision they reveal.  This is a given and a bit of a golden thread through this series on leadership.  But like a fragile new plant, trust is not easy to grow.  Ideal conditions require moral purpose and personal commitment. 

We develop a moral purpose when we choose to take on the responsibility of another – be that in a love relationship, a family relationship, a community or work relationship.  Moral purpose understood, accepted and practiced as a common consciousness, is a special treasure for all leaders in all types of businesses that leverages humility through this type of responsibility.

As Max De Pree wrote in the last chapter of his book Leading Without Power, “Without moral purpose, competence has no measure and trust no goal.  This defining thought gives me a way to think about the place of moral purpose in our organisations.”

Let Me Contribute

In our cynical, breakneck-speed, instant-access-and-answers world, how can we manage this?  People, in every walk of life long to contribute!  The highest motivator is to achieve...to make a difference...most want to reach out to help others, from the person working next to them to some grand world out there -- and not only just for money or we would be without charities and simple, everyday good will. 

Yet many organisations create constraints and measurements that foster only internal competition.  Did you realise that fully 60 percent of the activity within an organisation is devoted to internal competitiveness!  When we all know that the competitor is out there, across the street.  Or are the words of Walt Kelley’s character, Pogo, still ringing true, “We have met the enemy and they are us!”

Responsible Leadership

As a leader, you have the responsibility and privilege to identify and put individuals’ gifts and talents and learnings to good use.  Leaders have a choice to be authentic in a world where we innately appreciate authenticity and deplore imitation, manipulation and insincerity and use this quality to seek and develop those who work with them. 

When our organisations become centres of sharing, where we belong and have the right to own our ideas and see them respected -- centres where we can demonstrate values such as trust and keeping our word to our employees, managers, suppliers and the community at large – then we are exercising the full value of our responsibility.

Where’s the Boss?

There’s been a flurry of television reality shows over the last decade...a fad of “authenticity”.  Some focus on a “Prince and the Pauper” approach within businesses, where the owner/leader takes on the “disguise” of being one of the workers in their own company at an entry level. 

They get a job, report to work and begin learning things they were rarely, if ever aware of with regard to on the shop floor realities and heroic efforts their very staff work with. 

The changes a leader, who goes through this experience, can see to make, in an effort to reach their vision, are inspiring.  Needless constraints and hurdles are easily identified and can be eliminated or minimised.  People’s lives are touched as they are appreciated in areas their efforts would have been never been seen clearly in before. 

We can’t all take the time, or make the effort, or risk our emotions or ego to take a job in our own organisations, but if we did I wonder what we would discover about our own leadership from that perspective.