People often think it’s charisma, an exciting new product, the latest technology, or great marketing which explain why individuals and companies experience long term success.
Character and culture ultimately determine individual and organizational outcomes. Admirable character and ethical cultures account for being exceptional in your career and industry.
Abrashoff (2002) observed that no one follows a leader who lies. Customers and vendors do not do business with people and companies they cannot trust.
The character of the leader will become the culture of the organization. People recruit, hire, and promote who they are. To succeed in the long term, you must have leaders of character and an organizational culture of ethical responsibility.
Character and culture are all about consistency. Over time, your statements and actions as a leader must be clear, authentic, and consistent. They must be grounded within a specific set of defining and well-known values for you and the organization. Leaders are culture carriers. They are responsible for the organization’s culture either by intention or default.
Employees follow your example. For better or worse, those you lead will replicate your thinking, attitudes, and behavior. What one employee sees you do, they will copy. Over time, others will repeat their conduct. Your character as a leader determines what is acceptable or unacceptable in the organization. You have to do the right thing for the right reason day in and day out regardless of reward, recognition, or result. You cannot engage in mixed messages.
Culture will defeat any policy, procedure, or training. “That’s the way we do it here” will overcome any other source of direction to employees.
Values predict which countries and companies triumph and which ones languish in mediocrity or eventually collapse. Values are an unchanging and objective moral code and timeless truths which govern our lives. They are not arguments of convenience or talking points only invoked when they could offer strategic or tactical advantage in a political, business, or social situation. It’s obvious when people are ethically inconsistent or are seeking personal gain by making high minded arguments in which they don’t believe. They can mouth the words, but they don’t know the music. An ethical position of the moment born of an impure motive in a specific situation but not evidenced throughout your life can never be confused with genuine integrity.
You have to always encourage other individuals of integrity, speak out against wrongdoing, and act according to your stated values. Protect your character and culture like your career and company depend on them because they do.
