Thinking About Leadership Ethics

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

EMG-POD-20260205-THINKING ABOUT LEADERSHIP ETHICS

Bill Berthel

Welcome to the Get Emergent Podcast. The Get Emergent Podcast guides leaders to creatively strengthen relationships and improve performance of their leadership and those that they lead. We like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in your work and your leadership. And we hope that you’re going to find some better practices to apply directly to your work. I’m Bill Berthel.

Jeremiah Poulsen

I’m Jeremiah Poulsen.

Bill Berthel

Hey, Jeremiah, how’s it going?

Jeremiah Poulsen

Pretty good, Bill, in this cold season in central New York. But I, I got a warm heart today, meeting with you.

Bill Berthel

Oh, awesome. I’ve been looking forward to this. We’ve been having conversations, you know, kind of in the office and over cups of coffee, talking about this topic of ethical leadership. And I love that as we were preparing for this, you jumped onto AI to create a little bit of a worksheet for us to play with, because I think we were. It’s such a deep, rich topic. Ethics, morals, this responsibility leaders have. Yeah, I think we’re going to talk not just about ethics and morals and leadership, but a little bit about what a complex topic this was and how we’re preparing to talk about a little bit about our preparation or a little bit about our process today too.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah, there’s a little bit of a side benefit to the conversations we’ve been having and the preparation for it, I think, for the listener and for us in recognizing the danger of just going to ChatGPT or AI systems and just having it think for you. I know maybe nobody but me is tempted to do that, but as I was thinking about this topic, I caught myself in two ways. One, feeling incompetent to talk about it. So I wanted more information. But then also, once I started really processing it out loud, I caught myself sort of getting on a soapbox, if you will, of what should and how people ought to be, rather than trying to get into the critical thinking side of it, to just process how do you navigate these conversations and how do you get to a place where you’re aware of and recognizing and sharpening the alignment of your ethics and your leadership, both personally and professionally. So kind of. To back up a little bit, I went, as we were talking in the office about this idea of ethics and leadership, I realized, man, I don’t know much about this topic in terms of, like, academically. So I wanted to get some information. I went to ChatGPT and essentially prompted it to create a worksheet for me to think for myself about this topic in Avoidance of it. Just telling me what I should think. So this worksheet that we’re going to talk about a little bit has been helpful, I think for both of us to probably process the topic.

Bill Berthel

Oh, 100%. And so many rabbit holes we could go down even, you know, what’s the ethical use of AI and in our. Oh yeah, and that’s not what we’re talking about today. And, and we don’t want to, nor do we think we can or should get on some type of platform or soapbox to talk about what is ethical leadership and what’s not. That’s not our intention here, but maybe through our discussion we’re going to illustrate what a complex and complicated topic this is. Because the situation, the culture, the environment, the relationships matter greatly, right? The context of the situation when we’re talking about ethics and morals really matter. But I think we need to ground our conversation in what are ethics and what are morals? And like you, I’ve been preparing myself for this. I studied a little bit of this, you know, in school, enjoyed it greatly enjoyed ethics classes. I studied ethics in psychology and was not just how we think about it, but the ethical practices in mostly clinical psychology. but I’ve been most recently reading a differentiation that’s intriguing me right now. I want to talk about a little bit. Is ethics is the black and white of it, the rules, the what’s right, the what’s wrong, the policy or the rule or the law or the, the black and white of it. And then morals is the meaning, the rationale, the why, the why it matters. That’s one way to look at it. There’s lots of ways to look at this. And that intrigues me right now because it helps me think about ethics and morals just a little bit differently and that they dovetail with one another, not really overlap, but that we need the what is it? The ethics. And then we need the why does it matter? The moralistic reasoning, the mattering the why.

Jeremiah Poulsen

yeah, you remind me of actually a recent conversation I was in with a team that was newly assembled and they had a recently written standard of procedure document that they were using. And one of the members of the team said these are our standards of procedures, but where are the morals that go along with this? What are we expecting of the people who are executing on this procedural manual?

Bill Berthel

So in that example, the SOPs or this manual, the collection of centered operating procedures, was the quote unquote ethics and the morals. What’s the understanding of it, the application of it, and why it Matters, the rationale.

Bill Berthel

Yeah, I love that. What an awesome example. I think about it often in policy, like probably you and many of our listeners have unfortunately had the experience where usually in a maybe service or a retail kind of situation where the person serving us is really limited by the policy, they can’t really help us that much as the customer or the client, and they can’t go much further either. They like they know the ethics, they know what they can do or can’t do, but they don’t really know why that’s set up. It’s policy is the answer. Right. Where if they had maybe a little bit more of an understanding and then also maybe some latitude or some freedom to be able to work with the individual. I often think the ethics of the black and white and the morals of the gray, does that make sense?

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah. And, and knowing what exists in the gray space gives you authority and maybe some agency to be able to think clearer about the exceptions to the rules that come up. Then you can say, you know what, I can make a case for this exception because I understand the why behind the what or how.

Bill Berthel

I think leaders are doing this day in, day out, whether they are conscious of it or not right there. And don’t get me wrong, I think many times they are, but I think really I do. I hope so. Maybe, maybe I’m a little Pollyanna there. Maybe we are subconscious or on autopilot sometimes with that. To me it goes to a pretty big leadership responsibility in compliance to ethics and a relationship with the moralistic part of it to be demonstrating it, modeling it, sharing it, communicating it, teaching it, fostering it. Right. Explaining the why. Now culture matters here. Right. I get that in some environments just the compliance with the rules is needed and you don’t necessarily need to understand why, just comply. I think those are very specific cultures and there aren’t that many that way. I think there’s some level of and desire for people to understand why the right and wrong of matters exists and the value of that, how it serves, how it protects, how it creates. And I think leaders lead that. I think leaders have a very important unique responsibility to ethics and morals.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah, unique responsibility to it. And I think we. It’s funny because, as you said, I think there’s a, a different kind of pandemic of leadership that is I’m just going to execute on the thing I’ve been told to do. This is what we’ve done. This is what’s written in law. This is what the easy answer is just do what the SOP says to do. Sure. And not really do the hard work of aligning yourself ethically, morally so that you can really think deeply about the gray area. And people don’t copy value statements, they copy patterns. And so as we live out our moral, as we live out our ethos in some way, whether we’re aware of it or not, the people around us are going to copy that and that’s what the culture is going to be. So I think there’s a danger, and, I like the word used, responsibility for the leader to not just live in the patterns, live in the unconscious patterns of their morals and ethics, but to be aware of them and then align it, align that personal ethic, align that personal moral with the ethic and say, I’m going to walk in this, I’m going to be cognizant of the pattern and I’m, also going to reckon with whether or not these things are in alignment. Maybe I’m recognizing it and going, you know what? My moral is not in line with the sop. My moral is not in line with the rule. So what do you do then? And maybe that’s why some people back away from the table and they go, you know what? I’m not even going to pay attention to it. I’m going to leave it in the dark place so that I can just ignore it and not worry about it.

Bill Berthel

Yeah. And I appreciate that you’re talking about that awareness, our consciousness about, you know, those either expectations or rules, the ethics of things. And I want to go back to the worksheet you created with the help of AI because to me, one of the most valuable exercises on that was to think about some common ethical traps to watch for. Watch for. That’s awareness. Right. So where might there be some traps in my. Either the leadership of myself, my team, my organization, even maybe how I work with clients or customers. Right.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

And those traps were all, I just want to read a few of them just because I think they might help our listeners think about where theirs might be. But these helped me think about my alignment with my behaviors and the ethics, my ethical behaviors, basically. Right. And so one was, an ethical trap to watch for is rationalization. And it explained like, well, everyone does it. We could rationalize. Right. My dad always used to say, well, if everybody jumped off a bridge, would you. Right. Like just because. Just because everyone else around you is, would you be thinking about yourself? And I always thought, well, yeah, like jumping off the bridge into a river and that could be cool. But that’s not what he was talking about. Right. He was talking about, don’t just follow and rationalize your behavior by everyone else’s behavior. Critically think for yourself and make sure it’s in alignment with the outcomes you want and your values. And so rationalization, although a beautiful part of the human mind, can actually become a trap in our ethical behavior just because everyone else is doing it. I’ll do it, too.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah. One of the exercises I’ll take leaders through sometimes when they’re trapped here or when they’re stuck and they’re working their way through it, is describe the emotions you’re feeling about the situation, what comes up for you about the situation. Describe your rational thoughts about the situation. And then as you see those two things, ask, what does the wise mind say in this moment? You know, get yourself in a place of perspective where you can see and feel both of those things. Think it through, Feel it through. And then ask yourself, what is the wise mind saying about this scenario? to get unstuck or avoid the trap.

Bill Berthel

One of the other ethical traps on the list was the urgency pressure. And I think this one plays out for me more times than I’d care to admit. And that urgency pressure is, to me, something equal to, like, cutting, corners or taking shortcuts. Right. But when we’re thinking about it from an ethical perspective, maybe not a quality perspective or, you know, accuracy perspective, but the pressure of time, or we just don’t have time to do that. Right. Or behave or act accordingly.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

Can be understandably, a little tempting sometimes. Right. But that’s an interesting trap to watch for. The urgency of time. The pressure of time.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah. Yeah. As you’re talking about, I’m, reminded of a very important football game I played as a high school student. The rivalry. Us in a crosstown team. Yeah. Beginning of the game, I was calm, cool, and collected. we were doing all right as time ran out. We’re down in score. And I’ll tell you what, Bill, I started trash talking in a way that I to this day, am. Like, how in the world did you let yourself talk to people like that on the football field? Now we’re down in time, pressure is on, and there’s only a few minutes left. I’m doing whatever I can, kind of throwing caution to the wind, and unfortunately, my moral standard to the wind in that moment. And I think it’s a trap a lot of us get stuck in. Yeah.

Bill Berthel

I mean, so we’re talking about the gray here. It doesn’t have to be incredibly egregious. It doesn’t have to be illegal. But it might show up in a way where the pressure of time is having us behave not at our higher self or our best self. We might lose our temper, we might cut some corners, we might yell at somebody when we really would rather not do that.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Right.

Bill Berthel

The, silence as safety prompt got me thinking. So the idea of this is like, it’s not my place to say something or do something. Really got me thinking, like, where might I be taking that option? Like, where might I be thinking? it’s not really for me to step in there or say something there. And I think, you know, I’ll go back to time and the pressure of that. We do only have so much time, so much energy. I get that. But what this one turned me on to was where could I step in and make a difference and not. Not just from an ethical morality perspective, but really stand up for congruency of my values.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Do you think as I read this, the phrase came to mind, the silent quitting, you know, the silent retreating, whatever you want to do. You think that’s in there?

Bill Berthel

I think so, a little bit. Right. So I think that, you know, that’s somewhat of a self leadership role, responsibility space. We could, I think, frame this sometimes. I jokingly sometimes go to the place where it’s like, yeah, it’s the law of least effort. Right. And that’s. Yeah.

Jeremiah Poulsen

What’s most comfortable? how can I preserve my energy? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bill Berthel

You know, I’ll. I’ll step back and let go or surrender in this space where it’s really somewhere for me to step in.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah.

Bill Berthel

For me, I think about that as an opportunity. Where can I practice that just a little bit differently and instead of saying, it’s not my place, question a little bit more deeper and say, how might I help lead this or how might I contribute in this space?

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah, yeah. And I like the way you’re flipping the coin of it there and saying these traps are also, as I recognize them, as I notice them coming up, it’s a chance for me to take a step in a direction I want to be and be an active participant in a shift toward more openness.

Bill Berthel

I think so. And I think often for leaders it’s making a call, making a decision. I was really, really lucky in my career. I got to mentor with a, very talented HR leader for about five years in a succession plan with her. And she kind of introduced me to the idea of, you know, instead of asking for permission. You can ask for forgiveness later. And what she really meant by that was we need to make a decision. We need to move something forward. We’ll do that in an ethical, moral way. But we also have to recognize that we might make a mistake. And so don’t let those fears or those potential mistakes paralyze you from, you know, making a decision or moving something forward. I try to practice that. I really try to practice that in my leadership.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah. I think even kind of zooming out a little bit on the whole topic in conversation, I think one of the things that even keeps us from talking about morals and ethics in leadership is the fear of being wrong.

Bill Berthel

Yeah, absolutely.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Or the fear of somebody else making the mistake, admonishing or declaring a certain moral that then later we find out wasn’t good if, we want to call it that. Right. So. So I think it’s a universal tension, but it’s also universally powerful to be able to lean in and make the call.

Bill Berthel

Yeah. I think leaders need to be ready to do that. Right. And. And in a thoughtful way, but then also be able to have the confidence to recover on the other side of it.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah. And reminding yourself recovery is possible and failure’s not the end when it comes to making the call.

Bill Berthel

Yeah.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Keep moving.

Bill Berthel

So if there was a call to action for the leaders that are listening, what would you ask for them to either practice or consider?

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah, great question. Honestly, I think that the question I asked chat GPT.

Bill Berthel

Yeah.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Was ah, help me process my. Help me process the ethics and morals of my leadership in an academic way. So I think that staying open and teachable to thinking critically about your behavioral patterns is the action that I think it’s not easy, it’s complicated, but it’s so worth it. And so, you know, I’ve got this worksheet. If people want to reach out and say, like, hey, just send me your worksheet. I’ll send it to you, you know, listeners out there if you want. This one that we’ve got. It’s been helpful for us to think through and, it’s nothing fancy, but think deeply about the patterns of behavior that happen unconsciously or without thinking about it. And wrestle with them, Wrestle with them. And I’ll just say this. I know I’m going on a little bit, but one of the things that’s come up a lot lately, and I’m a big NFL fan, I’m a Buffalo Bills fan, and whatever the listening audience thinks about that, I’ll let them think about it. All right. I’m coming out today as a Buffalo Bills fan, and there’s been a lot of talk at the end of the season. There’s always a kind of a moving around of head coaches in different ways and GM general managers. And there’s been a lot of talk about alignment being a powerful force for championship in the NFL in the National Football League. And I think that when a leader wrestles with their alignment with the organization, they’re part of, there’s a flywheel effect that happens when you have that alignment between the members of those teams and the structure of the organization. So if I can wrestle with it, no. Am I aligned or aren’t I? That’s golden. For the sake of the professional environment. Is my moral standard? Is my. Whatever you want to call it? Is the gray area of my life in line with the black and white area? And can I explain the standard operating procedures that I agree to and reinforce and hold other people accountable to? Can I also explain the why and do I believe that’s good? Do I believe that’s part of what ought to be? And if that’s the case, then you’ve got alignment and just watch what happens.

Bill Berthel

Yeah, I like that. Focus on alignment.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah, there’s a lot there. How about you, Bill?

Bill Berthel

Yeah, so I think it’s what we’re modeling here. Be in a, state of process and curiosity around your own relationship with ethics and morals. I love that you offered the worksheet and anything we can do to help folks be thinking about it. I’m a big proponent. I’m a big fan of that kind of critical thinking you mentioned. And so I’d ask our listeners to be more critically thinking about their ethics and morals, not just accepting it. Right. Go deep, Go wide with it as well. I think what that, that looks like is asking yourself how you know that to be true, why that’s important, but always with respect. Right. So it’s questioning with a sense of respect, whatever level you’re. You’re at in your organization, if there’s a process, you’re not fully understanding why it’s done that way, seek to understand and learn about why it might be done that way. if there’s something you really disagree with, you think is doing harm, make the call and step into that space respectfully to make a positive change or an improvement in that and where you know, where things are absolutely right and why that is. Help others see that and understand that and learn more about that. I think that’s what leaders do in ethics and morals. So less focus on the black and white of it or the judgment of it. More on the, if I can say it this way, the stewardship of the ethics and morals in your organizations.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Yeah. Bearing the responsibility for them and doing what’s.

Bill Berthel

Yeah, Yeah, I think so.

Jeremiah Poulsen

yeah. Good stuff.

Bill Berthel

Hey, thanks for the conversation.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Thank you. Thank you Learning and growing every day with you, man.

Bill Berthel

Always. And thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode and that you’re looking forward to more. You can listen to a new podcast two times every month here at Get Emergent or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you pick something up, you’re going to apply to your leadership and work. Let us know if you’d like some assistance in this space. You want that worksheet Jeremiah mentioned? Just reach out to us. [email protected] [email protected] or simply@[email protected] we’d love to hear from you.

Jeremiah Poulsen

Thank you.