Managers Part VIII - Ethical Leadership

This is a pretty short lesson. If you want to be an ethical manager, treat people the way you want to be treated, the good ol' Golden Rule. Treat people with respect, tell the truth, don't abuse them.

Here are a few examples and illustrations:

Sometimes as a manger you need to fire people. I have fired people and I've been fired. More than a few times for both. Once you decide to fire someone, just do it. Don't make them work their whole shift, or have them train their replacement. If their performance is so bad that they need to go, then get them out! Many years ago I was fired from a job that I'd held for a few years. I deserved to be fired, there was no question about it, so I was quite surprised that I was still employed the day after the incident which occasioned my termination. In fact I worked the whole weekend, ran a full store inventory and took over the checkstand at 6:00 AM on Monday so my overnight checker could leave. At 7:00 AM, when the morning checker arrived I was informed that I was terminated. When I asked my manager why he waited all weekend before firing me, he told me that he didn't have anyone who could work the weekend.

For a positive example, for a few years I was an assistant manager. It was a retail grocery store, and like many retail stores, the busiest times were during the holidays. This sometimes caused problems, since people would attempt to take off for a week just when it was busiest, or you would have entire departments asking off at the same time. If you wanted to keep the place running you couldn't give people off during the holidays, other than their regular days off. Some store managers would take off themselves, leaving the place in the hands of less senior supervisors, but our store manager would always schedule himself to work the holidays and the busy weekends - as an example to everyone else.

Employees also see how you treat other people, like your customers. Many companies make a habit of lying to their customers; employees see this and assume that if you're lying to one group of people, you're just a liar in general.

The final example is a fairly recent one. The store that I was working in was going to close. It was losing almost a million dollars a year - it was an understandable business decision. But when the corporate leadership was asked directly about it they lied - assuring me and others that the store was not going to close. When the truth inadvertently leaked out, they continued to lie, even sending a corporate manager in to convince the store personnel that the store was not closing, and sending him back to lie again when I told my former employees the truth after I had been fired. Several managers from the store quit after this, not able to trust the company that had put so much effort into lying to them.

Being dishonest, treating employees badly, cheating - all may seem the best business decision short-term, but will always come back to bite you in the long-term.