Monday, March 17, 2014

Inspiring Ethical Leadership

This blog is about what an individual can do to fight corruption.

In my Policy Blog today on How to Fight Corruption, I discussed How to Strengthen Corruption Prevention Through Mid-Level Management.

There I discussed simple, but often ignored, diagnostic tools that can be used by a new executive in an institution to identify weak areas in the mid-level management of an organization that create parts of an organization that are susceptible to decay and corruption.  Each of the identifiers are known as 

The Empty Chair.

If you are a member of the public you, too can see that the mid-level management of a government organization is missing.

The lowest level of motivating an individual to change behavior is to simply observe that what they are doing is wrong.  Often, you don’t need to confront the person directly.

If that fails to generate any response, you can get a message to the person, either confidentially or otherwise that their behavior is known and that it would be a simple matter to make some small corrections to improve things.

Next, if you don’t have a blog yourself, you can take your observations to the media or your community bloggers.  They are often eager for material to write about.

But where an individual is doing something wrong – such as refusing to carry out their official responsibilities for the government and people, it is often more productive to inspire positive change by brining attention to the things they are doing well.

Indeed, bringing attention to the misdeeds of government officials is dangerous.  Even internal whistleblowers attempting to use “accepted” means of correcting problems are regularly attacked from the very organizations they seek to help.

Everyone wants to feel good about themselves, and generally object to negative criticism.
There is an excellent story used to teach this idea known as “The Two Wolves.”  

A short letter to a government official acknowledging their transparent handling of some manner can go a long way to inspiring positive change.

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