LEADERSHIP ETHICS AND ACCOUNTABILITY
by Alexandros Varveris

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What is True Leadership?

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Do you know anyone in your organization who flaunts their title as the only means to get things done? I bet you do. It’s 2023 and still, many think, that people will follow and respect them because of their title. This continues to tease my mind, leaving me always dumbfounded by companies that consistently recruit people into leadership without any form of leadership mentoring and psychological evaluation besides fast-paced basic interviews.
 

Everyone wants to be a leader, but many don’t want to do the work required to become the human a leadership requires. It’s easy to bark out orders, boss people around, threaten people with contract termination if they do not magically perform in the way you want; let alone without a leading-serving support. Leading means being in the forefront, leading the force to the a goal, not on the back with a whip. Managers, in pursuit of becoming leaders, have to realize that good employees do not need managers more than managers need the good employees.
 

Ιt takes work to coach, mentor, motivate and inspire people to produce their very best work. It has nothing to do with using force or any way of manipulation. It’s all about treating people with respect and creating a safe environment that will allow everyone become the best versions of themselves, as professionals and as humans. Unfortunately, nowadays, people who rely on their title or positional power to influence others, do not lead; manage perhaps yes, but lead? No.

Leadership has nothing to do with your title, and the people who rely on their title to prove their worth frequently neglect many of the human aspects of the people in their organization. There can be no leader without empathy, emotional intelligence and conscious truly insightful capacity to understand situations.
 

Let me tell you a story to reflect that. Back in mid 2010s, I observed a situation while I was consulting a PR business as part of the coaching team. There was an amazing employee, top in his field which was producing the most in his department. Additionally, he was doing the extra (unpaid) mile, coaching new hires and taking care of some brief meetings on the foot of his at the time direct manager. One day, he had to do a special task that required a certain amount of extra time; time that he definitely couldn’t give as after work he was studying German and was helping his mother's candle shop. Unless he would receive some support from leadership during a period that he anyways has over-achieved his goals, it wasn't possible. His manager, blinded of power-hunger which caused amnesia on how important this employee was, threatened him that he would be dropped from the project if that extra task didn’t take place in the exact non-negotiated terms (see: overtime) that the manager requested, depriving from the employee alternative solutions or discussion. The employee felt utterly unimportant with a depleted feeling of safety. He left the company and a couple of other employees followed as well as they felt unsafe and of a trivial given value to their worth. Would said employee get spoiled if he would get that support? Or would the manager become a leader if showed understanding? That’s the difference between management and leadership. I took the side of said employees; and sadly the General Manager with the emotional intelligence of a 5-year old blocked my promotion in a project I had overworked with a multitude of achievements, in a project that dozens of employees wanted my guidance. The General Manager shot himself on the foot and found a way to blame me, that I care ''too much'' for the employees. My passion for the company died too, in fact murdered (so and the project not much later) by a person that put their fragile emotions above the project itself. Leadership requires   If you want to be a leader and you are called to choose between hierarchical/financial growth and personal growth in terms of ethics, you have to choose the latest. That defines if you are a manager or a leader. If you sell your meant-to-lead integrity which eventually makes you a slave, you will be just a manager, figuratively only on paper. If you are leading the self to what is right, becoming a prime example of an envisioned better world, without selling your moral integration for a title, you are a leader. Dejectedly, moral integration and climbing the corporate ladder are usually in oppositional conflict. I'm sad to see, that situations like this can still occur, years later. As long as corporate success requirements derive from a place far from integrity in ethics and accountability, there won't be a space for true leadership.

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It's incredible how many people believe that people will automatically respect them and listen to them once they obtain a certain title, which nowadays has also to do with the right politics instead of the right volume of skills (people management skills included). As a result, they are often unable to look beyond the roles and the responsibilities that their title harbors, and to see how their performance, attitude, ideology, and general behavior affect others. Managers are entitled to an idea that are God-sent lords but leaders ask some questions every single night before they sleep: ‘’How can I become better?’’, ‘’How could I have handled that better?’’, ‘’Did I respond to that person/situation correctly?’’. Leadership is about ever-evolving growth and a leader has to be the prime example of that. And whoever seeks growth, find it everywhere. I can’t not mention the best manager I ever personally had. While still a young teamleader, she was allowing me to talk, she was listening to me (while with most managers, people can't talk for 10 consecutive seconds without being talked over), she was diving into every thought I would express and guiding me to express more; and at the end, she, a person above in hierarchy and position of power than me, said: ‘’I learn so much from you’’. I owe so much to her for where I stand now, the first powerful person in a corporation that believed in my philosophy. It might sound obvious for the audience here, but how many managers have the strength and emotional intelligence to do that?
 

People who believe that their power is granted on the title, and not in the willingness of their mind and heart to become better, become slaves of a lower emotional intelligence and may perceive others as lesser, using manipulation to acquire influence while further reducing the integrity and the trust that others had placed on them.
 

According to John Maxwell, many of these positional managers love to instill fear in their organization; for example the classics ‘’your job is on the line’’ or ‘’you will never be promoted if you don’t do it my way’’ or the clearly illegal which I have witnessed with my own two eyes ''you will lose your bonus even though you have achieved it if you don't the the extra X''. Every word or phrase is based on fear in an attempt to hold on control. However, fear is always in the eye of the beholder. The fear of appearing incompetent leads them to behave like that. They are not leading fear but fear leads them; and no one can be a leader if they don’t lead their emotions first as the failure on that leads on a blinding fog of overall awareness; and a blind cannot lead. Needless to say, those are far against the law. Confident leaders, must educate their employees of their legal rights, even towards the very own leader himself.
 

Leadership is about lifting people up; supporting them to overcome their difficulties (of course as long a person wants to be helped too which indeed is not always the case). Another strong memory I have is working in a nightclub in Berlin, as event manager. There was a bartended with regular anger issues, always combative and loud like a mad dog. I knew it had to do with insecurities and low emotional intelligence; confidence and intelligence are silent, the opposition of those are loud. He needed support and a chance of someone giving the effort to make him grow not as a bartended in that case but as a person which would lead also to a better bartender. I gifted him a book named ‘’Ikagai’’. He chose to read it and it did a positive difference. Years later, he thanked me for saving his life from an alcohol addiction I had suspected to exist. If he didn’t choose to read it or grow, after 3 chances, of course, he would be fired. When it comes to chances, the number 3 is the magic number, as number 3 symbolizes wisdom, growth, knowledge, consciousness and understanding. We have always 3 levels, and barriers of consciousness aka body, mind, spirit. If anyone fails 3 chances, then they have to face themselves because leadership is about being fair; its about equity and not equality. Communism doesn’t work; if we are good to the unfair, we become unfair to the good. Nevertheless, until and if someone fails those 3 chances, we shouldn’t load them with even more fear, but with tactics that would help them destroy fear. A manager has the responsibility to do anything to prevent fear, let alone to facilitate it.
 

Are there bad employees? Of course. I have seen employees that take advantage of the support of their managers. Of course there are employees that are every day late, neglect work and misbehave. And in all cases, they are people suffering in pain; no healthy spirit would do that. All I am saying is, that before the warning of joblessness comes, they must have 3 chances of utter support. If they do not take it, they should face the slap of life they created. In any case, at first, they should have absolute support, kidness and ground to transform and thrive. If instead of using it, they abuse it, they have to let go for a) give space for someone who deserves it and b) take a good tough disciplinary lesson that might end up bringing the growth they need. I have baptized this ''Reverse Trojan Horse''.
 

Nevertheless, this article is not about employees but for managers who have the privilege of more ''jail free cards'' and even more responsibility to be grown.
 

Many managers dive immediately to nonsense fearful tactics and that happens because of their mental conditioning and lack of confidence to the point where they adopt these kinds of ridiculous strategies in their managerial spice, and life, to get others to perform. Fear, manipulation, control and your title should never be used as any means to influence your people to work; what kind of influence fear and neglection can influence anyways than its own energy? To young managers out there: If this is your tactic, you need to evaluate yourself because you will never build anything of value.
 

I am diabolically opposed to companies that tolerate this behavior. Attachment to a title is a poor substitute for influence, and according to John Maxwell’s ‘’Five Levels Of Leadership’’, such people may be bosses but never leaders. They have subordinates, not team members. Rules bring order and indeed order separates us from animals, but rely only on policies and organizational charts to control everything; all inside a box, separates us from humanity too. People would only follow that within the stated boundaries of authority, and not from a free choice.
 

The very nature of leadership speaks to inspiration, motivation, vision, purpose, trust, values, communication, meaning and many more virtues that seek to help people become the free very best version of themselves. We need to usher in a new paradigm in many organization to get people to love their work. We need our leaders to eliminate all traces of toxicity, wherever it comes from, within their organization; starting from the self. The beauty of leadership lies in the fact that a person does not need a formal title to prove they are leaders. Instead, people follow leaders because of their values, vision, passion, purpose, inspiration and ethics. It’s not about rank, but it’s about inspiring people to believe in themselves, abandon bad habits, see their own gifts and potential, and something much greater than their own self-preservation. When you become a leader who has this influence, and people choose to follow you loyally and voluntarily, you are on a great road or actually you have achieved everything already.
 

Some days ago, I read a post on LinkedIn, about a CEO who was very nasty and disrespectful to one of his managers. The guy shouted so loudly in order everyone in the room would listen to his perhaps valid but definitely classlessly-performed critic. The manager returned after 10 minutes with a handwritten resignation letter dates ‘’effective immediately’’. Can you blame him? Can you call him childish for not tolerating that? How on earth do you expect anyone to function in that type of environment? This story stuck with me and I can understand why 90% of managers in 2023 fail to become leaders; they might fondly call themselves one but they are not. There are three fundamental processes for effective leadership that most managers fail to grasp:
 

- Establishing a compelling direction, a vision for the future, and the strategies on how to go there all together, using each one’s unique leading strengths (some employee can coach all about sales, someone else on IT, someone else on marketing). Like the Olympians, the gods in Greek mythology, where no one was perfect but all together were powerful.
 

- Aligning people, communicating the direction, building shared understanding, getting people to believe the vision and influencing people to follow that vision; by following the better and better selves.
 

- Motivating and inspiring people to enact the kind of positive change you have visioned and articulated

When you are responsible for leading people, you have an opportunity to make a profound impact on your team, but it’s up to you as the leader to recognize that your team is the organization’s most valuable resource. You have to do everything to prevent someone from wanting to go by not trusting your leadership; it’s the epitome of failure. As a leader, your influence can change the trajectory in someone’s entire life, professionally and personally.
 

During one of Simon Sinek’s trips with the Marines Corps, he recalls on a video of him I watched, a harrowing situation in Afghanistan. A pilot provided cover for troops under fire, exposing himself to dangerous enemy fire from both sides of a valley, so he can provide cover for the Special Forces to come out without casualties. He gave to others, without expectations of anything in return. When he was asked ‘’why did you do this?’’ he replied ‘’because they all would have done it for me’’. Obviously, no one expects your co-worker to sacrifice their actual life for you, but this gives a message of some healthy selflessness that should exist in corporations. This is what it means to work in a place where the leaders create a circle of safety for their team, and in return, their people giving everything they can to protect and advance the well-being of each other, their leader and the organization. There’s so excuse for any so called leader to not do that for their employees, let alone abuse them. No excuse! Many who fail to understand that, would blame the leaders who do that for ‘’spoiling’’ (see: decently supporting) their employees in a false translation, so they can baptize apathetic authoritarianism as the norm. It's not only about KPIs, it's most importantly about people. People bring the numbers. 
 

During my academic work, I have seen with my own two eyes, several CEOs and managers taking pleasure in nasty authoritarianism. That is because they know, in many instances, that they have convinced their employees that their company is the only one to work for. Yet, as Greg Savage pointed in an article ‘’People don’t leave companies, they leave managers’’. When employees leave; when it’s not for a higher paying or most suiting job, it’s not the company that they blame. It’s almost never the location, the database, or the air-conditioning. It’s the ‘’leadership’’. When people are valued, incredible things happen and teams are being built that reach the targets month after month, in a wondrous stability. And again, insecure managers will find ways to blame any stable team by having it ‘’too easy’’. Good managers end up making things look easy and stable. You wouldn’t blame an architect for crafting a building that needs no regular maintenance and changes, so why the team? I’ve been blamed too by managers that my and my team’s work is too easy, and even if the intention was an insult from ill-minded ones, I should take it as a compliment.
 

Valuing the people that you do work with, starts from valuing yourself.
 

How do you value your employees? It’s not a rocket-science but more like a human-science. Start by asking them how they are doing. Ask them how’s their mom/dad/kids are doing. Genuinely. Show that you are there for them to talk. It’s a start.

If you never did this, please do try it; these simple things will significantly impact your employee’s motivation and inspiration. When you show your employees the simples of gratitude genuinely, you will have the most loyal employees. As a leader you have endless opportunities to change someone’s life every single day. Tell them how amazing job they do, invite them for a damn dinner to express your gratitude; you don’t have to be best friends, but tear down the wall of being just a boss which creates separation, believe me, then healthier boundaries and work balance will arise. When we reach the non-duality, we respect duality more. That’s how people will believe that the impossible is possible. Not by taken for granted, making them feel less than you or even themselves. Leadership is about developing people to perform at heights they could never imagine, and by walking fearlessly the path, more of the path to success will appear. That’s how they will listen you and immediately jump to correct something that needs correction in their work. Leadership is about positively impacting your community, your employees and inevitably the department and organization. It’s the organization the employees work for. By squeezing them, they will give something for a while but by watering them they will give a lot for a long time.
 

Furthermore, like that, we make even the whole world better. When employees are in a fruitful environment and not in a survival mode, they have more to give. There are several science experiments took place, which shows that ethically-inspired and supported happy people when they have even slighty more than they actually need survival-wise, they naturally tend to give. Additionally, when they are inspired by a good leader, which inevitably more or less they mimic, they will care more for their clients, more for their neighbors too. On the contrary, when people are in survival mode, their consciousness is blinded as we are DNA-programmed first and foremost to survive. However, when the environment is inspiring and empowering, people by nature will give; a performance too. We are evolutionary species. It’s encoded in our DNA. Love is encoded in our DNA, that's why we feel euphoric when we share it.
 

Love is loyalty, love is teamwork, love respects the dignity of the individual. Love is growth. And all these are synonyms of the strength of any organization. Love is at the heart of leadership, especially the ''servant leadership'' as I like to call it which doesn't mean submission. On the contrary, who has the ability to serve is dominant. Politicians or kings should serve their people. A man should serve their family. We need more of serving in our leadership today. ''The leader who gets the most out of their people, are the leaders who care the most about their people''
 

Gandhi has said ''the best way to find your powerful self is to lose yourself in the service of others''
 

Why not to love the people we work with? This word has became such a ''taboo''. I have never heard it being mentioned in many corporate speeches. Because people see it nowadays as a weakness instead of a strength. Don't get me wrong, by loving all your employees, I do not mean to run hand-to-hand on flowery fields. Nor to be friends that hang out every weekend. By love, I mean even just caring about their well-being. Let's love the people we lead, love the work they are doing, and communicate it with actions.
 

In Kevin Cashman's article, ''The Three L's of Leadership: Love, Listen, Lead'' about a coach who transitioned popular football players into business careers, all of whom stated ''Tough guy, but we have never been so loved, outside of family, by anyone. He made us feel safe even during fierce coaching''.
 

How can in a business love your employees? By understanding their needs. Not caring because you want something done or when it suits a common interest/purpose (ex: fix their PC because you want them to keep working), but genuinely care irrespective of the situation. Engage with them. Listen to them. At the end, they mimic you, and they will listen to your clients more. Everything is a circle.
 

That being said, do the managers/CEOs care about results? Yes. Are they focused on company growth? Ultimately, yes. But at the same time, they should focus on the well-being of the employees too as it is not something opposite, but complementary. That's your job as a leader, to give the very best to your team (professionally and personally) so you can get the very best from your team. The team is a mirror that reflects you. As a leader you have to ''walk the walk'' to demonstrate the standards of humanity and through that performance. Effective leadership is the most critical factor in organizational success in 21st century. Companies that need to grow, need to embrace ''transformational leadership''
 

We live in 2023 now. Slavery is over or at least it should be. Millenials are changing the world of work and corporations that don't accept the fact that the leadership is different after 20 years, or won't be again different in 20 years, they will be left behind. According to Erin Binney, the pyramid structure of the 20th century, worked when manufacturing companies employed workers and the employment contract was only transactional. Leading by fear and intimidation was the order of the day. There was physical and emotional distance between managers and employees. Leaders sat in offices, far away from the manufacturing floors and viewed employees as just a cost and tool of labor. That perhaps worked then, when jobs were very mechanical and without growth. But on jobs that require mental necessities, it doesn't work. Sadly, many companies are still operating with the same poor ideology, where communication is stagnated, and silos/KPIs are the order of the day. Managers who are barking ''do!'' instead of showing ''how to do'', are desperate to protect a status quo and keep their jobs, this isn't either in the company's best interests; and they should find something else to do.
 

Many organizations have changed their culture and leadership style, because they recognize that this generation is more evolved since it has due to internet access to much more information. We are completely different than baby boomers that could afford a house and feed a family of 5 in one average wage.
 

Leaders of the future must change their leadership style to give their organization a chance to compete and operate in this technologically driven world in which ''simple'' jobs are taken over by robots and AI. The speed of change is unprecedented in the history of our existence, as we live in the most ''free'' world to date. We still have wars and injustice and dictators, but we have never been, men and women, more free to date. Therefore, leaders must modify their leadership in order to attract and keep the best talent available and to ensure their employees they are safe to do the extra mile towards growth.

How do you get your team to do the extra mile?
 

- Communicate with every member of your team. Develop each employee individually. Identify each person's ambitions as they may vary. Someone is there more for experience than money, someone else more for money. Identify what they want, and help them get it.
 

- Question the old ways, impart new perspectives, challenge the status quo and allow your team to give ideas of what it could change in their entire organization. Thoroughly consider those ideas as they may carry hidden gems. Let lose your entitlement that you know everything; you do not.
 

That's how you build great teams. Team building is both an art and a science. It takes great leadership to build winning teams and winning teams are developed under leaders who have structure and stability but also flex around each team's needs. Consistently high-performance winning teams arrive from consistently feeling safe, heard and supported. Supported teams are successful teams and leaders are only as successful as their teams.
 

A team with the right dynamics in between diverse personalities worth their weight in gold. You can have in the same team shy gamers, fancy ladies, politically left and right persons, military and religious people, of many sexual preferences and religions and with the right ethics, they can work together, fueling each other, like a Swiss clock. A ''team'' is not just people who work at the same time in the same place. A real team is a group of very different individuals who enjoy working together and share the same commitment to work cohesively for their and the corporation's goals. Most likely, they are not all equal in experience, talent, education and they have different skills, but they are similar in one vitally important way, the entire growth of the organization. Of course, that requires the organization to not play filthy ''divide and conquer'' games, but see their employees as their precious entity.
 

It takes a good leader to orchestrate all that like a maestro. When a leader empowers their employees to become the very best version of themselves, by challenging any limiting assumption they have for themselves, great things can happen. When you trust your team in the way you helped them build themselves, and you give them more responsibility to achieve more, it can benefit both the people and the business. Again, for that to take place, the business's CEO has to carry similar ethics and vision.
 

Leaders must understand that leading others, more than anything, should be held in reverence. Again, being a leader means that you have been placed in a compliment of a position to serve others. Unfortunately, too many times, I have seen managers to duck and cover, throwing their people (or leaving them) under the bus. Hell, I have seen managers cutting off people for being ethical and doing the right thing.
 

You are privileged to be in a position where you can direct, shape and focus people's potential. When you are given this responsibility, (and here goes my favorite motto: the meaning of your life is proportional with the responsibilities you have), you are given an incredible opportunity; to make people's lives better, not enslave them. That responsibility should never be taken for granted. Never. ''No one can be a great leader unless they care about everyone in the team''.

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An organization's culture doesn't turn toxic because of a few bad seeds but becomes toxic of bad farmers (managers) and ground (corporation aka CEO/VP). If employees have to be conscious of their growth and actions once, managers and CEOs have to focus on these x10, instead of living in a delusive ''I am always right because of my position'' dream.

As leaders, you have to constantly grow; and we keep growing by listening to others too, by reading. If we only bark and say what we know, we will only keep knowing what we already know. As leaders, you have to create a culture where your people are inspired to create great ideas, embody these ideas, and give themselves the space to lift themselves and therefore the entire organizations as they are the cells of it, to higher levels.

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To ambitious young professionals out there who are eager to do your best work: Place ethics first, lead yourself to a better version and with hard work, you will be able to select businesses that you can thrive together upwards; in ethics, values and eventually KPIs. While “values” have been a part of the zeitgeist for a long time, research shows that 80% of employees work for organizations that have stated values, but only 23% agreed that they could apply those values to their everyday work.

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Following up, we’ll explore that disconnection and present a more effective, alternative way for leaders to foster shared understanding, language, and accountability in their organizations. Where companies' values fall short, precisely besides the false antagonism between the rush for KPIs and integrity maintenance?

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Consider the following common values statements: We value inclusivity. We value integrity.

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These values are admirable, and the intentions behind them are mostly good - not always though. Businesses in 2023 in pursuit of being politically correct, are murdering equity for just superficial looks of equality through pseudo-morality ending up disadvantaging good employees because of sex or gender that is no longer defined as ''popular''. In pursuit of striving away from sexism, corporations are falling right into it. After all, values represent the highest ideals of what an organization aims to be. Yet, we often find these stated values don’t translate into the actual priorities, decisions, and actions of the company. And in some cases, there is a clear difference between what leaders say about their company values and the actions they take based on plastered intentions.

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More than ever, employees want clarity on 'the ways they work together'. They want to understand the boundaries and help shape the direction of the organization. When everyone is unclear on what’s important, it’s difficult to do that, and when leaders are acting in opposition to the company’s stated values, it’s impossible.

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The mismatch is not surprising. Conservatively, there are more than 50+ different values an organization can embrace and anyone that tries to prioritize them all will prioritize none. More importantly, our individual understanding of values like flexibility and integrity vary from person to person; and on top of that employees who are people with potentially paramount education and wisdom, are not even asked about what constitutes a good value. Again, dangerous self-entitlement from managers that could have got their position in non-valuable ways as facts do show. Employees need to have more voice. Someone can believe acting with integrity means you’ll always deliver exactly what you say you’re going to deliver, while someone else might believe that making changes to what you said you would do to better serve the client is acting with integrity, even if it’s different from what was agreed upon.

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As we continue the transition toward a new era of work, we need to move from oppositional and strict hierarchical relationships toward actions and frameworks that support co-creation and foster healthy cultures. And self-defined values or even values general alone don’t do this.

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CEOs, VPs and leaders have to build a purpose and ask a valuable question:

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What does our company stand for?

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The answer to that derives from some fundamental tactics, such as crafting working agreements!

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Set up key and legitimate working agreements:

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I recommend bringing employees together to develop working agreements: codified ways in which they partner with each other in all of the work they do. Working agreements guide and influence behavior, decisions, and collaboration. They serve as a clear reference point to ensure everyone has a shared understanding of how work gets done. In other words, working agreements take implicit practices, behaviors, values, and beliefs, and make them explicit, clear, and actionable. They help teams build three key components that drive effective collaboration.

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Implement a shared language:

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We shall provide written articulations of an agreed-upon belief, value, or practice in clear, specific language. These are the key phrases, descriptions, and word choices associated with the said agreement.

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Implement a shared understanding, shared accountability, and equative consequences:

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We have to encourage shared understanding by translating that shared language into clear, specific actions and practices. They go beyond values by expanding on what the agreement means and often what it doesn’t mean. Additionally, any violation from a higher-ranking individual should end up to proportional consequences. Let me give you an example: If a 10-year-old child steals something, we understand that it is a kid. It has the role of a kid that may do mistakes and is not in a position to lead or teach. Therefore we should be more upset or disappointed if a 40-year-old adult steals something, correct? As the adult is more in place of accountability, carrying more years of experience. Same should occur in corporations. Since the reward/salary is higher for higher managers, they should also have proportional consequences. If a manager of managers does something unethical, their consequences should be higher than a junior employee. Instead, managers live in a self-created utopian world in which ''mistakes are never mine - let's find a way to blame my inferiors'. Well, that's not leadership. When team members all know the working agreement and how it’s defined and practiced, they’re better equipped to hold each other accountable, which can increase trust in the team. It also makes it crystal clear when the team isn’t adhering to what they agreed to.

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Working agreements can be created for an entire organization, a specific team, or even smaller working groups. Leaders can work on with the team to build let's say five key working agreements that helped cement their commitments, drive their actions, and clarify their decision-making. These working agreements can include items like: investing time and resources in order to meet their stated goals, a willingness to embrace discomfort and make difficult (and sometimes unpopular) decisions, and a shared commitment to following the mechanisms they created and tracking outcomes. As a result, the teams will be far more able to meet their strategic goals, improve team communication, increase diversity across their team, and model these practices for other teams in the organization.

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How to create working agreements as a leader?

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Start with the goal of turning beliefs, practices, and intentions into actions. Let’s take the example of integrity, which is a value many companies cite. Integrity written as a value might be: “We value integrity. We do the right thing, even when no one is watching” Alternatively, an example of a working agreement would be: “Integrity is a priority. We work with our clients in ways that are transparent and clear. We always tell the truth. If we make a mistake, we own up to it right away and do what it takes to make it right. We have the adultery to apologise even to our hierarchically inferiors. We do the right thing even if it costs us”. The working agreement doesn’t just add words. It clarifies what we mean when we say “integrity” and defines the actions one would take to operate within the context of the agreement.

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But these agreements shouldn’t be created in a vacuum. To develop a working agreement, partner with various members of your team or create a working group. Discuss your current structures for systems-level actions, project management, and decision making. Consider inputs like company purpose, goals, and aspirations and outline the steps and ways of working needed to achieve them. Here are some guiding questions:

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• What values, practices, and principles are most important in our organization, and what do they look like in action?

• Why did we start this project, team, or organization?

• What are some of our unstated practices or beliefs?

• What are some of the ways we support each other and foster belonging?

• Are there any considerations within the context of our current business environment and/or industry?

• What are some of the ways we want to operate? What do we believe are great ways to work together to achieve our goals?

• What is critical about how we work together as a team? What is important about how we partner with clients?

• What are specific practices we want to use in decision making?

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After you’ve written out your first version of your working agreement, check that it contains each of the following components:

• Clarity: Does it use clear and concise language, avoiding ambiguity and jargon?

• Alignment: Does it reflect the goals and intentions of the team or organization?

• Measurability: Is it defined in a way that allows for concrete actions and outcomes (i.e., accountability)?

• Actionability: Does it provide practical guidance and empower decision making?

• Relevance: Can it be applied to the specific context?

• Present tense: Does it say what you do, not what you will do?

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After creating a working agreement, apply it to several different real-world scenarios to test it out. Can you use it to identify how you will act, make decisions, and partner with each other? If you can, your working agreement is ready.

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Remember that creating working agreements is the beginning of the process. In order for any component of your culture to be effective, you have to take consistent action toward the aspirations and goals you outline. In other words, you have to do what you say you’ll do.

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Once the ethical agreements are in place, reinforce them through your respective ethical actions. Use storytelling (like the examples earlier in the article) to continue to ensure shared understanding and definition of the agreements. Display and discuss your working agreements across a variety of mediums. Finally, use working agreements in your day-to-day work, including talent attraction and hiring, performance management, decision making, and project management. Only then do you take your values from something posted in hallways to life. Lastly, never forget: Of course care/act for your well-being as only a full bucket can water others, yet be as unconditional or at least fair as possible. Your people come first, and I tell you from experience: That brings the goals too.

Develop yourself. Inspire your team. Conquer the world!