For businesses to thrive in the future, their leaders should lead from a position deeply rooted in ethical values.

We’re already in the future, in the third decade of the 2000s, where the vocab about the future of work, and how to work, is so often about change, and about combatting corruption in the private and public sectors. And dealing with the unexpected and unknown. The need for our organisations to do business sustainably, responsibly, and in an impactful way. How to work smarter, not harder.

While I agree that we need to respond to adaptive problems innovatively, I think this should stay the same: As leaders, we should know our values. Our values should be ethical – for the good of selves and others – and we should lead from them.

This is not new news. Writers such as Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky (Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Change, 2017) say that leaders who build the capacity of their organisations to respond to challenges and take advantage of new opportunities do so best when they are anchored in the values that orient their decisions.

James Kouzes and Barry Posner (The Leadership Challenge 4^th edition, 2007) say that “to model behaviour effectively, you must first clarify your values. You must find your own voice and then, clearly and distinctively, express your values to everyone in the organisation. You must believe in the values you express, but those values must not be merely your own personal principles. They must represent what the company stands for”.

But what values?

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, speaking at the launch of the Gordon Institute of Business’s ethics barometer on 19 November 2019, said that ethical leaders are humble, teachable, preoccupied with the greater good as opposed to self-interest, honest, and straightforward. They fulfil commitments, are justice-oriented, fair, and take responsibility. They preserve the dignity of others, serve others, show courage, and stand up for what is right.

Rick Hackett and Gordon Wang, quoted in Elkington (Ethical Leadership at the Speed of VUCA: Visionary Leadership in a Turbulent World, 2017), concluded that across cultures, the six virtues every ethical business leader should show are courage, temperance, justice, prudence, humanity, and truthfulness.

King IV suggests that a governing body should govern the ethics of an organisation in a way that supports the establishment of an ethical culture.  The leaders serving as the governing body, rooted in their own value systems, will be ethical leaders if these values include courage, service, and the like.

I think it takes people who are keenly self-aware, who know which beliefs and ethical values define them and can talk about the principles they live by, to transform organisations. And I agree with Kathy Bennett, a coach of leaders in South African corporates, who writes (in Living and Leading Through Uncertainty, 2017) that the leader who is best equipped to lead an adaptive organisation which addresses the demands of the future is one who has a healthy respect for values.

What does that mean for you and me?

We need to know what we stand for, and be able to state it clearly and often.

We need to be able to reason why those values are good for all in our organisations and all our stakeholders. We need to align our organisations with ethical values, and insist on every person in our teams conducting business honourably, transparently, with the effect on others in mind.

That should be our future, and it’s not new.

• This article written by Marian Griffin Kloot first appeared in the quarterly Directorship magazine published by the Institute of Directors South Africa in December 2019 at  https://ipaper.ipapercms.dk/Iodsa/directorship-q4-2019/?page=22