ethics
The personal code of ethics is a core value that guides and shapes an individual’s personal and professional attributes. The code of ethics determines the behavior of a person when faced with difficult decisions. Such decisions may be in a workplace or any other setting that may make a person choose between various options or decide to take a certain path. Ethical guidelines are dependent on a person’s cultural, religious, and academic backgrounds. Different backgrounds based on region, cultural teachings, and education determine how a person thinks, behaves, and makes decisions daily. As an aspiring leader, my personal ethics focus on guiding my team in the right direction through leading by example, respecting divergent opinions, honesty, and integrity.
Good leaders show their teams and subjects how to get tasks done and provide good examples for others to emulate. Therefore, in my quest to be a good leader, I strive to be a good example by taking the initiative on assignments. Showing a good example encourages other people to emulate good actions and activities, thereby generating a positive ripple effect within the community or organization. Rather than sit back and issue instructions, leaders need to show their subjects how to make the right decisions or accurately undertake activities. There are many situations in the community that require a leader to take charge. Many times people may be at crossroads and have challenges to make a decision or start activities. In such situations, a leader steps up and shows the people the correct way through decision-making or taking the first initiative.
In any community or workplace, some people have different opinions. Such differences are what makes life enjoyable. A good leader should respect the opinions of other people, regardless of their social or financial status. When people get into influential positions, they tend to be carried away by the power and sometimes brush off the opinions of those below their social status. However, as a leader, I hope to be conscious the cognizant of all opinions. Moreover, I will teach everyone under my leadership to respect others’ opinions, cultures, and religions. People need to respect others’ opinions even if they disagree with them. A simple phrase for the same is that people should agree to disagree without fighting each other.
Honesty is an important virtue of a person. It is a moral character that connotes straightforwardness and the absence of lying. Good leaders should be true to their word and always mean what they say. People prefer to work with and follow a person who says the truth no matter the situation. As a leader, there comes a time when a person has to make a tough decision and stand with the truth regardless of the gravity of the outcome. Such situations call for honesty as the value in a person. Without honesty, a leader may be corrupted by lies. Ultimately, honesty brings about trust and integrity. An honest person is also likely to have integrity because such people may not want to do anything that may force them to make tough decisions between right and wrong. Therefore, I am always cultivating honesty by always doing the correct thing and saying the truth, no matter how hard it may be.
As mentioned before, honesty and integrity are complimentary. A person with integrity behaves honorably regardless of the presence of others. Such people have high moral principles and always aim to do what is right according to the community’s perspective. Integrity is an important aspect of leadership. People with high levels of integrity can be trusted with their team to perform their duties diligently. Integrity is a virtue that helps people in making decisions, serving customers, and interacting with people in a community. Therefore, all leaders should work towards cultivating the attribute of integrity in their personal and professional environments. Leaders with integrity as one of their core values are honest, reliable, and upright in their dealings. Such leaders have a good work ethic and always try to ensure that other team members are doing the right thing. Eventually, leaders with the integrity to develop a positive culture within their community through motivation and mentorship. Young people will look up to such leaders and aspire to emulate their character traits. In the end, there will be a ripple effect where many people are emulating integrity and ethical behavior within a community or workplace.
There comes a time in life when personal ethics conflict with organizational ethics. A person develops personal ethics from childhood through learning from parents, education, and religion. However, the current organizational frameworks focus a lot on margins. While executing the organization’s functions, people may find themselves in situations where they violate their personal ethical values. Whereas personal ethics develop from childhood, business ethics develop at a later stage in life. Some of the key organizational ethics include confidentiality, reliability, and punctuality. It is near impossible to separate between personal and organizational ethics because they complement each other. Ideally, an organization needs to look for employees that are compatible with organizational ethics. Therefore, during the hiring process, the human resource department ought to be thorough and ensure that they onboard people whose personal ethical values are in sync with them. In the same breath, people should be careful when applying for jobs and only join organizations whose values are synonymous with their personal ethics.
There is a lot of competition for job opportunities due to limited positions. Therefore, people have to decide between upholding their personal ethics and joining an organization with conflicting ethical standing. When it comes down to such decisions, a person often has to choose survival, resulting in joining the organization. For instance, some people do not take alcohol due to religious reasons. It is immoral for such people to work in an organization that deals with alcohol in any way. Therefore, it is unethical for these people to work in a bar or brewery. Regardless of the situation, a person should never compromise their personal ethics in favor of the organization. When a person comes into a situation that may compromise their ethics, it is important to access the situation, seek expert advice, and speak up. One compromise may lead to bigger problems. In the end, compromising one ethical values may lead to the deterioration of moral standards and form an unhealthy culture for the person and the organization. A person needs to uphold their personal ethical standards at all times. Moreover, a person should apply personal ethics and beliefs at work because these are the building blocks of morals. For instance, applying honesty and integrity in a workplace perpetuates a positive culture. Moreover, when all employees demonstrate high ethical behavior, they are likely to increase productivity, positive customer experience, and workplace efficiency. Such standards have a long term positive impact on the organization.