E18 | How to Develop Ethical Maturity

Hi. Welcome to lead with a coaching mindset, a Podcast where we explore how leaders unlock their following potential. I am Dr Damian Goldvarg, and I am very excited to discuss my new book, lead with a coaching mindset.

Hi everyone. I'm Elaine Padilla. I'm also coach and I will be the host of this podcast. We hope that you find this space inspirational and thought provoking. Let's get into it.

Welcome to lead with a coaching mindset. Today, with Elaine Padilla, we're going to be exploring the chapter two from my book, lead with a coaching mindset, and in this book, we're going to be focusing on ethical leadership. In our last episode, we discussed some of the principles of ethical leadership, and today, we're going to be covering ethical maturity. Delay. How about you today? Good, good. Glad to see

you again, Damien, and glad to be here with everyone joining us today. Let's get into it,

and thank you for partnering with me in this space so we can together reflect and bring some light about some of these issues related to leading with a coaching mindset. And one of the key element of the key foundations of leaders demonstrating ethical behaviors is following ethical standards. And last time we discussed the difference between morality and ethics, and we see that morality is what is shared in society or what is shared by by an organization or by country or whatever it is some co shared by the group of people, compared to ethics that are more related to my individual decisions, my individual choices.

Yeah, I wonder, how you know, if you're on a multinational or a multi cultural team, how did ethics come into play? Like, how do you think about them?

Well, there is some standards that are shared by the whole organization. So, for example, every company has its own guidance, ethical principles, values, ways of working, and that made people to choose if they want to work for that organization or not. Like in my book, I share an example where I had to work for a company that was a brewer, and I was wondering, you know, like, how I will be trained. I was training people on preventing DUIs and the negatives of effect of alcohol and how to be responsible drinking. But at the same time, we know many people die from DUIs, and many people die because of excess of alcohol and how bad is for the health today, I was hearing somebody talking that in where I live in California, it's one of the states in the country where there are more cases of DUIs. So I think that here. So I have an issue like I was teaching and I was bringing awareness and supporting people to be more responsible, but still was being paid by a Brewing Company. So I decided to quit. There was, like a values conflict for me personally, with terms of what I think was right or wrong. So I think that this is another example some people may not choose to work with some companies that maybe have some values, that they may not be aligned. And then one we work with people from different countries, different ethnic groups. We need to respect differences, and we need to understand that people may have different ways of living and rules. We may or may not agree with them, but we need to be respectful and understand them and accommodate when it's possible to some extent,

yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense in your in your book, I just want to pivot. We you cover ethical maturity. You know, what is it? And what are those six components that you share in the book?

Yeah, ethical maturity is about making decisions, because ethics is about the decision that you make. And many time you're not white and black, it's gray. So when you have gray area, what do you do when you're not very clear what to do? So ethical maturity is your ability to make decision based on your experience, based on your emotions, based on your intuition, based on logic, based on reasons, based on many different elements that help you to make the best possible decisions. But not only about making the decision, it's also about implementing it. You may have in your mind make a decision, but then you don't do anything. Okay? Well, it's not not doing anything. It's at the end of doing something. So basically, include the decision making process, the implementation, explaining people why you have done what you have done, and finally, living with it, being at peace with it. And the last one is learning from the experience. So all of these elements are part of the ethical maturity and. We developed that over the years, and leaders need to apply ethical maturity when they need to make decisions. So it's not only about information. It not only about collecting information to make decisions. Sometimes we need to take into consideration the context, because if you follow only reasons and only logic you may not pay attention to, elements in the context that may be important to consider when you're making a decision, what is the level of empathy? Compassion? Also using your intuition, is all of the information that you have, maybe you are missing some information. And emotions are also a good indicator if you don't feel good about a decision, something may be missing there. So emotions not in the sense of okay, I let my anger to make a decision that I may regret later. So it's about paying attention to the emotions and see how your emotion may be providing you with information that may be helpful when you need to make a decision.

I was curious about, you know, ethical maturity and how it may differ in new managers versus seasoned managers. And also, you know, age does that even come into play?

Well, we may say, if we talk about wisdom, wisdom comes with experience. It's like, if you have been there, you have done it. It is easier to make a decision when you have to make a decision that you have done it 20 times in your life, but we need the first time that you need to make that decision is much more challenging because you're not sure is that the right decision. I may be wrong. I may regret that. So when you are younger and when you have less experience in any job, you may struggle more with the right decision compared to being more experienced. I have been there before, having to that many times, so you already know the experience, for example, about one of the most uncomfortable situations for leaders, is laying off people, letting go of people. Is it one of the things that people feel the most pain, and it's more challenging and it's difficult? How do you make the decision? And there may be many elements, and sometimes in some organization is seniority, the people who have been there the longer are protected, compared to people who are new. But sometimes that may not be fair, because somebody new may be providing more value to the team that somebody who has been in the organization for a long time, who is not committed or doing their best or so, what is fair, you know, is what is the right criteria to make the decision, or what organization need the most right now, right now based on the challenges that the organization is facing, what are the key skills that need from the team, and maybe the decision is based on that and not seniority. So it's there are many elements playing to make the decision, but then it's about being able to live with the decision. It being able to say, Okay, this is the decision that was, the reason why it was made, and being at peace with it, and that also takes learning. The more you do it, the more comfortable you are with we're making the kind of decisions, certainly not our laying off. Sometimes it's just firing somebody because they're not doing their jobs. That is even more difficult. Nobody likes that. Nobody likes to be there. But certainly necessary,

yes, and sometimes you can't show the reasons why the person is being let go. It might be obvious, may not be obvious to others, but those who are making that decision are very clear as to why they need to do it. You were talking about like layoffs, and that's going on a lot right now across different organizations, and I'm just hearing about how it's done. Yeah, it's being done differently across whether they are unionized or not. And then what's the, you know, the follow up. How do, how do leaders, you know, show up ethically in the aftermath, right? How can they demonstrate ethics afterwards.

This is a great question. And I think to the extent that leaders can be transparent, to the extent that leader can share information, they're able to, as you say, sometimes you may not be able to share some information, but when you can share the information, do it. And when leaders are honest and vulnerable, and they share how challenging is for them, and they share whatever they can share. They don't think that people have a crystal ball and read their minds, because that does not happen. So let me articulate to the extent that is possible, what's going on, and provide as much information as they can and we. And people believe them that they have their best intentions in mind, they can be better prepared and readier to receive the news. Now the issue is not only the people who are gone, but the people who stay. Because the people who stay are wondering, Am I next? You know, how can I trust this leader? So again, it's about being able to articulate in language and to explain, to provide as much information as leaders can, and that's the best way to manage and navigate these challenging times.

Yeah, you know that resonates with me. At my organization, we had major layoffs, but and the interim leader, just the way he was showing up, very, you know, genuine and as transparent as as he could be, it was really appreciated, despite him having To communicate, you know, difficult news. So I'm not surprised that you know he was, you know, named now the permanent leader of our organization. And I think people feel good about that, because they were able to see how he navigated a very challenging time and how he showed up. So, yeah, I think we're, we're hopeful for the future.

That's great to hear. Now, one key element of ethical maturity is self awareness. Is knowing ourselves, is knowing our values, knowing what is important to us, and articulate that in language, letting people know about them. So to the extent that we know ourselves and we are mindful about the consequence of our decisions, we can be more effective leaders. So I think that this is a key element. This is the foundation of ethical maturities, before we make a decision, before we implement the decision, before we let people know about it, are at peace with it and learn from that. The foundation is knowing ourselves, understanding our values and being consistent in our behaviors with them.

You know, in your book, you you, you provide some questions that people can ask themselves when they encounter an ethical dilemma. You know, tell us about those, those questions, right? Even though, if they're guiding with values and and just, you know, they have that self awareness, but what are some good questions that they can ask?

Yeah, yeah. So, so as we, as we wrap up today's episode, what are the takeaways for for folks? What do you want them to remember?

I want to remember that when we need to make a decision, we pay attention not only to the information, but also we pay attention to our experience. We also pay attention to our emotions. We pay attention to our intuition. If possible, we engage other people in decision making. Sometimes we don't need to make the decision alone. Sometimes we may engage other people, but sometimes not possible. So with it not possible, we need to look at the consequences of our behaviors and know that the may be a perfect decision, but we do the better decision that we can make with all of this information, with using logic, reasoning, emotions, intuition, paying attention to the context. And then when we make that decision, knowing that it may not be a perfect decision, we can live with it. Yeah, good point. And then we let go, and we are on peace with it, and we wonder what we can learn from the experience. So remembering that there is always a learning opportunity. What is a learning opportunity for

me? Excellent. Thank you. Damien,

thank you, Elaine, great, having the conversation with you again.

Yes, thank you. Bye, everyone see you next time.

See you now our next episode.