Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM  

Perhaps it’s our shared upbringing in the Pacific Northwest and Norwegian ancestry.  More likely, it’s the fact that Dennis Bakke has written an inspirational book on building values-based organizations that will challenge our assumptions about how to lead.  Either way, “Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job” is on the Gifted Leader’s “must read” list!

Bakke’s notion of leadership does not require a John Wayne or a General Patton or a Jack Welch to swagger on to the scene and save the day.  In fact, the superhero style of leadership is not conducive to creating a joyful workplace or to putting the same emphasis on values as on the bottom line.  Bakke contends that the importance and impact of moral leadership on the life and success of an organization have been greatly underappreciated.

Moral leadership is not optional.  It is a basic requirement for individuals who want to reach their best creative potential and business leaders who want to capture the best efforts of their workforce.

Here’s this month’s feature ...

Moral Intelligence: Enhancing Business Performance & Leadership Success -- by Doug Lennick & Fred Kiel

From -- Knowledge@Wharton, August 2005

Highlights from the article:

• A high value is placed on cognitive intelligence (IQ) and technical intelligence, especially in individuals considered for leadership roles.  However, these are merely threshold competencies, the price of admission to the leadership ranks.  They are necessary but not sufficient for exceptional performance.  To succeed, leaders need to cultivate “differentiating” competencies, specifically, moral intelligence and emotional intelligence.  Many leaders ignore these competencies because they are soft skills that are difficult to measure.  However, an increasing number of organizations are now realizing the performance benefits of emotional intelligence and moral intelligence is drawing more and more attention in the world of business.
    

• Integrity is the hallmark of the morally intelligent person.  Integrity means doing what we know is right and acting in alignment with our values and beliefs.  Morally intelligent leaders are also willing to take responsibility for their actions, they show compassion by caring about and showing respect for others, and they have the capacity for forgiveness.  Forgiveness is a crucial principle, because without a tolerance for mistakes and the knowledge of our own imperfection, we are likely to be rigid, inflexible, and unable to engage with others in ways that promote our mutual good.
    

• Emotional intelligence can help you behave with great self-control and interpersonal savvy.  But emotional intelligence alone won’t keep you from doing the wrong thing.  Moral incompetence surfaces in moments when personal or business goals conflict with core values.  Just about everyone has worked with someone who had great interpersonal skills but dropped the ball on a moral issue.  Recently there’s been an increasing interest in systematically developing moral intelligence -- the best leaders know it’s their secret weapon for lasting personal and organizational performance.
    

• The best performing companies have leaders who are able to promote moral intelligence throughout their organizations, despite the fact that the business world all too often seems to reward bad behavior, at least in the short run.  A funny thing happens when leaders consistently act in alignment with their principles and values: they typically produce consistently high performance almost any way you can measure it -- sales, profits, talent retention, company reputation, and customer satisfaction.  Successful leaders always attribute their accomplishments to a combination of their business savvy and their adherence to a moral code.
    

• Moral intelligence is not just important to effective leadership; it is the “central intelligence” for all humans.  Why?  It’s because moral intelligence directs our other forms of intelligence to do something worthwhile.  Moral intelligence gives our life purpose.  Without moral intelligence, we would be able to do things and experience events, but they would lack meaning.  Without moral intelligence, we wouldn’t know why we do what we do -- or even what difference our existence makes in the grand scheme of things.

For the full text article, go to ...
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1264.cfm

Moral Transformation

According to Patricia Aburdene, author of Megatrends 2010, spirituality in business is converging with other socioeconomic trends to foster a moral transformation in capitalism.  The notion that “business exists to make a profit and benefit shareholders” is the “old-fashioned definition of capitalism”, she says.  We’ve begun to experience the consequences of a system that has honored profits at all costs and there is now compelling evidence that corporate finances flourish when social responsibility and all stakeholder (including employees, communities, customers, shareholders, and suppliers) concerns are taken into account.

More and more businesses are taking their responsibility to communities as well as to shareholders seriously.  Millions of Americans are making choices in the marketplace as “values-driven consumers.”  Business leaders are repudiating the corporate myth of “lean and mean” and the “profits at all costs” path to prosperity.  In a poll of 25,000 people in 23 countries by the Conference Board, two-thirds said they want business to “expand beyond the traditional emphasis on profits and contribute to broader social objectives.”

Workers are increasingly reporting that they have been feeling a clash between their personal values and those of the corporate world.  People no longer want that spiritual part of themselves to be abandoned when they work and are searching for meaning and morals in the workplace.  Corporate leaders now recognize that we live in a technologically based society where, in order to be consistently innovative, a corporation has to draw on the creativity of its employees.  Even the old-fashioned business types have to grudgingly agree that we find creativity, inspiration, and innovation within, from that deep spiritual part of ourselves.

Employees have long been interested in the moral aspects of the workplace.  Business leaders are taking notice and moral transformation is a growing trend in businesses across the U.S.

Next Month

A new type of leader is needed to unlock the creative, but discretionary, energy of people in the workplace.  Learn about the defining qualities of this new, servant leader.

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