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Five Managerial Mistakes that Hurt
the Integrity of Your Company
Copyright ©
All rights reserved
By Ken Chapman, Ph.D.
Ken Chapman & Associates, Inc.
Most
unethical or unprincipled behavior found in companies happens for one of
five reasons. Individual leaders need to be ever vigilant to make sure
they are not committing one or more of these five deadly sins.
1. Favoring the company’s interest over the interest of its
stakeholders — customers, employees, the community, and the public.
Examples – underpaying employees because the job market is tough and “they
have no where else to go,” or reducing hazardous waste disposal cost by
discharging waste illegally.
2. Rewarding behavior that violates ethical standards.
Examples – handing out sales bonuses or advertising campaigns that
misrepresent the product. Rewarding managers who are “under budget” even
though they cut corners where they should not have and pushed employees too
hard.
3. Creating a corporate environment that encourages separate
standards of behavior for work and home. Examples – allowing employees to
pass the buck rather than take responsibility, punishing people for being
honest about mistakes, thereby encouraging secrecy and deceit, and rewarding
individuals who grandstand while ignoring solid, but quiet team members.
4. Allowing individuals to abuse power to further their own
interest. Examples – managers who take excessive compensation for
themselves “off the top” before other stakeholders get their share,
executives who promote friends over more qualified employees in order to
surround themselves with friendly faces.
5. Creating managerial values that undermine integrity.
Examples – the “Madison Avenue mentality” that believes that anything is
right if the public can be convinced it is right, being more concerned with
appearing ethical than being ethical, and cutting
corners on quality to benefit the almighty bottom line.
Periodic review of the above five managerial mistakes will likely insure
that they do not threaten your company's integrity.
For more information about
Ken Chapman and Associates’ Leadership Development Programs, contact Ken
Chapman at 205.366.0265 or email Ken at
kchapman@leaderscode.com.
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