Ethics & Leadership: Christopher Avery chats with "7 Lenses" author Linda Fisher Thornton

0:03 hello this is christopher avery and i am delighted to be here with the author of a fabulous new book called seven lenses the author is linda fisher thornton and she's an expert in the area of ethics and leadership and the reason i'm so excited about this book is that for a very long time i thought that ethics was beyond right and wrong beyond do this don't do that beyond rules and linda's is

0:33 the first work that i've seen in modern day that looks at ethics as important considerations and trade-offs of different perspectives since the idea of seven lenses so linda thanks so much for joining me and tell me why did you write this book thank you for having me christopher well i wrote this book because like you i had the sense that there was a deeper explanation for why people kept disagreeing on what ethical leadership meant

1:04 they came at it from so many different perspectives and some of them seem to be in conflict with one another and i attended an ethics conference at the university of richmond where i teach as an adjunct faculty member and many experts came from around the world talking about what the greater good meant from their perspective and they each painted a very clear picture from their perspective whether it was privacy or politics or sustainability but then i left there saying there has

1:35 to be a framework that puts all of this together so that people can act on it and i i researched that and didn't find a framework so that's when i began writing this book so then what is the central message in seven lenses the central message in the book is that ethical leadership is inherently multi-dimensional that we can't oversimplify it and just say well profitability is is what we have to focus on profitability isn't a value and

2:07 so we can't use it as a value we have to accomplish it by creating shared value with our constituents but we need to look at ethical leadership in all of its multi-dimensional nature it's almost a kaleidoscope view when we look at all the different parts of it and i describe seven different lenses of ethical responsibility and of course profit has to be in there because a business has to make a profit in order to continue unless it's a non-profit structure

2:39 but then we also have to honor laws so the second lens is law the third one is character demonstrating moral awareness and ethical competence and then of course people honoring people and caring what happens to them and demonstrating that care and then also helping improve communities and protecting the planet for future generations and then the highest level is of course the greater good it's beyond ourselves and beyond our own

3:10 interests beyond our own lifetimes but leaving things in good shape for future generations i love it and i want to come back and ask you to explain how profit is not a value i i could imagine many people looking at that and saying it's valuable to me but but but on the way there i just wanted to add my two cents i've always believed that that for me ethical action

3:41 has to do with increasing i think of increasing the livelihood maybe the right word is increasing the survivability or the sustainability at different levels of dynamics so i can put myself first i can put my family first i can figure out how to way to put both myself and my family first beyond my family i can put all of humanity first and figure out a way to do something that's good for myself my family and all of humanity and then the

4:13 animal kingdom and then the planet and so i've always thought that ethics has to do with the tradeoffs between interdependencies and that which is ethical is what creates the most win for the most different levels that's just sort of always been my sense of it and that's why i like your book so much because it takes into account those types of considerations that that's well said i look at it in terms of focusing on what it means to think beyond ourselves

4:46 so a prophet doesn't think very far beyond ourselves which is why it's not really value but when we think about ourselves then we also need to incorporate concern for others as you mentioned so it's a higher level of moral development to consider ourselves and others and then it's even a higher level than that if we consider self others and society so it's continuing to add additional lenses to our view and to our decision making until we've incorporated all of them and

5:17 it is a learning process it's a lifetime learning journey i talk about ethical leadership as not something we can check off a list not something we'll ever finish not a task but a long-term learning journey because the world is changing very quickly and we can become we can move into unethical territory just doing what worked a year ago and if we don't stay aware of what's changing in the world so we need to continually have that broad

5:49 sense of responsibility and awareness for ethics so then you can't just take a half a percent of the corporate budget and assign it to somebody to be the seven lenses officer and make sure that we get that right and checked off as you say it's a it's a learning journey does this learning journey contribute to one's ability as a leader in other words if i accept the challenge of

6:21 being a responsible ethical leader and realize that that's going to come into play in every decision i'm making every important decision will that make me a better leader better business person yes i believe it does we've heard a lot about authenticity and i think that one of the things that growing in ethical awareness and ethical leadership does is it brings out our authentic selves our best selves so when we can consider our constituents

6:52 broadly and take responsibility at a a high level then that really brings out the best in ourselves when we bring out the best in our own leadership then that allows us to bring out the best in a whole company full of people and to model what we want them to do and encourage them and bring out their potential one of the interesting things about ethics is it's really gotten a bad rap because people have mostly talked about it in terms of the

7:20 things that can go wrong the penalties and the fines and the sanctions and the problems and yet there is a very powerful positive part of ethics and that's where i'm focused and that is that it's about the potential and the opportunities that proactive ethics brings to the organization and it has such a powerful impact when it's implemented consistently so what is the first step the leader

7:50 takes to start being a learner around ethics i think we need to start by knowing where we are how broadly we're considering constituents are we just focused on ourselves are we considering ourselves and others are we are considering what happens to society giving back to the communities and thinking much longer term about the impact of our choices once we find out where we are and

8:20 there's a section in seven lenses that helps people think through that with some questions for self-reflection once we know where we are then we can incorporate the next lens that is beyond where we're currently operating and we can say okay you know i'm already considering profit and law and character but i need to do a better job about how i treat other people you know being respectful demonstrating care for people on a consistent basis and a lot of

8:52 people need to work on that or maybe it's about communities and making time and making it a priority to find ways to positively impact lives in the community so so you can treat these lenses as additive you can say right now i only have capacity to to focus on one or two of these lenses and as you develop that ability then you can bring in more is that what i hear you seeing yes the ultimate is to use them all

9:23 but you have to start from where you are and so you you would not want to start from where you are and try to do too much at once you'd want to say okay here are the next lenses that i want to begin to incorporate but in terms of the senior leadership i want to point out that the lenses that the senior leadership team uses when they make decisions really will impact the tone of the entire organization

9:51 so at the top people at the top need to be especially careful to include all of these lenses and to help people learn to do that even if they say okay we know where we are we're not quite there yet here's how we're going to get there so that they're talking about this learning journey talking about the gray areas in balancing profitability with all of the other things that come with ethics and care for others in

10:18 society how do you balance that out so having those important conversations helps the employees know what to do when the senior leaders aren't there it helps them understand the thinking process that the company will be using so thank you for that so the intersection of your work in my work has to do with responsible leadership so how does how does learning and practicing ethics and bringing ethics into business decisions how does that make someone a more

10:49 responsible leader at its very core that's what ethics is really about it's about how we think beyond ourselves and demonstrate responsibility and we're we're both part of a powerful responsibility movement that is definitely gaining momentum and there's a a very powerful conversation on twitter of course about this and in other forums that the time has come for us to more clearly understand what it means to take

11:20 responsibility and then to step up and do that in our leadership and what is the most exciting finding about what happens when you do that is it has amazing positive benefits for the organization it builds trust it moves important metrics forward it improves employee engagement customer attraction and retention productivity profitability so it's the new competitive advantage that's the best news so far you talk to people about

11:52 taking responsibility and they say okay taking responsibility but then you say this is the new competitive advantage this is what the companies that are performing well are doing and all of a sudden there's a carrot there's a reason to pay attention and to to take on this learning journey because it it has a transformational effect on the organization agreed and i'm so happy to be to be one of the warriors in this movement with you linda tell people

12:23 where they can get your book and what formats wonderful seven lenses is available on amazon.com in paperback and kindle and the other two versions the nook and ipad versions are probably going to be coming out this week so watch for that i'll be tweeting about that at leading in context excellent very cool and let me ask you one more question who is the perfect reader for this book and the perfect

12:54 the perfect candidate for your coaching and consulting assistance that's a great question this book is written for someone who wants to take on the learning journey someone who realizes the powerful positive potential of proactive ethical leadership and who wants to realize where they are and where they need to go in that journey so it's for the forward-thinking ceo and for the leader who wants to learn at a deep

13:25 level what it means to lead responsibly in a complex world and in terms of companies that i work with it's a very wide variety but mainly it's people who are thinking ahead and saying we need to be taking a more proactive approach to how we think about ethics and leadership and we need to help our entire company embrace this model and we need to manage it as a performance system so one of the things i also do is help

13:55 companies understand how ethics is part of a human performance system that needs to be carefully managed in order for it to be effective throughout the organization wow well linda thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule to talk with me today and i look forward to our paths continuing to intersect in our work on responsible leadership as do i thank you so much for inviting me today thanks for the conversation

14:25 you're welcome you