Six Essential Ethical System Leadership Skills

Hands up if you have ever looked at the results of a staff survey to find the phrases ‘silo working’ and ‘poor internal communications’ appearing in the comments section. I always feel sorry for the internal communications teams when I see this because it’s not their fault. It’s yours.

That might have been a bit harsh. What I mean is that the problem usually isn’t remote working, lack of an effective intranet or protectionist teams. The problem is a lack of organisation-wide and fully embedded shared values and a failure to see that you are one part of a much larger system. By learning and improving six essential skills, you can play a huge part in changing this.

Leading the system

I’m a big fan of system theory and seeing the various elements of my organisation as interconnected parts of a whole. At various times I’ve led operational, technological and corporate support services, so I know that if they are not all aligned and talking to each other then failure is inevitable. Its not just about your organisation, though. If you want to deliver a policy agenda then consensus amongst a wide group of diverse stakeholders is always key.

Yet for most of my career I was discouraged from collaborating with my colleagues and made to feel that time spent expanding my network wasn’t real work. Working with someone from another directorate was a rare ‘development opportunity’ and having a coffee with a colleague from another regulator was ‘skiving off’. Please don’t be that leader (I’m sure you’re not!) who thinks that until you reach the c-suite you should stay in your lane and in your team.

Please, instead, be the leader who develops these six essential ethical system leadership skills.

Ethical system leaders bring the light

Visualise the whole system

I visualise it - you might prefer to write it down. Up to you. The fundamental point is that you see the interconnections not the silos. I used to describe it as focusing on the gaps between the teams, but then I and my excellent team of senior leaders plugged those gaps. Then we started to plug the gaps between us and our stakeholders.

A whole system approach requires an appreciation that every product or service, every piece of information, every policy or research report - or whatever it is you do - is a node in a vast, ever changing system. Some nodes will be deeply influential and high impact; others… won’t. It’s a spectrum. What no leader should do, however, is erect the equivalent of the Theodosian Walls around their piece of said system in what will be a doomed attempt to go it alone.

A good rule of thumb is to take a look at some of your organisation’s more substantive process maps. If they don’t mention at least half a dozen teams and a few external stakeholders then they are probably reinforcing division rather than delivering as a system.

Keep purpose and values at the centre

An unaligned system spirals into chaos. An unaligned organisation quickly fractures. I’m sure we’re all seen this - instances when teams duplicate work or appear to be heading in opposing directions. As a leader, you are accountable for this. You must ensure that a clear and well-understood purpose drives everyone, and that ethical guardrails are built along the path.

As an aside, can I just say that telling people there is a ‘golden thread’ between their daily actions and the organisation’s corporate goals is not enough. This is where your ‘leader’s shadow’ comes into play. If you show (show, don’t tell) that the whole organisation is bonded by ethical intelligence and a clear sense of purpose then others will see how it all fits together.

Have a culture of learning and trust

Take a moment to think about how many times in the last month you have:

• had a junior member of staff highlight a potential issue to you so you could use your mighty executive power to solve it

• said that you don’t know what the answer is

• kept asking ‘why’ until the exact moment when you can tell you are going to get shouted at, then asked it again

  
  

Once, many years ago, I was told about a major problem three days before going live with a product. The team had known about it for weeks, during which time I could have brought in additional resources to solve it. At first I was, shall we say, somewhat peeved. Then I started to reflect on why no one had told me. This incident completely changed my attitude as a leader in ways that (so 360 feedback told me) was both empowering and occasionally irritating to my teams. They knew they could come to me about problems and I would have their backs, but they also had to put up with me sometimes asking difficult questions (“Why do we do it like that? We may well have always done it like that, but is there a better way?”).

Creating psychological safety isn’t hard - it’s the role model point again. If you role model learning and viewing failures as opportunities to improve processes and skills others will want to tell you when things are going wrong. Then, you can fix them.

Be ready to adapt

The best laid plans, as they say. Whether you embrace system thinking or not, the system around you will keep changing. In my former world of political regulation, we needed to adapt to two unexpected general elections, amongst other things. Some of these changes you can see coming, or even deliberately cause yourself. Others will come out of nowhere.

You need to accept that you can’t know everything that will affect you and you must get comfortable with ambiguity. My top tips for this are:

• always have a strong sense of your priorities, without falling into the trap of thinking everything is high priority, so you can stop or change your team’s low priority work as needed

• move away from the idea that everything has to be perfect before it’s launched, because sometimes you will need to just get the product out the door and make it better afterwards

  
  

One strategy to help with both of these is to have a small group of trusted users or stakeholders (including critics, for a diverse view) with whom you can quickly check in on the real world impact of changing tack.

Convene and collaborate

You are not alone… in a good way. The essence of system thinking is to recognise you are part of a bigger system. Get the other parts (by which I mean the people representing them) in the room when you are exploring issues or grappling with decisions and you’ll find that you have more influence, more information and are seen as a collaborative leader.

This takes a certain amount of confidence and skill. In my experience any reasonably representative group of stakeholders is going to include people who don’t like you and don’t like each other. You need to get them focused on solving the same problem and be prepared to sit with occasional tension and discomfort. You also need to be open about your policy work while you are debating it internally.

This is where shared values come into their own. A critic might, well, criticise you but if they understand your values and what you are trying to do they may well genuinely appreciate the opportunity to be listened to before decisions are taken. As an added bonus they may think it is harder to criticise said decision when they have been part of forming it.

Learn to self-reflect

Back to you, the system leader, and the skills and attitude that you bring to the party.

You will have noticed throughout the above that I believe learning, embracing change and uncertainty and being prepared to work with a wide range of stakeholders is key. To succeed, you need to embed these in your professional persona so they become fully part of who you are as a leader. This will make you:

• humble, and aware that your knowledge is only ever partial

• emotionally and ethically resilient, especially when navigating resistance or failure

• prepared to reflect on your biases, prejudices, fears and values as they impact the choices you make

• 
  

My advice is to build a self-reflection habit, such as writing in a journal or spending a little time each day in a darkened room or on a walk thinking about how you conducted yourself over the previous 24 hours.

Pay it forward through mentoring

Each leader may be just one person, but the impact one great and ethical leader can have is extraordinary. Their values, attitude and behaviour can reverberate through an extensive, closely interlinked network, inspiring innovation and curiosity in others and showing the next generation of leaders how to become great and ethical themselves.

My final advice: be a great ethical system leader, and make sure you mentor the next generation to be the same.