Giving wings to your leadership style

Here are six touchstones for being a transformational leader able to bring about organizational change based on humanistic values.

By Claudia Peus

Managers can sometimes find themselves pressured to behave in ways that place money over people, as this manager of a large U.S. financial services firm attests: “I have worked for firms that have been publicly cited for having ethical lapses, poor management judgment and regulatory problems. As I moved up the ranks, I stuck to my guns on how I wanted to treat people, especially the people whom I was supervising. There’s an awful lot of pressure not to do that, to do what’s in the company’s interest rather than balance the two. I really hold firm on balancing the two and having a high level of honesty and integrity, especially with the people I manage. I think treating people well, and being a high integrity person, is a (success) strategy.”

Not everyone agrees. Today, many people are tasked with ambitious business goals that can only be achieved — it seems — by ignoring humanistic values. Managing people is reduced to setting their targets and giving them orders. Helping people to develop personally and professionally is neglected. In the worst cases, people’s dignity may be violated. However expedient it may appear at the time, this style of leadership comes at a high price in the long term.

Research shows that being a person of high integrity, who communicates values and who treats employees with respect and dignity, more often achieves lasting success.

In recent years, leadership scholars have introduced a number of terms to capture the idea of this type of leader. They include “humanistic,” “ethically oriented” and “moral.” Lately, the term “transformational leader” has come to dominate research in the field.

Although the scope of these concepts may vary, they have a number of core components in common, characterized by a sincere concern for others, the communication of certain principles and a focus on providing role models.

What does this mean in practice? How can these concepts be implemented in today’s business environment, especially when, as the previous manager testifies, there is an awful lot of pressure not to do so?

This article is published in IESE Insight Issue 13 (Q2 2012).

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