SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 170,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.
Last week, we asked: What is the ethical climate like in your organization?
- We always uphold the highest moral and ethical standards: 53.90%
- We have an occasional ethical or moral lapse: 35.18%
- We have regular ethical lapses: 7.94%
- Our climate is pretty unethical/immoral: 2.98%
“Occasional” isn’t good enough. 45% of you are at risk for being a trending topic on Twitter or being splashed across thousands of blogs. Even an “occasional” moral/ethical lapse can turn into a colossal PR nightmare for your organization. At the least, those lapses erode your culture unless you quickly jump on top of the issue, correct it, and get a firm message out to the organization about what is/is not acceptable. If you simply think about treating others the same way you treat a family member, you’ll reduce the frequency and severity of those lapses.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”