Examples of Responsible Leadership

Some say it is a science.  Some say it is an art.  I believe leadership is fundamentally a responsibility. I admire leaders that have a keen awareness of the impact their behavior, words, and decisions have on their various stakeholders.  The leaders I respect most also have an expansive view of just what it is they are responsible for, and who it is they are responsible to. 

While there seems to be a dearth of responsible leadership exemplars in our current political climate, as a leader of a for-benefit corporation with a long history serving organizations invested in social impact I have the unique privilege of working with and learning from responsible leaders across all three parts of our business: social sector retained search, career transition, and leadership development.

" Responsible leadership is about making business decisions that, next to the interests of the shareholders, also takes into account all the other stakeholders, such as workers, clients, suppliers, the environment, the community and future generations." --Financial Times Lexicon

In the social economy, there are countless examples of leaders who see themselves as responsible for much more than the work being done in their organizations.  Animated by social and economic justice concerns, social economy leaders seek to transform the world we live in for the benefit of many.  Social entrepreneurs draw upon business techniques to solve broad social problems.  These leaders have integrated a higher sense of purpose with their day-to-day professional roles as leaders.  We have the pleasure of working with many such leaders in our social sector retained search practice.

In our work with corporate sector leaders, we often meet leaders with a keen awareness of their impact and an expansive sense of responsibility.  We see this directly in our leadership development practice. In our executive coaching work, for instance, we help leaders appreciate the ripple effect of their behavior via 360 degree feedback processes.  Sometimes, just the increased level of awareness awakens a leader to the need to act more responsibly and elicits a behavior change. And sometimes our coaches have to go much deeper, and work with an individual leader to develop new skills or to change underlying attitudes and beliefs.   This view of development at different levels is illustrated here under our Philosophy of Leadership Development.

Some of the CEOs and HR chiefs we work with rightly acknowledge themselves as responsible for proactively developing leaders in their organizations – they appreciate the ripple effect of leadership behaviors – good and bad – and invest accordingly. The simplest measure of leadership responsibility in this context is the degree to which harmful leadership behavior will be tolerated or ignored in the face of outstanding business results.  

Responsible leadership is also evident in our career transition and outplacement client base.  Many of our clients offer professional career transition coaching to departing employees as an extension of their employment brand; these clients see this service as an extension of leadership responsibility to employees, and perhaps to the communities in which they operate.  Some offer this benefit only in job elimination and RIF contexts, while others offer support to employees being exited regardless of circumstance.  Because our practice is known for personalization and quality, we have the good fortune to work with HR leaders whose sense of responsibility extends to their outplacement vendor selection and management – choosing to go beyond “checking the box” with an average provider and aligning with a high quality firm willing to partner to improve the exit and transition process for employees.

What examples of responsible leadership have you had the opportunity to observe or participate in?