Life Toolkit to be a better Ethical Leader

I just completed my HKU MBA — Business Ethics and I can say that it was one of those eye-opening courses for me. We were so lucky to have one of the very best and most popular professors David Lee teach us this course. He shared with us life toolkits that will help us become better ethical leaders and decision-makers.

When I watch the top CEOs in the world like Satya Nadella, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, they look too perfect. I always wondered if I could ever be like them — talented, skilled, innovating, creative, self-driven, resilient, etc. After the Business Ethics course, I learned that you don’t have to be a founder, CEO, or public figure to be a good leader. You can be who you are and lead by example and bring the change you want to see in the world. 2 tools that have deeply struck me in the course are Lead and respond and not react.

Lead:

In the class, we discussed how and why when we see people suffering in public, we can find mobs around the misery, but no one wants to help. It goes back to the research of group psychology. We tend to follow what others do, which is why we see influencer marketing as a billion-dollar business.

I agreed with what I heard “People have good intentions and want to help, but they must be led in the right direction”. We don’t have to wait for the right leaders to show up… we can be leaders who can do the right things and bring good influence into society. For me, it all starts with self-leadership. I used to say: “Why me”… now I say: “Why not me?” I have experimented with this last week, and these are the results that I achieved:

• When I got on the public bus, I offered my seat to an old /woman with a baby, and I saw a few others do that.
• Every morning I took 10 mins to meditate, and my mom started joining me. It was such a beautiful moment that I shared with my mom.
• I started encouraging other team members to talk and share more of their thoughts in team calls.
• I wake up a bit early so that my team members don’t have to stay up later to talk to me about work to match my time zones.

Small acts of leadership like this can help others and also bring so much happiness to us. When you lead, it makes us better humans, and that’s what I think — most successful good leaders are great human beings.

Respond and not React:

While we were discussing this in class, I realized that I most of the time react, and it has always done more harm than good to me. Not only is my job as a public relations but also in my personal life, I encounter a lot of unexpected events — more so in the last 2 years thanks to the Pandemic. I learn that there is a massive difference between Responding and reacting, and it’s always better to step back and respond to the situation.

Reactions tend to go like this: Something happens. You panic. Then you proceed.

Responses tend to go like this: Something happens. You Pause. You Process. You Plan. Then you proceed.

I am always anxious to react, reply and express, and that’s inbuild in me, and I have decided that I need to change!!!! As I started practicing this at work, I realized responding is more complex than reacting. It takes more time and effort. It often requires letting an intense itch — the yearning to do something immediately, anything, about whatever just happened — be there without scratching it. But, like most things that require effort, responding also tends to be advantageous. You rarely regret deliberately responding to a challenging situation. You often regret automatically reacting to one.

• Now I take my time before I reply to any tweet that would have upset me.
• I don’t harshly reply to my parents. I listen to them and try to understand from their point of view.
• I don’t force my thoughts on others, and I try to accept another school of thought.
• I step back and ask myself if I am reacting or responding.

A few lines that I often respond with are “I hear you…”, “I feel you..”, “I get you…”. “I understand you…”, “How I can help…”, and “How I can do this better…” have helped me show empathy towards others.

We need our own endurance in being the leader we want to be.