Why the fourth Big 6 Leadership Principle® matters most when people are anxious about what comes next.
In 480 BC, King Leonidas led a force of 300 Spartans and several thousand allied Greek soldiers to hold the narrow pass at Thermopylae against an invading Persian army many times their size.
For two days, they held out against seemingly overwhelming odds.
Then a local Greek citizen betrayed them, showing the Persians a mountain path that led around the pass. When Leonidas learned the enemy would soon be behind him, he sent most of the allied troops away. He and his Spartans stayed, along with about 700 Thespians who chose to remain with them, knowing they would be surrounded. They refused to yield, and they fought to the death.
Their stand inspired the Greek city-states that united against Persia to fight on, and within a year they had defeated the invasion, a victory that likely changed the course of history. Today a memorial on the site carries the ancient epitaph: “Go tell the Spartans, ye stranger passing by, that here, obedient to your laws, we lie.”
Leonidas and his Spartans held long after the outcome was no longer in doubt, and they did it for those they served rather than for themselves. That commitment is the essence of All-In Adaptive Leadership, and it is what Level Five leaders must embrace today.
Why Uncertainty Raises the Stakes
The fourth of our Big 6 Leadership Principles® is Do the Right Thing When No One Is Looking. It is our responsibility as leaders to serve those we lead by doing the right thing when nobody is looking, and in doing so, we teach others what is right. More often than not, we are shaped by those we work for and with, and we translate their behaviors into the leaders we become.
I have rarely met leaders who seek to do wrong or see their organization fail. What I observe today are people who are uncertain and anxious about the future. That anxiety is why this principle carries so much weight right now. When the ground is moving constantly, people watch their leaders more closely and take their cues from what they see.
My good friend and colleague, Colonel Bill Smullen, U.S. Army (retired), put the responsibility plainly in his book Ways and Means for Managing Up:
“As a professional, regardless of rank or position, you must be accountable for all you do or fail to do to uphold the reputation and credibility of the organization. That may come naturally to those who were raised to uphold the highest of ethical and moral standards. Others may have to learn it.”
I appreciate that last line, because it means integrity – doing right — can be taught. Most of that teaching happens by example.
When the Outcome Starts to Outrank the Process
Doing the right thing is largely a matter of valuing the process over the outcome, and that is hard to do. Readers who were with me in April will remember the phrase I recounted from the factory floor when I became President of a manufacturing company soon after leaving the Army:
“We rarely have time to do it right the first time, but we always have time to redo it.”
It speaks to our tendency to get product out the door and thereby value the outcome over the process.
Uncertainty makes that tendency stronger, because the pressure to hit today’s number crowds out the discipline of doing it right. Each shortcut feels justified in the moment, and as I wrote this summer, small compromises have a way of compounding.
Rules alone will not hold that line. In a Culture of Commitment, the ecosystem depends on people who do right whether anyone is watching, and leaders build that culture one example at a time.
You cannot have it both ways: a role model during the day and another person at night or on the weekends. There is no All-In Adaptive Leadership in that model, only selfish conduct, and in the end, these leaders fail those they were supposed to lead.
Integrity does not take hold and become habit by accident. Below, I share the two leadership habits that build it, along with the new Do the Right Thing Workbook and Facilitator Guide. To read the rest of this article, visit this link.
Enjoy the journey!
