Callan…Coffee…Contemplation for the Week of July 27th
Why Ethos is the Key to Organizational Excellence
Ethos is a Greek word meaning “the essential character or spirit of a group.” Ethos is the deep perennial knowledge and communal roots that define the spirit of a people. Ethos is what is passed from generation to generation to form a deep sense of common identity, common purpose, and common reference. When alive and thriving, ethos provides to the group answer to these three elementary question: Who are we? What do we do? What do we stand for? Ethos is akin to the underground root system of a tree, in that ethos is the life-blood and wellspring of the organization’s enduring health, vitality, and resilience. When ethos is built and sustained by leaders, ethos protects the organization from living solely in a present-tense culture, allowing the organization to feel its past in the wind while confidently looking forward towards the future. Ethos is a affect image…touching hearts and souls in a deep and powerful way, and as such ethos instructs, informs, galvanizes, and reinforces cultural expectations and aspirations..
Heroic Leaders Embrace Paradox
Leadership is a master craft, and like all master crafts, gaining true excellence in leadership requires embracing paradox. Not everything about leadership is linear or simple. Heroic leaders, in mastering themselves and gaining true inner authority, have to accept and internalize leadership paradoxes such as these:
- To get, you must give
- To excel, you must release power
- To speed up, you must slow down
- To lead others, you must master yourself
- To win, you must occasionally fail
- To detect, you must reflect
- To integrate, you must disintegrate
- To get hard results, you must master soft skills
- The higher you go, the less you need to know (technically)
Heroic Leaders Avoid the Slippery Slope
Like Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, all leaders will occasionally be lured by the siren’s call to the shores of ignoble behavior. It is tempting to follow the siren’s call and step onto the slippery slope towards our lesser ambitions, and when we do, we end up crashing on the shore and shipwrecking our integrity, our honor, and our trustworthiness. When leaders step on the slippery slope, they fall prey to these toxic mindsets and behaviors:
- Convenience
- Instant Gratification
- Victimization
- Cynicism
- Rights without Responsibility
- Entitlement without Sacrifice
Like Odysseus before us, we must lash ourselves to the mast of moral courage, avoid the slippery slope, and chart a wiser course to uphold our integrity and our honor.
Heroic Leaders Understand the Necessity of “No”
Like the mythic Pandora, leaders often mistake success as saying “yes” to everything. And like Pandora, when leaders lift the lid of the box and say “yes” to everything, they unleash a torrent of unfocused tasks and misguided energy that results in chaos and confusion. Why do leaders often fall prey to this Pandora effect and focus on doing more and more and more? Because of the chimera of activity and business! When leaders perceive busyness, they automatically correlate that busyness to production and effectiveness, which is often the opposite of what is actually achieved. Busyness and unfocused energy creates dissipation, not focus! Heroic leaders therefore understand the necessity of saying “no.” Heroic leaders must discipline themselves, and their organization, to focus on their ethos, their core strategy, and their ultimate end states, and say “no” to things that do not align with these core purposes. Great leaders instill in themselves and their organizations a willingness to ask these crucial questions: What should we stop doing? What should we never do? In this way, leaders foster a discipline for “no” and create healthy mechanisms for removal.
Heroic Leaders Know Honor is Worth More than Glory
Heroic Leaders know that when honor is abandoned for personal glory, convenience, instant gratification, or self-gain, that loss of honor becomes a fatal wound, seriously diminishing the leaders trustworthiness. Conversely, Heroic Leaders know that when honor is upheld during trying times, that act is galvanizing and reinforcing of the leader’s trustworthiness. When we abandon honor we descend, when we uphold honor we elevate. Seen this way, honorable behavior relies on moral courage. Moral courage reminds us of this eternal maxim: The more it costs us to defend and uphold, the more it is worth! Honor can be an inconvenient thing, as honor requires leaders to see beyond the moment, to reach beyond personal glory, to refuse the temptation of instant gratification, and avoid the well-worn path of convenience. To remind ourselves of the value of personal honor, and the necessity of moral courage in upholding our honor, we should always remember these facts: (1) You won’t recognize honor if you don’t practice it; and (2) you can’t expect honor from others if you don’t model it yourself. Honor requires the leader to apply judgment, and in doing so, choosing elevating over descending.
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