ble integrating these values with tra-ditional business imperatives such asprofit, growth, and shareholderreturns.

The business pages of the world’snewspapers are filled with storiesabout managers and executives whosuddenly and surprisingly self-destruct. Many of these leaders hadbeen stars of their business universe,but something happened and they

became the corporate equivalent ofMr. Hyde or David Brent (a charac-ter in the BBC television show TheOffice, who, though surviving as aregional manager for his company,nevertheless has fatal flaws that leadto his downfall). Such managers aresuccessful up to a point in theircareers and then become unsuccess-ful, winding up at best at a dead endin the organization and at worstdemoted or terminated. Sometimes

RUDI PLETTINXPlettinx is managing director ofCCL’s European operations, based inBrussels. He previously was a pro-gram director for ManagementCentre Europe, working with majorinternational companies on theirstrategic learning needs.

I think social responsibility has alwaysbeen part of what CCL teaches,although the term itself has enteredbusiness language only recently.Social responsibility is implicit inCCL’s philosophy that if you changeindividuals, you can change organiza-tions, and if you change organizations,you can change society.

All of CCL’s educational programsfocus on self-awareness as the step-ping stone to development, and amajor part of self-awareness is get-ting in touch with some basic valuesthat are crucial for ethical leadershipand social responsibility:

• Honesty, transparency, andintegrity

• Fairness in treatment of and atti-tudes toward staff members, suppli-ers, and partners

• Compassion for the less fortunate• Encouragement of diversity, and

respect for individuals and their con-tributions

• Responsibility for recognizingand implementing sustainable devel-opment

Of course leaders can aspire toembrace these principles, but puttingthem into practice often proves diffi-cult. Some leaders seem to have trou-

A Q U E S T I O Nof

LEADERSHIP

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they take the organization downwith them. The term for this phe-nomenon is derailment, a metaphorlikening them to a train coming offits track.

CCL’s research into derailment—its causes and effects and how to pre-vent it—shows that isolation is oftena precursor. The higher up oneadvances in an organization, theharder it is to get people to “speaktruth to power”—to give candid feed-back. CCL’s research indicates thatderailed leaders sometimes partici-pate in and encourage their own iso-lation. They become godlike in theirown minds—and often in the mindsof their subordinates.

Enron is but one spectacularexample of derailment, with resultsthat were devastating not only forindividuals and the organization butalso for society at large.

Ethical violations are often com-mitted by people who have a historyof good behavior but who are notwell prepared to handle the pressureof power and privilege.

The good news is that recent CCLresearch indicates that well-designedleadership development programs canhelp managers stay on the ethicalpath. The results of a survey of par-ticipants in CCL’s LeadershipDevelopment Program (LDP)® inBrussels show that leadership devel-opment supports ethical action byproviding executives with opportuni-ties for comprehensive feedback,enhancement of self-awareness,reflection on personal and profes-

The business pages of

the world’s newspapers

are filled with stories

about managers and

executives who suddenly

and surprisingly

self-destruct.

See Plettinx on page 24

in Europe. In the United States in the’60s Lyndon Johnson’s idea for aGreat Society guided governmentpolicy. Business leaders were acutelyaware of their public service role and(especially in Europe) of companies’responsibilities in rebuilding theeconomy and society. The stakeholderview of the company was widely heldamong the elites and entrenched inlegislation and corporate governancestandards.

In the 1980s, neoliberal ideas—based on the thinking of Friedrichvon Hayek in Europe and MiltonFriedman in the United States—grad-ually gained credibility. Deregulation,privatization, and supply-side eco-nomics became the fashion. Theseprinciples also guided the acceleratedwave of globalization that started inthe 1990s. The purpose of the com-pany was now defined strictly asmaximizing shareholder value, andthe role of management wasenveloped in the so-called agencytheory: the idea that managers shouldact only with a view to increasingshareholder value.

After 2000, in the aftermath ofmarket crashes, corporate scandals,and debate over the pros and cons ofglobalization, a new period began,one of reflection on the responsibili-ties of governments and business andthe role of managers.

This is the intellectual environ-ment in which we currently live.Practitioners and theorists who lackawareness of the histories of theirprofessions or disciplines are in dan-ger of being shortsighted in boththought and action.

GILBERT LENSSENLenssen is president of the EuropeanAcademy of Business in Society(EABIS), an alliance of companies,business schools, and other academicinstitutions committed to integratingbusiness-in-society issues into theheart of business theory and practicein Europe. He is a professor of man-agement at Leiden University in theNetherlands and a visiting professorat Henley Management College inEngland. The author of numerousbooks and articles on managementtheory, management cultures, corpo-rate social responsibility, and con-temporary epistemology, Lenssenholds a Ph.D. degree from theUniversity of Hamburg and theUniversity of Antwerp.

Both the practice of managementand the approach to managementdevelopment are determined by theparadigmatic framework of thesocial contract of business, in whichthe roles and responsibilities of thecompany and of management areunderstood and defined in a particu-lar way. Practice and theory rein-force each other. This social con-tract is subject to historicaldevelopment.

Over the past thirty years animportant battle of ideas has beenfought over the primary purpose ofthe company. The ideas governingpublic policy in the period immedi-ately following World War II weredeeply influenced by Keynesian eco-nomics and the politics of socialdemocracy. During the 1950s and’60s welfare states were established

What are the best ways to develop sociallyresponsible leaders?

This leads me to the first charac-teristic of responsible leadership:thought leadership. Thought leader-ship is developed through questioningthe underlying assumptions that guideour theoretical constructs and dailypractice of management. To be athought leader one needs to recognizethe limitations of the paradigmswithin which we operate in compa-nies and educate today’s and tomor-row’s managers. We need to questionthese paradigms and to teach man-agers to question them, not necessar-ily from a moral perspective but morefrom a practical perspective. Thisrequires the courage to step awayfrom comfortable frameworks, askdifficult questions, and identify sys-temic interdependencies and long-term consequences.

Above all it means having histori-cal awareness. We should reconnectmanagers with the history of ideas,stimulate their intellectual curiosity,and help them suspend judgmentbased solely on instrumental useful-ness and short-term gains.

Second, responsible leaders needto be skilled in strategic leadership.Leaders need to develop the ability tothink through the issues that affectthe long-term sustainability and legit-imacy of their companies globallyand locally, at the level of both theindustry sector and the companyitself, and to know how their compa-nies can take action to ensure long-term viability. Training in this abilitywould involve learning to understandglobalization and its effects and

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See Lenssen on page 24

sional relationships, and improvedunderstanding of the nature of strate-gic processes.

External stakeholders are demand-ing ethical behavior from corporateleaders and their organizations. Inessence, they are demanding corporatesocial responsibility (CSR). CCL’sLDP research shows that in addition tograsping the value of self-awareness,executives participating in the LDP seethe importance of relationships andwork-life balance—making time foractivities outside of work, includingcommunity involvement. These real-

izations spark a transformationalchange and a desire to bring new, con-nected values to the workplace.

Europeans have been ahead of therest of the world in embracing CSR,at least in theory. What I think is evi-dent from the LDP research is theimportance of a motivation to movefrom simple compliance CSR to con-viction CSR. Executives who makethis transition find that creating aresponsible corporation is not just anice thing to do but makes realbottom-line sense.

It takes real leadership to makeCSR work in any business. Leadersneed to

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• Set the direction and tone of theCSR program.

• Align the CSR initiative withthe rest of the business.

• Get full commitment from oth-ers throughout the organization byleading by example.

If leaders do these things, CSRthen becomes an all-inclusiveapproach to doing business, in whichCSR behavior flows naturally from acompany’s purpose and values.Again, if you change individuals,you can change organizations, and ifyou change organizations, you canchange society.

thinking through these issues using aframework of long-term viability forboth the company and the industry.

At the level of company leader-ship, strategic leadership meansreconnecting strategic management tostakeholder management. It alsomeans understanding how social andenvironmental issues can be inte-grated into corporate and businessstrategies so that the company usesits core competencies to contribute totackling social and environmentalchallenges. Too often corporate socialresponsibility programs are tacticaland reactive responses to pressuregroups and lack strategic impetus.

At the level of industry leadership,strategic leadership means having theability to identify the limits of com-panies acting on their own and to acton the potential of multistakeholderinitiatives among industry players,governments, international institu-tions and agencies, and nongovern-mental organizations.

We need to focus managementtraining on scenario planning forsocial and environmental issues,total-impact management, and riskmanagement. This requires consider-able analytical and interactive skill.

This leads to the third characteris-tic of responsible leadership.Managers need to be able to integratethought leadership and strategic lead-ership into change leadership. This isthe management of change, whichrequires shifting the values base ofthe organization to align with strate-gic requirements; redefining purpose,process, and people requirements;reengineering business processes forstakeholder and societal value;redesigning organizational structuresand performance management sys-tems to balance financial, organiza-tional, and societal requirements; andinstalling new knowledge manage-ment systems and processes toinform the strategic process. Toooften leadership requirements aredefined in ethical terms, and thebehaviors of leaders do not match

their rhetorical performances onissues of ethics and corporate respon-sibility. Perhaps we need less of thistype of leadership and more of theenduring, hard-working managementskills that really make a difference.

This is quite a challenging agendafor management development andtraining. Apart from the traditionalmethodologies for learning anddevelopment, some newer approachesneed to be added. We need to bedoing more action learning, moreexperiential learning (such as givingmanagers challenging assignmentsboth inside and outside the com-pany), and more longitudinal learning(such as bringing managers togetherin group sessions to reflect and con-sult over time).

These newer methodologies arebetter suited for learning how to seethrough complexity and ambiguity—the hallmarks of deep change. Butthey pose a formidable challenge forbusiness schools, corporate universi-ties, and management developmentprofessionals.

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Plettinx: Development Supports Ethical ActionContinued from page 12

Lenssen: New Ways of Learning Are Needed

Continued from page 13