Executive Development

Why do so many high profile leaders find themselves in the news for all the wrong reasons? Surprisingly, they seem to be more prone to ethical infractions than the general population. We need to understand why to be able to manage the risks.

In 2018, the CEO of Danske Bank, Thomas Borgen, was dismissed for his company’s involvement in one of worst money laundering scandals in European history. He was not alone in his infamy. That same year, nearly 40% of CEO dismissals were due to ethical issues, more than for any other reason — including poor financial performance – according to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

One of the challenges faced by all organisations is appointing effective leaders. The quality of leadership affects everyone in the organisation as well as the organisation’s stakeholders. A critical element of effective leadership is ethical behaviour. Ethical leaders inspire trust and a range of positive outcomes for the organisation, according to research.

So, why do there seem to be so many high profile examples of leaders acting unethically? Dr Suze Wilson of Massey University says that, while there are certainly “bad apples” to blame in some cases, that’s far from the whole story.

Now, let’s be clear: There are many leaders who are exemplars of ethical behaviour. However, the power and status of high level leadership roles appeal to some people for the wrong reasons. So – and this is the bad news – there is an over-representation of narcissists and psychopaths among high-level leaders, according to Dr Wilson.

Also, people are in fact changed by having power. Sometimes the changes are positive, such as enhancing confidence, optimism and resilience. But there are often adverse changes, such as developing a sense of entitlement and feeling exempt from norms & rules.

Forewarned is forearmed, Dr Wilson says. In her webinar, she explains the dynamics that lead to unethical leadership and most importantly, how both leaders and their followers can navigate these dynamics to manage risks.

To see her 30-minute webinar on the topic, click here.

Suze is a senior lecturer and leadership scholar at Massey University. Her research challenges heroic notions of leadership, while her teaching is focussed on equipping emerging or established leaders to practice leadership in ways better geared to 21st century realities of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Suze has an extensive practitioner background prior to taking up her academic career, having held senior roles in organisations such as the SSC, NZ Post, MPI and the Ministry of Education, as well as consulting to a diverse range of organisations on people and strategy-related issues. Dr Wilson also works as an executive coach.

Do you believe that the measure of a successful negotiation is when one party walks away with all their demands met and their opponent lies defeated and bleeding? Surprisingly a winning strategy may involve giving in. 

Next time you see two kids fighting over a toy, pay attention. This is negotiation at its most basic. Both children want the toy, and both are prepared to pull, push or cry to achieve their objective. There is usually a lot of noise, waves of emotion and inevitably one of them will dissolve into tears while the other runs away gleefully with the toy. Or the toy ends up in tatters, and the crying is broadcast in stereo.

Children rarely have the ability to consider the bigger picture – the imperative of keeping the toy intact and the possibility of sharing “toy time” with each other. All too frequently inexperienced corporate negotiators fall into the same trap. They enter the fray believing that an outright victory is the only successful outcome. However, often the most important aspect of the negotiation may be to preserve the relationship, even if that means surrendering one or more points.

Negotiation experts will tell you that preparation is the most important aspect of any negotiation situation. Beyond the seating arrangments, the displays of power, the tactics of interaction and verbal sparring it is the team which prepares best that usually achieves its objectives. And part of the preparation is understanding the priorities of the outcomes – which minor points are worth conceding,  what is the relative value of the deal to all involved, what mandate both parties have to engage and most importantly how important the long-term relationship is. In many instances, the relationship survives the negotiation process, and while certain concessions may seem like a short-term loss, but it is sometimes better to lose the battle in order to win the war. Remember that this negotiation may not be your last interaction with this opponent and your behaviour now may influence the treatment you get next time. Behave responsibly now, and your chances of a fair fight in future are far better.

Take a deep breath

Another reason the children end up in tears is their lack of self-control. The negotiator’s ability for self-management is as important as their ability to manage the negotiation process. Reining in those emotions, controlling tone of voice, avoiding knee-jerk reactions and rigorously maintaining an understanding for the bigger picture are all essential aspects of win-win negotiations. When tempers flare the balance of power shifts, and a clear perspective is compromised.

To outsiders, a negotiation session may seem to be shrouded in mystery. The two sides seem to be employing hidden tactics, poker faces and brilliant acting techniques. But there is more science than art involved in the process. There are at least five clear strategies that can be employed and five equally predictable outcomes. There are even tools to help one select the best strategy to use depending on the expected outcomes. Professor David Tweed, an experienced negotiator and company director, shares his insight into the negotiation process as well as examples which illustrate each strategy in this webinar.

David is currently a member of faculty in the School of Management at Massey University having previously served in two Director roles and as an Associate Dean (APVC).  He worked with The Treasury for three years in the design and delivery of an advanced governance programme for the directors of boards of New Zealand’s SOEs.  David has management experience in turnarounds, executive education, and delivery of large research contracts. He is a graduate of the Senior Executive Programme at the London Business School and a member of the Arbitrators’ and Mediators’ Institute.  Adding value to organisations and their people in collaboration with managers, councils, boards, and trusts, is what he most enjoys.

Massey University has launched a real-time gross domestic product (GDP) tracker, which is believed to be the first of its kind in the world. Called GDPLive, the online portal uses  machine learning algorithms and the most up-to-date data possible, including live data sources. It allows users to instantly see estimates of how the New Zealand economy is performing on a daily basis, and provides GDP forecasts.

Professor Christoph Schumacher is Professor of Innovation and Economics at Massey University and Director of the Knowledge Exchange Hub.

Christoph holds under- and postgraduate degrees in Engineering and International Business as well as a PhD in Economics (game theory). He has also recently completed a course in Big Data Analytics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA).

“The consumer is the product of a conspiracy hatched by corporate executives in the bowels of the Ministry of Truth, then imposed with diabolical cleverness on a passive population.” The helplessness implied this description has certainly changed over time.

From the early 1900s the trend in USA advertising started to reflect a change in consumer mentality and power. Jackson Lears suggests that there was “a shift from a Protestant ethos of salvation through self-denial toward a therapeutic ethos stressing self-realization in this world — an ethos characterized by an almost obsessive concern with psychic and physical health defined in sweeping terms.”

The shift from self-denial to self-realisation has reached a new peak. Today the consumer is king. Although they may be stressed and over-worked, the consumer is pampered, cajoled and “encouraged” rather than pressured. Once the marketing effort shifted from a production focus to a consumption-oriented society the importance of the consumer shifted upwards and that elevation would continue to this day.

Not only are consumers powerful and pampered, they are bored. There is too much choice, they have too much money, and they want more for less – all the time, right now. The psychological needs of the consumer is more powerful an urge than their physical needs. They have more than enough food – they want to be persuaded by clever packaging, by convincing stories and transparent labelling. They demand more information about their food and its origin, they insist on the primacy of their health and well-being, and they refuse to pay more for any of it.

If you are a consumer (and you are) then this is great news. If you are a producer or a retailer you could be worried. Your customer has more choice than ever before. In the UK around 25% of all retail transactions now occur online. Price transparency is now a global phenomenon – and shipping is usually free! Not only do ingredients need to be itemised their origin needs to be stated and proved. There are eagle eyes on pack sizes, on the amount of packaging, on the recyclability of packaging, plus the option of bringing your own packaging. For an industry whose metrics are traditionally based on bulk sales, uniformity and speed of through-put all of these demands pose real problems. In the New Zealand context, there is the additional threat of global retailers licking their lips in anticipation of sweeping up the local market.

A whisper in your ear

The glass certainly looks half empty. Unless… one can understand and meet the needs of the all-powerful consumer. They are stressed and need the ability to give themselves mini-indulgences. They need to go to places where they can feel pampered. Every action needs to give them a sense of self-justification and to improve their self-worth. Savvy retailers and manufacturers believe they can satisfy these needs as well as any psychologist.

You stop by the shopping centre on the way home – just to pick up a salad for dinner. Why not buy just a little bar of chocolate after a tough day at the office? After all, it is dark chocolate ethically sourced from the jungles of South America where a percentage of the profits are re-invested? In fact, on the recyclable paper packaging is a picture of the farmer on whose land the cacao was harvested – he has a name and a story and a very grateful smile. Not only are you buying a well-deserved treat, you are doing good at the same time. Why not wash it all down with a glass of milk? Real milk, full-fat milk, natural, healthy milk from a farm in the Waikato, not even two days old. You might have driven past the farm, you might have spotted the actual cow! You want to make sure your money benefits the local economy too, not just the South American cacao farmer. And look! There’s a bar of soap for that long, hot bath tonight. To soothe those over-worked limbs we have a soap-free, naturally-fragranced compound in the shape of a cloud. It contains no nasties, has moisturising coconut oil and a slightly abrasive texture because of small quantities of very fine river sand from the Rhine, carefully washed and gently blended with the soap.

By the end of the shopping trip your imagination has travelled the globe, your generosity has benefited farmers in two countries and your environmental footprint is microscopic. The chocolate will evaporate from your hips within a few seconds of stepping into the gym and you will feel on top of the world – you’ll feel like the all-powerful consumer you are. Doing good while pampering yourself. Now who’s to say that retail is dead?

Listen to Prof Jonathan Elms discussing a range of trends in this webinar entitled “Key trends in Food Retailing and Marketing”.

Jonathan is the Sir Stephen Tindall Chair Professor in Retail Management at Massey Business School and leads the Bachelor of Retail and Business Management (BRBM), New Zealand’s only retail degree.

Jonathan is the Founding Director of the Centre for Advanced Retail Studies (CARS), New Zealand’s centre of excellence for retail research, education and scholarship. Jonathan has also conducted research and is a regular keynote speaker at national and international conferences on retail change, strategy, and innovation.

Reference: Lears, T.J. Jackson 1983. From salvation to self-realization: Advertising and the therapeutic roots of the consumer culture, 1880–1930. In The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980, ed. by Richard Wightman Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears, New York: Pantheon Books, 1–38.

I’ve taught a business research methods course to MBA students for many years at two New Zealand universities. These students are all experienced business managers or owners. And one of the challenges I have is convincing them that research competencies are not “academic” skills that are irrelevant to their workplace but are basic to making good business decisions.

Managers rely on carefully conducted research for understanding market opportunities, for evaluating campaigns, and for testing initiatives, among other things. And managers need to understand good research practices to get the best value from such research. I recently had as a guest speaker Tracey Bridges, co-founder and director at the Good Registry (and formerly Managing Partner for Senate SHJ). Tracey emphasised the importance of managers not just letting the experts plan and do the research, but instead getting involved and carefully scoping the project to ensure you get the outcomes that will be useful. I couldn’t agree more. Managers should work to explain carefully and clearly their aims and objectives for the research, and the questions they want answered. And if others do the actual research for them, managers should ensure the research plan – even down to the questions to be asked on surveys – is likely to produce credible answers.

Credibility of research results is the key. There’s little point in point in doing research that can be picked apart for having used shoddy data or analysis. Another guest speaker I had recently in my MBA course was Dr Andrew Peterson, Head of Data Science at the Warehouse Group. Andrew focused on avoiding being fooled by random variation – that is, thinking we’ve found something significant when we’ve really just gotten certain findings by chance. For example, you may think your new pricing strategy produced an increase in sales, when in fact the increase could be due to seasonal fluctuations or some other factor unrelated to your pricing strategy. So, Andrew says it’s critical to carefully construct experiments and use controls that give us confidence in the answers we’re getting from research.

Beyond carefully designed, formal research initiatives, good research competencies instil a discipline in evaluating available evidence in making good business decisions. Managers often lack the resources – including time – to commission all the market research they may need or to conduct careful experiments to test initiatives. But even so, good research practices teach us to be disciplined in questioning the available evidence and constructing careful arguments to make better business decisions.

Learn more about the Massey Executive MBA here.

Prof Ted Zorn is the head of Massey Executive Development and he teaches Applied Research on the Massey Executive MBA. A professor of organisational communication for nearly 30 years, Ted held positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Waikato University before joining Massey University in 2012. His research in recent years has focused on the use of dialogue and other forms of communication in leading change.

Have you ever seen a rugby prop doing ballet? Was Shakespeare any good at algebra? Could Einstein sing well? Is Bill Gates any good at carpentry?

In business today, our first instinct could be to question how people differ from what we consider the norm. This person is louder than we are comfortable with, that one does not speak as eloquently as we expect, another is too quiet and does not make eye contact, and the guy from marketing does not understand how to read a balance sheet. Not one of them matches our personal definition of “normal”. They are not like us, so there must be something wrong with them. Any leader who adopts this approach is sure to mould their team into miniature clones of themselves. The leader will hear what they want to hear (as opposed to the truth), the team will behave like the leader (rather than in the most appropriate manner), and precious talent could be lost while obedient avatars replace them and strive to do nothing more than “keep the boss happy”.

There is strength in unity, but that is not the same as suggesting that there is strength in uniformity. In any successful team, there are players who contribute to the victory with a variety of strengths. Some are fleet-footed sprinters; others are rock solid immovable objects; all of them need to work together to bring about a triumph. Business is no different. Diversity provides the greatest chance of success because it builds in the combined personalities and strengths of a group of people.

Tim Kloppenborg, Emeritus Professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati and an expert in strengths-based leadership, explains that the work done by the Gallop Corporation was significant in the area of identifying peoples’ strengths. “Following a very comprehensive study Gallop identified 34 different thought patterns in people across organisations, at different levels of management and in different cultures.” These patterns were grouped into four domains, namely executing, influencing, relationship building and strategic thinking.

Once the strengths have been identified the next step is to construct the team’s roles in such a way that complementary strengths are grouped together. A studious introvert may need someone to engage with customers on their behalf. A verbally confident influencer may need someone to look after the written or admin parts of the job. A strategic thinker may need someone to implement their grand plans and ensure that the detail is taken care of. Such actions enhance the diverse strengths of a team to construct a formidable engine, capable of responding to a variety of circumstances and resilient in the face of unpredictable challenges.

And what about the strengths of the leader? What does the team expect of them? The four elements identified by Don Clifton (the father of strengths psychology and inventor of the Clifton StrengthsFinder®) as crucial to all leaders supersede their personality. The four elements are trust, compassion, stability and hope. No matter what your strengths as a leader these aspects of character are important for your team to observe in your words and actions. While the team can contribute a wide range of skills, knowledge, behaviour and talent, they will look to you for honesty and trustworthiness; for understanding and compassion; for predictability, trust and stability; and for hope through your ability to generate a vision and steer the vision.

To find out more about Strengths-base Leadership watch Tim Kloppenborg’s webinar here. Tim will also be presenting two powerful workshops in Auckland in April. Find out more here.

Timothy J. Kloppenborg, PhD, PMP is a Professor Emeritus from Xavier University. Tim has over 100 publications to his name including 12 very successful academic books on various aspects of Project Management.  Tim has worked closely with the authors of over 30 books including Stakeholder-led Project Management: Changing the Way We Manage Projects and Developing Strengths-Based Project Teams.

Tim has worked in manufacturing, construction, and research, as well as being a retired USAF Reserve officer. He has lead thousands of people in consulting, training, and university classes on six continents, many of these assignments dealing with project management and/or strengths-based leadership.

He holds a BS in business from Benedictine College, an MBA from Western Illinois University, and a PhD in Operations Management from the University of Cincinnati.