Monday 25 November 2013
Soraya and the McCain Institute: Ethical Leadership
The following is an extract of my application interview conducted in Feb 2013. I explain my understanding of Ethical Leadership before the program.
McCain Institute: Explain what ‘ethical leadership' means to you. Discuss your core values and ethical principles, and how they have influenced your professional choices and development.
Soraya: Ethical leadership is leadership that promote an honest, transparent, and trustworthy culture and is best carried when the leader himself holds these values at heart and transmit them to the people he leads. Ethical leadership is not just a matter of reputation for the organisation leaded in such manner; it is also a well thought strategy that enhances the performance of the organisation by helping all involved to align their performance with the ultimate organisation goal in a conscious and cohesive way.There are quite a number of qualities needed to be an effective leader. However, some of the qualities are proper to certain challenges or area of leadership. But generally, some of the qualities that are needed in all kind of leadership positions are same the world over. To me, all the other skills or abilities that a person possesses need to be anchored in the following four cornerstones of effective leadership.
- Trust and Honesty– a leader need to be trustable and be believable earning the respect of the organisation he or she leads through these two universal values.
- Integrity – a leader has to distinguish him/herself for his impeccable integrity. In the Congo where most of the political figures climbed the power ladder by being a threat to the public or by stealing from the Congolese people, it is time to promote and restore values of integrity and make them work for the Congolese.
- Transparency – A leader needs to be a person who values and promotes transparency everywhere. He is the leader of a larger groop that needs to know what he does, how he does it and for whose benefit.
- Competence: Some would argue that there is a difference between a leader (who provides a vision and a way) and a manager (who takes people step by step through the way). I say that it is practical to have both skills and to base a vision on practical knowledge of how to roll out the vision and how to lead people.
- Altruism: A leader would be working for himself if he doesn’t have the benefit of his people closer to his heart than his own benefit.
In 2008, when I joined Banro Corporation, they were experiencing strong misunderstandings (not to say resistance) from the local community. The first thing I did was to advise the management on adopting and adapting our community relations policy (which I drafted) and this emphasised on engaging with all stakeholders in a transparent manner, and putting in place corporate values that aimed at giving the local community a privileged status among our stakeholders. The results of this mutually beneficial policy came very fast as we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the community and established a committee in charge of monitoring and evaluating its progress. Our success story went so fast that I was nominated for the leadership award (which I won) and the national mines minister sent other mining companies to copy and adapt our models to theirs.
I have come to the conclusion that the most challenging stakeholders’ engagement programs will have more changes to succeed if the parties around the same table understand and respect each other’s values. It is very difficult to disagree on a reasoning based on respect, trust, altruism, integrity and other core values that I promote through my speeches and actions. I use them as a weapon or a shield whenever I meet the group of stakeholders who lay out development plans that suits foreign donors goals, those who try to develop themselves using their offices and power, those who exploit the local communities by organising monopolies and racket, those completely out of touch with the reality and can’t go beyond analysing and explaining the problems. The stakeholders I talk about in the first part of this form.
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