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LEADERSHIP IS A PROCESS OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE, WHICH MAXIMISES THE EFFORTS OF OTHERS TOWARDS THE ACHIEVEMENT OF A SHARED GOAL.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Positive Leadership: Demonstrable Values and Integrity are Key to Economic Recovery


Giving the sixth annual ICAS Aileen Beattie Memorial Lecture recently, Douglas Flint CA, the Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings PLC, said that while the financial crisis was a “great opportunity to move things forward to learn lessons, [and] to fix things that need fixing”, it was also an opportunity for some “to take advantage of people’s fear of repetition to offer seductively attractive remedies that only address symptoms rather than causes”.

As well as addressing the fixes needed in the financial system, Flint said, it was important offer a positive vision and “to focus on what we want the wider financial system and banks in particular to do”.

Flint said restoration of confidence was important to recovery, and if this were to happen there needed to trust in leaders, in their motives and their data.

He emphasised the importance of behaviour: “the greatest opportunity for improvement will come from defining, teaching, reinforcing, rewarding and enforcing values in terms of behaviour”.

If behavioural values are to be relied upon it requires trust in organisations, Flint said. Assurance that this trust has been earned has to be built into the system.

He urged regulatory and public policy bodies to think more deeply about how to understand - “and if necessary shape” - the character and culture of the organisations critical to the financial system.

He said people should “care more about tone from the top, how individuals are screened for behavioural characteristics when recruited or promoted, how ethics and values are taught and reinforced, how values are enforced and rewarded”.

Flint listed the elements he felt needed to be embraced: “independence of thought, character, judgment, accountability, responsibility, a duty that goes beyond one’s own self-interest or the narrow interest of one’s employer to one’s underlying principles and integrity”.


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