CEOs are often seen as celebrities by their shareholders and boards of directors.
Stars of the executive suite, they are larger than life, fulfillers of corporate vision, the awe-inspiring orchestrators of a solid balance sheet.
This unquestioning deference to these mighty panjandrums is why the corporate world continues to be mired in an endless cycle of white-collar crime, financial collapse, recrimination and earnest, empty pledges to mend its ways.
The quest for ethical leadership can seem daunting - more difficult, even, than steering a BMW through the eye of a needle.
Much of the challenge rests with the fact that the ideals of many CEOs were steeped in values clarification - the public school adaptation of moral relativism which holds that values arise from cultural traditions or whatever one feels appropriate, and not from any timeless, universal code.
Decades later, corporations wooed these ethical illiterates with stupendous stock-option inducements in addition to their multimillion-dollar salaries.
Unfortunately, the types of leaders they attracted were often more suited to prison stripes than pinstripes.
"A 12-point increase in shareholders' equity by the end of the third quarter?" candidates of accommodating principle would tell the board's interviewing panel. "Sure - I know just how to achieve that."
And so these sociopaths would engage in chicanery that would keep them and their acolytes on Easy Street until the unmasking of their crimes left their companies' reputations in tatters.
However, in darkness there is hope.
In the wake of scandal at large public companies such as Enron Corp., WorldCom and Hollinger International, word-of-mouth "character in leadership" movements are emerging at the grassroots level to regain public trust in the private sector.
Conceived in America's conservative, religious heartland in 2002, the influence of this nascent movement is beginning to be felt in Canada.
"It does cause you to set a high standard for yourself as a business leader," Ric Borski, president of the Kitchener-based Better Business Bureau of Mid-Western Ontario, says in an interview. "The material is great."
Borski says Chip Weiant of Hilliard, Ohio, founder of The American Center for Civic Character (ACCC), was the keynote speaker at his bureau's annual Business Integrity Awards in June.
And now, says Borski, the BBB has begun talks with Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo to introduce a student of integrity award.
"It's just in the planning stages at this point," he says. "We'll see where it goes from here."
The concept of character may appear elusive to those who see the world in varying shades of grey, but American conservatives have no problem identifying its primary colours.
Character is a reflection of virtuous conduct - the practice of the Golden Rule, for example. Character is how you behave when no one is looking. Character is making ethical choices, as defined by right-thinking persons, regardless of what it costs the business.
In his 2005 book, Winners Never Cheat: Everyday Values We Learned As Children, Salt Lake City billionaire Jon Huntsman says leaders of good character play by the rules.
"Which rules we honour and which we ignore determine personal character," writes Huntsman, founder of petrochemical and plastics giant Huntsman Corp, "and it is character that determines how closely we will allow our value system to affect our lives.
"Employees watch supervisors. If these leaders and role models set bad examples, those following frequently follow suit."
In the U.S., a growing number of companies, not-for-profits and individuals have taken up the character-in-leadership torch.
Typically, they lack educational funding so they pass instructional materials on to others.
"We invest our primary energies into identifying and equipping long-term multi-institutional co-advocates who can then multiply our efforts exponentially by reaching out to their constituents at no cost to the centre," the ACCC says on its website at www.characterusa.org.
Kip Morse, president of the BBB of Central Ohio in Columbus and a promoter of character in leadership, tells Business Edge that he embraced the program in 2002 when he took charge of the bureau.
Morse says leaders who strive for ethical behaviour must deal with detractors who gleefully point out their past sins.
But such criticism is easy to address, he says. "I'm not perfect," goes the answer.
"I've made mistakes. But this is what I am striving for."
Businesses that embrace character have an advantage when they are not large corporations.
Small businesses are individually owned, with the owner intimately involved in the day-to-day operations. They are more amenable to a new culture.
Large, publicly traded corporations, on the other hand, are accountable to shareholders and they rely on hired guns - the CEOs. Ethics can seem little more than an abstract concept. Big companies therefore can take longer to turn around.
In 2002, Kip Morse introduced the character-in-leadership concept at an international conference of BBBs. Bureau chiefs returned home wide-eyed, and a few adopted it. Others gave it serious consideration, but decided the way they ran their bureaus was sufficiently ethical.
Good conservatives cherish universal concepts of ethical behaviour. It's good for business and good for the soul.
Businesses that are interested in adopting character in leadership should contact the nearest BBB.
BBBs are a sounding board for ethical concerns and their managers are happy to discuss such issues.
Bureaus can be helpful even if they haven't adopted such a program. They can put businesses in touch with organizations that have the tools. "BBBs should be the hub - the place that people go to for help," says Morse.
A good starting point is the job interview process.
First, the business must define its understanding of what constitutes character, courage and vision. Then, it must create questions aimed at spotting candidates who possess these traits.
One common approach is to ask questions designed to elicit information from applicants about their behaviour in challenging situations at previous jobs. Complex interviewing techniques are best left to expert interviewers, though.
(Brock Ketcham is an Edmonton-based writer who specializes in consumer and public policy issues. He can be reached at brock@businessedge.ca)
