Project Management

Project Leaders as Ethical Role Models

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By Peter Tarhanidis            

This month’s theme at projectmanagement.com is ethics.  Project leaders are in a great position to be role models of ethical behavior. They can apply a system of values to drive the whole team’s ethical behavior.

First: What is ethics, exactly? It’s a branch of knowledge exploring the tension between the values one holds and how one acts in terms of right or wrong. This tension creates a complex system of moral principles that a particular group follows, which defines its culture. The complexity stems from how much value each person places on his or her principles, which can lead to conflict with other individuals.

Professional ethics can come from three sources:

  1. Your organization. It can share its values and conduct compliance training on acceptable company policy.
  2. Regulated industries. These have defined ethical standards to certify organizations.
  3. Certifying organizations. These expect certified individuals to comply with the certifying group’s ethical standards.

In project management, project leaders have a great opportunity to be seen as setting ethical leadership in an organization. Those project leaders who can align an organization’s values and integrate PMI’s ethics into each project will increase the team’s ethical behavior. 

PMI defines ethics as the moral principles that govern a person’s or group’s behavior. The values include honesty, responsibility, respect and fairness.

For example, a project leader who uses the PMI® Code of Ethics to increase a team’s ethical behavior might:

  • Create an environment that reviews ethical standards with the project team
  • Consider that some individuals bring different systems of moral values that project leaders may need to navigate if they conflict with their own ethics. Conflicting values can include professional organizations’ values as well as financial, legislative, religious, cultural and other values.
  • Communicate to the team the approach to be taken to resolve ethical dilemmas.

Please share any other ideas for elevating the ethical standards of project leaders and teams, and/or your own experiences!


Posted by Peter Tarhanidis on: February 22, 2016 09:45 AM | Permalink

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Peter Tarhanidis Director | President and CEO | Adjunct | Board Member| Johnson & Johnson | Praxis Advisory | Columbia University Chatham, Nj, United States
Norberto,

I am sorry to hear about your difficult experience. In some cases, one is left with a difficult decision and to move on is part of a choice one makes based on ethical principles.

In many cases, one's supervisor is the first point of contact to guide one through ethical conflict resolution. The organization may also provide for a separate group to accept anonymous comments with similar issues. One's mentor could also provide guidance in navigating difficult decision making in an organization. Further, some organizations may have a compliance or audit organization ensuring teams follow standard operating processes or project methodology.

Having a project management team role for an ethics lead may be helpful to set a baseline of ethical policies and practices in the organization. That can be used to deliver learned lessons and build best practices. A slower way to change the ethical culture of the organization and may need to be done one project at a time.

Regards and thank you for a great question.

Peter



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Shridhar Shukla PM I| Technology Ind, India
Excellent ..

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