Culture Without Character
When organizational atmosphere is weightless
Ethos.
Leaders use that word a lot. Usually to refer to the atmosphere or the culture or the "character" of an organization. But in most cases, the word character really doesn't have anything moral or ethical about it. It is more the "flavor or feel or way" that is characteristic of an organization.
The word ethos has the same root as the word ETHIC.
Ethos is character of a culture and ethos is ethic.
Kind of interesting that today, for most of us ethos as culture is apart from and without ethos as ethic/character.
When an atmosphere/ethos is without ethic/ethos . . . well, we can use the same language that T.S. Eliot used - it becomes "hollow."
The ancient Hebrews would have said it becomes "weightless" or insubstantial or without substance.
The work of leadership is to create an organizational ethos that is weighty, substantial, ethical. Whether a family or a nation - this is the essential work of leadership. If we miss this, then any other bottom line that we pursue, is elusive.
And to build a culture that is weighty, substantial and ethical . . . a leader must have that within them, for leaders can only leak and imprint on the external world what is inside them.
Today is a good day to think about the "weightiness, substance, ethic" that is within you and then ... on how you are imprinting those around you from the substance of your own heart.
Brian K. Rice
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com
