During that period I would often do my utmost to promote the course of action I felt was right, knowing I risked – if not expected – to incur the wrath of the leadership team and all that would entail. It was both bruising and exhausting.

Only a few years later, in 2019, having changed career to try and ensure I had more control over my environment, I believe came very close to a nervous breakdown. In this instance it had become increasingly apparent that the values and culture of the organisation I had joined was nothing like the one they had claimed it to be. The resulting behaviours and attitudes I was exposed to, and their impact on working practices and ultimately my financial fortunes, made life extremely hard and stressful (so much so that the thought of a client meeting stretching to a second round of coffees would fill me with dread and thoughts as to what the family may need to drop from the weekly shop).

I had left the military to provide a better life for my family. Two years on, and we were at rock bottom. I felt I was letting my family (now with an extra child in it) down hugely. I had to succeed, and do so in a way which I felt was ‘right’. But was that even possible in the environment I found myself in?

The realisation that something had to change came in February 2020, when in finding myself battling insomnia at four o’clock in the morning, I decided to go for a walk, in my PJ’s and Crocs, with an umbrella, in sideways rain, around the village green. That’s when I realised that this situation was not right and could not continue. I made the decision then and there to go back to earning £0 per month and build my way back up in a new, healthier, more sustainable environment.

My point is this: While it is the big cases of poor leadership that hit the headlines, the many, many incidents at a smaller scale are just as damaging to people, and they can be insidious.

Anyone can talk a great game on leadership, as my toxic boss did, it is clearly harder to do in practice. Yet this is a nettle we must all grasp if we are to do deliver the most critical purpose of a leader – serve and protect those we lead.

If we are to improve things, ethical leadership must become a core and conscious pillar of addressing the issue. 

However, there are some simple guiding principles that can steer us to some pretty certain ground. A simple test might be to ask: Who benefits from this decision? If it's the people or the environment, you're likely to be there or there abouts.

In contrast, The Post Office scandal where business reputation was prioritised over human dignity (in some cases it even over logic and reason), starkly illustrates the consequences of getting this balance wrong.

To put it simply, Ethical Leadership is leadership which considers the existential needs of living entities above the ‘P&L’ or ‘balance sheet’ needs of an entity which exists primarily on paper.

Now, I’m also a pragmatist and a business person. So even I recognise that sometimes it can be hard to differentiate the needs of some people from the needs of the business. For example:

‘If the business does this, everything I have worked for over the last twenty years will be ruined and I’ll have hugely set myself and may family back’.

However, people who become a recluse, depressed, have marriages and relationships with their children break down, may never recover the years that they lose. Their cost is greater than the cost of others. And so leaders have to objectively weigh up what the ‘least bad’ option is – not just for them personally, but for all people impacted by the decisions they make. 

And so yes, ethical leadership takes courage. The courage to make a stand which may displease others, but which enables us to ‘do the right thing’ regardless of the displeasure of powerful people. 

And yet, what I have experienced, and observed in my career, is that any such great, singular moments of leadership are built on foundations made of thousands if not millions of other, much smaller interactions.

Ethical leadership isn't just about making grand gestures; it's built on the multitude of small, everyday interactions that shape an organisation's culture. Policies and values mean little if daily behaviours undermine them.

It's in the small moments — calling out inappropriate behaviour, not accepting poor work, not signing things off without proper scrutiny — that ethical cultures are forged. 

The big scandals occur when the gap between the ‘norm’ that has been established, as part of the organisational culture, and the ethical action required to be taken is too great to be bridged. Scandals occur where the culture leads to ‘group thinking’, and cognitive dissonance has too great an impact to enable such a gap to be bridged by the individuals within an organisation. That’s when, no matter the evidence, terrible outcomes can be justified and positioned in such a way that is acceptable to the culture that has been established – as ‘wide of the mark’ as that may be.

For any one individual to bridge this gap, to speak up, against the prevailing expectations and ‘norms’ of the organisation, requires a huge amount of courage. It can also be immensely bruising and hard to sustain.

Organisations that rely on having such courageous and resilient individuals in place to ensure they do the right thing, are setting themselves up for failure – and potentially a very public one. It is an unfair thing to ask. And it is exceedingly poor leadership to build such dependencies in by design, a lack of thought, or inaction.

Here are my three key points to consider when it comes to enabling ethical leadership: