Sarosh J. Ghandy, Executive Director for more than 20 years of TELCO (now Tata Motors) and later on Managing Director of TELCON, has a strong people orientation value and co-founded the IofC Centre for Training in Ethical Leadership. During the ‘Trust and integrity in the global economy’ conference, he gave us his point of view on ethical leadership and how it can be practised.

What has been your motivation to engage with Initiatives of Change (IofC)?
My main engagement with IofC was, initially, to try and bring around a change in my work force in TELCO. In the 1970s we had a tremendous amount of alienation between our managers and our workers. At that time IofC was starting what they called ‘the industrial programme’ in Panchgani, which aimed at bringing about understanding between managers and workers. I started sending some of our staff there. They began to understand each other and appreciate the priorities and pressures on each side, and back at work it brought about a lessening of tensions on the shop-floor.

What do you understand by ‘ethical leadership’?
Leadership is basically how you deal with people: How you motivate them, how you get the best out of them, how you get them to want to work with you rather than having to work for you. To my mind the word ‘ethical leadership’ is a pleonasm – you can only be a leader when you are ethical. If you are unethical, you can never build the trust of the people. Then you may be a manager, but you are not a leader. However, you have to be both a manager and a leader – it is a question of balance.

Why is training important?
I used training to get more involvement of my workers in their day-to-day work, which I think benefitted TELCO quite considerably. We have this misguided idea that all good ideas come only from managers, but actually, the amount of creativity that can be generated from your workers is fantastic! And it also adds to their happiness: It is a tremendous motivation when they see their own ideas being used.

Is ethical leadership reconcilable with the pressure to make profits at all costs?
Look at it like you look at a football game: You can compete and still be sporting. Likewise, you can be very competitive and still be ethical. In fact, most people who have tried being ethical found that rather than becoming less competitive, they become more competitive. It is like the universal law of nature which says, ‘The more you give, the more you get’.

Do you have any advice or visions for economic leaders in the world today?
We think too much in terms of money. If we were to try and lead people, and give of ourselves to develop them and take care of some of their problems, instead of just managing them, we would have far less problems than we have today. This is the main reason why I keep emphasising the aspect of developing yourself as a better human being: Only then you start thinking of how you can give to others rather than take.

Ms.Mirjam Beeler
(http://www.caux.iofc.org)