Building Ethic Instead of Details

I remember reading a leadership article a while back that talked a lot about KITA (Kick in the ass) managing – it provides stimulus, but doesn’t persist after the kick has faded into the background.

This week has been an amazing example of managing by building ethics instead of building detailed information based lessons that are underpinned by KITA. For example: we have not mentioned tardiness or attendance since the first day, when people were shown and told clearly that we show respect for each other by being where we are supposed to be when we are supposed to be there.

By setting the standard of you are being disrespectful to others and the institution when you are late, it has (so far) made people want to be on time in order to show that they care and that they want to be here. Instead of it being me or another administrator getting angry and acting childish (and that anger being a KITA), which would mean that staff would only care about being on time when they thought a manager was watching or would notice.