Table 7.
Moral leadership tactics used to prevent moral taint.
| Category | Groundedness | Illustrative Quote | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tot 350 |
Jr 181 |
M 168 |
||
| Personal support by compassionate managers | 96 | 30 | 66 | “I always ask them a lot of questions, like ‘What does your day look like? What are your responsibilities? What costs too much energy?’. With that, you intend to start something, and make the junior rethink himself.”—Manager 8. “I work around 60 h now.… They monitor that you do not work too much. … You have conversations like ‘you leave the project too late every time’. That is your manager who talks to you individually.”—Junior 8. |
| Open culture for social control | 61 | 34 | 27 | “It is very important to ensure that your employees dare to speak up, to create an environment in which people feel safe.”—Manager 10. “There are people that I see three times a week, who could assess my feelings better (than my manager). So I think it is the role of everyone: social control.”—Junior 9. |
| Approachability of managers | 59 | 40 | 19 | “I surely am approachable. And I am definitely open to those conversations (about stressors).”—Manager 10. “There is no barrier to approach my manager. If there were something bothering me, I could tell him. I also know other stories…. Here the doors are always open.”—Junior 4 |
| Responsibility given to employees | 58 | 42 | 16 | “Everybody has their own responsibilities. Of course, I will have the final responsibility, but I don’t manage their daily activities…. We give them free reign.”—Manager 4. “In the beginning you get a lot of guidance.... Now, after 1.5 years, I am much more pro-active. I say I want to do this or that. I organize and plan myself.”—Junior 6 |
| Institutional support through selection of the right candidates, performance reviews & training | 48 | 25 | 22 | “The other day, I conducted some job interviews, in which I explicitly asked: “What do you think of working over night?”.… So I test them, to see if they need structure or not.”—Manager 9. “We have an HR (Human Resource) cycle, in which we have a talk about performance, a talk on development and several training courses.”—Junior 2. “We recently got a case about work-life balance.… Here we got taught how to say ‘no’ to managers.”—Junior 9. |
| Compensation time & acknowledgement policies | 22 | 9 | 13 | “‘If we require our employees to work on the weekends, we compensate for that. We send a gift coupon to the family, especially if it happens more often, or we send flowers. And if we require our employees to work hard for an extended period, we send them on a weekend trip with their family.”—Manager 3. “We often hear ‘thanks for your help, you did really well’…. After every project we go out for dinner…. Sometimes there also is an event and you get some award for your contribution (he shows an award), awards like that.”—Junior 6 |
| Being a moral example | 6 | 1 | 5 | “People try to guard their image. But people should let that guard go. Saying ‘Okay, this is who I am; I am putting it on the table’. And then it’s easier for people to open up also. So, if you open up, they open up.”—Manager 11. |
Tot = Total; Jr = Junior consultant; M = Manager.