"We've defined leadership as 'authentic self-expression that creates value,'" Cashman said in an interview. "We've been furthering the idea that value creation has, at least partially, a financial definition -- and broadening that, to sustain leadership, you need to serve the financial function, the employee and the customer community."

Cashman argues that "most finance executives tend to be imbalanced, looking at things through a financial lens." He says that an evolving concept that is hot in the United Kingdom is the "triple bottom line," which features not just financial reporting but a focus on the "employee bottom line" -- including issues like morale, retention and development -- as well as the customer/community bottom line, and even an environmental assessment of the company's performance.

This multi-dimensional bottom-line assessment "is just starting in the U.S.," Cashman says. "That's not just a matter of the character of leaders, it's a way of perceiving these businesses. The challenge is to find the GAAP-equivalent principles that can be consistently applied. It's a great model for leaders, especially financial leaders, to use to broaden their impact."

That can be done in different ways, Cashman says, but "it requires a convergence of top executives, with the key functional areas stepping forward to compile that information. It keeps business leaders systemically more honest."

Looking at recent accounting scandals, Cashman notes that the imbroglio at HealthSouth Corp. "focused on the CEO and his lack of ethics, but a really important part of the story is how other leaders in the company responded -- how courageous were they? The story that [eventually emerged] is about ethical breaches, but there were a lot of small ones along the way."

Ethics aren't a core coaching concept, he concedes. "In all my history of coaching for 27 years, I've never had someone come up and say, 'I need to improve my ethics.' What happens is that we have to help people see concepts around ethics as they involve other people; authenticity and ethics are human dilemmas."

He adds that "codifying ethics is important, but it's not sufficient. Enron had beautiful and well-crafted values; the problem wasn't crafting them, but living them. Compliance is fine, and it's useful to set standards, but if you don't go beyond compliance to embodiment, not much happens."

An appropriate 'tone at the top' is a good thing, Cashman says, "but the problem is that the tone might be somebody's voice, and it may be saying the right things, but how to take that tone to behavior is the challenge. Employees will trust and support ideas that are backed by behavior. Leaders need to be transparent -- and it's incumbent on them to be transparent like never before."

Consultants and trainers at LeaderSource are constantly hearing that companies want leaders at all levels, Cashman says. "CEOs and CFOs have an innate desire for others to be as committed as they are" -- the problem comes when leadership is defined as hierarchical. Cashman says his firm has focused on "personal leadership," and by asking for "authentic" values, calls on each individual to bring forward his or her strengths, as well as show their vulnerabilities and development areas.

In an age of heavy regulatory burdens, "most leaders will think that compliance will be enough," Cashman says, but "visionary leaders" realize that they need to go beyond compliance and develop trust with their stakeholders. "Without trust," he asks, "why are they going to invest?"

KEVIN CASHMAN is CEO of Minneapolis-based executive coaching and development firm, LeaderSource, and author of Awakening the Leader Within, published by John Wiley & Sons.

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FEI's flagship publication, Financial Executive magazine, has won another award -- an Eastern Regional gold (first place) award from the American Society of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) in their annual competition. FE won in the editorial division for its March 2002 special section on "Best Practices." This is the fourth juried award FE has won in the past two years.