...in the outer...: Ethical Leaders and Ethical Leadership

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Ethics: The Heart of Leadership
Edited by Joanne Ciulla. An important collection of essays by philosophers, leadership and management thinkers considering the role of ethics in leadership

Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness
By Robert K. Greenleaf, Larry C. Spears, Stephen R. Covey. Servant and leader--can these two roles be fused in one real person in all levels of status and calling?

Warranted Christian Belief
By Alvin Plantinga. Third in a trilogy of works on the issue of warrant - the basis of the rationality of Christian beliefs written by arguably the most important philosopher of religion alive today

Renovation of the Heart
By Dallas Willard. A philosopher and quintessential Christian teacher relates and reflects on what it means to put on the character of Christ.

Foreign Bodies
By Hwee Hwee Tan. An impressive first novel by young new author from Singapore acclaimed as an up and coming Pulitzer Prize winner

Mammon Inc.
By Hwee-Hwee Tan. Second novel by this very important young new author from Singapore applauded the world over, including The Times in London and the New York Times

Three Philosophies of Life
By Peter Kreeft. Three life philosophies presented through the works of three of Scriptures most beautiful poetry books, Job, Ecclesiastes and Songs of Solomon

Horrendous Evil and the Goodness of God
By Marilyn McCord-Adams. A seminal response to the age-old problem of evil which attempts to take seriously the theological ramifications of the character of God

Blink
By Malcolm Gladwell. Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant.

Smart Mobs
By Howard Rheingold. A social commentary about how "sophisticated mobile Internet access is allowing people who don't know each other to act in concert".

Linked
By Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. An engaging treatise about the fundamentals of interconnectedness and complexity that underlies neurology, epidemiology, Internet traffic, and many other fields.

The Peaceable Kingdom
By Stanley Hauerwas. A clear explication of a Christian ethic based upon the meaning of the gospel, highlighting virtues and character, and narrative as a mode of ethical reflection.

The Goldsworthy Trilogy: Gospel & Kingdom, Gospel & Wisdom, Gospel & Revelation
By Graeme Goldsworthy. A collection of masterful works expositing on the centrality of the Scriptures: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Grace and Law: St. Paul, Kant, and the Hebrew Prophets
By Heinz Cassirer. A Kantian scholar looks at the Old Testament Law, and Paul's understanding of it, concluding that Kant's delimma is answered by the gospel of grace.

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Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Ethical Leaders and Ethical Leadership

In his forward to Joanne Ciulla's Ethics, the Heart of Leadership : Second Edition, James MacGregor Burns categorizes three types of leadership values each of which have implications for styles and stragegies for leadership itself.

These values are

ethical virtues--"old-fashioned character tests" such as sobriety, chastity, abstention, kindness, altruism and other "Ten Commandments" rules of personal conduct; ethical values such as honesty, trustworthiness, reliability, reciprocity, accountability; and moral values such as order (or security), liberty, equality, justice, community (meaning brotherhood and sisterhood, replacing the traditional term fraternity.

These values, Burns says, are exemplified in the different leadership types or models:

Status quo leaders, presiding over relatively stable communities are dependent on ethical virtues, rules of personal behavior, such as kindness and altruism, that makes for harmonious relationships. Ethical values are crucially important to transactional leaders ... Moral values lie at the heart of transforming leadership, which seeks fundamental changes in society ...

Commenting on Burns' points, Ciulla outlines three broad questions regarding ethics and leadership:

(1) The ethics of the means: What do leaders use to motivate followers to obtain their goals? What is the moral relastionship between leaders and followers?

(2) The ethics of the person: What are leaders' personal ethics? Are they motivated by self-interest or altruism?

(3) The ethics of the ends: What is the ethical values of a leaders' accomplishments? Did his/her actions serve the greatest good? What is the greatest good? Who is and isn't part of the greatest good?

She goes on to wonder if leaders need to be ethical in all three areas in order to be considered ethical leaders. For instance, how should we evaluate a leader who might be ethical as a person, but uses unethical means to achieve ethical ends, or if the same leader uses ethical means but ends up with a less than desirable result? How about a leader who accomplishes great success, but is unethical in his own personal life? What does it take to be considered an ethical or good leader? Is it too much to ask for a leader to pass all three tests before he or she can be considered a good, effective, moral and ethical leaders?

What do you think?