CHAPTER 6

Leadership Ethics

With one after another high-profile scandal in business and government, interest like
ethical leadership has grown proportionally. Prominent scholars, including Ronald Heifetz,
James MacGregor Burns, and Robert Greenleaf, have provided perspectives on this important
subject. A common theme is the need for leadership that is based on honesty, service to
others, and moral courage.

For Heifetz, leadership involves the use of authority to help followers uphold important
values in the workplace. Burns’s theory of transformational leadership emphasizes the moral
development of followers and maintaining high standards of ethical conduct. Greenleaf’s
approach to leadership has strong ethical overtones, with the central premise being that true
leadership is service to others.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the intent, means, and
consequences of moral behavior. It is the study of moral judgments and right and wrong
conduct. Some human judgments are factual (the earth is round); others are aesthetic (she is
beautiful); and still others are moral (people should be honest and should not kill). Moral
judgments are judgments about what is right and wrong, good and bad. The Spanish
writer Cervantes wrote about ethics in Don Quixote:

I know that the path of virtue is straight and narrow, and the road of vice broad and
spacious. I know also that their ends and resting places are different; for those of vice, large and
open, end in death; and those of virtue, narrow and intricate, end in life; and not in life that has
an end, but in that which is eternal.

The word ethics is derived from the Greek word ethos, referring to a person’s
fundamental orientation toward life. Originally, ethos meant “a dwelling place.” For the
philosopher Aristotle, ethos came to mean “an inner dwelling place,” or what is now called
“inner character.” The Latin translation of ethos is “mos, moris,” from which comes the
English word moral. In Roman times, the emphasis shifted from internal character to overt
behavior—acts, habits, and customs.

In more recent times, ethics has been viewed as an overall human concern:

One of the chief problems is to determine what the basis of a moral code should be, to
find out what one ought to do.

1. Is right that which is the word of God given to man in the Ten Commandments?
2. Is it what is revealed to us by conscience and intuition?
3. Is it whatever will increase the sum of human happiness?
4. Is it that which is the most reasonable thing to do?
5. Is it whatever makes for the fullness and perfection of life?
6. Above all, is there any absolute right, anything embedded, so to speak, in the nature of
the universe, which should guide our actions?
7. Or are right and wrong simply relative, dependent on time and place and cultural pattern,
and changing with environment and circumstance?
8. What, in short, is the basis of our moral values?

These questions are of vital importance in a day when intellectual power threatens to
outrun moral control and thus destroy humankind.
 No Easy Subject

Ethics is a difficult subject, forcing people to think about moral issues with elusive
answers. This is true now more than ever before. Consider the questions that people are being
faced with today:

1. The conscious creation of new forms of life.

a. What are the benefits and penalties of creating new forms of life through
recombinant genetics?
b. Should people be cloned?
c. If so, who should be cloned?
2. Exploration and the use of outer space.
a. Should people be exploring space?
b. Are the huge financial sums spent on space exploration justified given the human
misery on earth?
3. Nuclear energy.
a. What should be done with our knowledge about atomic energy?
b. Should we build bombs that can destroy life, or should we apply this knowledge
to human welfare?
c. What should be done, and who is to decide?
4. Information technology.
a. Should everything that can be known be known by anybody anytime?
b. Should children see the surface of Mars on a computer screen before they feel the
surface of the earth—its rocks, sand, water, and grass firsthand, with their bodies?
c. What should we do in response to the admonition not to become tools of our
tools?

Aside from moral issues created by developments in science and technology, there are
many ethical problems common to the workplace—issues of quality, safety, property, and
human relationships. It is the task of the leader to understand and make judgments on these
difficult subjects.

The Roots of Ethics

Ethics has both religious and secular roots.

1. Religious ethics is based on a theistic understanding of the world. What is real, true,
and good is defined by God.
2. Secular ethics is based on a scientific understanding of the world. Reality, truth, and
goodness do not depend on the existence of a god.
3. Both religious and secular ethics may endorse many common values, such as the
preservation of life and the importance of the Golden Rule. The primary difference is
how values are justified.

The Secular Tradition

Aristotle (384–322 BC) was one of the first and perhaps most influential of all people to
shape the ethics of Western civilization from a secular orientation. He believed that every type
of animal has a common essence or nature and that human beings are essentially, or by
nature, rational. He viewed rationality as the central and most significant trait distinguishing
humankind from other creatures. Further, Aristotle taught that the good person is the one who
lives most rationally and whose moral judgments and social conduct are born of contemplation
and reason, in contrast to spontaneity and emotionality. Today, when we address a moral
dilemma by saying, Let us use reason; let us use logic; let us think rationally about this, we are
being ethical in the Aristotelian secular tradition. Consider the short essay on the next page
by the Englishman Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), a modern philosopher whose views were
secular.

The Religious Tradition

All the world’s religions make prescriptions for moral behavior. St. Augustine
(354–430), for example, who generally is agreed to have had a greater influence on Western
religious thought than any other writer outside biblical scripture, maintained that the naturally
evil inclinations of humanity could be overcome only by divine grace. St. Augustine synthesized
Plato’s philosophy with Christianity. He believed that if we allow ourselves through faith to be
drawn to God, we will overcome our basic immoral nature and eventually be reconciled in the
city of God in heaven.

Another Christian philosopher, Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274), integrated the

philosophy of Aristotle with Christian theology. Aquinas taught that all people are endowed
with a natural desire to be good. He believed that this inclination could be dormant in an
individual and could even be perverted. Nonetheless, he believed it to be present in all people
and impossible to destroy. Aquinas taught that to resist God’s pull is contrary to human nature
and that if we allow ourselves to follow God, we will fulfill our nature and we will be purely
good. Further, by acting out this goodness in our day-to-day lives, we will be moral and will
experience the greatest meaning of which we are capable.

The majority of people who have ever lived have been influenced by religions such as
Christianity and individuals such as St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Consider the example
of Ben Franklin, who believed that the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice
in another life respecting its conduct in this.

Ethics, Humankind, and Other Animals

Whether based on religious belief or secular thought, ethics is a concern unique to

humankind. People are the only creatures who combine emotion (feelings) with knowledge
(information) and through abstract reasoning (thought) produce a moral conscience or a
sense of what should be.
 Some ideas about right and wrong are of prehuman origin. Indeed, such social virtues
as self-sacrifice, sympathy, and cooperation can be seen among many other species, such as
elephants, porpoises, and lions. However, more than 40,000 years ago, the human race evolved
into beings who could distinguish between what is and what ought to be, and it is this attribute
that separates people from all other animals.

In The Descent of Man, biologist and social philosopher Charles Darwin concludes of
ethics, humankind, and other animals:

I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that, of all the differences
between man and the lower animals, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important.

It is summed up by that short but impervious word, ought, so full of high significance. It
is the most noble of all attributes of man, leading him without a moment’s hesitation to risk his
life for the life of a fellow creature, or after due deliberation, impelled simply by the deep
feeling of right or duty, to sacrifice it in some great cause.

Moral Development

How is morality developed? The English philosopher John Locke, one of the most
important philosophers of modern times, viewed the newborn child as a tabula rasa, or blank
tablet, on which a life script would be written. He believed that experience and learning would
shape the content, structure, and direction of each person’s life. In this sense, the ethics of the
infant are amoral—that is, there is no concept of good and bad or right and wrong that is
inborn.

After birth, babies soon discover that they are rewarded for certain things and
punished for others. As a result of this early programming, they develop an understanding of
what the adult world considers good and bad. Thus a social conscience is begun, and this
becomes the foundation for future moral development.

Through modeling and socialization, the older community passes on ethics to young
people. The words and actions of parents, teachers, and older companions teach and reinforce
morality before children develop their own critical faculties. Ben Franklin’s advice to “teach
children obedience first so that all other lessons will follow the easier” captures the spirit in
which moral values are taught.

When practiced over time, ethical behavior becomes habitual and part of people
themselves. By telling the truth, people become trustworthy; by serving others, people
become kind; by being fair, people become just.

On a societywide scale, the ethics of adults are similarly programmed. Swiss

psychologist Jean Piaget writes that heteronomy (rules as sacred external laws laid down by
authorities) is the unifying factor in adult societies and that in every society there are leaders
(governmental, religious, and educational) who believe in certain moral ideals, and who see
their task to be one of imprinting these ideals on succeeding generations.

Practically speaking, the three most important influences on character formation are:

1. Associations. Family, friends, and role models help shape our future lives. The example
and encouragement of some people may improve us, while that of others may pull us
down. Whenever possible, avoid toxic people and keep company with agents of
goodness.
2. Books. The printed pages and other media can poison us with wrong accounts and
harmful thoughts or can enlighten and lift up our lives with reason and spirit fundamental
to a healthy person. Consider the influence of just one book, Don Quixote, a cultural
landmark of the Spanish-speaking world and second only to the Bible in terms of total
 number of copies printed. Cervantes’s courageous hero refuses to conform and seeks to
right the wrongs of the world, inspiring generations of people.
3. Self-concept. When our thoughts and actions are not consistent, the result is a dissonance
that the mind cannot tolerate. We do what we do to be consistent with who we think we
are. Our primary motivation is not self-preservation, but preservation of the symbolic
self. Whoever considers him- or herself to be honest, brave, and worthy is likely to be so,
as our outer lives are first decided in our inner hearts.

Levels of Morality

A person’s level of morality is one of the most important dimensions of leadership,

determining whether people will trust and respect the leader. Regardless of the code of
ethics, a society teaches and regardless of one’s values, on what basis does the individual make
ethical decisions? What motive, goal, or frame of reference does the person bring to moral
dilemmas? There are many ideas on this question, but the work of social psychologist
Lawrence Kohlberg occupies center stage.

Kohlberg explains that each person makes ethical decisions according to three levels
of moral development—pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional.

Different people go through the six stages of moral development at different rates, and
some people never reach the principled morality of stages 5 and 6. Individuals who remain at
lower levels of morality experience arrested developmental integrity. The egocentric
orientation of stages 1 and 2 is most characteristic of preadolescent children, whereas the
community-oriented morality of stages 3 and 4 is common in teenagers and most adults. The
self-direction and high principles of stages 5 and 6 are characteristic of only 20 percent of the
adult population, with only 5 percent to 10 percent of the population operating consistently at
stage 6.
 Lessons in Obedience

In the 1960s, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, performed a series

of experiments on obedience. Milgram demonstrated how a situation can overpower an
individual’s conscience. His findings have been used to explain the great atrocities of our time:
the Holocaust, the My Lai massacre, the genocide in Rwanda, and Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

Milgram drew his subjects from all walks of life, including lawyers, firefighters, and
construction workers. They all agreed to accept $4.50 per hour to participate in an experiment
on learning and punishment. In the experiment, they were told by a doctor in a white coat to act
as “teachers” by reading a list of associations to a “learner,” who was out of sight but could
hear in the next room. If the learner got an association wrong, the teacher was instructed to give
him an electric shock, increasing the voltage after each incorrect answer. The first shock was
labeled “Slight shock—15 volts.” The last was labeled “Danger: severe shock—450 volts.”

Of course, the real experiment was on the teachers to see how much punishment they
would administer. At 180 volts, the learner, who was an actor, would cry out that he could not
stand the pain; at 300 volts, he refused to participate; at 330 volts, there was silence. To
Milgram’s surprise, 65 percent of the teachers pushed on to the end, 450 volts, even if they were
told the learner had a mild heart condition. Many of the teachers were seriously
upset—sweating profusely, biting their lips—but with the prodding of the white-coated
experimenter, they continued despite their moral qualms.

Milgram’s research demonstrated how ordinary people could be induced to perform

inhumane acts simply by the presence of an authority figure. Milgram also found that the more
psychological distance the subjects had from the victim, the more likely they were to follow
orders to the bitter end. If the teacher only read the questions but did not administer the shocks,
90 percent finished the experiment. However, if the teacher had to touch the learner to
administer the shocks, then only 30 percent went up to 450 volts.

Milgram’s studies have been replicated in Australia, Germany, Jordan, and other
countries around the world, all with similar results. Milgram began his experiments because he
wanted to prove William Shirer’s theory advanced in Inside the Third Reich, that Hitler
could happen only in Germany. His experiments at Yale and New Haven showed that Hitler
could happen in America as well.

Virtue: The Nature of Level III, Stage 6 Morality

Moral evolution has followed a path from preconventional (level I, stage 1) to

post-conventional ethics (level III, stage 6). Increasingly, people as individuals versus people
as a society have become the basis of moral judgments. The sentiment that just because the
majority of a group or society judges an act to be right or wrong does not make it so reflects this
orientation toward individual conscience (personal principles), as opposed to collective
thought (community standards) or self-service (egocentric morality).

At level III, stage 6 morality, a person’s view of right and wrong depends on the
meaning she or he attaches to personal existence, and that meaning is based on self-discovered
and self-accepted values. This is the orientation of German writer Hermann Hesse’s young
Siddhartha, even after he had listened to the teachings of Buddha Siddartha Guatama
(Shakyamuni):

“Do not be angry with me, O Illustrious One,” said the young man. “I have not spoken to you thus to quarrel with you about words.
You are right when you say that opinions mean little, but may I say one thing more? I did not doubt you for one moment. Not for one moment
did I doubt that you were the Buddha, that you have reached the highest goal that so many thousands of Brahmins and Brahmins’ sons are
striving to reach.

“You have done so by your seeking, in your way, through thought, through meditation, through knowledge, through enlightenment.
You have learned nothing through teachings, and so I think, O Illustrious One, that nobody finds salvation through teachings. To nobody, O
Illustrious One, can you communicate in words and teachings what happened to you in the hour of your enlightenment?
 “The teachings of the enlightened Buddha embrace much, they teach much—how to live righteously, how to avoid evil. But there is
one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not contain; it does not contain the secret of what the Illustrious One himself experienced—he
alone among hundreds of thousands.

“That is what I thought and realized when I heard your teachings. That is why I am going on my way—not to seek another and better
doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers and to reach my goal alone—or die. But I will often remember this
day, O Illustrious One, and this hour when my eyes beheld a holy man.”

In 1884, Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a moving story
that appeals to readers of all ages. The novel centers on Huck’s struggles to reconcile the
dictates of society with his feelings regarding slavery. In the end, Huck decides that a
society’s rules can be unjust and that his sense of right and wrong must be followed.

The following example depicts level III, stage 6 morality in the world of work. It shows
how important it is for people to determine their moral principles, whether religious or secular
and to decide on ethical conduct in the light of the meaning they attach to their own lives. It also
shows that an individual’s actions are most virtuous when they proceed from the highest
motives, utilize the best means, and achieve the best consequences. The absence of any one of
these qualities will result in less than level III, stage 6 morality—and less than one’s potential
for moral virtue.

All three—motives, means, and consequences—are necessary ingredients of virtuous,

level III, stage 6 moral leadership. We use these criteria to judge the character of a leader both in
the instance and over time. We have the highest respect for those leaders who behave with honor
throughout their lives. Their records are known, and the verdict is given—these are the great
leaders. When faced with a moral dilemma, they do not ask, Will I go to jail? (Level I morality),
or Will my reputation suffer? (level II morality), but What is the right thing to do? (level III
morality). Virtuous leaders know the difference between reputation and character: the first
is what people say about them; the second is what they do when no one is watching.

Ethics and the Legal Department

The philosopher Lou Marinoff gives practical advice about leadership and moral
dilemmas: Everyone’s ethical warning lights go off at different times. Although working will
always involve compromises, it is important to know when an action may take you over a line
you do not want to cross. In these situations, your conscience should guide you.

In the world of work, ethics is typically the purview of the legal department. But being
legal may or may not mean being moral. Legality includes everything the law permits or
doesn’t expressly forbid. Morality is an even older idea, predating even legislated laws.

By all means, you should do what the people in the legal department advise you to abide
by the law, but you must never lose your moral compass. If something makes you morally upset,
so much so that you know what you are doing is wrong, don’t let legality alone appease you.
The argument that “I was only following orders” won’t absolve you if you make a moral error.
Remember, every society has laws, but not all laws are just.

So what is a person to do? The best advice is to follow the dictum “nonharm to
sentient beings.” This is the basis of every professional code of ethics and every moral
society. If your actions cause harm to others, they are immoral. Systems of morality and the
laws of a society can get complicated, but if you live by this basic requirement, you will have a
clear conscience.