By Linda Fisher Thornton Since moral growth is a lifelong pursuit, moral education needs to start early, and it needs to continue throughout our professional careers. This requires quite a bit more effort than just doing an "annual ethics training." Since ethical leadership itself is multidimensional and nuanced, any ethical leadership development for leaders must be multifaceted and nuanced.
Tag: Ethical Leadership Development
Ethical Leadership Development: High Level View
By Linda Fisher Thornton What is Ethical Leadership Development? Ethical leadership development is the ongoing process of guiding leaders to become ethical people and ethical leaders. It is not the same thing as compliance training or following legal requirements, although those are also important. This is the human development that happens over time to bring leaders to the point of being able to handle what the world throws at them using ethical thinking and action. The way we develop leaders impacts their growth and readiness to make successful and ethical choices when faced with challenging situations.
10 Quotes to Inspire Leaders in 2024 (Part 2)
By Linda Fisher Thornton This series includes 10 quotes (linked to blog posts with leadership guidance) to inspire you and help you improve your leader development as we head into the new year. Part 1 included the first 5. Here are 5 more:
Hallmarks of Ethical Leadership (Part 5)
By Linda Fisher Thornton In Part 5 of this series on attributes of ethical leadership, I explore the importance of really hearing all stakeholders, including those who are not in the room. Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 in case you missed them.
How to Tell What’s “Right” in a Complex Situation
By Linda Fisher Thornton To understand a complex situation, you first have to WANT to see it as it really is. This means letting go of preconceived ideas of what might be true, and being open to what may unfold as you learn more. After approaching the situation with this open mindset, you need to get more information. As you know from completing puzzles with lots of pieces, a few pieces do not show you the whole picture. As you complete a jigsaw puzzle, you start to see parts of the picture and begin to get a sense of it, but you're definitely still not seeing it as it really is.
Ethical Thinking and Decision Making for Leaders (Part 3)
By Linda Fisher Thornton Ethical Thinking and Decision Making require staying grounded in ethical values, but there is much more to do than knowing our values and living them every day through our choices. In Part 1 of this series, I explored the Depth of our thinking, and in Part 2, I broke down issues related to understanding Context. In Part 3, let’s take a look at Complexity.
Ethical Thinking and Decision Making for Leaders (Part 2)
By Linda Fisher Thornton In Part 1 of this series I looked at the importance of Deep Thinking. In Part 2, we’ll consider the Context. No matter how much effort it takes to understand the context, we can’t expect to make an ethical decision without taking that step.
Responding (Ethically) To An Overwhelmed Employee
By Linda Fisher Thornton "The issue of the overwhelmed employee looms large" according to Josh Bersin, Bersin by Deloitte. (Are You an Overwhelmed Employee? New Research Says Yes, LinkedIn). Employees are having a hard time managing an overload of information and tasks, and the problem is not getting any better.
Systems Thinking: The Diet Soda Puzzle
By Linda Fisher Thornton Research is showing that diet sodas do not help prevent weight loss, and in fact may be a cause of weight gain. How can this be? Since the way we understand it depends on which kind of thinking we use, let's examine the issue using several different kinds of thinking.
Ethical Leaders Care (Part 4)
By Linda Fisher Thornton I wonder what our workplaces would be like if every leader cared. Most leaders care about their own well-being. But what if every leader cared about others? How would things be different? In an organization where every leader cared, wouldn’t we experience improved employee engagement and customer retention? Wouldn’t it be easier to recruit and retain talented and dedicated employees? Wouldn’t we be able to get more done?
Building an Ethical Culture (Part 5)
By Linda Fisher Thornton Leaders are in a unique position to make ethics a priority through their everyday actions, but simply modeling ethics isn’t nearly enough. Here is a starting list of 5 actions leaders can take that move organizations toward an ethical culture, besides telling people how important ethics is and demonstrating it in everyday behavior and choices.
Building an Ethical Culture (Part 4)
By Linda Fisher Thornton Ethical Culture is a System of Systems Don’t assume that an ethical culture will just happen in your workplace. Even if you are a good leader, ethical culture is a delicate thing, requiring intentional positive leadership and daily tending. It requires more than good leadership, more than trust building, and more than good hiring. Why does building an ethical culture require so much more than good leadership? Ethical culture is a system of systems, and just putting in good leadership, trust-building and good hiring doesn’t make it healthy.
Building an Ethical Culture (Part 3)
By Linda Fisher Thornton Ethics has a compounding effect on culture, and our leadership choices determine whether that effect will be positive or negative. Being diligent about ethics in every decision brings the culture ethics dividends. Being careless about ethics brings ethics penalties. The tricky part about managing ethical culture is that every leader decision and action throughout the organization is changing the equation. The culture equation is changing in real time, every day.
Building an Ethical Culture (Part 2)
By Linda Fisher Thornton One of my favorite concepts for understanding how social media is changing the visibility of organizational culture is Trendwatching.com’s report Glass Box Brands. As Trendwatching.com eloquently explains, “In an age of radical transparency, your internal culture is your brand.” The key point I take away from this important report is that we can no longer assume that our culture is private. In fact, it’s completely public and it defines our brand.
Building an Ethical Culture (Part 1)
By Linda Fisher Thornton After I published “Prevention or Cure: Your Choice” about reducing ethical risk and creating a positive culture a reader asked for more information about the business case for prevention. Here are some compelling reasons why the prevention approach is a better business decision than waiting for ethical problems and applying a “cure” after the organization is already in trouble.
Leading in Context 