By Linda Fisher Thornton What is flawed thinking? What harm can it cause? What can we do about it? This post looks at the harm we can do when we fall victim to our very human tendency to use flawed thinking about people who are not like us. If we don't question an assumption or a piece of information, we may automatically "file it" and let it become the basis for decisions and actions that are unethical.
Category: Trends
Artificial Intelligence and Ethical Accountability: An Action Plan
By Linda Fisher Thornton Managing the ethics of artificial intelligence is only becoming more complex over time, and the stakes are high for finding a path forward. This week I am sharing a special report “AI: Where Are We Now?” published by EDUCAUSE. This timely report includes an article I wrote for the EDUCAUSE Review titled “Artificial Intelligence and Ethical Accountability.”
Ethical Values Are Good For Business (Part 7)
By Linda Fisher Thornton We need to get leadership right because so much depends on it. Many global factors are driving changes in ethical leadership expectations, and in high-stakes times, how we handle ethical leadership development can make or break our success. This week I’ve created a graphic that brings the expectations and priorities into clearer focus.
Ethical Values Are Good For Business (Part 6)
By Linda Fisher Thornton Ethical values can drive positive business results, but only if leaders continually learn and apply better leadership, and stretch to grow. With the bar for expected leadership set so high, it will be a continual career-long stretch for our leaders. But leaders shouldn't be scared off by this, because taking this journey also provides a deep sense of meaning, satisfaction and making a positive difference.
Ethical Values Are Good For Business (Part 5)
By Linda Fisher Thornton Ethical values are good for business, but only if you keep up as times change. Right now, expectations are high and Ibelieve that values-based leadership is gaining momentum. Recently I was asked to explain why I think so, and I thought I would share my answer in today’s blog post. Here are a number of trends that I see that are working together to fuel the movement toward leading with positive values.
10 Years of Top Posts: Leading in Context Blog
By Linda Fisher Thornton This week I’m sharing The Last 10 Years of Top Posts on the Leading in Context Blog. It’s a time capsule of the issues you thought were most important over the last 10 years. For each year, I have selected a theme that reflects the topics and focus of the reader's most read posts.
Top Post Series of 2022: Leading in Context Blog
By Linda Fisher Thornton The Top Post Series for last year on the Leading in Context Blog reflected the urgent need to move ethical thinking and decision making forward in organizations. It featured specific areas of focus and strategies for improving organizational ethics. Use these posts to identify areas you want to improve in 2023.
Top 10 Posts of 2022: Leading in Context Blog
By Linda Fisher Thornton Of the 52 weekly posts published on the Leading in Context Blog in 2022, these 10 were the most popular. See if you notice a theme that connects these new topics that readers accessed most frequently:
Focus on Teaching Students How to Think (Not What To Think)
By Linda Fisher Thornton Have you noticed that the current fray about what to teach about difficult subjects has been focused on teaching "one way or the other?" "Are you for it or against it? and "Which side are you on?" This approach completely misses the point that the purpose of education is not to teach students what to think. It's to teach students how to think, and how to navigate differences respectfully.
Transdisciplinary Thinking Leads to Better Decisions
By Linda Fisher Thornton There's a problem that people don't talk about often enough. In the quest to understand things, we have divided up content and areas of science and our world in general into categories that we label (like biology, art, and psychology for example) and think of as separate. People study inside these realms intensely until they become experts in them. The problem is that these divisions and their labels are false constructs that we have imposed on a world that is much more complex than the categories convey. When we think in these simple terms (and teach using them) we are oversimplifying our decision making, and that can lead us to make choices that don't lead to the outcomes we want.
Get News Closer to the Source
By Linda Fisher Thornton We have a "spin" problem in the media and it's out of control. Unfortunately, many media channels have decided that clicks, and the dollars they generate, are more important than journalistic integrity. So we end up with people getting what they think is "news" when what they are actually getting is from sources of "infotainment," and using that bad information to make bad decisions and even in some cases commit crimes. Infotainment sources that incite anger, violence, and bad decisions do not care about you. They are using you as a pawn for their own financial gain.
No Routine Decisions
By Linda Fisher Thornton As a leadup to a keynote I'm doing for the Michigan Association of School Boards, I was invited to submit a feature article for their fall issue of the MASB LeaderBoard. In the article, "Meeting the Challenge of Ethical Decision Making," I write about how since the start of the pandemic, decision making has become more complex and requires much more intentional decision making.
Leading the Return to In-Person Work: 5 Perspectives
By Linda Fisher Thornton This week I am sharing 5 interesting articles that tackle the challenge of leading the process of returning to in-person work. They each share a slightly different perspective. As a reminder, there are many human issues to consider beyond just keeping people well as we learn to live with COVID-19, and I discussed some of them in a previous post. Below are 5 additional resources, each highlighting issues to consider as you lead the return to the office this fall.
Recognizing Ethical Issues (Part 6)
By Linda Fisher Thornton In Part 1 of this series on Recognizing Ethical Issues, I addressed the gaps in our thinking that require us to develop an ethical alert system. in Part 2, I explored why some leaders who want to do the right thing still don't "do the work" to learn how to do it. In Part 3, I dug into the importance of ethical awareness as the basis for ethical decision making. In Part 4 I described ways to develop ethical thinking. In Part 5, I shared some recent blog posts about how to recognize ethical issues in current events and make good decisions about them. In Part 6, I provide an overview of each post in the series and an opportunity for you to practice recognizing ethical issues with your teams.
Navigating Return to Work Challenges: Virginia Business
By Linda Fisher Thornton Today I'm sharing an article from Virginia Business called Future Shock that includes my recent interview with John Blackwell. His article focuses on how leaders are navigating through the many challenges of returning to in-person work after workers have enjoyed the increased flexibility of remote work during the pandemic.
Leading in Context 