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.
Category: Talking About Ethics
Ethics and Leadership Should Be Learned Together
By Linda Fisher Thornton Preparing leaders for ethical leadership is a long-term process. It requires careful thought about the messages we are sending. For example, what message are we sending when we separate ethics training from other leadership training?
Ethical Perspectives: Rights, Responsibilities, and Freedom
By Linda Fisher Thornton While some people think of rights, responsibilities and freedom separately, in a compartmentalized way, I believe they cannot be separated, and according to John Courtney Murray, freedom was always intended to be grounded in ethical values.
Making Ethics Clear
By Linda Fisher Thornton Workplace issues are complex and opinions vary about the right thing to do in challenging situations. This complexity and uncertainty combine to create a "murky uncertainty" that may keep people from giving us their best, most ethical performance. Leaders may intend to create an ethical culture, but may still have difficulty getting past the murky uncertainty about what ethics means. To move beyond the uncertainty, we need to take the time to talk about ethical behavior and how we will make ethical decisions.
Insights For The Class of 2023
By Linda Fisher Thornton While the world will pull you in many different compelling directions, it is your values that will keep you anchored. Become aware of them. Nurture them…Know what you believe in. Live it. Set an example for others by building a good, ethical life in a chaotic world.
What’s the Difference? Is It Fake News or Misinformation?
By Linda Fisher Thornton Most people are concerned about how much information that is "out there" isn't true. And UPenn found that "misinformation works much more easily than the efforts to undo it. Their data revealed that misinformation is almost always accepted as fact — a staggering 99.6% of the time — whereas attempts to correct it succeed only in only 83% of cases." (UPenn, Misinformation, Misconceptions, and Conspiracy Theories in Communication)
Teach Every Child These 5 Things
By Linda Fisher Thornton Our successful shared future depends on how we raise children now, as they will become our future leaders. There is no way to know which children will be the ones to solve the problems our current leaders are unwilling and/or unable to solve in the future. How we teach and inspire them now will impact their ability to interact with others and lead others in ethical ways.
The Peace Imperative
By Linda Fisher Thornton "Global Peace Index 2022 results show that the average level of global peacefulness deteriorated by 0.03%. Although slight, this is the eleventh deterioration in peacefulness in the last fourteen years" - Vision of Humanity
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.
700th Leading in Context Blog Post: What If?
By Linda Fisher Thornton In my 600th post, I wrote about my top 10 Leadership Lessons Learned. In this 700th post, I want to take a moment to dream and imagine what life could be like if all leaders took the time to learn ethical thinking, decision making and leadership, and applied them every day.
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:
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 in Context 