Unleash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Ethical leadership is about much more than making good decisions and abiding by laws and regulations. One of the elements of ethical leadership that may be overlooked when we view ethics using a “legal lens” is supporting and developing the potential of the people we lead.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Part 4 described ways to start developing ethical thinking. In Part 5, I share some recent posts that address current societal issues. Read the ones below that strike you as the most relevant, to learn about how to recognize the nuances of ethical issues in current events and make good decisions about them.
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 will explore how you can develop ethical thinking.
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’ll dig into the importance of ethical awareness as the basis for ethical decision making.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
In Part 1 of this series, I explored why it is important to develop our own internal warning system to alert us when we need to think carefully about ethical issues. In this post, I’ll address why some leaders who want to do the right thing have not yet developed their capacity to detect ethical issues.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
While it may be convenient to think about ethical leadership as a task, a program, or a rule book, that’s not where it lives.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
n How Do You Recognize an Ethical Leader Part 1 and Part 2, I shared 6 special qualities, behaviors and outcomes that define ethical leadership. This week I’ll share three more. These are intentional actions ethical leaders take to stay competent as things change around them.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Ethical leadership failures can be caused by different types of problems that may compound. Some of these problems are individual and others may be embedded in the organizational culture.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Developing ethical leaders and building ethical cultures have become critical business priorities. As if that weren’t already challenging enough, managing ethics well also requires systems thinking and a broad understanding of ethical responsibilities. Why is ethics such a challenge for organizations? It has many dimensions, and while we are sorting them all out, expectations for how well we handle day-to-day challenges are increasing. Keeping up is a formidable challenge.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
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 legal requirements, although those are also important. This is the human development that happens over time that brings leaders to the point of being able to handle what the world throws at them using ethical thinking and action.
Leading in Context 