Unleash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Generating an intentional positive ethical impact is the successful ethical leadership of the future, and it’s already here. The Forum For the Future describes it as net positive leadership – making a positive contribution to society and leaving things better than we found them.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Much attention is paid to the tactics of ethics – the ethics codes, compliance plans and such. We can easily begin to think that ethics is something we can see and touch. Something finite. Something written in stone. Something outside of ourselves.
But that’s not where ethics lives.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
In the quest for corporate integrity, we must do a number of things well. We need to have clear expectations for what ethical leadership looks like in our organization; we need a congruent system for managing ethics that sends a consistent message; and we need a clear message about what taking responsibility for ethics really means to us.
There is an ethics trend away from a “push” mentality when it comes to learning about ethics (making people do it) to a “pull” mentality (making it positive so that people will want to do it).
Taking on that “pull mentality” involves creating a positive ethical environment:
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Ethical expectations are continually increasing, and it is not always easy for leaders to keep up with the changes. This week, I’m sharing an assessment to help you answer the question “How current is my message about ethics?”
By Linda Fisher Thornton
If you’ve read the news lately, you’ve noticed that there is a lot of discussion about who is right. Each person has an individual perspective that seems to be right from where they sit. Each group has values and norms that seem right. How can we make sense out of it all? When we need to make a critical decision, and everyone around us is arguing passionately for a different approach, how will we know which one is most right?
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Openness to learning about other cultures has become a necessary component of leadership. One way to help people respect cultural differences is to build what UNESCO calls “intercultural competence.”
By Linda Fisher Thornton
5 More Ways to Avoid the “Rightness” Trap
The comments kept coming! Here here are 5 More Ways to Avoid the “Rightness” Trap based on social media responses to Is Needing to Be “Right” Unethical? They are each illustrated here with quotes.
10 Ways to Avoid the “Rightness” Trap
There were quite a few responses to last week’s post about “rightness, Is Needing to Be “Right” Unethical?, which seemed to strike a chord with readers. These are just 10 of the themes raised by readers in their comment. Collectively, these themes represent 10 ways to avoid falling into the “rightness” trap.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Author’s Note: In a previous post, Civility is an Ethical Issue, I explained why civility is an ethical issue. In this post I’ll explore the connection between civility and openness to learning.
Moving From Tolerance to Civility in Conversation
It seems that “civility” has come to mean something closer to the word “tolerance” in everyday conversation. Civil behavior now seems to imply an aloof stance that doesn’t step directly on anyone’s toes, but that is not nearly enough. According to W. Jason Wallace, we should be “moral agents” who “share moral relationships.”
Customers shop globally now, and when they buy, they compare products more and more often based on ethics. In addition to shopping cautiously during the recession when money is tight, there’s also a trend toward thinking about how each purchase impacts the global community and the planet.
How Much Homework is Too Much?
As we build awareness about learning, motivation and the general well-being of children, more people are beginning to wonder if the way we use homework is part of the solution or part of the problem.
The idea for this post came from a reader’s comment about how new the area of social media leadership is to the leadership community (Thanks Justin!).
Here are some resources that will help you lead others through engagement with social media engagement and the new ways we communicate in business today:
There is a completely new mindset required to navigate the complex issues of our time. Sustainability is a word that is being used to describe the practice of operating as if our impact on the world and its resources truly matters…
Leading in Context 