Video Transcript: Week 11

Hello, class. So this is the penultimate lecture. So we are on lecture number 11, and this is on Leadership Ethics. So this is kind of cool. We made it this far. I hope you've enjoyed not only my lectures, but certainly all the supplemental information that that we've we provided for this class, and hopefully that has given you the tools you need to be successful on the quizzes and the other things that you have to do as part of this degree program. So I really hope that you're finding value in this class. And it's not over yet. We still have two more modules, so you don't have to be sad about the class ending yet. Certainly, we have two more modules before that happens. Now we're going into Leadership Ethics. Let us open with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank You for Your example, again, your example again and again and again. You have given us a roadmap for Leadership Ethics and how we should be operating ethically. And you know, Lord, as we as we go through and we learn different ethical theories and different ethical words from these philosophers, let us not never forget that you have inspired us all with the way to act ethically and in a way that glorifies you in Jesus name Amen. All right. So this one is very multifaceted. It's kind of different from some of the other lectures and chapters that we have read. It's kind of a general guide to Leadership Ethics. There's, there's, you know, certainly a lot of historical accounts of great leaders and their morals, certainly Jesus, certainly Gandhi. But we're going to look at it as it it's defined and by Western traditions and a little bit of Eastern philosophy as well, but mainly Western. So Western tradition of ethics comes from Plato and Aristotle, and ethics comes from the word ethos, which translates to customs or conduct or character. And It's concerned with the kinds of values and morals that somebody would hold. It provides a systems of rules or principles that guide us making decisions on what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad. Now the secular version would say that came from Aristotle and Plato. We both know that that actually came from a god, and certainly from Genesis all the way through Revelation. It certainly tells us how to act in situations, both in the Old Testament, you know, you think of the 10 Commandments and some of the other laws all the way through Jesus's example and him explaining the laws and further illustrating them through his character. Specifically regarding Leadership Ethics is concerned with what leaders do and who they are. So remember, we talked about leadership behavior a little bit, especially going back to lecture one, and now we're talking about again in lecture 11, but it's also in a decision making situation, the ethical issues that are implicit or explicit to the situation and kind of how those evolve. Remember that a leader's choices are going to be influenced by his or her moral development. Obviously, Christians are going to respond to a moral issue a little bit different than somebody who was raised in a secular home and has secular values and is not a Christian. So that's just something to keep in mind. There's a guy named Kohlberg who came up with the stages of moral development. There's a bunch of them. He discusses the reasoning. We're not going to get into all those, but we will talk a little bit about them in the stage one, which is the obedience and punishment. This person's morality is dictated by authority, so rules are obey, obeyed to avoid punishment. You can think of this with a child who, who may not, who may not want to, you know, sit at dinner and eat their peas, but know, if they don't, then they go to bed without dinner, or they go to bed with some kind of punishment. Stage two is individualism in exchange. So you make moral decisions based on self interests and believes that other people act this way as well. So you're not willing to really engage with the community about it, but you do exchange some figures. Level three is post conventional morality again. Oh, I'm sorry I skipped some again. Remember, this is a Non Christian perspective, interpersonal according conformity, is you make moral choices that conform to others, and that's what makes you a good person. Maintaining the social order is stage four, and you make moral decisions that show concern for the society as a whole, and they realize that by obeying society's rules preserve everyone's safety. You can actually see this one, I think, a lot with the mask mandates and covid 19, especially in the beginning, a lot of people followed masking protocol for their particular country and for their particular county, because they saw as a way that was a good for society. Stage Five is social contract and individual rights, and you make decisions based on your views on what a good society should be like. You also realize that there's different opinions and values of groups, and you negotiate agreement between these different groups and advising laws. And then stage six is universal principles. And that's just universal principles of justice apply to everybody, and everybody's perspectives need to be to be respected. That's kind of a hard thing, because it was his principles were derived from an all male sample. So it's been accused of having some gender bias. Certainly, I can see that, certainly cultural bias, and also it says there is some post conventional morality there, which means that people have to actually place themselves above the law and above society. Along those lines, there are some ethical theories that exist. We're not going to get into all of these. This is not a philosophy class. It's a leadership class, but we will discuss them, and then we will discuss how they relate to leadership theory. There's there's ethical egotism, which states that a person should act as to create the goodest, the greatest good for themselves. Egoism, you can think of egoism as having an ego, and that's a way to remember that utilitarianism, which states we should behave that we should create the greatest good for the greatest number. So you'll see people here that would sacrifice one to save a million. And you sometimes you'll see some ethical some ethical things around that. So, you know, one question is, would you kill this one leader in order to save X number of people. And then there's altruism, which suggests that actions are moral if their primary purpose, person purpose is to promote the best interests of others. So you can certainly see seven as servant leadership, which talks about altruism a lot, which is for the good of others. One sacrifices themselves and their own, their own things. So that's some of the different ones. So if you think about those, remember, egoism is basically the greatest good for yourself. Altruism is the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and then altruism is the greatest good for everybody above yourself. So there's also these things called teleological or dentological theories, and they look at the behavior and the conduct of the leader. So these are sometimes called virtue based theories. And in this perspective, virtues are rooted individual individual and became can be acquired through practice and construction. I think a good example of this is when somebody is a brand new Christian, I think that that they are learning the virtues of being a Christian, and they learn this through practice and instruction, reading the Bible, going to Bible study, those kind of things, virtue based theory stress that the attention should be given to the development and training of moral values. I think we can see that in church as well. Now obviously, between the secular version that I just described and through the spiritual example I gave, there's a lot of room there, right? So I'm asking you to do some critical thinking there and think about those, those moral differences. There's also a number of common virtues which seem to be valued, which date back to Aristotle. So courage, temperance, generosity, self control, honesty, social, sociability, modesty, fairness and justice. I think we have seen those played out as well, especially in America, where some of Aristotle's philosophies there on what are some common virtues have been questioned. And in addition to that, some have said that we have not reached a higher good. We're not altruistic, and we're very focused on ourselves and individual individuality and some of those questions. Questions are coming about, what is the moral fabric of America? And I'm sure it's happening in other countries as well, certainly in European countries. In the western view, in essence, virtue based ethics is about being and becoming a good, worthy human being. Again, as Christians, we know what that means. And you're going to hear me say that a lot through this ethics, and that's why I kind of want to go through this quickly, because I don't really want to fully discuss secular principles when it comes to leadership theory. But what I will say is it's important to understand these concepts, because many of you are not blessed to work in a Christian organization, but you have to work in a secular organization. So as a Christian leader within a secular organization, you need to understand these principles and kind of the mindset of others. So you may be seeing, why aren't you discussing this from a spiritual perspective? And I think that's a fair question and a fair point, and the reason why is because many of you work in secular organizations. So because of that, I have to take a very secular view on this so you understand it, and then you can assimilate your Christian worldview into it, and then be able to teach others about Christ through your example, through their ethical and moral lens, which may not be Christian. Does that make sense? I hope so, all right, the centrality to ethics and leadership, it's about influence and it's about the impact on the rights of those being wed so in order to make a change in other people that it requires a significant and enormous ethical burden and responsibility, and leaders have to be sensitive to how their leadership style affects followers lives. And you've heard me in previous through my examples in previous lectures, especially around leader member exchange, around transformational leadership. Talk about how leaders can affect other sites, right? You know, certainly not every leader is positive. There's going to be a book written by Watkin and Walker, actually, Walker and Watkin, two of my really good friends, Mitch Walker and Stephen, I'm sorry, Stephen Mitch Walker, he I call Mitch, has his friend, but is Stephen Walker and Daryl Watkin that talks about toxic leadership and the impact of that. So remember, there's a lot of undue or there's a lot of influence that a leader has, and that comes with it a certain ethical standard. Ethics is central to leadership, and leaders need to establish and reinforce organizational values. So there's certain values that an organization has, and you certainly have to to establish and reinforce those values. And respect for people is important. I think as Christians, we all understand that we're going back to our old friend, Heifetz, who you remember I referenced in the adaptive chapter, and Heifetz says leadership involves the use of authority to help followers deal with conflicting values that emerge in changing work environments and social cultures. So you must use your authority to mobilize people to face tough issues, and you can get use that authority to get people to pay attention to issues, manage and frame issues and facilitate decision making. So all that's to say is, you haven't met ethical standard, and your job as a leader, you have a moral authority as all these changes are happening to make sure that that ethical standard, that organizational value, is then talked about for your followers. And then is, is, is part of the follower dynamic. Burns is a different one. He's the transformational leadership guy. If you remember, and Burns says that a leader's role attending to the personal motivations and moral development of the followers. So it's important for a leader to morally develop their followers. Now I'm going to this is a criticism of Burns, and I'm also going to say this a scary thought. It's pretty scary to me that my reader, who is not a Christian, he is secular, he is he believes in a religious system that is very conflicting to my own, but that he his responsibility is then to force his morals, which are different from mine As a Christian, onto me. So that is also a criticism of Burns as that the question is, what makes one set of moral batter values better than another? And I would say Christianity values are much better. But besides that, that would be the secular perspective when we talk about this, there is this, this notion of toxic leaders, which I just talked a little bit about. And they the personal characteristics of people who lack integrity or certain values. Is they lack integrity, they have insatiable ambition, they're arrogant, and they have a reckless Disregard for their actions. And because of this, they have been linked with derisive supervision, impervious despotic leadership, dearth of ethics, erratic behavior, narcissism, self promoting and managerial, managerial incompetence. Those are a lot of big SAT words. SATs are standardized tests they use to get into college in certain colleges. But those are a lot of big words, but they basically boil down to this, leaders who are focused on themselves and have no moral compass, destructive leaders. They use charisma in a negative way, and use person and coercion to to cause bad for their followers, because they only care about themselves. So let's talk about, I'm going to shift away from that, because I think we've talked a lot about some of the damaging effects of certain leaders in this class, and I want to shift to a Christian perspective. And I'm actually going to put away my notes for this, so you're going to see me close my notes right now, and let's talk about what it means to be a Christian leader. As a Christian leader, we need to follow Christ, right? So Christ set the ultimate example for us. Christ was a very moral leader. You know, obviously had a moral compass, followed the commandments, followed God's will, was in God's will. And I think as a leader, we have a ethical responsibility to be in God's will and to lead our organizations as Jesus would lead them. You know, there's a popular bracelet. What would Jesus do, and that is a great question for readers, is, would Jesus want you to lie and steal and cheat to get ahead in your organization? Would Jesus want you to step on somebody to get a promotion? Would Jesus wants you to disparage and degrade your followers in order to get ahead. The answer to all that is obviously no. So when we think about these leadership theories, and again, I talked about why, I talked about the secular approach, I want us to end and close on this note, instead of talking about the bad stuff, which I just put away, I want us to close on this note, which is, leadership is a very powerful concept. And remember, we talked about it. It's about influence, and you can influence others in a very negative way, or you can influence others in a very positive way. The good news is, as Christians, God has given us a roadmap to exactly what leadership is supposed to look like. And what I would do is, I would challenge you to live your life like Christ would, and to lead your organizations like Christ would, and to lead your followers like Christ would. So that is my that is my appeal to you. Before I close in prayer, I just want to ask you a couple questions. Ethics should provide to all people within an organization. Of course it should. Ethics are not just for Christians. Of course it's not. Ethical egoism is concerned with doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. We know that is not true, and then going down to multiple choice, let's see which ethical leadership principle is concerned with being open and representing reality fully and completely as possible. Those are leaders that are honest, altruistic service. Leadership includes listening and self promoting, destructive leadership thrives in environments that are unstable, the dark side of leadership is closely related to pseudo transformational. Remember, we talked about that in transformational. Finally, leaderships that focus on leaders characteristics are known as virtue based. And give you one more denotological theory focuses on duty, and you can get that word from the word denotological. Let's close in prayer, Heavenly Father, thank you for being the ethical example for us to follow as Christians. Thank you for giving us the right path forward and showing us the way you are, the way, the truth and the light. And Lord, you teach us how to lead in light. And we thank you for that Lord. And we, we, we just praise you for that Lord. So Lord, as we close out this last, this penultimate module, and go into the ultimate module, the last module, which focuses on team leadership, I pray that we will think about these ethical principles and how to lead in a world that needs you more than ever. Lord in Jesus name Amen. Thank you so much, my friends and I'll see you for next module.