LEADERSHIP

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Psychology 1508 Dirty Hands
Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is
not enough we must do. Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
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Leading With Dirty Hands?
How you cling to your purity, young man! How
afraid you are to soil your hands! All right,
stay pure! What good will it do? Why did you
join us? Purity is an idea for a yogi or a monk
To do nothing, to remain motionless, arms at
your side, wearing kid gloves. Well, I have
dirty hands. Right up to the elbows. Ive
plunged them in filth and blood. But what do you
hope? Do you think you can govern
innocently? Jean Paul Sartre

• The inevitability of errors
• The inevitability of wrongdoing

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Choosing Between Right and Right
The inspirational approach to ethics offers
little help with serious conflicts of
responsibility.... What to do when one clear
right thing must be left undone in order to do
another or when doing the right thing requires
doing something wrong? Joseph Badaracco
An ethical decision typically involves choosing
between two options one we know to be right and
another we know to be wrong. A defining moment,
however, challenges us in a deeper way by asking
us to choose between two or more ideals in which
we deeply believe. Such challenges rarely have a
correct response. Joseph Badaracco
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The Case of Honest Abe
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Choices leaders MUST make

• Delivering bad news
• layoffs
• criticism
• Remaining competitive
• local manufacturing
• how much to pay and to whom?
• Political leadership
• defining life (Terry Schiavo, abortion, etc)
• just war?
• Exit or Voice? (Stone, 1994)

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Making Right Versus Right Decisions

• Hierarchy of Values
• Principled AND Flexible (Janusian)
• Life and liberty as highest values (axiomatic)

If freedom is lost, there will not even be
equality among the unfree. Karl Popper
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Making the Right Decision

• Clarify personal hierarchy of values
• Take time to reflect (Batson and Darley, 1973)

If there is a hallmark characteristic of
authentic and exemplary leaders, it is that they
continuously reflect back to move
forward. Bruce Avolio
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Making the Right Decision

• Clarify personal hierarchy of values
• Take time to reflect (Batson and Darley, 1973)
• Ask questions (of self and others)
• Empathize
• Seek beautiful enemies
• Think systemically
• Courage to face the truth and pay the price

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The Inevitable Price of Leadership

• The pain of wrongdoing
• The pain of making mistakes
• The pain of suffering rejection

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So why do it?

• The desire to make a difference!

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It is not the critic who counts not the man who
points out how the strong man stumbles or where
the doer of deeds could have done better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the
arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes
up short again and again, because there is no
effort without error or shortcoming, but who
knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions,
who spends himself for a worthy cause who, at
the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high
achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails,
at least he fails while daring greatly, so that
his place shall never be with those cold and
timid souls who knew neither victory nor
defeat. Theodore Roosevelt (courtesy of
Vikram)