Doing the Right Thing Well: Experiments in Ethical Leadership

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Doing the Right Thing WellExperiments in
Ethical Leadership
Charles Westerberg and Carol Wickersham Beloit
College
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Assumptions

• By virtue of their education, all graduates,
  across the curriculum, will have the capacity for
  and responsibility of exercising leadership.
• Good leadership is both ethical and effective.
• Leadership is shaped by the individual leader,
  her context and applicable texts.

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The Problem

• The highly contextual nature of practicing
  leadership.
• Potential leaders can often be unprepared for the
  contexts they encounter outside of the classroom.
• Cultivating leadership outside of disciplinary
  boundaries.
• Finding a way to provide aspiring leaders with
  the tools to connect the texts they encounter in
  the classroom with the contexts they will
  encounter beyond it.

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The Conceptual Frame

• Seeing the practice of leadership as a set of
  experiments (Gandhi)1.
• Working to avoid the snare of preparation
  (Addams)2.

• Gandhi, Mohandas K. 1993. An Autobiography The
  Story of My Experiments with Truth. Beacon
  Press.
• Addams, Jane. 2008. Twenty Years at Hull House.
  Dover Publications

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Leadership as Experiment

• Far be it from me to claim any degree of
  perfection for these experiments. I claim for
  them nothing more than does a scientist who,
  though he conducts his experiments with the
  utmost accuracy, forethought and minuteness,
  never claims any finality about his conclusions,
  but keeps an open mind regarding them. I have
  gone through deep self-introspection, searched
  myself through and through, and examined and
  analysed every psychological situation. Yet I am
  far from claiming and finality or infallibility
  about my conclusions. One claim I do indeed make
  and it is this. For me they appear to be
  absolutely correct, and seem for the time being
  to be final. For if they were not, I should base
  no action on them. But at every step I have
  carried out the process of acceptance or
  rejection and acted accordingly. And so long as
  my acts satisfy my reason and my heart, I must
  firmly adhere to my original conclusions.
• --Mohandas K. Gandhi

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Avoiding the Snare
It was not until years afterward that I came
upon Tolstoys phrase the snare of preparation,
which he insists we spread before the feet of
young people, hopelessly entangling them in a
curious inactivity at the very period of life
when they are longing to construct the world anew
and to conform it to their own ideals. Jane
Addams
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Course Design

• Creating a course that forces interaction between
  text and context.
• Connecting leadership to a diverse set of
  experiences.
• Pairing action in a leadership setting with
  academic reflection.

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Examples of assignments

• Sets of field notes analysing student's
  individually chosen on-site leadership
  initiatives in light of assigned texts
• Short papers reflecting on current issues and
  media in light of classic and academic texts
• Interviews with community leaders
• Work in groups to develop a mechanism to share
  what has been learned from community leaders

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Some quotes from students

• ...(L)earning about different leadership styles
  encouraged me to challenge myself to
  experiment...Some, such as Thoreau, believe that
  'the government is best that governs the least.'
  Others, such as the chair of the Board of
  Trustees of Beloit College, feel that central
  planning is the most effective way to lead. In
  trying on these approaches with my group, I found
  that mutual adjustment leads to effective group
  decision-making and that the challenge for me is
  to learn how and when to delegate. Senior,
  Economics and Management.

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I learned from community leaders and from the
readings that a good leader is someone who
doesn't need to take credit (but sometimes has
to take blame). They are willing to share the
work and credit. I believe this is the noble
and humble, and most of all ethical, thing to
do. It also works! This was talked about by the
Principal at the elementary school and by Lao
Tsu, even by Plato in our first reading. Those
leaders who need the credit are in it for the
wrong reasons. They are not focused on the goal
or the mission of their project. Many of these
leaders who are in it for the glory become
corrupt. I have wondered sometimes if students
who are in it just for the grades have the same
problem. Senior, sociology
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The assignments in the class were inspiring and
motivating--and hard! I had never read
philosophy before, but now I can say I know what
Machiavelli and John Calvin and others were
talking about. I not only know in my head, I
know because we were pushed to try it out. I
was blessed to read about the humility of Dr.
King and now I know about Napoleon and hubris.
All of the texts resonated within me to give me
insight I never had experienced before. In this
class reading and assignments were like
labs-- you do the experiment (reading and
projects), and you hope for results
(understanding). Junior, Biochemistry
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I feel like my greatest success as a leader in
this group was recognizing the role that hope
played in this capricious process, and inspiring
a consistent level of optimism throughout the
semester. Honestly, I better understand Letter
from a Birmingham Jail, though I'm no Martin
Luther King, and our issues were small in
comparison. But I now know holding the vision
and the hope for the group is one of the things
a leader has to do.Sophmore, Sociology, Health
and Society
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Reflection

• Most higher education provides information
  students need to be effective leaders.
• This information often exists in a dispersed and
  disconnected way.
• What this course seeks to provide is a mechanism
  or interface that allows students to easily
  access and appropriately apply this information.
• Academic reflection about happenings in actual
  leadership contexts provides needed practice with
  this interface.

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Conclusions

• The structure of the course was successful.
• Iteration is necessary to leverage contextual
  opportunities.
• There is wide interest in broadening the types of
  leadership education available to undergraduates.