Week 13

Ethical Leadership Practice



Introduction

Your Agency Interview and Observation assignment is due NEXT week so I am going to make this module quite short with the content. Ethics in leadership is something that frequents the news headlines on a weekly basis. I am guessing that you strive to be ethical as an individual, student, and work (if you are employed). You most likely want to make the best decisions and have the best outcome without cheating, cutting corners, hurting people, stealing, telling lies, scapegoating, or other "unethical behaviors." Unfortunately, being ethical, or what is considered as ethical, is not always an either/or or black/white siutation. There are lots of grey areas and, as a leaders, you will be in the situation where you have to make ethical decisions and the path forward may not always be clear. Brook Deterline, describes how people that describe themselves as "ethical" can find that situational circumstances can lead to bad decisions in this video:

Here is another Ted Talk on the topic of unethical conduct of an individual leader can affect the organizational culture. Mel Fugate also discusses the intersection between ethics and legality, which are quite shocking.

Now that you have watched these videos, the rest of this week's materials are articles about how one can be a more ethical leader and how to judge if you are an ethical leader. Here are this week's readings: