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The Smartest Guys In The Room

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The Smartest Guys In The Room
The entirety of an organization and its day to day operations is guided by a leader; a leader who is ethical. Ethical leadership is the, “Influence of a moral person who moves others to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons” (P. 262). The importance of ethical leadership is broken down into six factors: the character of the leader, the actions of the leader, the goals of the leader, the honesty of the leader, the power of the leader, and the values of the leader. The first factor, the character of a leader, is a leader whose core values are good and honorable to each and every individuals of different ethnicities. The characteristics of the character of a leader exemplifies six pillars: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, …show more content…
Enron, at the time, was a legitimate energy company that delivered tangible goods. The two bosses of the company, Enron, were Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay. They also had companions that contributed to this disgraceful activity as well. Jeff and Ken were caught constantly lying about everything. They corrupted all of the six factors of an ethical leader and the six pillars of characters, but in this particular incident, they corrupted honesty and trustworthiness. The company and its owners strived firmly on no interference from the government. To most people, this is better known as “Laissez faire”, which is, “The practice or doctrine of noninterference in the affairs of others” (dictionary.com). Due to the fact that there was no government interference, it made Jeff and Ken very believable, thus the reason why they were so convincing until the stock market collapsed. After it collapsed, both Jeff and Ken tried to put the blame on Andy Fastow, who was the CFO that Jeff had hired. Fastow was guided by others involved on the deal and had no idea what was going on. The bosses, Jeff and Ken, were not honest with him about the company before they hired him; later on, this also made them not trustworthy. Fastow was the only one that did not know what was going on so it made sense for the Jeff and Ken to put the blame on him because Fastow was responsible for the paperwork. In
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