How Ethics Influences Leadership

How Ethics Influences Leadership In order to draw a correlation of ethics to leadership and provide an overview, I find that I must first place the elements of the correlation into the following contextual reference: definitions offered in the textbook, the objectives of the lesson(s), and finally our societal or cultural paradigms at play. In our textbook Supervision by Certo, ethics is defined as the principles by which people distinguish what is morally right and leadership as the management function of influencing people to act or not act in a certain way (Certo, 2008). With these definitions in mind, one could make the assumption that this overview might dare attempt to capture the essence of how ethics influences good leadership. Certo implies that in order for the supervisor to enjoy the benefits of trust that is built by employing high ethical standards such as increased loyalty, cooperation, communication, and results then he must be prepared to consistently model the attributes of an effective leader by his fair and predictable behavior. An outstanding theme throughout this class has been the focus on the qualities or characteristics of an effective leader. While Maxwell’s 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader is an excellent source of devotionals dedicated to the application and development of building leadership skills, I would like to reference Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as an outside source that not only reflects the sentiments of the objectives to be captured but solidifies their application with his principle-centered, character-based, inside-out approach to effective leadership skills. Covey’s research notes that in our country’s last 200-years, it has only been in the last fifty or so years that the we have evolved or shifted from character-based ethical standards that measured success with things like integrity, humility, modesty, and the Golden Rule to the state of affairs we are in today that looks to

References: Certo, S. C. (2008). Supervision: Concepts & Skill-Building. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Ciulla, J. B. (1995). Leadership Ethics: Mapping The Territory. Business Ethics Quarterly , 5-28. Covey, S. R. (2004). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Free Press. Jackson, L. A. (2005, October 01). Mywire. Retrieved April 26, 2008, from The Business of Ethics: The Importance of Working with Integrity: http://mywire.com/pubs/BlackEnterprise/2005/10/01/1323628 Maxwell, J. C. (2003). Growth and Leadership: There 's No Such Thing as "Business" Ethics. Retrieved April 26, 2008, from Business Know-How: http://www.businessknowhow.com/growth/ethics.htm Maxwell, J. C. (1999). The 21 Indespensable Qualities of a Leader. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc.