Go ahead. Look deep into the eyes of young children, deep into the recesses of their souls. If you do, you will see goodness and only that. You will see purity and innocence and hope – the fragrance of spring. You will see this even in the eyes of troubled kids, the ones you may not want as your own. Look past their behaviors for a moment and you will see goodness in them as well. I know this because I’ve seen it time and time again – as a parent, teacher, and leader across many, many schools.
I know this because I have spent my life encountering people, especially young people. Teachers will tell you if you ask them. For they know best. They encounter children each day the way a poet encounters words, the way a sailor knows the sea. Throughout my life, I have witnessed good prevail over evil countless times. I have seen the death of winter give way to the fragrance of spring. These encounters have given me a sense of the inherent goodness of people, no matter how naïve that sounds or hard it is to believe.
I say this because there is a recurring truth and defining quality among great leaders that cannot be understated: They seek to serve not themselves but others. If we look beyond the politics and processes of leadership, we will find honest-to-god goodness there among our best leaders. Yes, of course. We know. Not all leaders have this quality, but the best ones do. Without it, leaders become what we see too often – self-serving, power-hungry, rudder-less. Our post-modern manners have given rise to ethical decision-makers who situationalize, marginalize, and then rationalize their every move – no matter how unctuous they may be. When this happens, we suffer the consequences of the foolish (that would be us) and turn our moral authority over to the feckless and foolhardy (that would be them).
Servant-leadership as ethical leadership
Though we can define leaders in many ways, we all know quality leaders when we see them and you will never find one who is unethical. After many years serving in many roles and with many great leaders, I have come to learn that leadership is the process of making decisions and navigating the fallout from those decisions. Not making decisions is easy, of course. Watching from the sidelines and critiquing the decisions of others is easier still. And so it goes in the daily life of leaders in organizations both large and small.
As leaders, we can’t pick and choose our decisions like we’re squeezing a tomato at the market. Nothing is ever quite that easy. No matter how small, almost all decisions are ethical ones. Once you get beyond the black-and-white decisions around which color of paper to print the brochure on or whether the buses should enter through the north or south gate, you find yourself mired in ethical messes. One of the more compelling struggles I faced as a principal was the inevitable “wiggle room” discussion that was had in the final hours leading up to graduation. Each year, administrators across our schools are faced with issues like this one, and others related to student discipline and grades and the very real notion of “second chances.” These decisions are all ethical ones, made among a milieu of skepticism and in full view of the critics.
Yes, most students either graduate or not – no questions about it. Some complete all the needed measures with room to spare and a few miss one or two parts by wide margins – making their fate regrettable but easy to forecast. Still, each year there are a few kids on the bubble and it’s the job of daring counselors and administrators to wrestle with the consequences of their decisions as they work with teachers and students to give kids second chances to retake a course or make-up an assignment. I recall one such case many years ago where a student had all the graduation requirements in place, but did not meet a district attendance mandate and missed the final exam. The funny thing was that the teacher didn’t even catch it. Not knowing the rule, the teacher passed the student in a manner inconsistent with stated policy. A guidance counselor noticed the error and brought it to my attention – just hours before graduation.
The decision I made in this case and many others was shaped by many forces and become another clash of ethical principles. Among those were district policy, my allegiance to the district, and my own professional liability. I was hired to interpret and follow policy and we can’t have leaders in place who just make stuff up. In fact, a number of leaders who I’ve known would not have thought twice about failing the student and blaming the policy for its harsh requirements. Of course, the other forces at play were purely affective. The student, his family, his future. This is where the ethics of fairness and virtue come into play. Once we realize that these situations are not being played out in a textbook, decisions become much more difficult. Lives are affected all way around.
Servant leadership as genuine leadership
Though some leaders carry themselves as automatons, most cannot separate their work lives and their work decisions from their personal ones. I firmly believe that we are who we are and those qualities undergird the decisions we make as leaders. We all grow. We all mature. We might even soften (or harden) a bit over time. But most of us are who we were raised to be and that person will come through in the toughest of times. In the ethical dilemma stated above, all the key stakeholders at the school had a personal stake and not just a professional one.
As for the research on ethics, it attempts to outline and quantify ethical decision-making as if it were a five-step plan – like a list of do’s and don’ts in a Hurricane Survival Guide. Nearly all of the decisions I have faced are either too complex for that or must be resolved too quickly for that kind of deliberation and study.
Let us be clear that leaders are shaped and judged at all times, even when they least expect it. People are watching and listening very closely. That’s why I submit that ethical leaders must first be genuine, meaning that leaders should be upfront with their thinking and their decisions, even their agendas. In this way, being ethical is akin to being genuine.
In the post-modern age, we are surrounded by too many self-serving leaders. Worse yet, we find many people who seek to “get ahead” without being willing to work very hard or learn very much. These leaders operate in formal and informal ways to undermine the virtues of organizations and individuals. They even teach others that getting ahead at all costs is an accepted practice in business and other formal enterprises.
I reject that notion.
As naive as it sounds, I believe that great organizations are built as servants and by servants. Though we have sometimes strayed from this model, servant leadership is in great demand as we enter a new age. The people I encounter in my life and workplace are eager to be led, to be supported, and to be celebrated. They are fully prepared to be inspired, if only there was something worthy of it. Though our very nature causes us to serve ourselves first, our true virtue causes us to serve others as well. We are not satisfied unless both callings are clear.
In a speech to students at Tubingen University in Germany many years ago, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair called on young people to “resolve an apparent conflict between old and new, modernizers and traditionalists.” He said: “The resolution of this conflict lies in applying traditional values to the modern world; to leave outdated attitudes behind; but re-discover the essence of traditional values and then let them guide us in managing change. The theologians among you will say it is reuniting faith and reason.”
So there it is: faith and reason as antecedents to leadership. It’s a good starting point. We have learned from a long trail of failures that our society doesn’t need more blind rule-followers or policy wonks. We have too many of those already. We need leaders who bring authenticity and positivism to work each day and help others to share in it. In truth, it’s tough to remain positive in an age of critics – to suffer what we might describe as the great pangs of positivism. In fact, it is easier to give in to the pressures of unsavory leadership in an unseemly world.
So I challenge our young leaders to rage against this attitude and stand firm in the face of the ethical pressures they face. We need those of you who choose to suffer the pangs of positivism, who trust in the mercy of the many, who dance in the delight of a new dawn, and have seen the jubilant sun pierce even the darkest clouds. We need those who have seen goodness and hope in the eyes of young children. We need those who believe in the reincarnation of innocence in the souls of many.
So let us suffer the pangs of positivism. Let us be naïve in the face of the critics. Let us be hopeful and ethical and servant-minded.
And, if need be, let us be imbeciles in a world of madmen.
P.S. I let the kid graduate.
