Within the value based paradigm article, the employee diversity puzzle brings up a lot of issues within purpose, attitude, values, speech, and more. I like how this article emphasized the need of understanding and being there for employees needs. If a workspace is not built to support employees things like purpose and attitude, there will not be good culture around the building. To build purpose and attitude, I believe that leaders have to make employees feel as if they can bring a part of their identity into the company’s success. If there is success, they can know that they played a good role within that outcome. Additionally, attitude is built better within this because they know that they are working towards a common goal. Also, there is not as much individual work going on usually when there is team success being upheld. Finally, I believe that measurement is the most important aspect between building a culture like this. Accountability is only confirmed or denied when measurements can accurately portray how a group or an individual is doing. This reading made me realize that measurement should be held to the highest standard within any organization.

When reading about the need for fundamental inspiration in today’s leadership in, Needed: Leaders Who Inspire, Listen, I realized that many of the qualities exhibited in an inspired leader are centered around trust. Honors people, provides meaning, listens, is open, builds trust, is open are all qualities of a leader that inspires groups well. I think that this works well as a leadership strategy because your employees do not feel as at odds with leadership. If employees can feel comfortable bringing concerns or harder things going on that they need help with, and they feel that they can share their concerns because they are in an element of care, they will not have pent up bad feelings. I believe pent up bad feelings about the workplace can come up when the employee deals with their concerns at work themselves, or if they feel work is harming their personal life in some way. If a leader can create an environment where the employee feels like their work environment can be an asset in their life, it will increase function across all employees. On top of this, providing a stake is also one of the most important values of a good leader. As they are able to give meaningful work to their employees so they can be proud of the success of the company.

Within the Principles of Management book, a few highlights from the Decision Making chapter caught my eye. The story of Bernard Ebbers is a good one to learn from because it speaks of rapid growth and of the temptation to settle when it comes to new issues. When WorldCom grew, they found themselves in a place where it was difficult for them to keep up with the new expectations and staff. This started from the top down however, as Ebbers was shying away from any issues and only wanted to hear of issues solved. This really isolated his employees and put a burden on them while he was not involved in the process at all. This led to many of the employees fraudulently putting out false financial reports along with other dishonest techniques when it came to their operations. This made me realize how important it is for a leader to get within a problem alongside his or her followers. Leaders should be servants in a sense where they would be the first to look at the problem and formulate a plan, rather than setting a bad precedence of ignorance. The employees at WorldCom were looking to a bad example which eventually bit their leader back for the worst. Instead, Ebbers should have welcomed the problems the new change saw put forth, to encourage and show employees that with more comes more ethical responsibilities, not permission to bend around ethical decisions.

One thing I appreciated in reading about UC San Diego’s ethical awareness article was the fact of being up front with what is ethical or not within a workplace. i think it can be dangerous for many companies or other organizations to go about their work assuming that everyone is on board with their ethical assumptions. Unfortunately, this could not be further from the truth. I think it can be quite dangerous for organizations to assume these things, and it is best to clarify what is expected, even if it seems mundane or obvious. I appreciated the article articulating a 7 step path needed for individual ethical choices, which include stopping and thinking, considering consequences, and looking over the options before making an ethical decision. I think this is important to equip people with personal tools to then build up the culture of the company. Finally, accountability is important as well. This is where UC San Diego highlighted good internal control that promotes competence of staff. There was me a well run internal control team to make sure that ethical subjects are not just promoted, but maintained.

Daniel Lubetzky expanded upon the idea of transparency and authenticity. I found this to be extremely helpful when thinking about how a leader should be transparent when dealing with their stakeholders. I loved what Daniel said about authenticity in that people prefer honesty with some limitations instead of a fake flawlessness that no one can believe. What I have realized over the last few years is that humans mainly have the same struggles and even if they don’t, someone out there does. I am so confident that within a workplace environment there is two people who are sharing with the same struggles, whether personally at home or professionally with a shared project. This is why it is so important for leaders to be authentic, because id they are not, that person will not seek the help they need because they think everyone else is doing perfectly. But in reality, this is never the case in life. Transparency about a leader’s struggles with work is important so that his employees feel that they can approach him or her with their own problems. no one wants advice from perfect people, just broken people who have overcome or are currently going through a certain issue. In this article, outside of the workplace, truth in marketing is extremely important as you want your consumers to have the same respect for your image as those in the company.

I found it interesting to look into how different men were described when it comes to their classifications. First, the theoretical man wants to know what is true and what is the intellectual thing to do. The economic man wants what is useful to him and his company. Aesthetic man wants what looks good in form and harmony. Social man values his love of people and seeks what is best for others in his life. The political man yearns for power, and the religious man seeks for unity through the values given by his guiding truth. When reading about these different descriptions, I could not help but think about which one I seem to have things in common with and which one I seem to think would be better than others. Through my conversations in my leader interviews, I found that the love of people is extremely important when leading a group of people. The social man would be best for this, and I seem to resonate with him the most. As a leader, I think my guiding north star would be seeking the betterment of those who are stakeholders within the organization I lead. Finally, I think the intellectual man can also be effective. I do not resonate with this one as much, but I do see how it can be good. I think that seeking the truth is important, and implementing things that expound and establish those truths are important for our society.

In Posner’s, It’s how leaders behave that matters, not where they are from, Posner studies leaders in India, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and the Philippines. The first thing that stuck out to me within this study is how he found similar results from leadership style success in every place he studied. Leadership qualities are cross cultural, in that it does not matter where you are from ethnically or socioeconomically, everyone has the ability to be a great leader. One aspect I found interesting about this study was that he studied both India and Pakistan and still found success to be similar between the two cultures. This is interesting to me because the two countries border one another and are cultural and even sometimes political foes (Brink). Although their differences, thought processes, and even actions towards one another could be argued as justified, in terms of the study, they found similarities. I think this speaks to humans in general when it comes to putting our differences aside. Even with two countries that have been in disagreements for years and years having similar leadership styles, we see that leadership stays the same. Another takeaway I had was from the encourage the heart leadership technique, which brings together a sense of community. I think these are cultures that intuitively have that quality within their culture, but we miss it within America. I hope that in the future, we can foster a way where we are more community centric, instead of individualistic. I think this is done by plugging into local community efforts, shortening the workweek, and having community centric spaces to encourage open discourse.

75 years on, India and Pakistan remain enemies. (2022, August 16). BRINK – Conversations and Insights on Global Business. https://www.brinknews.com/75-years-on-india-and-pakistan-remain-enemies/

In the article, Moral Person and Moral Manager: How Executives Develop a Reputation for Ethical Leadership, I started to think about how I could improve both of these aspects. I see myself now as someone who can is a moral person, but where can I improve on that and how can I apply that within a leadership position that I will find myself in one day. First the article spoke about two pillars being present within both entities. The traits of a moral person are things like integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness. The behaviors that come of this are concern for other people, being open, etc. This is someone that holds to values in decision-making. I feel as though I could do better when it comes to concern for other people within decision-making. I think it can be easy for myself to think about what I get out of a situation and have a quick answer around that instead of getting input from other stakeholders first. Within a leadership sense, they then use these said traits and behaviors to their advantage. They apply them through being a role model, thinking about rewards and discipline, and communicating about ethics. I think in a leadership sense, it would be easy for me to be someone who communicates expectations for our team as we think about communicating ethics. However, one that I see myself struggling with in the future is within rewards. I think that articulating my encouragement for others or even receiving that encouragement is a difficult thing for me. I believe this is because it can be easy to get in the mindset that we are all just doing what we are supposed to do. But, when you get out of the business or efficiency mindset and really think about people, who they are, and what they come from, it will be much easier to be able to articulate a rewarding compliment or tangible benefit to appreciate who is on your team.

For the framework mentioned by Santa Clara University, the steps taken to make an ethical decision is similar to the scientific method in my eyes. I believe that identifying the problem equates to seeing the ethical issues involved. this included finding out what is beneficial or what is potentially harmful. Along with see the “good” and “bad,” we also see if there are any legalities or just efficiency. The next step within the scientific method is testing and analyzing a hypothesis. This is similar to the next two steps within guiding ourselves to coming to an ethical decision. As this starts with getting the facts, we can try to do this by seeing the relevant facts along with who the stakeholders are. This goes into a little bit of seeing the ethical implications of a scientific experiment. As sometimes stakeholders can be affected by different experiments in science, it has even more implications within finding ethical decisions. Next is within alternative actions, which starts thinking more into the different types of ethical decision making strategies like the common good, utilitarianism, rights based, etc. We see this through questions like: which option sees people fairly? Which options leads me to be the person I want to be? etc. Finally you can test it and implement it. I think we see many similarities so that the best decisions are made between ethics and science often.

Sources:

Santa Clara University. (n.d.-b). A framework for ethical decision making. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/a-framework-for-ethical-decision-making/

In “Thinking Ethically”” from the Markkula Center of Applied Ethics, I found that there can be multiple strategies to solving ethical problems. When I am combatted with ethical decisions coming up within the next election. This article made me think about different approaches on how to think about the pressing issues facing our country. I think that the majority of people want the best for everyone; the common good. The common good was one of the strategies mentioned, in that society as a whole should decide what kind of place we want to be and how we get there. I think the other strategies try to accomplish the common good approach. I think the utilitarian and rights approach describe our current voters landscape and thought process. Utilitarian describes how we see what would cause the least harm and the largest benefit and we go with that decision regardless. Rights originated from Kant and says that the rights should be up to the individual values. Like privacy, truth and information, etc. With our country’s emphasis on individual rights, I think this is how we go about our problems but also why there is often stalemates in policy. But, moving towards a better fairness or justice approach, in which our country is built on, will be the best for everyone in my opinion.

Sources:
Santa Clara University. (n.d.). Thinking ethically. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/thinking-ethically/