Ethical Leadership
In the wake of the 2009 economic crisis, the issues of ethnical leadership are gaining more attention. In part due to increasing demands for corporate transparency, and in part due the recognition of the terrible destruction caused by unethical business decisions, many organizations are re-evaluating the ways they ensure that leaders have the capacity to make ethical decisions. In 2008, Kidwell and Valentine studied the link between workplace climate and ethics in the military. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they found that in a more positive workplace, people were more ethical (they were less likely to withhold effort or neglect job duties). 19 The implication is that leaders who create a more positive workplace climate will also reap the rewards of increased effort as well as increased ethics. In a recent study (2009), business students were given an assessment of emotional intelligence skills and tested to see how they evaluated their own and others’ ethnical behavior. Empathy, the ability to connect with others’ emotions, was correlated with the ability to recognize others’ ethical decisions. 20 In other words, emotional awareness is tied to ethical awareness. One of these researchers conducted a similar experiment in a with physicians and nurses in a US hospital and, again, found that higher EQ scores predict higher performance in ethics. 21
…higher EQ scores predict higher performance in ethics 21
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White Paper The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence
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