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Yesterday I had a bit of an ethical dilemma. After a long day that included my son's christening, I sat back to have a glass of champagne with my wife. While enjoying this reactive strategy to the day's stresses, my gaze fell in the window to my dark yard, and I noticed flames rising behind above my fenceline. The flames were easily 15 to 20 feet tall and near the structures adjacent to my property surrounded by the trees of the forest behind my yard. This adjacent property is a rented garage that is meant to be storage and minor commercial work, but the renters often use it to throw loud parties. This has been a point of contention with the neighborhood, and it is not unlikely that they were building an illegal bonfire. My immediate thought was to call 911 and report the fire, but a voice in my head said to investigate first. If I wait the problem could get worse, and if I don't I may be issuing a false alarm or escalating the bad blood with the renters. I chose to call, show courage to challenge, and inform the emergency dispatcher that I see a tall fire near the treeline in a non-residential area. She reported the fire and dispatched 4 departments to the site. Luckily the Chief made it to my house, saw the flames, and was able to assess that only one truck would be needed. In the end I feel that I took initiative to make the call, showed citizenship by reporting a dangerous fire and fulfilled servant leadership duties of obligation by reporting unacceptable behavior to the authorities at risk of retaliation. The ethical debate in my head was to question whether my motivation was simply to have another violation by the renters on file, or whether I truly believed this a safety risk. My decision was based on the fact that I recognized the opportunity to make a questionable moral decision, but that my reasons for the call was authentically in the interests of safety.

I was intrigued to read about social learning theory in chapter 9, which says that we tend to pattern our behaviors after people whom we deem to have personal attributes such as legitimacy, personal attraction, and expertise. Social learning theory argues that people in leadership positions tend to be good role model candidates because they come from positions of authority. Moral leaders with a mind toward social learning theory need to be careful to build their ethical capacity so they can more positively influence their followers.

When I was randomly selected to lead Group 4, I was a little apprehensive, at first, considering that it might not be easy to guide a group that, like me, just spent the last three months studying leadership concepts. I was afraid I might demonstrate for them some of the traits Kellerman's Bad Leadership, particularly incompetence, rigidity, and insularity. Even worse, I was afraid I might not be able to communicate clearly to them the assignments as determined by "The Scotts," and fall victim to the attribute of misleading followers which defines toxic leadership. But I was foolish to feel that way. Each member of the group has demonstrated the courage to assume responsibility, and in doing so has exemplified the partnership and awareness attributes of servant leadership and authentic leadership, respectively. Our skills, motivation, and knowledge have generated fantastic results - our survey already has been distributed (meaning that we should have results hopefully within another week), and our focus group is scheduled for next week.

I spoke with my mother about ethics at the hospital where she works as a nurse. She said a commom ethical failure has been insurance companies’ attempts to avoid paying for services that they are supposed to cover. This is a callous strategy on the part of these companies to push their financial responsibilities onto patients. My mother said that doctors often take action to write their diagnoses and prescriptions in the exact ways required by insurance companies to ensure that patients get the insurance benefits they deserve. This is a good example of doctors fulfilling their obligations to help patients.

My mother also told a story about a nurse who was caught stealing drugs from the hospital for personal use. Obviously, such theft is an example of poor moral judgment. She also said that her coworkers always turn in items left behind by patients to the lost-and-found at the hospital. This shows the good moral character of her coworkers. (5)

My mom is a school secretary and has seen some ethical challenges over the years. The school is ALTRUISTIC and helps low-income families by providing free and reduced lunches. However, some families are CORRUPT and take advantage of the system by signing up for free and reduced lunches when they do not meet the criteria. The school doesn't require any verification, though, so people can get away with it. They also get very DEFENSIVE if they are questioned. Additionally, my mom mentioned that the school has students illegally attending that do not live in the city. She has displayed COURAGE TO SERVE the school by bringing "fishy" cases to the board's attention. Once the school obtains KNOWLEDGE of a possible violation, they send an investigator to review the situation. These ILLEGAL ACTS are difficult for the schools to combat, but when people like my mom utilize the FOLLOWER'S RESPONSIBILITY they can help combat unethical situations. However, with the ethical theory of JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS, does this excuse families from trying to get their children a better education?

My mom talked about how she had a boss who would STIFLE CRITICISM and attempt to keep people in line by threatening to constantly put things in their personal files or fire them. This was certainly a PLAYING TO THE BASEST FEARS of the organization. The boss FAILED TO NURTURE those in her office, making sure that all decisions went through her, and also being involved in every decision. She would also SET CONSTITUENTS AGAINST ONE ANOTHER by creating situations that purposely set others up to compete for good positions or opportunities. This boss truely LEFT FOLLOWERS WORSE OFF.

Authentic leadership is an appealing concept. The awareness aspect share a lot with EIL consciousness of self facet, especially self awareness and honest self understanding. I like that is seems intuitive or obvious, but I also find that acting authentic, unbiased by reward or punishment, is not always as cut and dry as it seems. I was faced with a situation where I need to gather some information, but the reason for the project is not public knowledge and I have been told that it should not be. So what do I tell my coworker when he asks why I am asking him to research some info for me?

I spoke to my dad tonight about task 36 which states we are supposed to talk to a parent about ethics issues that they have viewed. He spoke about an incompetent manager he had at his old job. This particular person was very callous and corrupt. My dad mentioned that he also had a heavy cocaine habit (reactive strategies). My dad used the courage to leave the job and got a new one with a better leadership group. (5)

Today I wanted to discuss how this ethic class will help in my current job and my career as a whole. I currently work for a mining company and we are constantly faced with ethical situations. I normally revert to my defaults in my decision making process. This class will help me identify the ethical situation that I may find myself in and help me develop skills to make better ethical decisions in leadership positions. Ethics means different things to different people and is often dependent on situational factors. You often times must weigh many factors such as fear and unpleasant expectations. I feel this class will help me develop skills to make the best ethical decision. I feel that this will help me working at Cliffs and dealing with the dangerous working conditions. I hope that this class and 10 year of 10,000 hours of experience will make me an ethical decision making machine

WSJ Article: Regulators Take Look at Patent Firms' Impact

When reflecting on the control of patents and intellectual property in the business place, certain regulatory bodies have a responsibility to exemplify high levels of moral sensitivity and moral judgment when deciding if property is beneficial to company or not. As stewards representing the business environment as a whole, these free-trade organizations have a moral obligation to protect the laws that have been established in favor of fair business in the US and avoidance of totalitarian regimes taking over key business practices.

Reading courageous fellowship, many of the concepts from MB552 pop up. The courage to assume responsibility is similar to citizenship while the courage to challenge sounds much like the followers responsibility. You could even say that the courage to leave exemplifies the enactive strategy to stress. Dr. Allen mentioned how the 130+ terms seem to be shrinking and this proves that statement.

I live in a neighborhood that in both famous and infamous for its Christmas lights from Thanksgiving to New Years Eve... if you are ever in Strongsville at night just follow the beacon of light from the main street of my housing development. Tonight, whiletaking the dog for a walk, I was drawn in to a classic parenting conversation with my 5 year old daughter when she started to drill me about Santa Claus and elves, and the North Pole. Would I respond with DECEIT or would i be AUTHENTIC in my answer to her? Long story short, I chose to support Santa and all his goodness so as not to appear CALLOUS or EVIL in the eyes of my wife as she overheard the discussion. I think my REVERENCE for the man in red and all that the Christmas spirit embodies will keep me prolonging my little girl's beliefs as long as possible.

Steward leadership is related to EIL capacities of consciousness of others in several ways. Stewardship and obligation, leaders putting needs of followers above their own and having a responsibility towards them, are similar to citizenship. Partnership involves developing relationships as well as empowering followers. Elevating purpose is along the same lines as inspiration. It seems like a good model to strive for in a normal work environment but also may be difficult to implement. I feel like it would take commitment from a leader to be consistent in this approach if faced with high levels of adversity.

This Thanksgiving, I aim to take a page out of our ethics text in administering a bit of transformational leadership in my family's Turkey Bowl. While leading my siblings & cousins down the field to the end zone between the two oak trees, I will speak to their higher-level needs, such as their esteem ("Here we go, David, you're the reason we're winning this game!"), competency (Brian you guard him, you're our best defender!"), and self-fulfillment ("Kyle, you were BORN to do this!"). Now because we are not all evenly matched (my youngest cousin is 10 years old), I must be mindful of terminal values of equality, as well as instrumental values such as fairness in order to assure that all players get enjoyment from the game.

When I first started at my company I was encouraged by the fact that every empolyee has access to the CEO's email. My skeptical nature tells me that the account is likely monitored by his assistant, but just the fact that he portrays the image of accessibility employees seemed a step towards authenticity. During my efforts to secure CEO interviews for the class tasks I have seen that many CEOs are not easily accessible to the public. I find it discouraging that it would be so hard to speak with the leader of a company. I own stock in at least two of the companies I am investigating to interview. As a shareholder in the company my confidence in the citizenship of the CEOs is not bolstered. This lack of availability could easily be interpreted as disinterest in the views, questions and opinions of stakeholders. It could also be a case of lower level employees (PR and media departments) shielding the CEO, for better or worse, from the public. I think that this is not necessarily a good action, while it insulates the executives from parties just calling for illegitimate reasons, it also distances the officers of the company from their stakeholders. In the interests of transparency and open communication, easy public access to the officers is desirable. Lacking access is a failure to nurture followers. I am much more comfortable when I know that the officers have the humility, an important virtue of a leader, to speak with the general public and employees of all levels one on one, and I that the officers don't believe their time too valuable to spend with interested parties and active stakeholders. This mentality of being "above" these tasks is noted in the book as possibly "evil by deception". Understanding that all stakeholders (employees, vendors, customers, and investors) are the most important constituents, with the community and industry as a whole coming a close second, is an example of Covey's habit 3, "Put first things first" or the servant leadership concept of partnership. Being available is a grounding mechanism that keeps CEOs from having the compressed view that the ROI, sales and stock price are the only things they should concern themselves with.

Task 37 - Analysis of MB 551 content through MB 552 lens

I feel that the content of MB551 and 552 go together to encompase how a leader should act and not act. 552 was more about the high level ideas of what makes a good leader like: personal attritubes, position and purpose to name a few. I feel that these same concepts could allow a leader to influence followers to be unethical from what I've been learning from 551. MB551 goes into more detail of different reasons that leaders become unethical and some relate back to MB552 concepts. Sometimes stress is a key driver in unethical decisions because some people are pushed to have certain results and that stress could lead them into making bad decisions. (6)

We finally showed some TEAMWORK and COLLABORATION tonight in class. After four class meetings, I think we have DEFINED THE PROBLEM and we can begin working collectively towards a SHARED VISION. Now we can get cracking and make something happen!

We finally seemed to have a breakthrough with DEFINING THE PROBLEM tonight at the end of the class. Some in the class had the COURAGE TO CHALLENGE and COURAGE TO ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY in the discussions tonight. The class showed AWARENESS of others feelings when dealing with the situation.

The most powerful piece of the debate for me tonight was examining the long term implications of actions. Such as DECIDING WHO THE ACTIONS of Bill Clinton INJURED.

Tonight was both productive and frustrating. I feel that we are still struggling to define the problem. We know what our deliverable it but we still need consensus on what we are saying. We need to identify the purpose of the presentation and how we will influence the client to adopt our suggestion (whatever that may be). I feel that we are continuing to waste time with a democratic approach. In talking with members of the class there is a clear feeling of anticipatory stress along with some feeling of disconfirmation. We need to tackle our problem using teamwork and citizenship.

I believe the NON POSITIONAL LEADERSHIP really prevailed in tonight's class. I think our MOTIVATION towards finding the right problem allowed us to DETERMINE ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS to what the deliverable will be for the end PRODUCT. The subgroups are trying to be SPECIFIC in notating their progress so that we can SET BASELINE EXPECTATIONS for what we need to move forward.

I enjoyed the debate on Bill Clinton tonight. I was surprised by the level of agreement in class that a general's or a politician's moral judgment and moral character should be judged with such a focus on his or her personal life. However, I do agree that Clinton's committing perjury misled his followers. He also left his followers worse off by hurting Democrats' chances in the 2000 election. As the scandal unfolded, Clinton may have been guilty of a lack of awareness about the public damage his private actions could cause. (5)

Tonight's debate or class discussion was fun. I thought Ron's group did a great job of establishing the baseline expectations and intervened skillfully by modeling the way. They exhibited strong group savvy and optimism in having a successful discussion.

This evening was another night of compression until we finally discussed the information that Tabitha acquired from the Dean. It helped define the problem considerably because now, at least I feel I know, who the client truly is and what they are looking for us to deliver. Tomorrow we should all have blogged about alternative solutions and can finally develop a mission statement and implement possible solutions. I know I am blogging about the same old stuff tonight but it so imperative that we truly understand this was a serious issue. I also have major concerns as the lack of control starts settling in here and I am not certain we have all the tasks taken care of, because by now all interviews should at least be scheduled if we want to have a real chance at accomplishing those tasks. I fear that as we close in on December 4th that we may fall short on the tasks. We need a true status report on the specific tasks that we can not control, such as CEO interviews, if we do not have them secured we need everyone to show citizenship and start getting on the phone ASAP! I will be going down the line of Fortune 500 CEO's and trying to bump up my Author/Scholar interviews first thing tomorrow.

I was extremely pleased that Dr. Allen intervened skillfully last night to help us get pass conceptual blocks. Much clarification was needed both for and from our group in order to properly define the problem. However, I am concerned though that there still appears to be key tasks that weren’t officially assigned to anyone (several interviews), which is now causing some to engage in reactive strategies due to fretting about our significant time constraints. But I am yet confident that our leadership will address and clarify the follower’s responsibility in this regard over the next couple of days. Moreover, Ron’s ability to create a clear approach to the problem was excellent relieved much of the stress I had about the deliverables for this project. (5)

I think we made great progress in finally boiling down the project to something with "teeth". I did have a question that I was not able to ask due to the time constraints. Why does the Boler school and JCU currently think that what they do to instill ethics into their students is not working? Has there been a lot of people caught cheating or breaking rules in their current codes of ethics? I think this is important to consider when we are brainstorming recommendations about how engage students and instill the code of ethics into their decision making. Maybe ask what they feel have been the shortcomings of past attempts to create this ethical culture they are seeking? Any thoughts?