Character and Competence: Hallmarks of a Professional

Goolsby DVP Lecture30 September 2010

Colonel Sean Hannah, PhDUnited States Army

Why do you want to be a leader?Have you prepared yourself to lead?Who and what is it that you serve?

What will be your legacy?

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The Core Questions

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My goal in life is to be as good of a person

my dog already thinks I am

~Author Unknown

A 2007 national study by Harvard reported that 77% agree or strongly agree that there is a crisis of confidence in America’s leaders

Rosenthal, Pittinsky, Purvin, & Montoya, 2007

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Were these then really even LEADERS?

Followers look for two things in their leaders:

• Character • Competence

Both become even more important when facing a tough call

Three Options for OrganizationsThree Options for Organizations• All production can be organized under one of three logics:

– The market of free, unregulated competition where consumer choice determines services, products, and prices• caveat emptor, “let the buyer beware”

– A bureaucracy of planned, supervised, controlled work focused on predictability and efficiency

– A profession of workers with specialized knowledge who organize and control their own work based on a trust relationship with their client (s)• cedat emptor, “let the taker believe in us”

Being a Professional1. Expertise

2. A Sense of Calling and Identity

3. A Sense of Service

4. Identify with the Profession’s Ethic

5. A sense of Stewardship/Ownership

6. Moral Compass

In essence, the professional’s “practice” is the repetitive exercise of discretionary human judgment

Therefore: Character is the Sine Qua Non of any Profession

Principles of Officership

Duty…always first, subordinating personal interests Honor… physical and moral courage, integrity and

honesty, seeking truth, doing the right thing, always Loyalty… upward to the Constitution & the

Commander in Chief, down to all subordinates, central to trust between profession and citizens

Service to Country… the officer’s calling, motivation, and legacy

Competence… a moral imperative Teamwork… modeling civility and respect, placing

the group and mission over individuals and self Subordination… to the organization, the mission and

senior leaders Leadership… always, but always, by example to be

emulated

Leadership DefinedLeadership Defined

A system where people are positively influenced – and have a sense of purpose, direction, and motivation – while operating to accomplish the mission and improve the organization

Leadership Is Inherently Moral

Leadership is an Interdependent System

Leader PeersPeers

Follower

Senior Leader

Leadership emergesthrough positivesocial interaction

FollowerFollowers

Unit Effectiveness

and Character

CommandControl

PlanOrganizeResource

OrganizationalSuccess

InspireMotivateEnablePassionValues

Management

Leadership

Leadership is not Management

Management and Leadership can be aligned or in conflict: e.g., Espouse Organizational Values, yet “Do what it takes to make numbers”

Authentic Leadership

• SELF AWARE

• TRANSPARENT

• BALANCED IN PROCESSING

• MORAL PERSPECTIVETo thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man 

~William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Leaders Ground Others in Core Values

“Let me conjure you, in the name of our common country as you value your own sacred honor as you respect the rights of humanity; as you regard the military & national character of America, to express your utmost horror & detestation of the man who wishes, under any specious pretences, to overturn the liberties of our country, & who wickedly attempts to open the flood gates of civil discord, & deluge our rising empire in blood. (15 March, 1783)"

General George Washington

In 1783 officers of the United States Continental Army, camped 15 Miles from West Point, was on the verge of a rebellion and planned to March against the Congress in a coup d'etat. At the height of that fervor, when even General Gates, Washington's second in command had sided with the rebelling officers, General Washington addressed his assembled officers:

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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

Unknown (misattributed to Edmund Burke, British Statesman)

EthicalBehavior

UnethicalBehavior

VirtuousBehavior

Compliance or Virtue?

MORALRECOGNITION

MORALJUDGMENT

MORALINTENTIONS

MORALACTION

Moral Cognition Processes Moral Motivation Processes

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice

~Confucius

Being Ethical Isn't Easy!

Ethical Thoughts &

Behavior

ProfessionalEthics

Personal Ethics & Morals

Physical & Psychological

State

ManagerPressures

Leadership & GroupNorms

OperatingContext

(e.g. IndustryStandards)

Laws & Regulations

OrganizationCulture &

Values

• Different individuals may “weight” the influence of each component differently• The same individual may weight influences differently in different contexts 4

MORALRECOGNITION

MORALJUDGMENT

MORALINTENTIONS

MORALACTION

DEVELOPED MORAL CAPABILITIES - MORAL COMPLEXITY

- MORAL IDENTITY- MORAL OWNERSHIP

- MORAL CONFIDENCE & COURAGE

POSITIVE EFFECTS ON MORAL

PROCESSING

Moral Cognition Processes Moral Motivation Processes

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Taking Moral Ownership

MORALMORALOWNERSHIPOWNERSHIP

Behavior Environment

Person

You are both a product of and a producer of our environment

It isn’t worthwhile…to dictate to gentlemen. Most of these things that need legislation they will, no doubt,

easily find for themselvesPlato, Republic IV

When will you be called upon to make the tough

(right) calls?

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Why do you want to be a leader?Have you prepared yourself to lead?Who and what is it that you serve?

What will be your legacy?

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Character and Competence: Hallmarks of a Professional

EXTRA BACKUP SLIDES

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ORG Level Ethical Development Techniques

• Supportive, Morally-Developed Organization:– Ensure Espoused and In-Use Values are Aligned– Ensure Artifacts & Reward Systems are Aligned with

Values– Role Modeling at all levels– Psychological Safety– Reinforcing Structures and Systems– Ethical Performance Feedback

• Leader Attention – Raise Visibility – Add ethics to all organizational planning systems– Add ethics discussions to “after action reviews”– “Frame” issues as moral

Some Ethical Development Techniques

• Key Developmental Ethical Experiences – “Trigger Events”– Coupled with guided reflection & meaning-making of those events– Cognitive disequilibrium– Moral dilemma discussions– Teaching deliberate cognitive moral decision-making skills and processes– Process challenges through multiple “lenses”

• Building Moral Potency (Courage, Confidence, Ownership)– Mastery Experiences– Vicarious Learning– Social Persuasion– Raising perceptions of “Moral Intensity”/Deterring moral disengagement

• Placing moral issues in humanistic terms, discouraging sanitizing language, making salient the injurious effects, limiting attribution of blame, etc…

– Build Moral Individual and Social identity

All of these observable objects are called artifacts. Artifacts can mostly be seen, touched, and heard.

These beliefs become intertwined over one’s experiences such that they become attitudes about “the worth or importance of people, concepts or things” that we then call values.ESPOUSED and IN USE Values

These values permeate organizations, and when shared, reinforced and validated as “successful” in solving the problems of organizational survival and effectiveness, they gradually become transformed into underlying assumptions, “supported by articulated sets of beliefs, norms, and operational rules of behavior.”

Shared ValuesShared Values

Underlying AssumptionsUnderlying Assumptions

ArtifactsArtifactsSurface Surface

To Understand Your Ethic and Profession You Need to To Understand Your Ethic and Profession You Need to Think Past the “Tip of the Iceberg” Think Past the “Tip of the Iceberg”

Moral Rationalization1) Advantageous comparisons (“our actions aren't as bad as

the other company’s”)2) Attributing blame to victims (“they were asking for it”)3) Diffusion of responsibility (we wouldn’t have to do this if

headquarters didn’t demand such profit numbers”)4) Dehumanizing victims (“these regulators are a bunch of

snakes”)5) Choosing to not recognize the extent of harm (“only a

few people will have bad side effects”) 6) Using sanitizing language or euphemisms (“a bomber

‘servicing’ a target causes ‘collateral damage’”).

Any of these strategies allow the actor to lessen the perceived severity of their actions and thereby protect their moral self-esteem/self-identity

Ethical Leadership

• Conducts his/her personal life in an ethical manner • Defines success not just by results, but also by the way they are

obtained • Listens to what unit members have to say • Disciplines unit members who violate ethical standards • Makes fair and balanced decisions• Can be trusted • Discusses ethics or values with unit members • Sets an example of how to do things the right way in terms of ethics • Has the best interests of unit members in mind• When making decisions, asks “what is the right thing to do?”

Brown and Trevino, 2006