#ethics21 Leadership and the Duty of Care

I've been casually following a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) structured by Stephen Downes, Ethics, Analytics and the Duty of Care. While it is mainly focused on how ethics applies to analytics (particularly Artificial Intelligence) and learning, it strikes me as relevant to well, everything. In particular, leadership.

Leaders must make decisions guided by their ethics on an almost daily basis. As the discuss in #ethics21 has pointed out, though, while it may seem clear what ethical behavior means, it is much more complicated than that. Ethics, when examined with any level of curiosity, uncovers more questions than answers. Maybe that's best, but it is also challenging.

I did take one course in ethics in graduate school working on my masters in Organizational Leadership. Every course, though, contained ethical overtones. I learned that leaders must examine their motives and reconcile them against their values while behaving ethically. I learned that there are many more shades of gray than right or wrong. Should our choices be absolute? Are ethics relative to the circumstances? Who gets to decide?

What I enjoy about this program (#ethics21) is the connection to duty of care. Even there we find multiple meanings. Any search of the terms "duty of care" will uncover bunny trails that are hard to climb out of.

I do like this meaning uncovered by Downes, "reasonable care becomes an obligation when performing any acts that could cause harm." That applies as much to leadership as anything else. When we seek to achieve our goals, when we work on solving problems, when we lead people into uncharted territory -- we owe our constituents care -- the effort to protect them from unnecessary harm.

As leaders we owe our teams the ability to discern truly ethical acts and to always -- ALWAYS, consider our duty of care.

-- doug smith

Image of Stephen Downes retrieved 27 November 2021 from:

https://www.downes.ca/images/cover-image.PNG

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Your Reputation

More authority means higher levels of responsibility. More power requires more service to others, not less. What you do with your power is who you will be known as. Also, how you use the power you have creates who people will remember you as. How do you want to be remembered? -- doug smith

New Ideas

New ideas won't break you but they can make you bigger. -- doug smith

Decide

What do you want? Are you getting what you want? Intention is direction. Decide. And, then go. -- doug smith

High Performance Leadership Combination

We can rationalize anything without making it justified. Leaders should always ask: who is this good for other than me? High performance leadership does NOT mean performance at any cost. It means performance that serves a noble cause while also benefiting people. High performance leadership is a combination. Results without relationships are shallow and temporary. Take care of both, and you'll be a high performance leader. -- doug smith

What You Need

Use what you've learned to become what you need. -- doug smith

Measures Matter

Some people measure quantify first and quality later. Some people measure money first and impact to the team later (not even second!). How you measure productivity might determine your character and your reputation. Put people first. -- doug smith

For example

Get good at something that won't obsolete itself. For example: emotional intelligence creating great conversations encouraging people leadership What would you add to the list? Which ones are you developing? -- doug smith

Personally

Improving performance does require us to take our work seriously. But it does not require us to take ourselves too seriously. Taking things personally is a waste of self-esteem. -- doug smith

Start With Kindness

When you start with kindness you don't have to stay there, but you probably will. It works better for others. It works better for you. If you're human, you'll probably relapse. It does take practice to stay the course. The course starts by starting. When you start with kindness, it becomes more naturally the way. High performance leadership develops from the core leadership strengths of clarity, creativity, courage, and compassion. Build one of those strengths today thru some act of kindness and the others will get stronger as well. -- doug smith

Show Integrity

The goals we seek bring a lot of pull to them. We get wrapped in them. It's useful and it's powerful when we care about our goals so much that they propel us forward and keep us working even when we're tired, beyond the boundaries of our usual limitations. But they should not take us beyond the boundaries of our usual values. They should not trick us into bending the rules just because the rules are in the way. Truly high performance leaders of character who are focused, and centered, and noble maintain integrity. No cheating is ever worth the outcome. Integrity is so rare that many people don't even recognize. If you do, be thankful. We need leaders like you. To truly understand integrity you've got to keep it. Even when it's hard. Even the lines are blurred. -- doug smith

High Performance Leadership

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