By Linda Fisher Thornton What kind of leadership legacy will you leave? It's a powerful question that we don't often stop to think about. Here are some questions to reflect on to assess your legacy, as it stands now, and determine whether that's the "message in a bottle" that you want to leave for future generations.
Category: Ethical Leader
Ethical Thinking, Ethical Self: 5 Things You Need to Know
By Linda Fisher Thornton Developing an "ethical self" is important for good citizenship and good leadership. But what does it involve? There's more to developing and maintaining an ethical self than trying to make good choices. Making ethical choices isn't easy, and while we're struggling, our brains are actually working against us.
Leadership Isn’t Cushy (Human Development Required)
By Linda Fisher Thornton There's a powerful connection between responsible leadership and human growth and development. It's not easily visible to leaders, so today I'm digging into how these important variables intersect and how they should inform our approach to leadership development.
Leadership: No Discomfort, No Growth
By Linda Fisher Thornton Why is using a growth mindset important in leadership? Some leaders actively avoid discomfort, not realizing that they are also avoiding the necessary growth that propels them to their best leadership. Great leadership doesn’t happen by itself. It happens when a leader decides to intentionally learn and grow, and to pursue that growth into the Discomfort Zone.
Trust Repair For Leaders (Part 3): Notice
By Linda Fisher Thornton This series of posts shares strategies for repairing organizational trust. It was inspired by conversations with other members of the Trust Across America Trust Alliance and my work as part of the Trust Alliance TAP team. #tap2021 Trust Repair Part 1 addressed the importance of Accountability and strategies for building a robust accountability system. Trust Repair Part 2 addressed strategies for improving leader Transparency. Trust Repair Part 3 includes strategies for overcoming a third area the Trust Alliance found to be a common problem - Notice. This important element of trust requires us to "seek out and listen to diverse perspectives - every voice can matter." (TAP Principles, Trust Across America Trust Alliance)
Trust Repair For Leaders (Part 2): Transparency
By Linda Fisher Thornton This is the second in a series on how to repair organizational trust. It was inspired by conversations with other members of the Trust Across America Trust Alliance and my work as part of the Trust Alliance TAP team as part of #tap2021. In this series, Trust Repair Part 1 addressed the importance of Accountability and strategies for building a robust accountability system. Trust Repair Part 2 addresses another area that the Trust Across America Trust Alliance found to be lacking in many organizations - Transparency.
Trust Repair For Leaders (Part 1): Accountability
By Linda Fisher Thornton This post is the first in a three-part series about how to repair organizational trust. It was inspired by conversations with other members of the Trust Across America Trust Alliance and my work as part of the Trust Alliance TAP team.
10 Trends Shaping the Future of Ethical Leadership
By Linda Fisher Thornton We need to get leadership right because so much depends on it. Many global factors are driving changes in ethical leadership expectations, and in high-stakes times, how we handle ethical leadership development can make or break our success. This week I've created a graphic that brings the expectations and priorities into clearer focus.
600th Blog Post: 10 Leadership Lessons Learned
By Linda Fisher Thornton I've been blogging for 12 years, after making a very rocky start on March 5, 2009. If I had let my early failures determine my future, I would never have made it to this point, celebrating 600 posts on the Leading in Context Blog. Today I'm sharing 10 Leadership Lessons I've learned since starting this blog in the hopes that they will inspire you to press forward in your important work.
When Position Power and Ethics Collide
By Linda Fisher Thornton Our responsibilities as a citizen, worker, leader, family member, and friend require us to choose ethics over loyalty. Yet, when we do, it can surprise people. Maybe that's because it is not the easiest path to take. Here's a story about a situation I faced very early in my career, when I was in my 20s.
20 (Responsible) Leadership Outcomes
By Linda Fisher Thornton With responsible leadership, people experience feelings of self-worth from being treated well, and feelings of usefulness from being able to make a valuable contribution to the team. In this kind of environment, people can best use their talents to forward the organization's mission. How does responsible leadership make people feel? Here are 20 human responses that transform individual lives and organizational outcomes. Think about great leaders you have worked with and see if these outcomes resonate with your experience.
It’s Time For Ethically Adaptive Leadership
By Linda Fisher Thornton Agility and adaptability are mantras for leaders during this time of global unrest and catastrophic change. Each day brings new challenges that consume our time and require us to grow into higher levels of ethical awareness to avoid missteps and miscalculations. As we try to find stable footing in unstable times, ethical agility will be a factor in our success.
Ethical Awareness is a Moving Target
By Linda Fisher Thornton How well is your organization navigating the ethical pitfalls of the working world? If you're finding it to be a major challenge right now, you're not alone. Why is it so hard to navigate ethical minefields now? There is currently a "toxic soup" of factors at play...
Digital Deception: Unethical Sleight of Hand
Things are not always as they seem. Technology has advanced to the point that we can't be sure whether or not what we're seeing is real. There are many new ways that bad actors are usual digital sleight of hand to trick us. And the list is growing. It will take a healthy dose of skepticism, critical observation and research skills to find out if what we see is as it appears. Educate yourself and your teams about these methods of trickery and how to spot them:
Unethical Leadership: Beliefs of Convenience
By Linda Fisher Thornton Sometimes leaders believe things that aren't true because they haven't taken time to investigate the truth. In other cases, they may have trusted someone who has misled them. But there's an even more problematic reason some leaders may ignore the truth - claiming to believe the falsehood may benefit them in a tangible way.
