Unleash the Positive Power of Ethical Leadership
Employee engagement is a metric that companies are closely watching. Using surveys, levels of participation in programs, and satisfaction reports, companies measure how well they engage those they lead. Butcould this heightened level of watching be part of the problem?…
Read More Are We Focusing on Employee Engagement Metrics (And Missing the Point)?
By Linda Fisher Thornton
This week I'm sharing answers to your burning questions about ethics and ethical leadership - What is it? How do you stay up to speed in spite of rapidly accelerating expectations? Why is ethics such a contentious topic, and defined in so many different ways by different people?
The leader groups I work with find that clarity on these and other questions informs their leadership and their decision making. Use this curated collection of posts to shore up your knowledge for the new year:
By Linda Fisher Thornton
The Top Post Series this year reflects the challenges of applying ethical thinking and decision making to complex problems.
This series answers the important question “How do we analyze and understanding the multiple connected variables in a changing context to make responsible choices? Today I’ll share a quote from each post in the series that will give you a quick overview of the topic.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Of the 52 individual posts published on the Leading in Context Blog in 2019, these 10 were the most popular. See if you notice a theme that connects these new topics that readers accessed most frequently:
By Linda Fisher Thornton Each year I raise questions that help leaders stay current as ethical expectations change. Here are 3 new questions to ponder as we head into a New Year. They are important questions about our ethical intentions, action…
Read More Ethical Thinking: 3 Questions to Ask in the New Year
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Often when we test our purpose is to assess progress toward learning objectives. But there's an inherent problems with over-testing or focusing too much on test scores. Testing can de-motivate learners. If our purpose is to improve learning, then we need to pay close attention to how testing impacts the motivation to learn.Â
By Linda Fisher Thornton Micromanaging is not just another "leadership style." It harms people. When leaders micromanage, they send many negative messages to employees. Take a look at this list of more than 20 negative unspoken messages micromanagement sends to employees. Can you afford to let it happen in your organization?Â
By Linda Fisher Thornton Christa Motley, host of Inspire Indeed at WRIR radio, invited me to the station to talk about the journey to writing my book 7 Lenses and how it is helping people who want to understand ethical…
By Linda Fisher Thornton
What exactly does respect look like? It's a question that is difficult to answer, but we need an answer if we are going to be able to help our leadership teams learn how to show it, recognize it, and expect it from others. This week I'm sharing some work I've done that may help.Â
By Linda Fisher Thornton
I am a long-time advocate of systems thinking. It has risen in importance as an increasing number of our greatest human challenges can't we understood or resolved without it.
Today, I'm taking a look at new findings on the human microbiome, which is known to impact the brain in important ways. You may have already seen the recent news about advances in our understanding of the Gut-Brain Axis.
By Linda Fisher Thornton One of the challenges of responsible leadership is staying on top of fast-moving trends. This week, I'm making that process a little easier for you by sharing 19 interesting leadership trend reports. Get ready to read…
By Linda Fisher Thornton
We've seen selective respect too often. Beyond harming the people who are disrespected, it also destroys trust, and leads to chaotic environments and fear-based cultures. Even though we've all seen selective respect in action, we may not have had the vocabulary to describe why it's wrong (beyond calling it mean or inappropriate). This week I'm digging in to those details.Â
By Linda Fisher Thornton
This series has explored 5 important spheres of Ethical Thinking and Decision Making.Â
This week I'm summing it up in a checklist that will help you apply all 5 to your daily choices. When you are making a key decision, run it through the checklist to be sure you have considered all 5 important dimensions.Â
By Linda Fisher Thornton
Who we include in our ethical thinking, and how broadly we consider our responsibility to others are important elements of ethical leadership. In Part 1 of this series, I explored the Depth of our thinking, and in Part 2, I broke down issues related to understanding Context. In Part 3, I looked at Complexity. In Part 4, we'll dig into the importance of Inclusion.
By Linda Fisher Thornton
In Part 1 of this series I looked at the importance of Deep Thinking. In Part 2, we'll be considering the Context. No matter how much effort it takes to understand the context (whether we like it or not) we can't expect to make an ethical decision without it.Â
Understanding the Context
Without seeing the context - a broad and sweeping view of the issues we are discussing or trying to resolve - we are describing or trying to solve a SUBSET of the real issue. To use ethical thinking and decision-making, we must always remind ourselves that the SUBSET is not the whole.Â
Leading in Context 