By Linda Fisher Thornton Talking about controversial topics has become a daunting task. There are some things we can do, individually and collectively, to improve those difficult conversations. Use the important points below as ground rules for discussing potentially emotionally charged issues:
Tag: coherent ethics
3 Steps For Dusting Off Your Leadership in the New Year
By Linda Fisher Thornton When we start a New Year, it's is a wonderful time to take stock of our leadership. The intense, conflicted global environment we face is formidable. Sitting still won't keep our leadership up to the task. It's definitely not a good time to let our leadership get dusty from a lack of attention. It's time to take action. Here are three things you can do to dust off your leadership and discover your best capabilities this year:
Systems Thinking: Using the 5 Whys
By Linda Fisher Thornton In my Applied Ethics Class last fall, I introduced my students to the Five Whys. This is a simple and valuable tool for getting to the root cause of problems. We may think we understand why something happened but when we "fix" whatever we think is the sole cause we don't always get the intended result. The reason for that is that problems tend to have multiple causes. They happen in the context of multiple processes. Singling out one "cause" is rarely sufficient for understanding what really happened.
Leading in Context 