Leading the Conversation About Ethical Leadership

By Linda Fisher Thornton Dialogue is a powerful tool for developing ethical organizations. Workplace issues are complex and opinions will always vary about what ethical behavior means. This combination creates a kind of "murky uncertainty" that keeps employees from giving us their best, most ethical performance.

Compliance With Laws Isn’t Ethical Leadership (There’s More)

By Linda Fisher Thornton Beyond Compliance I have intentionally avoided using the C-word (Compliance) in most of my posts, and I decided that it was time to explain why. In this post I'll explain why laws are not enough, and why complying with laws does not mean that we are leading ethically.

What Variables Impact How Freely We Extend Trust?

By Linda Fisher Thornton The recent post Should Trust Be Freely Offered or Conditionally Earned? generated lively discussions in LinkedIn Groups about extending trust when we meet someone new. It was clear from the discussions that trust has many different dimensions, and that those dimensions are perceived differently by different people.

10 Thinking Traps (That Ethical Leaders Avoid)

Avoid These 10 Thinking Traps What are some of the thinking traps that we fall into as leaders? I'm not referring to "correlation versus causation" and other logical reasoning problems. There are some common ways of thinking about business leadership that…

Honoring Human Rights is Essential

  by Linda Fisher Thornton Human Rights and Morality  Business leaders have a clear responsibility to honor universal human rights. In their article The Moral Foundations of Ethical Leadership in the Values Based Leadership Journal, Hester and Killian remind us that…

5 More Ways to Avoid the “Rightness” Trap

By Linda Fisher Thornton 5 More Ways to Avoid the "Rightness" Trap The comments kept coming! Here here are 5 More Ways to Avoid the "Rightness" Trap based on social media responses to Is Needing to Be "Right" Unethical? They are each illustrated here with quotes.