Character and Competence: Hallmarks of a Professional

1. Character and Competence: Hallmarks of a Professional Goolsby DVP Lecture 30 September 2010 Colonel Sean Hannah, PhD United States Army

2. The Core Questions Why do you want to be a leader? Have you prepared yourself to lead? Who and what is it that you serve? What will be your legacy?

3. My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am ~Author Unknown

4. A 2007 national study by Harvard reported that 77% agree or strongly agree that there is a crisis of confidence in America’s leaders Rosenthal, Pittinsky, Purvin, & Montoya, 2007 Were these then really even LEADERS?

5. Followers look for two things in their leaders: Character Competence Both become even more important when facing a tough call

6. Three Options for Organizations • All production can be organized under one of three logics: • The market of free, unregulated competition where consumer choice determines services, products, and prices • caveat emptor, “let the buyer beware” • A bureaucracy of planned, supervised, controlled work focused on predictability and efficiency • A profession of workers with specialized knowledge who organize and control their own work based on a trust relationship with their client (s) • cedat emptor, “let the taker believe in us”

7. Being a Professional • Expertise • A Sense of Calling and Identity • A Sense of Service • Identify with the Profession’s Ethic • A sense of Stewardship/Ownership • Moral Compass In essence, the professional’s “practice” is the repetitive exercise of discretionary human judgment Therefore: Character is the Sine Qua Non of any Profession

8. Duty…always first, subordinating personal interests Honor… physical and moral courage, integrity and honesty, seeking truth, doing the right thing, always Loyalty… upward to the Constitution & the Commander in Chief, down to all subordinates, central to trust between profession and citizens Service to Country… the officer’s calling, motivation, and legacy Competence… a moral imperative Teamwork… modeling civility and respect, placing the group and mission over individuals and self Subordination… to the organization, the mission and senior leaders Leadership… always, but always, by example to be emulated Principles of Officership

9. Leadership Defined A system where people are positively influenced – and have a sense of purpose, direction, and motivation – while operating to accomplish the mission and improve the organization Leadership Is Inherently Moral

10. Leadership is an Interdependent System Senior Leader Unit Effectiveness and Character Peers Leader Peers Leadershipemerges through positive social interaction Follower Follower Followers

11. Leadership is not Management Command Control Plan Organize Resource Management Organizational Success Inspire Motivate Enable Passion Values Leadership Management and Leadership can be aligned or in conflict: e.g., Espouse Organizational Values, yet “Do what it takes to make numbers”

12. Authentic Leadership • SELF AWARE • TRANSPARENT • BALANCED IN PROCESSING • MORAL PERSPECTIVE To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man  ~William Shakespeare, Hamlet

13. Leaders Ground Others in Core Values In 1783 officers of the United States Continental Army, camped 15 Miles from West Point, was on the verge of a rebellion and planned to March against the Congress in a coup d'etat. At the height of that fervor, when even General Gates, Washington's second in command had sided with the rebelling officers, General Washington addressed his assembled officers: “Let me conjure you, in the name of our common country as you value your own sacred honor as you respect the rights of humanity; as you regard the military & national character of America, to express your utmost horror & detestation of the man who wishes, under any specious pretences, to overturn the liberties of our country, & who wickedly attempts to open the flood gates of civil discord, & deluge our rising empire in blood. (15 March, 1783)" General George Washington

14. Compliance or Virtue? Unethical Behavior Ethical Behavior Virtuous Behavior The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing Unknown (misattributed to Edmund Burke, British Statesman)

15. To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice ~Confucius MORAL RECOGNITION MORAL JUDGMENT MORAL INTENTIONS MORAL ACTION Moral Cognition Processes Moral Motivation Processes

16. Being Ethical Isn't Easy! Leadership & Group Norms Operating Context (e.g. Industry Standards) Professional Ethics Physical & Psychological State Organization Culture & Values Ethical Thoughts & Behavior Personal Ethics & Morals Laws & Regulations Manager Pressures • Different individuals may “weight” the influence of each component differently • The same individual may weight influences differently in different contexts

17. DEVELOPED MORAL CAPABILITIES - MORAL COMPLEXITY - MORAL IDENTITY - MORAL OWNERSHIP - MORAL CONFIDENCE & COURAGE POSITIVE EFFECTS ON MORAL PROCESSING MORAL RECOGNITION MORAL JUDGMENT MORAL INTENTIONS MORAL ACTION Moral Cognition Processes Moral Motivation Processes

19. Taking Moral Ownership Person MORAL OWNERSHIP Environment Behavior You are both a product of and a producer of our environment

20. It isn’t worthwhile…to dictate to gentlemen. Most of these things that need legislation they will, no doubt, easily find for themselves Plato, Republic IV

21. When will you be called upon to make the tough (right) calls?

22. Character and Competence: Hallmarks of a Professional Why do you want to be a leader? Have you prepared yourself to lead? Who and what is it that you serve? What will be your legacy?

23. Extra Backup slides

24. ORG Level Ethical Development Techniques • Supportive, Morally-Developed Organization: • Ensure Espoused and In-Use Values are Aligned • Ensure Artifacts & Reward Systems are Aligned with Values • Role Modeling at all levels • Psychological Safety • Reinforcing Structures and Systems • Ethical Performance Feedback • Leader Attention – Raise Visibility • Add ethics to all organizational planning systems • Add ethics discussions to “after action reviews” • “Frame” issues as moral

25. Some Ethical Development Techniques • Key Developmental Ethical Experiences – “Trigger Events” • Coupled with guided reflection & meaning-making of those events • Cognitive disequilibrium • Moral dilemma discussions • Teaching deliberate cognitive moral decision-making skills and processes • Process challenges through multiple “lenses” • Building Moral Potency (Courage, Confidence, Ownership) • Mastery Experiences • Vicarious Learning • Social Persuasion • Raising perceptions of “Moral Intensity”/Deterring moral disengagement • Placing moral issues in humanistic terms, discouraging sanitizing language, making salient the injurious effects, limiting attribution of blame, etc… • Build Moral Individual and Social identity

26. To Understand Your Ethic and Profession You Need to Think Past the “Tip of the Iceberg” All of these observable objects are called artifacts. Artifacts can mostly be seen, touched, and heard. Artifacts Surface These beliefs become intertwined over one’s experiences such that they become attitudes about “the worth or importance of people, concepts or things” that we then call values. ESPOUSED and IN USEValues Shared Values Underlying Assumptions These values permeate organizations, and when shared, reinforced and validated as “successful” in solving the problems of organizational survival and effectiveness, they gradually become transformed into underlying assumptions, “supported by articulated sets of beliefs, norms, and operational rules of behavior.”

27. Moral Rationalization • Advantageous comparisons (“our actions aren't as bad as the other company’s”) • Attributing blame to victims (“they were asking for it”) • Diffusion of responsibility (we wouldn’t have to do this if headquarters didn’t demand such profit numbers”) • Dehumanizing victims(“these regulators are a bunch of snakes”) • Choosing to not recognize the extent of harm (“only a few people will have bad side effects”) • Using sanitizing language or euphemisms (“a bomber ‘servicing’ a target causes ‘collateral damage’”). Any of these strategies allow the actor to lessen the perceived severity of their actions and thereby protect their moral self-esteem/self-identity

28. Ethical Leadership • Conducts his/her personal life in an ethical manner • Defines success not just by results, but also by the way they are obtained • Listens to what unit members have to say • Disciplines unit members who violate ethical standards • Makes fair and balanced decisions • Can be trusted • Discusses ethics or values with unit members • Sets an example of how to do things the right way in terms of ethics • Has the best interests of unit members in mind • When making decisions, asks “what is the right thing to do?” Brown and Trevino, 2006