TRUST
COMPETENCE
MOTIVES
MEANS
IMPACT
MORAL LEADERSHIP
"THE MORAL LEADER" COURSE

TRUST

To trust fundamentally means to make yourself vulnerable to the actions of others. We trust because we believe they can do what we want them to do, and that they will do right by us. When we choose to trust someone, we willingly give them power over us, trusting that they will not abuse this power. Trust is a special form of dependence. It is predicated on the idea that we can be more than disappointed: we can be betrayed. In The Power of Trust we argue that people trust organizations based on four elements: their competence, motives, means, and impact. We can trust companies on some of these and not on others. Case studies illustrating each element are listed below. 

COMPETENCE

A company’s ability to create and deliver products and/or services through a combination of process excellence, technical know-how, and managerial smarts.

MOTIVES

A company’s intentions to do well by all the people and groups who interact with it. And, when confronted with the necessity to make painful decisions, how well a company balances the interests of different groups to cause the least amount of harm.

MEANS

The fairness of a company’s processes and treatment of people in achieving its goals, when distributing rewards and pain points, and in conveying information.

IMPACT

The overall effect, both intended and unintended, of company actions on other people. And when the consequences are unintended, whether a company stands up and takes responsibility for them.

MORAL LEADERSHIP

My goal in moral leadership is to help people recognize—in a given situation—the presence or absence of moral leadership. It is important to understand that the opposite of moral leadership is not immoral leadership, but, instead, leadership in which an opportunity for moral action was not taken, or when the “most moral” choice was not exercised. Questions to ask are, “What is ‘moral action’ in this situation?” and, “What is that based on? Why is that moral?”

Most of us are familiar with moral dilemmas, which disturb us as they arise in our work and personal lives. To exercise moral leadership, we need to be able to parse a problem with moral stakes: to “reason morally,” to understand situational pressures and the ways that our reasoning can lead us astray, to develop a capacity for complexity – the ability to hold multiple perspectives in view simultaneously – and a tolerance for ambiguity – a willingness to live with partial solutions and solutions that may take a long time to come about.

On reasoning morally: 

Moral dilemmas in everyday life: 

The slippery slope: 

“THE MORAL LEADER” COURSE AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL

“The Moral Leader” course was launched more than four decades ago by Robert Coles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning physician and educator. Coles recognized the power of literature – of stories – to illuminate moral challenges and engage us deeply. I have taught the course for two decades. The syllabus covers 2,500 years of storytelling about moral dilemmas, from Sophocles’ Antigone, to Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece about the effects of British colonial rule on villagers in Nigeria, to Katharine Graham’s handling of the challenges of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate at The Washington Post, to U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s use of the atomic bomb against the Japanese at the close of World War II. Here are key takeaways from the course:

What is the nature of a moral challenge?

How do people reason morally?

What is moral leadership?