Ethics: Must We Be So Serious?

Leadership ethics is serious business.  In the last month, I have spent a considerable amount of thought peeling back the onion to the origins of unethical decisions. In this process, to be successful, it's apparent we can neither be tangled in raw emotions or emotionless robots. Somehow we must learn to balance these two for a resolution we can live with. To start with, this class has helped me see how an individual's worldview built with different bricks produces much different results. It's been even more helpful to understand how I think the way I do.

I always take ethics seriously, however sometimes ethics can be better understood when we remove our emotions and our judgment from the situation.  Although my technique is not recommended when approaching the solution of an ethical problem, rather to shake myself out of moral judgments and thoughts which demonize decision makers. Perhaps you may be willing to try my way: finding a way to laugh at a common human approach to a situation rather than retaining a rigid stance and fighting to be right.

Ok, how do people ever get to be suck ups? Somewhere along the line the perception has been created being a suck up will get you ahead. We've all seen it, we can all think of at least one person who, in our minds, has gotten ahead because they were a suck up. But was this person an ethical suck up? Enchantment author, Guy Kawasaki argues on his blog to change the world there is an art to being a suck up to get what you want.

We all want something whether it's a paragraph from a teammate, an extra pen, or a promotion.  Is there a nice and ethical way to get what we want while working our wiles on our teammates, supply clerks, and bosses? Kawasaki says the art includes seven elements to be effective and I would add, ethical. These include: credibility, empathy, utility, gratitude, obligation, fluidity, and flattery. In a nut shell being an ethical suck up acknowledges we are human beings interacting with one another. Why not do it with these elements to have a pleasant engagement with someone rather than taking advantage of the person? It is the intent behind the action which is so important for us all.