Society as we know it is a vast tapestry of overlapping organizations – some private, some public – that serve to structure human activities and human relationships into an edifice of intricate complexity.
Allow me to start with a disclaimer: This article is a full-on recommendation for a little gem of a book titled “Virtue at Work” by Geoff Moore, Professor of Business Ethics at Durham University in the UK.
Doing the right thing is not as easy as just saying it. It can often require real courage to do what is right, and humans are notoriously fallible in this front. But another, equally daunting obstacle stands in the way of what is good and just – one that we have likely been struggling with for as long as our species has had a notion of right and wrong: How exactly, pray tell, does one determine what is the right thing to do in a given situation?
In his influential book “After Virtue”, moral and political philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre put forward the contentious view that professional managers within bureaucratic corporations – whether public or private – are intrinsically (by their very nature) amoral.
There are entire sections in libraries devoted to leadership and many great leaders and thinkers have spent their lives trying to define and describe leadership. And there are innumerable courses and programs designed to help people become good leaders by focusing on one aspect or another of what makes a great leader.
Academic research has shown that happiness makes employees more productive while conversely, lower happiness is systematically associated with lower productivity. Similarly, a growing body of research supports the connection between diversity in the workplace and higher profitability
As I press “enter” to publish this article, I’m a few hours away from addressing an audience of leaders on the topic of courage in the workplace.
