"Leadership and Ethics"
As a pastor of many congregations, I have always been committed to being an exemplary ethical leader. For me this means that I seek to be a caring servant within my leadership position. This includes seeking to treat others as I would like to be treated (following the golden rule). The traits that I have sought to exemplify most are humility, empathy, and kindness. As a Lutheran pastor, I have sought to do this as part of my faith response to God’s grace, and not to earn any “brownie points” from God. As a parent and grandparent, I have made it my goal to treat other people like I treat my children and my grandchildren.
A helpful book on leadership and ethics (which I came across while teaching ethics) is Kurt Senske’s Executive Values: A Christian Approach to Organizational Leadership. Senske, was at that time president and CEO of Lutheran Social Services of the South. He wrote this book in response to the moral failure of several leading companies, especially Enron and Arthur Andersen, to remain true to good leadership values. This, in part, led to their fall during the next year after 9/11. Less than a decade later the same greed-driven, corrupt practices led to a major collapse in the mortgage market and our economy. How quickly we forget!
In his introduction, the author offers eight guidelines for Christian leaders:
Develop a closer relationship with God
Strive for personal success
Have a closer relationship with family
Adhere to Christian values in dealing with others
Achieve organizational goals
Provide good leadership
Make a difference in people’s lives.
Share Christ with others (Minneapolis: Augsburg Books, 2003, page 5)
Senske then goes on to unfold what he means by each of these “principles” and to ground them both in Scripture and leadership. I commend the book to you.
Perhaps a varied interpretation of these guidelines may have motivated leaders who turn out to be unethical. For example, striving for personal success on its own terms might lead one to lose a sense of service or humility. By and large, though, when kept within an appropriate balance with being a servant of God and having a close relationship with family, personal success is an appropriate goal. What is really important to practicing your faith in leadership is always keeping to Christian values and trying to make a difference in people’s lives. Then profit will not be your goal at any price. With these measures of success, bottom-line profit-minded thinking is kept in check and the measure of a good leader is faithfulness to God, other leaders, and to consumers.
These leadership goals, or something like them, should be kept in mind when we look at leaders in government. During this millennium we have obviously seen the negative results of corruption in business. Now our country has a businessman, a real estate mogul, as its president. With the recent failures in corporate ethics, should one be surprised if a businessman would be questioned for his ethical principles. Although claiming to be a Christian, it certainly appears that President Trump exemplifies very few of Senske’s guidelines for being a Christian leader. Our president may strive for personal success and for the achievement of organizational goals. Where we would question his leadership would be in his “adhering to Christian values in dealing with others.” Also, there are serious questions about the personal values of his leadership style, especially on whether he sees himself as a public servant and at all measures success in faithfulness to God and others. As a citizen of the United States of America, Christians will need to seek to hold him accountable to these Christian standards and will need to pray for less of him and more of his country in the execution of his leadership.
Whatever leadership positions we are, may we seek to be mindful of those who are watching us, especially those who come after us, and what effect we might have on them and their future. This is why it would behoove all of us to treat others as we would treat those we love who come after us-- our children and our grandchildren. In doing so, we will leave a legacy of Christian service that will go far beyond us in the here and now.
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