Ethical Leadership, Part I: Modern Management Theory

Five years ago this month, I embarked on a long-postponed adventure and returned to school to earn a master’s degree. My quest for new-to-me knowledge coincided with the pandemic, fortuitously providing meaning and structure to my life at a time that was difficult for so many. Because I continued to work while in school, it took me four years to finish. I graduated this past spring and am grateful to be teaching in the program where I studied alongside the professors who guided my academic journey. Graduate school proved to be an intellectually satisfying experience, which I highly recommend, especially for those of you, like me, who have been in the field a while. Integrating theory into practice is a fascinating exercise—it isn’t always feasible, but it does help to be more intentional, less rote, and objectively question the why of organizational action.

I spent my last semester in school researching ethical leadership. There is copious literature about the inherent traits and practices of effective leaders, largely discussed through the lenses of modern business management. The ethical dimensions of leadership don’t always receive center stage, but there are a few standouts among the gurus. Below are insights from eight experts of the late 19th through early 21st centuries whose teachings have application to the nonprofit cultural sector. (Alas, I’ve included only one woman and one person of color here, which is reflective of overlooked perspectives in the field. Scholars like Tyrone McKinley Freeman, Leon Prieto, Kristin Williams, and others are seeking to rectify that oversight through their recently published works.)

N.B. Much academic literature on leadership expresses a binary relationship between “leader” and “followers”—the former a singular individual who creates and manifests the vision, and the latter who choose to be led by someone in a position of influence over them. I find these definitions and this dualism fraught, especially for nonprofit organizations, which represent a collective and cannot achieve success without collaboration, community, and alignment among diverse stakeholders who together co-create and -manifest the future.

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American political philosopher and organizational management theorist Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) defied convention among the privileged women of her generation by graduating from Radcliffe College in 1898 and pursuing a professional path. (Most women in the 19th century weren’t college educated, didn’t labor outside the home, and couldn’t vote nor own property.) Working in the Boston area, she taught at a private school, performed social work aiding indigent families, and volunteered in the settlement house movement that inspired the community center movement. These experiences influenced her perspectives on organizational life. In a period of rampant industrialization when corporate CEOs often employed scientific management methods to regulate the performance of workers, Follett advocated for a more holistic and personalized approach.

In a collection of essays, she recognizes the role of leader as someone with the “ability to grasp a total situation” and “find the unifying thread” to coalesce a group around common purpose—what she calls “the invisible leader”. Good leaders, says Follett, utilize “imagination and insight…[and] courage and faith” to “create group power rather than express a personal power”. They remain attuned to current forces and future trends, and are prepared to shift direction to take advantage of opportunity while avoiding excessive risk. She believes in self-empowerment and developing leaders among followers by providing them with the tools and training to advance.

Charles Clinton Spaulding (1874-1952) was a successful entrepreneur who served as president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company for over 50 years. Raised in rural North Carolina, he worked on his father’s farm until moving at age 20 to Durham, NC to complete his eighth-grade education (equivalent to high school today). Six years later, he began selling insurance for a new company founded by a local barber and doctor to help their Black neighbors cover funeral expenses for loved ones. Spaulding was quickly promoted to manage the business, which he evolved from a fledgling endeavor to a hugely profitable enterprise, expanding into four nearby states. He also founded four other thriving finance and insurance related companies, all in service to the Black community.

Considered the “father of African American management”, Spaulding was inspired by Booker T. Washington’s life story and self-improvement principles of “cooperation, thrift, diligence, and economic solidarity”. His leadership style emphasized humility, service, spirituality, and above all, relationships. He demonstrated a commitment to the broader community and mutual advancement for men and women alike. He invested in his employees, whom he considered family, providing perks—such as health clinics and cafeterias—and programs, including educational training and public speaking lessons—to aid their personal and professional development. In 1937, he published an article in The Southern Workman magazine articulating his “Four Cardinal Points of Entrepreneurship”. These stressed the importance of character, modeling values of honesty, courtesy, and courage; fundamental business principals, understanding the industry and its market; cash or its equivalent, ensuring sufficient financial, social, and human capital to operate prudently and responsibly; and social service in business, a precursor to today’s corporate citizenship programs that give back to the community.

Robert Greenleaf (1904-1990) led corporate management training programs at AT&T for over 40 years before “retiring” in 1964 at the age of 60 to found the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership (originally called the Center for Applied Ethics). He sought to create a movement broadly disseminating his own leadership theories that focus on aiding others. In his foundational essay The Servant as Leader, first published in 1970, Greenleaf defines servant leaders as individuals who are, simultaneously, “historian, contemporary analyst, and prophet”. They are profoundly self-aware, moral, humble, alert, empathetic, perseverant, trusting, and trusted. Such leaders are attentive listeners who create meaning from imagination and “intuitive insight” that inform communal vision. They help to build strong institutions by empowering followers to become leaders. Greenleaf’s ideas presaged social entrepreneurship of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He also predicted today’s social justice movements that call for people of privilege to “stand aside and serve by helping when asked and as instructed”, enabling opportunities for women and people of color to step up and lead.

John W. Gardner (1912-2002) began his career as a college professor of psychology, then served overseas in the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service and the US Marine Corps before joining The Carnegie Corporation of New York, where he was president from 1955 to 1965. He was appointed secretary of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson from 1965 to 1968. In this role, he worked to uphold the Civil Rights Act of 1964, expanded federal funding for public education, initiated the national healthcare system of Medicare, and established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He resigned in opposition to the Vietnam War and in 1970 founded Common Cause, a nonprofit that holds government accountable to the electorate. In 1979, he established Independent Sector, a service organization that brings together the public sector with government and business “to advance the common good”. Ten years later, Gardner returned to teaching at his alma mater, Stanford University, and advising its program in public service until his death in 2002.

Gardner’s book, On Leadership, was written in response to the political, economic, and social ills of the 1980s. Its first chapter, “The Nature of Leadership”, lays the groundwork for the book’s premise. Differentiating leadership from “status”, “power”, and “official authority”, he defines the term as “the process of persuasion or example by which an individual…pursue[s] objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers”. He asserts that great leaders naturally embrace complexity. Most “act in a stream of history”, shaped by the environments in which they occur and thus are not solely responsible for outcomes. Admonishing other leadership theorists (notably, Warren Bennis, below) for isolating leaders from managers, he identifies six discriminating traits of “leader-managers”: they are planners who connect today’s reality to future possibilities; they understand how history and environmental context affect organizations; they “influence constituents beyond their jurisdictions”; they prioritize mission, vision, and values; they are skilled in managing multiple agendas and diverse constituencies; and “they think in terms of renewal”. He champions empowered, distributed leadership as a requirement of large, multi-faceted organizations and urges the “institutionalization” of leadership teams as the way for future progress.

American political scientist James MacGregor Burns (1918-2014), who had a 40-year teaching career at Williams College, became widely known for his formative ideas on leadership theory. Although his seminal book on the topic often equates leadership with masculine notions of power defined in terms of conflict, he recognizes the concept as predicated on “relationships” where “two or more persons engage with one another”. He distinguishes between transactional and transformational leadership, describing the former as a self-interested “exchange of valued things” and the latter as a moral, “conscious choice among real alternatives” based on personal values. In tandem, Burns differentiates power over—brandishing power in ways that influence the behavior of followers by controlling resources, which he finds corrupting—from power with—sharing power and being in relationship with others to achieve a common purpose.

The late Warren Bennis (1925-2014) was an accoladed professor of business administration at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and University of Southern California for over 40 years, as well as an academic administrator—provost at State University of New York at Buffalo and president of University of Cincinnati. Considered one of the founders of 20th century leadership theory, Bennis emphasizes the vital quality of trust as essential to leaders seeking to foster the “motivation and energy that makes it possible for organizations to be successful”. With co-author Joan Goldsmith, a management consultant and educator, they outline the four qualities of trust-based leadership for the nonprofit sector: constancy, congruity, reliability, and integrity. Bennis and Goldsmith also believe in vision as the building block of leadership, where followers are “invite[d] to feel they have a stake in realizing the vision…[and empowered] to experience the vision as their own”.^ Leaders who “set the moral tone in organizations” also must have empathy for their staff and constituents, which helps to transcend the status quo and effect change.

^ This viewpoint differs markedly from my own concept of vision, which is collective, co-created, and embraced by leaders and stakeholders working together towards fulfillment.

Leadership development consultant James Kouzes (1945- ) and leadership and management professor Barry Posner (1949- ) posit a fundamental concept about ethical leadership—that it “emanates not so much from the head as it does the heart”. They attribute this idea to US Army Major General John H. Stanford (1938-1998) and his famous quote, “‘Love ‘em and lead ‘em’” (perhaps inspired by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1962 sermon, Levels of Love, at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta). The co-authors assert that “love constitutes the soul of ethical leadership” and the presence of love, compassion, and support in an organization reflects its health. Love emanates from a strong, confident, and caring leader who equally values herself and others while seeking to find a communal “sense of purpose, fulfillment, and fun” in the work environment. When loving leaders are functioning at their best, they empower followers to become leaders.

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So what are the common threads among these experts that hold value today? That leaders bring foresight, empathy, integrity, and accountability to their roles as organizational guides; stand in genuine relationship with others to serve a community and a common purpose; uphold with conviction shared personal, institutional, and public values; and nurture leaders from followers. Who would you add to this group of theorists?

Image credits (L to R):
Mary Parker Follett, n.d. Courtesy of The Mary Parker Follett Network
Charles Clinton Spaulding, n.d. Courtesy of the African American Registry
Robert Greenleaf, n.d. Courtesy of Ausburg University
John W. Gardner, n.d. Courtesy of John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities, Stanford University
James MacGregor Burns, 2007. Courtesy of National Brooks/Associated Press
Warren Bennis, 2012. Courtesy of Phil Channing/University of Southern California
James Kouzes, 2017. Courtesy of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Barry Posner, 2017. Courtesy of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.