We know that the current climate is demanding values from everyone. Employers, educators, leaders, students, the government, and business leaders, to name but a few, are all being called to ‘think’ again and ask, ‘what is good leadership?’
Good leadership is, as Alan Williams tells us in The Values Economy, about what we do. But it is more importantly about “how it is done” (p.21). The ethical leader seeks to be informed about how people feel, how decisions are made and the effects they will have on individuals and the organisation. They may also consider how decisions might affect the climate or the local community if the implications involved resource extraction or miles of air travel, for instance. It is not simply the case that decisions are made quickly or just on a whim.
This is another way of describing what is known in the field of ethics as subjectivism. The ethical leader tries to avoid making decisions based on feelings or instinct alone because they have come to understand the dangers involved in taking quick, unconsidered, emotional or rash decisions. The ethical leader will try to engage with the facts and view issues from a multitude of perspectives in order to arrive at, in as much as possible, an objective decision – that is, one that is detached from pure emotion.
The need for facts and feelings
Obviously, we need to feel things and ‘feel’ that our decisions are the right ones. But we don’t simply rely on emotions to move organisations and teams forward. We engage with objective facts and try to seek truth in as much as it is possible. We also try to avoid major risks, while sometimes moving in a ‘grey area’ where we don’t always know fully the consequences of our moral actions or decisions.
To make a moral decision, therefore, is a matter of conscience. It is a matter of going to the very core of who we are, or what organisations are for, and what we need to consider about people when we’re leading them to determine the truth of what needs to be done.
This requires depth of character, time for contemplation, safe spaces to do the deep learning and reflection and the conviction that, if it goes wrong, we will take full responsibility – assuming that we took that decision in freedom.
The famous quote about the voice of conscience in paragraph 16 of Gaudium et spes is cited as one of the most significant texts in the field of Catholic ethics, for instance, because it demonstrates clearly that decisions need to be owned by us and that we must ensure that we go to the ‘inner sanctuary’ of ourselves in order to find what truth is in every age.
The need for safety in decision-making
Now, when we think of being in an ‘inner sanctuary’ making decisions, images of peace, security, safety, calmness, considered judgement and clarity of vision might come to mind. Given this, therefore, where environments are frantic, full of disorder, competitiveness, drama, politics, and emotionally charged, people do not have the space to enter into an inner reflection on what good, ethical leadership might be required at any given time.
It’s quite the opposite in many instances: stressed leaders often rely on the opinions of loud voices, can be driven by emotions, or by rules set down by others, or they can even fail to make a decision one way or another. Moral cowardice is as much a feature of contemporary leadership as is moral failure, even though much less is said about it. Many leaders simply don’t take decisions at all because they are afraid to own those decisions or to ‘rock the boat’.
When leaders are not safe, they cannot perform in the way that they normally would. And this is perfectly understandable. What is concerning about this, however, is that many do not know how to move from a lack of safety into a more stable state quickly enough, because often we just cannot help feeling unsafe in the environment where we are situated at any given time.
The nervous system and ethical decisions
This is another way of saying what Deb Dana’s work on polyvagal theory reminds us of: that “[t]he autonomic nervous system is at the heart of our lived experience”. It senses danger. It senses peace. It reacts in relation to how we feel in any given time.
Very little has been written in the field of ethics about the nervous system and ethical decision-making so, often, much of what we say about values-driven leadership, for instance, lacks an understanding of how our bodies can feel unsafe and therefore prevent us from making ethical decisions. The result is that we feel vulnerable and upset and fail to lead ourselves, let alone anyone else.
Furthermore, since many of us don’t know about how our leadership can be affected by our nervous system, we cry or get emotional because that’s our coping strategy, while the coping strategy of others around us might be to never show emotion at all and always ‘put on a front’. Either way, each reaction affects our ability to ‘see, judge an act’. In short, it affects our ability to be moral and to lead ethically.
Compassion and calming techniques can help
As a result, when we consider how many times we might feel worried as a leader, we begin to become more compassionate about what leaders go through several times in a hour, a day, or one single meeting. We can begin to gain insight into how unsafe people are feeling and be more forgiving when they don’t lead in the way we might wish them to, because beneath the role is a person – vulnerable and human, affected by situations and circumstances – like any other human person.
Techniques that I find helpful as a leader include those suggested by the Canadian leadership coach Martin Itzkow, FRSA. Itzkow has practised several ‘peace’ and ‘healing’ techniques with hundreds of community leaders, government officials and CEOs, so they are tried and tested.
He suggests that when we feel unsafe at work or see someone else feeling emotional or unsafe that we should try to do some of the following:
- Help the person to ground themselves and understand that this situation will pass. It’s just a moment.
- Encourage breathing deeply and try to come back to a place of peace and calm within.
- Try to develop inner steadiness so we can come back to a place where we respond thoughtfully and in a measured way, avoiding fear and rash decisions.
- Name what we feel and why. Learn ways of calming down and come back to safety quickly. This might involve writing feelings down, adopting a mantra, prayers, a walk in nature, ringing a friend, etc.
- Notice where we feel stress in our bodies so that we come to know how we react in future and can take time to listen to what we need when it happens again.
- Use a spiritual or centring practice from our faith (if we have one, that is) that can help us to feel protected and safe once again. This is called SQ (spiritual quotient) and is linked with leaders who lead with values and mission in particular.
(Taken from Itzkow’s 2025 ‘Self Healing Sheet’, adapted from Cindy Wigglesworth’s SQ21.)
In summary, therefore, if we are truly to move towards those ethical leadership traits that we are claiming to already have, then we need to also have a set of skills that enable us to be solution-focused and ethical in our responses when we see other leaders feeling unsafe and emotional, rather than judge them for being truly human. After all, who can honestly say that they never cried or got emotional over work?
