Blog XIII: Diversifying Ethical Perspectives through Transformational Servant Leadership

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A basic description of a transformational servant leader (TSL) is one who focuses on developing followers to their full potential and be transformational servant leaders themselves, both within the context of their group as well as in their personal lives within their communities (Imbenzi, Williaume, & Page, 2013, p. 7). One key aspect of transformational servant is the ability to understand and make ethical choices.

Making ethical choices however, can be an extremely complicated matter depending on the complexity of the situation. Philosophers are still engaging in a centuries old debate about a framework of universally agreed on truths which may potentially never get solved. To begin the process of helping others improve (or personally improving) their ethical decision-making ability, I believe it helps to understand and self-reflect on which perspective you align your personal beliefs with most. Johnson (2018, pp. 281-288) outlines several ethical perspectives that one could align their personal philosophy with to make consistent ethical choices.

The first is utilitarianism which Johnson (2018, pp. 270-272) describes as a process of making choices that will benefit the most amount of people (or harm the least amount of people). Utilitarian choices are made by:

  1. Identifying the action or issues present in the context of the situation
  2. Specifying those who might be affected by the action (e.g., the organization, the local community, a professional group etc.), not just those immediately involved in the situation.
  3. Determining the likely consequences, whether good and bad, for those affected.
  4. Adding up the good and the bad consequences. If the benefits outweigh the cost, then the action is morally right. (Johnson, 2018, pp. 270-272)

 

Another ethical approach is known as deontological ethics which basically outline that you should always make ethical choices based on your ethical values and what you view as morally right despite, or independent of, the situation. European philosopher, Immanuel Kant summarized this perspective best with the sentence: “do right, no matter what the cost” (as cited in Johnson, 2018, pp. 275-277).

One last perspective I will highlight out of many is pragmatism which is the view that we should approach and solve ethical dilemmas through the method of scientific inquiry. John Dewey, a proponent of pragmatism, argued that to solve ethical dilemmas, we would need to develop a hypothesis for the solution of the problem, test our hypothesis (often through moral imagination as we can’t always scientifically test these hypotheses), and be open to other viewpoints since our knowledge is limited (Johnson (2018, pp. 283-286).

For those unfamiliar with these perspectives, transformational servant leaders must do their part to educate followers about different ethical perspectives and then encourage reflection to determine which perspective aligns best with their personal philosophy. Each perspective have their own strengths and weaknesses and may also complement or disagree with each other. However, the strength of TSL helping followers discover what ethical perspective they personally align with can benefit the group. If followers understand more about themselves, it illuminates what Johari describes as our ‘unknown area’ and further helps followers reach Maslow’s highest need of self-actualization (Businessballs, n.d.). Along with this, groups who are more well-rounded with diversely thinking followers can help the overall group identify blind spots in their ethical decision making. Groups with members that exemplify a diverse range of perspectives have the ability to make better decisions, especially when these decisions affect a large number of people. A transformational servant leaders’ role in this context is to foster the development of their followers’ personal philosophies, accept differences within the group as a means to diversify perspectives, and then coordinate the group to reach the best overall decision.

 

References

Imbenzi, G., Williaume, D. & Page, D. (2013). Transformational servant leadership. Unpublished manuscript, Master of Arts in Leadership. Trinity Western University: Langley, Canada.

Johnson, C. E. (2018). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow [E-Book]. Los Angeles: Sage.

BusinessBalls. (n.d.). Johari Window Model and Free Diagrams [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://www.businessballs.com/self-awareness/johari-window-model-and-free-diagrams-68/