An Introduction to the Virtues of Ethical Leadership Part 1 – Introduction

An Introduction to the Virtues of Ethical Leadership
Part 1 – Introduction
by Chad Weinstein

This is the first in a series of posts exploring character-based leadership development based on the Ethical Leaders in Action (ELA) Virtues of Ethical Leadership.  We hope that you will find this exploration inspiring, informative, and useful in your own quest to develop yourself as a leader and help others to do the same.

Our leadership development approach is built around the Ethical Leaders in Action (ELA) Virtues of Ethical Leadership, a framework of five virtues – character traits- that make us more effective at bringing out the best in others.  Our goal in creating the ELA Virtues of Ethical Leadership was to promote the development of ethical leaders, who empower others to improve the world in ways large and small.

The ELA Virtues of Ethical Leadership (VEL), our model for character-based leadership development, consists of five main leadership virtues:

• Service,
• Competence,
• Creativity,
• Clarity, and
• Courage.

These five Virtues of Ethical Leadership define and support our capacity to lead: to bring out the best in others, and to achieve more together than we could without that leadership.

Many leadership development approaches focus on skills and techniques.  Indeed, leadership involves many such abilities, and good leaders spend a lifetime expanding their toolkit.  We believe that these abilities – and a leader’s commitment to apply them – also flow from our character.  Thus, we have developed a model based on virtues that leaders can develop through intentional learning and through experience.  Developing these leadership virtues enables us to practice an ever-widening set of leadership skills. 

The VEL model is a product of more than three decades of philosophical inquiry and practical reflection, with input from countless teachers, mentors, and friends along the way. Our inquiry seeks to answer some big questions:

• What essential qualities in individuals make them more effective as ethical leaders?
• In the lifelong process of leadership development, what are the roles played by the leaders themselves, their friends and allies, their mentors, and their teachers?
• How can today’s leaders benefit from a process for strengthening character and competencies that was framed by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago?

In our next post we will explore the tools we have developed to help you gain a perspective on how you express these virtues in your personal and professional live as well as get the observations of others on how you express these virtues in your relationships and day to day interactions with others.

Follow this link to Part 2 in this series, The Nature of Virtues https://ethinact.com/an-introduction-to-the-virtues-of-ethical-leadership-part-2-the-nature-of-virtues/

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If you would like to take the Virtues of Ethical Leadership Self Inventory (VELSI) you may do so free of charge at https://ethinact.com/velsi/.