And what was SEAC all about this year?

It was a great moment for the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum this year. The annual conference was held in Grand Rapids Michigan and was tightly organized. What made this especially delightful is that the agenda was not overcrowded with fatuous presentations and droning-on ill-read papers. Instead the organizers had limited the streams and brought in more than one thoughtful speaker who was willing (and able) to engage the audience in a conversation following/during the talk. [An interesting sidebar to the event was that I had picked up a “bug” earlier in the week, probably on a plane, and by the time I arrived in Grand Rapids, I had “lost my voice”!!]

The conference actually started with three concurrent presentations following the welcome. These were like ice-breakers at a training session and gently got the proceedings underway. They led nicely into the first keynote address: Leadership Ethics with Joanne B. Ciulla from the Rutgers Business School. She started with a picture of Napoleon and asked us all if we fully understand his hand in his shirt. It’s actually a sign of humility; and, she went on to point out that how we “see” leaders is significant. It is part of why it is difficult to be an ethical leader. People may not see us in that light and therefore do not respond to our efforts. Moreover, due to the ever-present potential for corruption (i.e. the use of entrusted power for personal gain) there is also a tendency for a perception of corruption to exist. It is through this veil that we must struggle to be effective about our ethical decision-making.

But then she made an interesting observation: “leadership is not a profession!!” Therefore it may shift, change personages, revolve — all within the same organization. Nevertheless, the common thread is that responsible leaders have an obligation to their team, to their client(s), to their society. Now this is something that I first heard from one of my mentors during my doctoral research — Ralph Mosher always would remind me that the administrator or manager always was facing ethical dilemmas because of her/his need to be aware of the responsibilities to one’s immediate circle (including family), to one’s employment circle (including workers and clients) and to one’s societal circle (the impact of what one’s place/nature of work, and also one’s preferred recreational world had on society and the environment). It was good to be reminded again of this. And she took it one more step: moral agency requires the taking responsibility for bad decisions within the organization or corporation (something that Purdy Crawford, a notable Canadian leader — in his biography by Gordon Pitts “Fire in the Belly” — did unceasingly). She illustrated this in a couple of ways — an old Chinese proverb: “he who stands on tiptoes is not steady” and the Old Testament story of David, Bathsheba and Uriah — a case of the leader’s (David) loss of strategic focus. A leader may get cut some slack through idiosyncracy credits, but it is not something a leader should rely on.

She then discussed the moral influence of followers and how it is important to reinforce the validity of positive moral influence among those who look to you as a leader. “Don’t fiddle while tragedy strikes!” She drew her talk to a close by asking how do we get organizations “out of trouble”? She suggests an attitude of reverence may be helpful: don’t assume the leader is the only solution or even the only one that can conceive of a solution. The question needs to include an examination of “followership”. There must be a serious commitment to rhetoric which is communications writ large rather than relying on “how the leader looks”. A leader to be ethical must have a sense of reverence for the team, the collective can establish a standard that is more lasting than that of the leader’s alone.

Following this I attended a panel on “revising ethical challenges of academic administration”. I wish many of the college administrators that I knew and/or worked with could have been in attendance. This panel was thoughtful, erudite and “right on”. The admin-types leading the conversation were quick to admit that in their early days “as administrators we never talked about ethics (and) did even faculty members talk about ethics?” It was too often something left to the philosophers’ corner, and thus was on the periphery of the campus conversation, except maybe by those who actually took the occasional class in ethics. The gist of it all was that it’s still a long and winding road, and the tone for ethical leadership is not always from the top — it must, in fact, be encouraged throughout the institution. There must be an emphasis on good governance more than good administration as this is a more inclusive framing of the challenges.

I also attended a session on publishing and found out just how far the world has come since my doctoral days when it was seldom talked about other than perhaps in one-on-one conversations with faculty members and their Deans. Firstly, there now is a great diversity of interests; secondly, there is a preponderance of people wanting to move their papers to print and/or expanding the journals focusing on ethics. Of all the comments that I heard in this rather disparate group of participants, these are the ones that resonated with me:
1) who’s publishing the books I’m reading (and thus I want to emulate)
2) voice and style are critical — reduce the “academic” prison influence
3) write to communicate not to impress (i.e. imagine someone you’re talking to…)
A final thought that was shared intrigued me — there are likely no more than “200” buyers for your book — so think about printing it yourself and giving it as a targeted gift, perhaps to colleagues who then might share it with their students…

The next session worthy of comment happened Friday morning. It was an “ethical leadership roundtable” with four classical philosophers. And this is an example of how thinking outside the box can make for a much more engaging conversation at a conference. Four individuals took on the persona of a different voice from the world of ethical thinking. We heard from Confuscious (globalist/centrist), Marcus Aurelius (imperialist), John Dewey (pragmatist), and Nel Nodding (feminist). It wasn’t so much what each said although that was important; it was more that they engaged each other and then conversed with the audience. While Marcus was very classical and talked about “worry first about oneself” he also pointed out that nothing really matters — just live and stay alive! John was into problem solving and the scientific method and saw no authorative, over-arching leadership model while Nel was into caring and therefore relationships (between people not “values” or “rights” but “needs”), Confuscious was more into exemplars and experience. They debated case studies posing different scenarios which kept everyone engaged. One question seemed to stump Nel though: is a “caring” individual able to better “think outside the box” when addressing ethical leadership challenges? The other question that all struggled a bit with was whether or not “moral exemplars” need to be heroes. It was posed from the audience that many people can help us with our reasoning through the moment of critical choice, especially when one uses the learning experience to practice different approaches to trying to resolve the ethical dilemma. In this regard it was felt that moral imagination becomes critical. As John Dewey argued quite forcefully, what is happening in the moment is key and therefore can we respond in the moment? There was some consensus that most important education evolves from learning from most moral examples; although Nel was adamant that we must restructure education totally. It did remind me that even scholars can mis-read others, as I’m not totally convinced that Nel was that fixated…

The second significant plenary speaker was from Notre Dame — Jessica McManus Warnell — discussing “millennials and ethical leadership”. A strong supporter of Mary Gentile’s Giving Voice to Values, she believes that these people born between 1980 & 2000 will be 75% of the workforce by 2050. Millennials are the people who have grown up in a “doted/spoiled” milieu. She believes that these people actually will benefit from such an upbringing as they are not competitive in the workplace, will have techno & social media fluency, proclivity to multi-task, great teamwork capacities, preference for mentorship and training, want meaningful work within social and environmental sustainability, and appreciate immediacy. She didn’t respond as forcefully though when asked how they will do on a global platform, where there are others who will compete, who will respond to challenges to do better, who will look for the innovative edge (as opposed to the group collaboration).

Warnell referenced Gentile: “let’s assume you know the right thing to do, how might you go about getting it done?” The response is through anticipating, scripting and rehearsal — moral muscle — let’s normalize “ethics” in the conversation. And she feels the the presence of women at the forefront of organizations, conversations, situations will speed this transformation. Moreover electronic communication is part of this new “giving voice”. Generally I don’t disagree much with Gentile, but I wonder if Warnell is not placing too much faith in the teaching others ethics. Perhaps we need to try to get them to learn ethics — experience it all — translate the knowing into the doing. The apprehensive do seek stability in an uncertain world, but motivation and purpose may engage them more than simply being told. It was a conversation hampered by unreadable powerpoint screens — why people persist in putting more than four large lines at a time on a screen still puzzles me…even more frustrating when they try to put twenty lines and two obscure graphs on the same screen (they should have taken my classes in the Certified Management Accounting program in the 90’s where we drilled this into the students!!). So, while Warnell was interesting, I really wish I had had my voice so as to have a follow-up conversation. For example: While her revisiting Japan around the morality of the atomic bomb is interesting, I think it would be more fruitful to engage in a conversation with Cambodia about how these people have dealt with the morality issues surrounding the killing fields. Granted there are survivors of the 1945 event; but, there is a resurrected society from the 1970’s slaughter and mayhem which actually targeted the moral leadership of that time. It might help us better appreciate how business and local community can lead when government does not — there is an opportunity for cultivating moral voice within the ordinary citizenry: the news isn’t all bad. Despite my remaining questions though, it was a good session and provided a springboard for other conversations throughout the remainder of the conference.

The only other thing I will mention happened at lunch — everyone was provided a “walking bag” of food so they could take in some of ArtPrize. This is an annual event in Grand Rapids and worthy of more study (google it!!). I was able to take in the observation and study of a number of pieces of art placed throughout the downtown. It would have likely taken me several days to see them all. But it was a nice touch to let us all have a facilitated moment to connect with the larger community during the conference. And the food bag actually contained tasty food too!!

g.w.