I am an Ethical Leader: Embracing Self-Analysis of Personal Ethics

This paper is going to picturize on my self-analysis of ethics and how important it is to follow. Moreover, I am going to emphasize more on how the course readings influenced my way of thinking on personal challenges. It will show the roadmap, I have taken in discovering an Ethical Leader in myself

To be successful ethical leader, it starts from being a leader with good character at the first place. According to Michael Boylan, “Ethics is the science concerning the ‘right’ and the wrong’ of human action”. The human actions are viewed through different lenses in the society and no matter what we should stick to our values which we inherited till today. Integrity and Transparency are on of the core values I follow in my day-to-day life.

Ethical Mind

My personal views and morals comes from how I was raise to be grateful, be kind always respectful and never break the law. Another fact that helped develop my ethical mind is that I am from another country that was poor and I would not have the same opportunities that I have here. Sometimes I feel like I take it too personal when people are not being ethical, for example, the case study I wrote about Professor Joseph Ellis made me annoyed that someone who has a good career would just lie the way he did. In my paper I thought he should be fired however, when I went back to rewrite the paper I was able to rethink my original punishment be applying the following techniques:

• Eight Steps to Sound Ethical Decision Making in Business
• Consequentialist theories
• Deontological theories
• Cognitive Moral Development.

These techniques helped me take my personal views out of the decision-making and think about it from a business manager role. The eight steps helped me break down what his lies did to everyone around him and was able to suggest a punishment, however, I still supported with I original wrote but I could not say he should be fired from the college. These techniques helped me not to only have a strong personal opinion but a good business structure to explain his offence. Luckily, I was able to take a second look so I did not come off as cynical. For the past three weeks, I have been focusing on my daily decisions and how these decisions can affect my future. I would like to share two quotes, which helped me in realizing that I am an ethical leader:

• “I do not believe that every person is a fit for every company. Companies need to do a better job to ensure they find people who are aligned with their values rather than just hiring for experience” (How To Be an Ethical Leader article)
• “I believe that one of the important responsibilities for the modern company is to create an environment where open communication is encourage and that, more importantly, people are listened to” (How To Be an Ethical Leader article).

In my current position, I am responsible for vetting and implementing more diverse suppliers to provide their good and services. It is important to me to be fair and make sure that everyone is getting an opportunity. For years Northeastern, employees have been reaching out to my department to see if we can get more catering options for the events that are held at the university. This November will be a year that America to Go was implemented through the university purchasing portal. This vendor has a variety of caters and there are currently eleven minority, small business and women owned caters that can provide a variety of cuisines to the university. Everyone is happy with these services and we are including the community. There is a percent of diverse suppliers working with our Facilities department but we want to reach across all our departments. I have been taken part in Diverse Suppler Networking events to create a list of different suppliers through the New England area and what kind of services they provide. From this contact list, I will be creating a website that all employees can access when they are looking to work with different suppliers. This is to support that Northeastern University is an equal opportunity organization. In my department is it important to have sustainability, transparency and diversity and by providing our departments a list of all kinds of suppliers to support the university’s values of highly developed sense of professional ethics and strengthen ethical awareness. My personal and professional leadership style is made up of being fair, thinking about consequences for the decisions I make, having respect for everyone I work with and having values. I want everyone I work with to trust my judgment. Some examples of my leadership values are:

• Integrity
• Respect
• Teamwork
• Customer serving
• Reliable.

The above are examples of the most important values to me, best describes my character, and I apply them to my personal life. Another rule I live by is “it does not cost anything to be kind” so even if someone is not nice to me (whether at work or in my personal life) I treat them with respect and remove myself from the situation.

Being fair and being respectful are a couple of examples that will help me grow into a good leader. I know that I do not have all the answers and I look forward to learning from people and it does not matter to me who I learn from. I want to be fair and open to in my personal and professional life. At work, I know that there are all kinds of people with different views or backgrounds and more importantly, we have students from all over the world that we work for, so I want to provide diversity in all aspects of us doing business. This way there is a representation of all races and culture because this is a way to learn from each other. For the last three weeks, I have applied the readings to some personal decisions and to help me come up with ways to bring more diversity into my work life. My hope is to find about more techniques to help me not only use my personal views to make a conclusion with a problem instead to consider other factors or other’s opinions.