You have self-control already in some ways.

Nevertheless, we often show we do not have self-control in many areas of our lives.   We have seen people cross many boundaries they otherwise never would cross.  We have seen good people bring incalculable harm on themselves, their organizations, their families, because of single instances of lost self-control.  We know of others whose lives are utter wastelands due to no self-control.

Self-control is not a particularly American value or skill.  We are a nation of consumers.  We are highly trained to respond on impulse to purchase.  Product placement, color, shape, images, and text, all are in concert to break down consumer control.  It is not too much to say that virtually all our national financial problems are linkable, in some way, to lost self-control.  This does not include outright criminal behaviors or harms.

For thousands of years, self-control was taught in the moral curriculum.  The Greek and Roman philosophers taught temperantia was one of the principal virtues.  That word meant essentially self-control.  Our English word, temperance, usually now is connected with drinking little or no alcohol (from the early “temperance societies”).

You are advised to weigh carefully the role of self-control in your life.   If you grow and discipline self-control, NOW, your life will be more successful.  When your family or organization are out of control, your capacities are needed more than ever.  Have a fine new year!

The title of the book is very appropriate for what I am about to write to all those who read this blog.  Since there are many readers who are of different faiths than Christianity, and some with no faith at all in any theistic entity or theological system, all should find what follows of some interest.

It is now 8:15 p.m. EST.  In a few hours, I have decided to attend my congregation’s Christmas Eve service at 11 p.m.  This is my first service of that type in 15 years–when I myself led one.

I have many mixed feelings about this season.  On the one hand, I agree with Americans everywhere who see it mainly as a season for commercialized buying and selling.  Ever since I was a little child in the 1950s, I remember how the word, “Christmas,” created great excitement for me and among most children because it meant, “presents.”

Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” appeared in 1843.  The movie, “Miracle on 34th Street” appeared in 1947.  In both works of art, characters make statements that show us how their authors heard disdain for the Christmas season in their own times.

Over the past several decades, there has been a very aggressive movement to remove from the public forum all references to Christmas, to Jesus Christ, or even the words of certain Christian Christmas carols.  I understand this movement, at least from the point of view of some.

To hear “Merry Christmas!” or seasonal references to “the birth of Jesus Christ” are offensive not only to Jews who do not believe Jesus was their messiah.  These are offensive to Muslims for whom Muhammad is the greatest and final prophet.  These are offensive to others who have different faiths.  These are offensive not least to those who have no faith in any god, who chafe at having shoved in their faces and ears what they consider old mythic deities and delusions.

So our public schools, our workplaces, and all the media tend now to use “Happy Holidays!” which literally used to mean, “Happy Holy Days!”  Holidays now are mainly periods off from work, and times to relax, not days to remember anything holy, or whether one has any relationship with the Holy.  Even our U.S. Thanksgiving Day has little to do with the giving of thanks, but with the same thing the Christmas season became long ago:  consumption.

Yes, there are many people today who visibly scowl if they hear, “Merry Christmas!,” or if they see the words printed in some store owned by Christians.  It is as if any public reference to Jesus Christ, or faith in him as the son of God, has the weight of a curse word.

This is completely true.  The same people who scowl or cringe at hearing “Merry Christmas!”–who look at the person who said such a thing as if he or she were a perverse and wicked individual–will not blink if they, or someone they know and love, say “Jesus Christ!” or much worse, “Jesus f****** Christ!” or any of the scores of varied uses of irreligious uses of his name in our society.

So I find this to be very revealing.  I am a Christian who always has defended the rights of non-Christians to be free from having my views of Jesus Christ thrust upon them in public.  Yet I hear none of those–who are grievously offended if someone prays in public, or closes a public prayer by mentioning Jesus–control themselves, their families, or friends, or strangers when they use Jesus’ name as a curse word.

This is the message I get from this.  In our society, it is expected that the name of Jesus, nor specific references to his teachings, are not allowed in faith-filled, devout contexts, but only in faithless, contemptuous contexts.

Many people do not know that the founder of the Church of Satan in America said, around fifty years ago, that it was important to disrespect and de-sacralize all things Christian.  It would appear his teachings have succeeded, in terms of what is politically correct, socially tolerable, and now considered even humorous or standardized speech.

Our movies–which mainly come from Hollywood–are filled with cursings using the name of Jesus Christ.  We are well familiar with portrayals of corrupt, venal, greedy, and sexually dysfunctional Christian clergy, based from life or from the imaginations of the writers.  Yet there is no other prophet whose name is so used and abused.  We can imagine what would happen if the prophets of any other religions were as systematically used as curse-words and epithets.

I often wonder, with these changes, “Would there have been so many protests from so many people, had Jesus of Nazareth’s religious teachings been followed, to the letter by all the billions in history who alleged themselves allied with him?”

There would not have been any antisemitism, for Jesus was a Jew among Jews.  There would not have been any Christian Crusades against Muslims.  There would not have been any Christians declaring or participating in any wars.  There would not have been any Christian bankers, politicians, businesspersons, clergy, who would have lied, cheated, or stolen.  There would not have been any Christians who invested in businesses that created foods, pharmaceuticals, or products, that harmed or killed anyone.  There never would have been any Christians who committed genocide in any part of the world, or who denied people rights because of any skin color, or religion, or gender.  There never would have been any Christians who just loved to judge others, which is something Jesus of Nazareth completely forbade (see the Gospel of Matthew, 7:1-2).

No, if all the people who said they believed in, loved, and were servants of the biblical Jesus of Nazareth, the world would be a completely different place.  It is my belief that, had all the Christians, in all times, in all nations, been as humble and holy and loving of all people as Jesus himself was, then there would be so few, so few today who would dare take Jesus’ name in vain, or would dare oppose the widest positive uses of Jesus’ name in the public arena.

Yet on this Christmas 2011, I know our nation and world are completely torn apart by greed, war, religious hatreds, and by leaders in politics and business–from the local level, to the state, to the nation, and all the nations–who want more power and money, at the expense of any others not in their immediate inner circle.

I know from reading the four Gospels that Jesus Christ still offers today’s battered world something better than he is given credit for–by the majority of people who claim to know him, and by a society that uses his name for a curse word.

Yet today, September 11, 2011, America faces more facts.

We are in the process of economic collapse.  Whatever our best economists say is needed, those in control of our economic polices still are aiding the banks, corporations, and others in their ongoing goals of profiting as long as possible without interference.  There is no evident hope this process will be reversed.  There are no leaders in Washington neutral enough, disconnected enough, from their corporate sponsors to stop the economic implosion.

We are led by three factions in Washington–Republicans, the TEA Party, and the Democrats–which, in anything they do, calculate everything in terms of this question, “Does this keep us in power, in positions aiding reelection by our base?”  There seem to be a very small number of statesmen and stateswomen, public servants, committed patriots who love their nation more than lining up with their respective parties, and their corporate sponsors.  There is no evidence to suggest this will change.  All we have is evidence that our so-called leaders will lead only in one direction:  reelection strategies, regardless of the harms these do.

We have a majority of citizens who apparently are more like sheep than thinking patriots.  Sheep may be gentle, but they are defenseless without one or more rams with large horns.  Sheep basically are vulnerable in thousands of ways.  They can be chased to death.  They gather in groups, cowering in fear, when wolves or other predators attack and tear them to pieces.

There are literally millions of American citizens who are just like sheep, just waiting for one more lying call from their political party shepherds, to believe and follow, just trust one more time.  They cannot think for themselves.  They cannot search for facts on their own.  They cannot see bogus political statements as bogus.

They are like trained seals which perform when  sardines are dangled in front of them.  They balance balls on their noses.  They clap their flippers.  They spin rings and plates in the air.  But they expect to be fed their rewards.

Millions of Americans are like the trained seals in that all most need is the same thing they have been fed for generations.  They gather around their favorite political party and incumbents.  Then they hang on every word, which they could recite by heart from years of repetition.

“We are a great nation.  We are the most powerful free nation in the world.  We have a great democracy.  We are the Party of Jobs.  We are the Party of Free Markets.  We are the Party of the People.  We need more pride in America.  We are a nation of problem solvers.  We are a nation of entrepreneurial spirit.  We are a nation of greatness.  Let us reaffirm our commitment to those who have gone before, and let us make our nation greater than ever before!  We are stronger than Global Terrorism.  Nothing can stop America and the American Dream!”

The factual truth is, we have tied ourselves to Communist China’s cheap labor, cheap raw materials, and China’s brilliant non-military strategy to create a completely subdued vassal state.

There will never again be any “real jobs” as we once had in manufacturing.  Why?  No corporation will be so patriotic as to cut its own throat by deep investments in manufacturing here, knowing their competitors–around the world–will invest in China or any other nation with cheap labor.

There never will be any meaningful banking or financial institution lending to help average Americans get back on their feet.  The only contracts that will be offered and signed will be those that assure the banks and financial institutions can acquire the remaining properties and businesses still worth acquiring through default.  There will be no patriotic sacrifices made by banking and finance corporations with sole purposes to post profits, not help save their nation.

Osama Bin Ladin once published an open letter to the American people.  In it he bragged that his organization would do to America what it did to Soviet Russia–drive us into bankruptcy.  Of course, September 11, 2001, did cost in the trillions.  Yet the financial and political collapse we have underway ultimately is not due to Bin Ladin.

Our imminent destruction is built upon the very same things heard all over America on this day, September 11, 2011.  Knowing what was expected on this day, Republicans, TEA Partiers, and Democrats, all spoke in glowing terms about what happened, what really happened, in the days, weeks, and months, right after the Twin Towers fell.  They all talked about those heroic, unified days, weeks, and months, “mean for today and our prospects for the future.”

Yet there was not one of our elected leaders willing to speak the complete truth about what happened after the heroics were done.  We had a Republican administration that deregulated banks and financial institutions more than Ronald Reagan did.  That same administration led us into a war on false charges.  That same administration shredded the U.S. Constitution with the Patriot Act.  And now, we have a Democratic administration that essentially keeps all the Republican policies in place, continues to aid our most powerful, yet gives great speeches, and decries gridlock.

Is this cause for despair?  It will be, if the sheep in America continue to be sheep.  Yet, there is the remote possibility that, perhaps, if We the People decide to embrace the truly heroic patriots who have lived and died for the rest of us, perhaps we will arise in unity to save our land.  The corporations will not.  The banks will not.  Most of our elected leaders in Washington will not.  Yet within all these institutions, there are minorities of patriots who know what is happening, and who may have the character and courage to stand up and say, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.”

What Will We Learn By Remembering?

We never will forget September 11, 2001. We the living will not forget. Yet history tells us how nation after nation has forgotten eventually some of the most horrible, as well as the most glorious, events.

Today there are young people born after 9/11/01.  Many of these know little about a day the rest of us lived and never will forget.

Most adults today were born after 1945.  An incredibly large number can tell nothing about Adolf Hitler or the Nazi regime.  The same is true for young Chinese today who know nothing of Mao Zedong’s killings of between 48-79 Million Chinese during the “People’s Revolution.”

Fortunately, in every generation in every nation, there is a small minority who DO REMEMBER in order to honor the dead, instruct the living, and protect future generations.

I am thankful that the leadership of The Presbyterian Church USA has decided to create a special website for “Remembering September 11.”  I do not know who started the ball rolling for this project, or what team encouraged its approval; however, this was a great act of ethical leadership for this denomination, and is a witness to other Christian communions.  Of all the people in this divided nation and world who have the capacity for remembering and critically reflecting on historical events with intentions to learn loving and good things, surely this should be followers of Jesus Christ.

I was motivated to expand my earlier work in religious violence, and relationships between Muslims and the West, in the following link below.  I usually write on this blog in a secular context–to executives who lead or manage organizations.

Therefore, in the link below, I write about a watershed event in U.S. history–one that may lead eventually to World War III–as a Christian, to Christians, and within the volatile and challenging framework we find ourselves in here in the United States.  For Christians, Jesus Christ is their principal religious prophet and leader, their lord and savior, the one who defines life.  Therefore, my discussions alternate between a wide range of genres, yet end clearly with reference to Jesus Christ.

What does this writing intend to achieve?  When I wrote to Prince Bandar in the Saudi Embassy back in 2004, I would end my communications often, “For the Sake of the One.”  Who was the One?  The One God, and also, The One Person who might, possibly, have One Benefit from the work so that more love and less hate might be the result.

I long ago gave up on grander schemes as a change agent in history.  So, this new work is posted here also in the hope and prayer that One Person will find at least One Point for meaningful benefit.

I am an American.  I am a scholar in the history of ethics.  But I also am an American Christian.  I also am a scholar in the history of my religion, and in the original leadership ethics taught by my most influential teacher, Jesus Christ.

I usually reserve this blog for secular, neutral reflections on leadership ethics for corporate and government executives.  However, in my teaching to others, I insist that we begin first with ourselves, that we model what we inculcate or expect from others.  To demonstrate what I mean by that doctrine, this downloadable document is an illustration.  So today’s blog entry is in context with “The Ethical Leader.”

September 11, 2001, was an awful day.  Truly horrible, awful events–news that a loved one has been killed, that you have cancer throughout your body and less than 60 days to live–bring us to our knees.faith, hope, and love.  Yet as we saw ten years ago, so many fine people, with and without much religious faith, all drew together amid, the smoldering rubble, stench, and chaos, in order to search and rescue the few they found alive.

Here, I write as a peace activist, a human rights worker, a historian of violence in America, an ethicist, and a Christian.  If you are one of my secular readers with no personal faith, or a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, or member of any religious community, perhaps your “eavesdropping” on this act of personal ethical leadership may give you something good for yourself for your own network of humanity where you live.

TEN YEARS AFTER SEPTEMBER 11 – John D Willis – 071911

Many people today do not connect the word “integrity” with “leadership” today because of wide gaps between the two in many leaders in business and government.

Accepting Personal Responsibility–a Fundamental for Leaders

President Harry Truman had this on his desk:  “The Buck Stops Here.”  Today, our nation is filled with buck-passers, those who want no accountability for bad decisions or wrongful actions.  To keep integrity intact, make every decision with care.

Why should this high level of integrity matter?  Just as you want to trust others in your life, you must prove yourself trustworthy if they are to put trust in you.  Having integrity is the foundation for building a circle of trust.

You know you cannot trust everyone in your business or workplace, as if all had your best interests at heart.  That’s just the way life is.  Some people were not raised well.  Others are driven by sick minds.  Still others are driven by career goals, regardless of whom they hurt along the way.

Nevertheless, when you keep your integrity intact, you will find at least two effects on others.  (1) Those who have integrity will be drawn to you.  (2) Those who do not have it either will seek to learn from you, or will avoid you.  An old proverb says, “A cord of three strands is not easily broken.”  You need alliances with people of integrity, to make a circle of trust to fend off the sharks in the water.  Integrity has this benefit.

Work and Integrity

Part of integrity is giving 100% when others are not doing so.  Why should we do this?  If they are being paid the same, or more, yet doing less, is this not unjust and a negative motivation to do all we can?

Integrity is wholeness of character.  Others who cheat their employers through substandard performance are lying, cheating, and stealing–all at once.

Your work performance is a direct extension of your character. What you do at work is a reflection of your own decision, either to give your best or not.  Every day, this is a private, personal decision that is reflected by what you produce.

Our U.S. military academies have this code of ethics in common.  Lying, cheating, and stealing, can occur in a thousand ways.  Always giving 100% at work is your statement you are driven for excellence, on principle.

Honesty and Integrity

Abraham Maslow taught that honesty and openness to facts were traits of psychologically mature and healthy people.  Based on what we are seeing today–and in fact what we have seen for many decades–there are many leaders in the United States who are neither psychologically mature nor ethically healthy.

Blame, excuses, and deceptions to cover errors or malfeasance, are quite common among leaders today.  This is because their self-interest has replaced mirrors in their ethical glasses.  When they decide and act, they are looking at themselves.

Integrity–wholeness in seeing–requires ethical lenses clear and well-ground through moral decision-making on a daily basis.  You cannot act otherwise when you are honest.

The picture to the right can be taken two ways:  as self-deception, or an honest look at the heart within.  One of the great facts about integrity is that, over time, it is revealed clearly to others.  Your personality may be timid.  But your moral choices add up day after day.  Your honest inner core must be revealed because you operate from within, not superficial devices to “spin” who you are.

Seeing with honesty means you have the power to cultivate integrity.

Happiness and Integrity

Aristotle’s statement is true.  Moral excellence, moral integrity, comes through repetition.  One of the reasons so many people are unhappy is they are seeking meaning through the approval of others, or seeking life goals that cannot be met, or goals that cannot give deep inner satisfaction.

Do you have a taste for sweets or chocolate?  Did you ever taste a vegetable, filled with vitamins, you did not like?  These analogies are useful for our thinking on the value of integrity and its relationship to happiness. Diabetes and fat plague our population.  Why?  People like sweets.  They do not like to sweat.  So feeding themselves on what they like, make themselves unhealthy, and become unhappy with the results.

How many people drink too much, take pills to sleep, go to therapists, and more, because they do not like the persons they are?  If you have become someone you do not really like, a person you fear to see truly in the mirror, then get off your “sugar high” of moral shortcuts.  Start, one decision at a time, to do the right thing for the right reason.  Perhaps you need to make the risks small, so you will do this.  But the long-term effects of moral habit eventually make you morally stronger.  You begin to have backbone again.

Integrity does not come cheap. It requires daily attention. It begins with baby steps of right moral choice. But a few decisions practiced soon begin to build our moral fiber. And with that comes the inner peace and satisfaction of knowing we are good people in fact, not belief or representation.

One of the greatest benefits of integrity is happiness when you are with those you love.  Whether you have young or grown children, when you speak from integrity:

• They know you have it
• They listen with respect
• They want to model what they see in you

Life is short enough.  Sometimes it can be shorter than we think or expect.  By cultivating your personal moral integrity, disability and death never will catch you off-guard.  Your flight path will be established and clear.  Your loved ones will not have to mince or make up words about who you were, because your character and integrity will live after you.

That knowledge will be a source of happiness for you, something more precious than gold.  To have the respect of those who know us best is 24K gold happiness.  We surely want to have the respect of our coworkers, subordinates, and superiors.  Yet our inner circles of family and friends are the people who will remember us when life is over.

Fraud:  A Legal or Moral Term?

The definition above was taken from a legal dictionary.  Most of the time we think of “fraud” only in the legal sense.  If we read that definition carefully, however, we can see the concept actually carries the idea of deceit for personal benefit. The fraudulent act is one where misrepresentation occurs to induce another person or entity to act, resulting in whatever goal is sought by the fraud.

American society is filled with fraudulent representations up and down, right and left.  People do not engage in these acts imaging–at least after a while, when they are accustomed to them by habit–they are doing anything wrong.  Why?  Everybody seems to be doing it everywhere you turn, but no one uses the term, “fraud,” but something else.

Let us look at some examples that include both the legal concept of fraud, as well as the moral concept; that is, legally misrepresenting something for profit.

Fraud In Everyday Life

You are involved in a fender-bender.  You have a friend who owns an auto body shop.  It also happens you have a desire to purchase a new electronic device.  You go to your friend for an estimate.  You know what principle the insurance company will use to select the comparative bids.  You tell your friend, “Can you figure this so I have a little left over?”  Your friend wants the work, and wants to help.  Your car gets fixed.  You get your cash and forget it.

You are a government contractor.  You’ve been in the business for years.  You know how to build in added profits on contracts that will be approved without a hitch.  You know the hot buttons that will bring your business up on the federal or state radar screen for review or problems.  You regularly build in incremental changes that boost your profits.

You are a physician.  With many patients, you spend about 10 minutes, and with some, 5 minutes for a quick check-up.  After each one, you check off boxes on your clipboard.  Each box = “treatment”= a billed fee.  You regularly check boxes that do not apply to the real treatment.  You are giving the insurance companies and U.S. government the treatment.  Your bedside manner makes your patients love you.  They do not know what boxes you check.  It’s just business.  Miss a box?  You pay your billing manager to catch it.

You are an hourly worker.  You are going to be late to work.  Your childcare bill will be coming due.  You give your electronic ID card to a coworker to clock you in.  You will work harder when you get there to catch up.

You are an attorney.  You have files filled with scores of cases with nearly identical fact situations.  When new clients come in with similar cases, your paralegal pulls files, and generates documents with the appropriate changes.  You bill at the original rate required to generate those documents.  No client has any basis to contest what you did.

You are a contractor.  You advertise your price estimates are fixed.  You regularly up-charge along the way, knowing once you are on the project, you have customers where you want them.

You also have several crews of undocumented workers.  You get them to finish the job, then complain to the only one who speaks English the work was not as promised.  You cut their cash pay between 25-50%, which already is below 50% of what you would have to pay legal workers.

You are in the auto repair business.  People come to you with a sqeak.  You know it’s probably a dry grease fitting, but you tell the truth, “We’d better look at it.  It’s really unsafe if it’s a ball joint.”  The customer leaves the car.  Your employee–who gets paid a percentage of each job–returns to tell you it needs a ball joint, inner and outer tie rod end, and a shock absorber.  The bill went from $1.50 for some grease to $450.  The customer returns, you tell her how good it was she came in, and how safe the car is now.  She leaves relieved and satisfied.

“What the Market Will Bear”

While there are some in business, government, and private life, who self-consciously know they are engaging in fraud (even if by another name, e.g., “smart”), it seems most fraud occurs in a mindless fashion.  If clients, customers, and companies pay, and there is no push-back, why not keep doing ?  How does this occur?

Many of us can remember when we were young and taught to tell the truth.  Then there was that day when we went on our first job as an hourly worker.  Day by day, incident by incident, we learned “how the world works.”  A few of us may have had the good fortune to have worked for a series of impeccably honest employers, and we did not learn the ins and outs of the little and big cheating that occurs.

“Charge what the market will bear” is the ordinary way people engage in small and large fraudulent services and billing.  If the bill goes out and is paid, that’s positive reinforcement that the fraud has its own reward.

Our Financial Crises and Our Fraudulent Habit

Millions of Americans are pointing their fingers at others in government and business.  Everyone places blame on everyone else for the condition we are in.  Nevertheless, decades of the Fraud Habit underlie part of the problems we face today.

There are some Americans who are scrupulously honest.  These simply will not do “what everybody’s doing.”  We know this.

Nevertheless, the problem of practical fraud in services and billing is a major problem.  No one talks about where they have crossed the moral line.  No one wants to cut back on profits, or have an ethical conversion, if everyone else will continue standard practices.  In fact, even if there were a mass movement to change things, there still would be many who would find that foolish, and another opportunity for more profits.

Make Your Decision at Your Own Risk

One of the saddest things to note is that becoming honest can cost you your job.  If you are a small business owner, you can make an organization-wide decision, and accept reductions in profit.  Yet if you are in a large corporation, expressly reservations about a service or product will mark you as a target for termination.

Jeffrey Wigand once worked for a national tobacco company as the head of research.  When he decided to spill the beans about his company’s long-held knowledge that smoking is addictive and harmful,  he suffered a multimillion dollar campaign of threats, character assassination, and fear for himself, his family, and any future to find another job.  A movie based on his struggles and painful journey tells a portion of what he had to endure.

So now, honesty likely may have a professional penalty.  The man or woman with ethical scruples must consider demotion, transfer, or termination, as the cost of doing the right thing.  Americans, and their counterparts in other nations where fraudulent practices also flourish, must, or at least should, wrestle with a moral dilemma that ought not to exist.

Americans long have had, “In God We Trust,” imprinted on their paper currency.  Millions believe the popular propaganda that Americans are a very religious people.  It always feels good to believe that God approves of a nation and its practices.  Yet, at least in the case of the Bible, there are many statements against fraudulent practices in business:  Proverbs 20:23 and Deuteronomy 25:13-16 among them.  The last text is worth citing.

¹³ Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light. ¹⁴ Do not have two differing measures in your house—one large, one small. ¹⁵ You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. ¹⁶ For the LORD your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly.

Whether or not anyone believes such ancient teachings, millions of Americans now are reaping the bitter fruits of fraudulent practices that are destroying the financial stability of the nation.  Since so many religions teach forgiveness for lying, cheating, and stealing is available just for the asking, this fraud reinforces all others.

“If you are in a place where a social crisis occurs–an emergency where electrical power, telecommunications, food and water supplies, or gasoline availability, run out and large numbers of people panic–do you have the moral fiber to take a responsible leadership role, to ‘keep your head when others are losing theirs’?”

Why ask such a question?

EXAMPLE ONE:  A Credible Nature-Based Crisis

A recent news article on the Internet reports the “U.S. Must Take Space Storms Seriously.”  Scientists are warning that the Sun’s regular cycle of activity is nearing a peak for 2013.

“So WHAT?,” asks the purely self-interested adult waiting in line to buy an I-Phone or Kindle.

Now is not the time to be self-interested, with a standard “head-in-the-sand” or “deal-with-it-when-it-happens” mentality.  The “So what?” attitude now may be deadly, a few months from now.

Scientists are saying this new solar cycle will produce “space weather” that will, not may, knock out power grids and telecommunications in certain parts of the world.  This already happened in isolated places on February 14th.  Some jets took different flight paths to avoid losing their radio contacts and other problems.  The peak danger of this solar cycle will be in 2013.

Unlike other periods, now millions and millions depend on electricity and satellite-based communications.  Literally life and death depend on keeping power and communications constant.  Scientists in the U.S. and Great Britain are teaming up to get ready for what may happen.  Read up on the potential, very real scenarios that may disrupt normal life and security for millions of people–perhaps for weeks, months, or even years.

If a solar flare, or a series of flares, knocks out power and communications in the area or region where you live, What will you do?  First, your own life and family’s lives may be at risk.  Second, even if you find yourself able to survive, your neighbors or others in your area may panic and be in fear for their lives.  The absence of electricity and communications will have untold effects on the stability and behaviors of those affected.

Electricity drives the pumps that push water with sufficient pressure into homes.  Electricity operates machines in hospitals that keep people medicated, or alive.  Electricity usually provides heating and cooling.  And if either telephone land lines, or cellular communications, are disrupted for even a few days, let alone weeks or months, no calls will be made to police, fire, rescue, or ambulance services.

Now some readers may choose to dismiss or ridicule these scenarios.  However, the subject of these news articles is that scientists are not predicting the possibility but the certainty that these solar flares are going to create crises with unpredictable consequences.  Thus, the discussions now–for some kind of preparation, to reduce the harms soon in the future.

EXAMPLE TWO:  A Credible Energy-Based Crisis

Most of the time, people, at least in the United States, watch gasoline prices go (mainly) up and complain.  Yet with all the different national revolutions occurring across the Middle East, any number of potential outcomes could happen.  Supplies of imported oil may be disrupted, perhaps leading to a lack of availability.

In the 1970s, the U.S. experienced a genuine gasoline shortage.  Cars, semi trucks carrying food and medicine, were in long lines.  Many were turned away when they finally arrived at empty pumps.  That was thirty years ago, so many today only fear higher prices, not fear of getting to work, or worse.

Now there is no need to go around with a long face and begin worrying about a worst-case scenario that may not happen.  We already have enough survivalists attempting to buy and store gasoline (as the late John Denver did), food, water, and ammunition.

Yet to recognize the pervasive place of petroleum-based transportation, then to imagine a long-term reduction in availability–or affordability–for millions of average people, is a relevant consideration.  Disregarding the question of your own gasoline supplies, or whether you will always have the money to buy gasoline at astronomical prices, you still have this question.

“If you ever find yourself and your family in a major energy-based crisis, where others are saturated with fear and anger, WHAT are you prepared to do and to advise, as a moral person in leadership?”

THE RELEVANT POINTS

Leadership Ethics Online seeks to assist leaders–formal and informal, official and unofficial–in thinking about their duties to themselves, their families, their organizations, and nations.

Whoever you are, in whatever place in an organization or society, you will not have the moral character to be a positive, sane, and constructive force in a major crisis IF you do not have the moral character today to make the right decisions in life.

A crisis, by definition, is an event of extreme stress, anxiety, pressure on those affected by it.  Our nature as biological creatures is to respond–neurologically, biochemically, emotionally–from our instincts of self-preservation, survival, and protection of those we love.

Therefore, if we are to develop moral character; that is, a highly developed, operating set of values that act to control our basest instincts in a time of crisis–when we are saturated with fear and uncertainty–then we must choose wisely each day to develop our moral nature.

Based on what we hear in this news of the “space storms”–not to mention other storms sweeping many nations, and storms threatening the domestic tranquility of the United States–the world is going to need individuals who are natural leaders.

Natural leaders are those who, by daily decisions during times of security and ease, have trained themselves to do the right thing through self-discipline and not external coercion. Day by day, these persons have imposed on themselves self-control, and restrained self-interest, taking and getting.  They have chosen to nurture in themselves a higher view of self, and a higher attachment to others as persons like themselves–not “The Other”–and cultivated moral awareness and moral action.

These are the people who, in times of crisis, are natural leaders.  They have so disciplined themselves in times of peace and tranquility that they are ready to exercise that same discipline when times of unrest and turmoil come.  These are those with the potential to engage in what the medieval thinkers used to call heroic virtue.

The Latin word, virtus, pertains to the idea of power.  Heroic virtue is when one has so put the power of the self into daily subjection, control, and guided direction–when bad times come–that same cultivated, strong, disciplined Self continues to function in the same way.

This essay has been written so that readers can reflect on themselves, and how they are living today, in preparation for harder times.  If the current predictions come true–if not in my area then in yours, or if not in yours then in my area–let us both be natural leaders where we are.  There are many unprepared minds and souls all around us.  When hard times come, and surely they will come in one form or other, they will need moral leadership from you and me.

So let us continue, or get to for the first time, the daily discipline of taming the worst within us:  for the sake of our own moral development, for the goodness and inspiration we will bring to those who love and care about us; and, finally, for the good and welfare of less-prepared neighbors, who will look to us in despair, yet find in and from us, courage to Do the Right Thing!

Many Americans are so accustomed to lying leaders, they are cynical.  Lying is the rule, not its exception.

Why So Many Lies, Scandals, and Harm?

Leaders in business and government who have lied during misconduct, or to hide it, are under intense criticism.  The broad and deep financial and social consequences of leaders’ misconduct and lying are what anger people affected adversely by them.  People become greatly concerned for truth and justice when their ox is gored.

Perhaps Santa Claus is the first, “little white lie” children experience.  In a thousand ways, we grow up learning that some lies are harmless, even helpful, but others ought not or must not be told.  Yet once we have admitted the utility of lying under certain circumstances, when we need this tool–to get or keep a job, a spouse, a reputation, loyalty, whatever–it is an easy step to take it out and use it.

Profit and power are two motives in America that generate lies among many leaders.  Fear of disgrace, losses of wealth and power, and prosecution are some negative drivers for lies.  What now gravely concerns many Americans is that greed and power seem to be leading to the ruin of the nation.

The Moral Learning Process

Morality has to do with conduct, which has to do with what is right or wrong in our conduct towards other persons.  There is a morality that holds it is always right to preserve life, and always wrong to take another human life.  There is another morality that holds it is always right to preserve the life of those we love, and always wrong not to take the lives of anyone who threatens in any way those we love.

Morality is a completely learned set of values, like a parenthesis waiting for us to fill in the content according to our preferences. The moral value of loving, discerning, following, and telling the truth, is a learned value.  It requires a process of teaching, practice, critique, correction, and affirmation or disapproval to master.  Many people claim many things are true, but one must learn to question, research, compare, and think independently of mere claims.  This involves critical thinking, an essential skill to learn what is true and false; to prefer the former to the latter; and, to live by that rule.

Americans today learn their moral values from every source:  parents, friends, years in school and, surely, millions of mental “inputs” from every media.  If you look at American values held up for public adulation and imitation, this is a terrifying prospect.  Sexiness, great wealth, material possessions, complete power to choose one’s way of life and destiny, even pushing others out of the way who block what we want, these appear in game shows, serial programs on TV, movies, magazines, and throughout the Internet.

The philosopher Goethe once made a philosophical point by playing on the identical sound of two different German words: “Mann ist Was man isst.“  This translated means, “You become what you eat.”  In this context, to “eat” means willingly to take in what we wish, on a daily basis, several times a day.  The “food” is our regular diet of what we approve, like, or love, in terms of values, behaviors, and life goals.  After all, we refuse to take in, or even be around, if possible, the things we reject, disapprove, or hate.

As with real food, so also with moral values, skills, and behaviors.

If we prefer and consume selfishness, a self-centered world, quick pleasures of the senses, and view every day as an opportunity to relate to others in order to “get what you want,” then we naturally become what we love and seek.  If lying helps us earn wealth, possessions, power, and admiration from others like us, then lying is merely a tool to our goals.

If we prefer and consume selflessness, an others-centered world, delayed sensual pleasures to obtain longer-lasting pleasures of character development, contributions to society and the world, character development, including honesty, then each day’s thinking and doing are applied to those goals.  Telling the truth not only has to do with with our inner moral core.  People who love their neighbor as themselves tell the truth because they know it is important not to deceive others, just as they do not want to be deceived.

In America now, there is a non-philanthropic, materialistic, cynical reinterpretation of the Golden Rule:  “Who has the gold, rules.”  If the neighbor gets in the way of obtaining the gold, get the neighbor out of the way, whatever is required.  Thus we have the loss of concern by some leaders in business and government to tell the truth, and their willingness to lie, for profit and power.

Exchanging Good for Bad Morals: a Historical Case

The Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels,  created what we now call The Big Lie.  Tell as truth whatever serves the regime’s goals, and repetition–without allowing full and equal time to opposing views–eventually has its effect. The people adopt the lie as the truth, then line up to execute it in public policy, funding, and personal sacrifice.

Most Germans had been raised to learn either Protestant or Roman Catholic catechisms, which included the Ten Commandments.  Lying and murder were forbidden, love for God, neighbor, and even enemies, were commanded.  Most of the German churches opposed to Nazism were silenced.  Over time, unopposed daily repetitions of how Hitler was good for “Aryans, an unstoppable master race with a divine destiny of a Thousand Year Reign over enemies who tried to destroy them” had their effect.

Because of the Big Lie, unopposed by a free press, or unopposed by clergy silenced from fear or their own nationalism, German Christians exchanged their childhood morality for Nazi morality.  What was unthinkable before was praiseworthy, beneficial, and doable.  Hitler and Goebbels were so effective that–even after the Nuremberg Trials, and  forty or more years later–some die-hard Nazis were convinced the Third Reich was correct.

American Leaders Who Lie and Harm

There is nearly nothing in our national media that celebrate–daily, regularly, systematically–people who tell the truth, have highly developed moral character, and always try to do “the right thing.”  We hear a few stories of heroism, sacrifice, and moral nobility.  They make the national news because they are the exception to the rule, that is, they are “newsworthy.”

It would be national news if somehow a magic wand revealed the truth of leadership misconduct and lying, leading to the prosecution and imprisonment of all involved.  Nevertheless, just as occasional self-sacrifice is newsworthy, so also is the occasional and even rarer story of a lying leader at the highest levels of business and government.

A series of U.S. Presidents have engaged in conduct some charged was impeachable:  Nixon (Watergate), Reagan (Iran-Contra), Clinton (lying under oath), and G.W. Bush (false information to Congress regarding  WMDs).  Clinton was impeached.  All others either resigned before impeachment was completed, or filed impeachment proceedings never passed Congress.

The single lesson learned by many Americans was that leaders lying in the highest positions can escape consequences, when aided by allies who suppress or preclude the full investigation of the evidence, to seek the truth, and protect the public interest.  This is not a partisan political statement.  It is a general rule.

The Roman Catholic child abuse scandals fit this rule.  Decades of scandals in the savings and loan industries, banking, food and pharmaceutical industries, mining and manufacturing, conflicts of interest throughout government, all these fit the rule.  If we turn completely away from U.S. history to the history of nations, we see the rule again and again:  lying among leaders rarely results in a full and fair search for the truth, and its consequences.

What Moral Leaders May Choose to Do

There are many thousands of American leaders in business, government, and institutions traditionally the custodians of private and public morality, such as religions, who have personal knowledge of lies by superiors, peers, and subordinates, covering over legal and illegal misconduct.

The definition of a leader is one who leads others who follow.  We often associate the term, leader, to mean a person in a position of power and formal authority.  Nevertheless, like the army private who steps forward to assume moral leadership without formal authority, when those with it are absent, there are hundreds of thousands of American leaders with the capacity to act, if they will.

We already have seen that the apparent rule for lying leaders in high positions of authority is exemption from punishment.  That exemption is possible only because the necessary evidence has not been revealed, or has been suppressed successfully by allies with those engaging in misconduct.

There is absolutely no doubt that many American leaders possess evidence needing to be entered in the public record.  Likewise, there are many persons not holding formal leadership positions who have knowledge and evidence.  Those in the latter class do not have formal leadership authority, but they have complete potential for moral leadership.  If they ever choose to become moral leaders, others will follow them and their example.

Moral leaders, formal and moral, have consciences burdened by what they know of harmful consequences created by liars and lies.  They have a moral choice.  They either must keep the truths they know to themselves, or they must decide to make a careful plan to find some means to tell the truth.  Silence means the continued erosion of character by protecting the guilty.  Acting for the truth means reclaiming personal integrity and demonstrating for their family and friends that someone must stand for the full disclosure of the truth.

Risks of Moral Action on Behalf of the Truth

There often are great personal risks to act against liars.  Liars are willing to do whatever it takes to keep what their lies brought them.  Character and career assassination are easy options for liars.  Thoughts of losing employment, of seeing one’s family put in the street, are strong deterrents against telling the truth.  Knowledge of what liars are capable of–threats made, threats kept against other honest people–creates stress and anxiety when considering any plan of action against them and the harms they have done.

In American history, we have many true stories of heroic individuals who told the truth against powerful individuals and alliances.  It is because they were heroic, that is, that they stood up against odds of personal harm that they were enrolled in the hallowed pantheon of heroes and heroines.  Some lived to enjoy the fruits of courage, but some suffered humiliation and ruin, or even death.  The story of the hero is the story of rare nobility, its benefits and costs.

The true stories of Frank Serpico and Jeffrey Wigand were made into movies.  Serpico tried to tell the truth of police corruption, was shot in a set-up, and nearly murdered.  Wigand told the truth about a corporation’s harmful products to 60 Minutes, but the corporation threatened lawsuits and the story nearly was not told.  Liars often may do anything to those who tell the truth.

There is a great temptation for morally honest people to give up, in the face of such widespread lying in high places, and against the real potential for personal financial or physical harm.  The logic runs, “I am only one person.  What can one person do against so many odds?  I must just live with what I know, remain bitter and cynical, and be silent.”

This is the choice of many good and honest people.  It is not a moral choice, but a prudential calculation.  Self-preservation and self-interest outweigh commitment to the Golden Rule, the old one.  Of course, the most powerful criminals and immoral people rely on fear in order to remain protected.  This is as it always has been.

The Time cover to the left raises a question for some.  “Was it coincidence, or maternal instinct–the desire to protect the innocent–that led three women to take personal risks in order to reveal the truth?”

Males dominate business and government positions of formal authority, yet women with moral fiber, character, and courage,  can and do exercise moral leadership. Women often are considered weak by testosterone-driven males; however, these three women acted as moral leaders when they defended innocent victims.

Julian Assange is attacked by many, not because he reports lies, but because he passes along to the public domain truths some do not want public.

Wikileaks’ sources have many motives.  Some may be perverse pleasure, or retaliation.  Yet some surely are persons who, because they have access to documents showing governments or businesses are lying to the public. For these, divulging secrets is to exercise moral leadership in the public interest.  These sources seek to add information; reveal truth; reveal lies; and, empower democratic people to judge truth from lies.

Your Moral Development

The ninth commandment in Moses’ Ten Commandments is, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”  Many good people salve their consciences by saying to themselves, “Well, it was not I who told lies.  Others told lies.  They are responsible, not me.”

This is rationalization and immoral reasoning.  At Nuremberg, many Nazis replied to their charges, “I was only following orders.”  They were not in charge.  They did not make the plan for the Final Solution.  They did not drop the canisters of Zyklon B. into the acid.  They merely had the subordinate duties they did.  Yet Nuremberg ruled their collaboration was criminal.  Millions died because thousands helped, in little ways, in the overall process of murder.

In U.S. law, there is the concept, accessory to a crime. People who did not pull the trigger, put in the knife, sell the illegal drug, hold up the bank, and many other crimes, still are morally and legally responsible when they enabled a crime, knew a crime was happening, and did nothing to stop its harms.

There are thousands of good people burdened with information, so long as it remains secret and hidden, that protects lies and liars who have harmed Americans.  This information, held inside, builds up pressure in moral people.  So long as they do not relieve the pressure by telling the truth, many turn to self-destructive behaviors.

This writer personally knew a career OSS/CIA employee whose mind was burdened with information he wished he did not know, and activities he wished he had not done.

He kept this information to himself, kept the code of secrecy, lived for decades as an alcoholic, and his secrets died with him.  He was a good man, doing what his superiors required, but still bad deeds.

There is an old saying, “The person sleeps soundly who has a clear conscience.”  If you are not sleeping soundly, unburden your conscience.

If you have information of harms done to your fellow citizens, illegal or unethical, release it to several groups of proper authorities. This will help ensure your information is not “buried,” increases the likelihood it will come before many eyes of moral persons like yourself, and this help protect you from unjust retaliation.

If you actively participated in, or passively endorsed such harms, your burden of guilt is increased.  Alcohol or prescription medications to relieve depression will never absolve you of your role; however, there is freedom, admiration, and support, for people who own up to their crimes or moments of weakness, based in fear.

If you know someone burdened by these kinds of situations, do all you can to encourage and assist them in becoming moral leaders:  for their moral development, moral satisfaction in loving their neighbors, and moral examples their families will cherish.

The tragedy of good moral leaders burdened with the bad deeds of others is they become victims, as they try to cope with the information they hold in their minds and memories.

Certain knowledge kept inside can age you, make you dysfunctional with family and friends, lead you to self-destructive behaviors, as your self-esteem suffers.  Choose to sleep well!

Think About Your Impact Over Time

In ancient Rome, a legatus was an ambassador, deputy, or governor sent to a province by the emperor.  A legatum was a bequest or legacy.  The words derive from the verb, lego, which means, “to send with a charge.”

America today is burdened heavily with a legacy of failed leadership in business, government, and the personal decisions of millions of heads of households.  By seeking short-term gains and pleasure in the present, the future has been put at risk, as our serial crises in so many areas attest.

Our children and grandchildren are given a legacy of jeopardy.  If you are a CEO or executive leader, this essay challenges you to create a better legacy.

Separating Ourselves From the Herd

My best friend, a brilliant mechanical engineer, has built factories all over the world.  Steve has run with the big dogs in his field.  His professional ethics are impeccable, which sometimes has put him in hot water.  He has had a number of clients over the years who have tried, unsuccessfully, to pressure him to build systems and structures just up to the required codes.  Steve always builds beyond the codes, sometimes because his experience tells him that, to reduce downtime or safety over decades, this is necessary.  He sees his work as his engineering legacy–which could affect lives.  He never has built anything he himself would not want to own and operate.

We are the engineers of our personal and professional lives.  If we design defective blueprints, for the fast track to success, we must build defective end products.  Consider the many scandals now in our nation.  If we design perfect blueprints, but along the way try to cut costs by using defective or second-hand materials, the final product will contain those seen or unseen flaws.  If our design-build methods intentionally disregard excellence, this is a reflection of our core character.  The legacy we leave will be the product of how we engineered our daily, monthly, yearly decisions.

True leaders step beyond the herd mentality of cutting the costs to personal and professional excellence.  They may have to work with the herd, but within themselves they follow the True North of their moral compass.  They know they have non-negotiables when it comes to certain decisions, regardless of adverse impacts, because they want their footprint in time to be one of which they are proud.

Make a New History, Day by Day

I once told a person suffering from much guilt and grief due to decades of bad decisions, “Use today as you should.  Make all the right decisions today.  Then do that tomorrow, and then the next day.  Focus only on making the right decisions, one day at a time.  Pretty soon, you will have a different past on which will inspire you.”

We all have made bad decisions.  We all have cut corners.  Most of us have broken the law, willfully and intentionally, at some time, from speeding on the highway to “tax avoidance” that was more than that.  We may been unfaithful to our spouse, or not been the kind of engaged parent we should have been. In fact, there is a possibility we have made a pattern of mistakes in either the blueprint or building of our lives to the present day.

Some leaders manage and interpret such memories in many ways.  Some simply do not think about them. This is the most dangerous decision of all, a sign of inner moral cancer.  Others intentionally stay busy so they have little time for reflection.  Busyness and engagement in the external world can be an escape from the inner moral world.  Some leaders “compartmentalize” their roles and keep their Good Self for reference when the Bad Self starts to create bad feelings.

There is an old saying.  “Every day above ground is a good day.”  Every day presents new opportunities to make new blueprints and to engage in positive construction of a new personal leadership legacy.  Some deconstruction may be needed.  Old and current friendships may need curtailment.  New friendships need to be formed.  Candid assessment of the “lay of the land” on which to build is required.  Yet it is indubitably true that today is a fresh, new day not requiring the old methods, but completely open to the new ones.

Beginning the Process

First, embrace the truth you are engaged in design-build of your leadership legacy.  Accept personal responsibility for how you use your time in shaping your moral framework and applying it in every daily decision.  The truth is, you are creating your legacies, day by day, night by night.  So why not take active, intentional control of it?

Second, put your life within the Big Picture of life.  You cannot change human history.  You may not be able to change the overall direction of your organization.  Yet physics itself tells us no energy is wasted.  Read about the Butterfly Effect.  Whenever you choose to put into motion in the real world the moral latency within you, you introduce moral energy that acts upon all other moral agents it touches.  This is a truth often unknown by those who say, “My life really does not matter, so I’m getting all I can, while I can.”

Your moral agency does matter, though you rarely see your impacts.  There are literally millions of people in the past, present, and future, whose lives have been created or destroyed by the following:

• years of conditioning by a parent’s loving or disparaging comments
• a single comment or deed experienced or witnessed by a stranger, at a vulnerable moment
• a single idea that took root and took control in framing “reality” and all decisions

If you somehow have succumbed to the false notion, “My life doesn’t matter,” just ask yourself this question.  What single individual has affected my life more than any other? Surely there is one, and likely more, whose influence has made you who you are.  If that person’s influence is loving and good, would you dare to believe that person’s life never really mattered?  NO, because that life matters to you.

Embrace Your Legacy

Legacy thinking is one of the most important things any leader can do. Your life matters, to the degree you choose to make it matter. Some leaders invest their lives accumulating billions, destroying untold numbers of victims in the process, then build a nonprofit facility emblazoned with their name. That is not a true legacy.

There is another saying. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Start today to build a legacy of love. That’s right. We are part of a species where love and nurture are built in to our very survival. We are dependent children for years, relying on adults to feed, clothe, and care for us. One of the greatest reasons our society and nation is in such trouble today is the biological calculus of love has been replaced by the calculus of materialism.

We all want to be loved.  We all want to be remembered as good and loving people.  Not one of us wants to be unloved or remembered as builders of a life more akin to Ebenezer Scrooge than to Bob Cratchett.  Embrace your legacy today.  It is completely within your power.  Your family, organization, and all who know you will be glad you are alive and using your life for good, not less than good.  The clock is ticking….  JDW

Proximity Can Put You Off Track

Life is complex. Life brings us into contact daily with negative people and situations. Family, work, neighbors, national and international news, all can present us with negative information. The fact is, we cannot control others or conditions around us.  We have some choices. Do we allow others to control our emotions, thoughts, and actions, or do we decide to control our responses in positive outcomes?

Understanding Our Power and Authority

Very often we are battered by our contacts with other persons and situation. We wake up in the morning with our priorities, then are hit like ping pong balls to go zinging off in directions that seem beyond our control. Others zap us with their emotions, statements, and behaviors, for whatever reason. Too many of us allow others to alter our daily directions and effectiveness with our permission. How do we change this pattern?

If we are to be in charge of our own lives, we must understand our personal power and authority to control how we spend our limited emotions, thinking, and behaviors. No one else has this power, right, and capacity. We are the only ones responsible for either keeping our daily focus and invested energies, or giving them up. We must be inner-driven, not outer-driven.

Analogies For Decision

Let us use the analogy of boats, ping pong balls, and directional compasses. If a boat has a broken rudder, or has no anchor, when storms and winds blow, the boat is driven wherever external forces take it. If a ping pong ball is picked up and hit, it will zing off in whatever direction sent. If a compass is never used, its needle showing “north” cannot give bearings on which way to travel. When we are outer-driven, we are like boats without rudder or anchor, like ping pong balls waiting to be sent off in space, and like compass owners who fail to use their directional tools.

Harnessing Our Power for Action

One of the greatest enemies to our happiness and satisfaction at home, work, and in life, is when we become victims as outer-driven people. When we are outer-driven, we are followers. When we are inner-driven, we are prepared to face external conditions so we remain in control of our life resources, our responses, and how we use our energies and talents.

One of the greatest reasons successful people continue to be successful, even despite unusually great challenges at home and work, is they:

• know who they are
• know what they believe is essential for their identities
• know where they want their energies to take them, and
• keep their identities, beliefs, and energies focused, never pulled off course.

Assistance Can Help

We here at Leadership Ethics Online are inner-driven leaders.  We have deep inner drives, clarity of vision, and awareness of the adverse power external forces can have.  Despite these facts, there have been times when we needed assistance from others for support, encouragement, and strength.  In our desire to be self-sufficient and, sometimes, “not to be any trouble to anyone else,” sometimes we did not turn for needed help.

This is why we formed this company–to give assistance to leaders like ourselves.  There is an old proverb, “Pride comes before the fall.”  We are here if you need us.  Be humble enough to recognize your need and to ask for the help we are eager to give.

Being an inner-driven leader sometimes requires outer resources.  Let us help you repair your rudder, open that compass, and stop others using you as a ping-pong ball!

John D. Willis, PhD, President
Leadership Ethics Online