Being a leader of conscience
What does a leader of conscience mean? It begins with character to avoid distorted values with a centered focus on virtues of humanity. A leader of conscience engages in community conversations and identifies what virtues to act upon in the choices being made.
Sparked by Professor Richard Shell's new book, The Conscience Code, I explored what being conscience means. It led me to the Ethics Centre, a non-profit in Sydney, Australia. The Ethics Centre defines conscience as:
What a person believes is right, and
How a person decides what is right
While conscience sounds simple, it quickly gets complicated as we encounter situations in which variables challenge us in what we believe and what we decide is right. In some cases, our conscientious voice gets it right immediately. Other times, confusion reigns.
Our conscience and character are intimately linked.
Our character builds specific values, and those values become engraved in our souls. While values are essential, they have become distorted, resulting in dogmatic views without any clear perspective of what is right.
Professor Shell highlights three elements of character. They are:
Must have moral impulses – prompts us to behave well and resist temptations and pressures
Must have the awareness to know what values are relevant in the situation you face
Must bring self-discipline to own a situation and act on your values – even when costly or inconvenient
These character elements resonate. However, they still rest on values, which may be a problem today.
Rather than focus on values, we need to raise our character to embrace virtues.
In pulling the thread on virtues, another center came to the forefront. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University discusses virtues as a focus on the full development of humanity. Virtues are "attitudes, dispositions, or character traits that enable us to be and to act in ways that develop this potential [humanity]." The development of humanity is crucial when considering our conscience and how we decide what to do in challenging situations.
Another significant point on virtues is that they are developed through learning and practice. A community component is embedded. For me, this means that we should (and must) have conversations about what virtues are essential in our civic and business discourse. It is a higher-level conversation, which leads to a focus beyond our self-interests.
Connecting conscience to character and virtues is imperative.
Too often lately, values are being distorted to protect a power base rather than engaging the value in how it helps humanity. Making a switch to virtues can raise the leadership standard. A new conscience accountability checklist:
After our conscience determines an approach, ask what virtue supports the decision.
With the selected decision, ask what the impact on humanity will be.
If you have not explored the impacted virtue with others, then put the decision aside until you do.
We all need to engage in conversations about virtues and begin to raise the standard of being a leader of conscience.
References
Ethics explainer: Conscience. (2017, November 17). The Ethics Centre.
Ethics and virtue. (2019). Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University.
Shell, G.R. (2021). The conscience code: Lead with your values, advance your career. HarperCollins Leadership.