The Kant standard for leaders
While our leadership standards seem to be faltering, we need the grit to lift them. Moral worth is a starting point. While leaders need to check their choices and actions, employees and citizens need to activate accountability too. What is the moral worth of your leadership?
Moral worth matters. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, said, “An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.” Duty is acting beyond convenience or self-interest. Duty is doing something because it is the right thing to do. It isn’t done for a profit, self-power, or usefulness for an individual or special interest group. American political philosopher Michael J. Sandel emphasizes, what gives an action its moral worth is the quality of the motive from which the act is done.
Have we lost our sense of duty?
In our current political environment, we are left to wonder if leaders have lost their sense of duty. Wearing a mask during a pandemic is confused with some personal loss of freedom. Getting a vaccine is viewed as a political statement. Without any facts, election results are questioned to provoke a political base.
In business, we doubt the sincerity of stakeholder capitalism when the motives are unclear. Business leaders may do one thing in the U.S. and do something different in another country. Inconsistency of actions and results lead to questions of motives.
It’s heteronomy time when considering freedom.
Since freedom is at the center of some motives, Kant created a word that may be helpful – heteronomy. Heteronomy is acting outside of myself. A choice exists in how we use our freedom. Is it to choose a means for a self-interested end, or is it choosing a future for a more purposeful outcome? In Kant’s view, human dignity is a good test. We need to evaluate the motive based on who benefits and if human dignity is honored.
Have leaders lost their sense of duty? The answer appears in the moral worth of what is being done.
Keeping or gaining power at all costs does not meet the test of duty. Discriminatory acts do not meet the test of duty. Ignoring the planet and our environment does not meet the test of duty. Pursuing the short-term at all costs does not meet the test of duty.
Moral worth needs to be engaged as a leadership capacity.
Distrust can be healthy when used to explore motives skeptically. Discussing duty and its relationship to freedom are critical conversations. We need a return to virtues in our leadership practices, and we need to lead with a good sense of moral worth.
References
Reimann, M., Schilke, O., & Cook, K. S. (2017). Trust is heritable, whereas distrust is not. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(27), 7007–7012. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1617132114
Sandel, M. J. (2009). Justice: What’s the right thing to do? Farrar, Straus and Giroux.