What makes a good leader? This is an important question we often ask students. Since leading a course for Students Shoulder to Shoulder, I have been thinking a lot about Ethical Leadership and how we can teach our students to develop and practice the qualities of an ethical leader.

I recently ran a collaborative workshop for teachers on Ethical leadership to start a conversation about it and to brainstorm what we can do in our roles as educators to inspire students to develop these qualities.

Activity Instructions

Using the “Qualities of an Ethical Leader” curriculum from Students Shoulder to Shoulder, I broke up the qualities into four categories of a compass, inspired by Compass Education: Character Traits, External Actions, Knowledge and, Thoughts & Beliefs. Then, in groups, teachers read and engaged with the different qualities following these directions:

1. On the compass, discuss with your group and decide where each trait of Ethical Leadership falls based on the 4 quadrants

·   Character traits

·   External actions

·   Knowledge

·   Thoughts and beliefs

2. Glue the traits in the spot that you decide as a group

3. With your group, discuss and decide HOW the traits are connected. Show the relationship between them by drawing lines

4. Add more examples under each quadrant. Consider real life situations and examples that would fit under each of the four quadrants. Write them down.

Reflection

As with most activities, the discussion that followed was the most productive element of the workshop. Teachers started sharing how they work on fostering ethical leadership in their classroom. One example that struck me was from a colleague. To get their participation points in his class, students had to write up how they acted (compassion) to help out their classmates. That explicit explanation of how the students recognized a need in others by listening and how they felt compelled to do something is what we need in the world today.

It is not enough that our students feel empathy; they need to start thinking about what they can do in their communities to enact positive change.

Students can act by helping a classmate study or organizing a service-learning project. Taking positive action inspires confidence, which in turn will inspire more positive actions.