Ethical Leadership

Leadership requires the ability to be flexible with multiple ideas and concepts. To be an effective leader, it is important to listen to multiple different perspectives to figure out which is the best option for the cause. Within choosing an option, the leader is going to be forced to make a decision that in turn benefits one group more than another. Whether the decision is ethical or not depends on the leaders personal morals and ideals. However, it is expected for a leader to make the best choices for the most amount of people he rules, and to do this, often times a decision must be made that the leader may not find to be personally moral.

Similar to how Machiavelli explained, sometimes people need to make unethical choices for the greater good of the people or to stay as the leader. I agree with most of what he’s saying besides the part of where he explained that leaders need to make these decisions to keep themselves in power. It is important that leaders do things for the benefit of the people they rule because if they act for themselves solely, then they become corrupt.

An example of this was in my middle school, there was much debate on whether or not to keep the arts and some of the foreign languages. One side of the argument was that they were creating higher taxes for people and the other side was that they were important for students to get a well-rounded education. In the end, the principal decided to keep the arts. This was a big decision that he made that he thought by choosing it, he would benefit more people (students) and their futures. By creating this decision, he was also hurting many taxpayers by not making the significant budget cuts. I believe that my principal made the right decision, but even by making a decision that he thought was ethical, he still was creating an outcome that was not desired by many people.