Reflections on Ethical Leadership Course

I'll be honest, when I first learned that I was taking ethical leadership I had no idea what that meant. All I could remember is my mother handing me paper months ago with a list of the different leadership classes and skimming through the descriptions of each course. I quickly skimmed through ethical leadership, circled it and moved on with my day. The first day I came to Brown, I looked up what ethical meant on my phone. The definition I came up with was: Of or relating to moral principles or the branch of knowledge dealing with these. I still didn't know what to expect. Were we going to learn how to be a morally right leader? Which in all honesty at the time sounded boring. I was pleasant surprise at how deep we delved into the topic. It made me at times reconsider previous notions I had and in some ways made me less naive.

The Seven C's at first were confusing to me. As we picked apart each one I finally understood how they all added up to change. The one I really thought applied to me was conciseness of self, being aware of my abilities and disabilities.Necessary evils, was I topic struggled to really accept. I was still naive and had such an innocence view of the world that I immediately rejected the concept. Necessary evils in my opinion meant something that was objectively wrong morally, but in subjective circumstances must be done for the greater good. By the end of course I still thought it was wrong but changed my mind about it a few times. Another concept I struggled with was the idea of dirty hands, which like necessary evils made me question previous beliefs I held. I now think that dirt hands can be used certain cases but that a leader has the duty to inform his or hers people of the deed they committed.

I overall really enjoyed this course it really got me questioning myself, beliefs, and what I was taught all my life. I didn't come away with this course with a pessimistic view of society. While I questioned my beliefs, in end I still believe them even stronger then I did before.