Humanise: Why Human-Centred Leadership is the Key to the 21st Century

CHAPTER 20 Moral decision making

The challenges posed by shifts and transitions, uncertainty and ambiguity, make it certain that those who follow you will face difficult, complex moral decisions. They will approach those decisions in a variety of ways, ranging from complete ignorance about — and even lack of interest in — their legal or moral obligations, to a well-developed and functioning moral compass. The future wellbeing of your company, country or community depends on your taking the time now to equip people for these challenges. Developing people includes developing their moral decision-making capability — an essential skill for human-centred leaders.

Navigating this chapter

This is the second chapter focusing on Doing: What are you going to do to get there? and in particular the moral decision-making aspect. This chapter provides some tools for helping you navigate your greatest strategic risk: moral risk. It offers a framework for decision making in the midst of moral ambiguity and complexity — for resolving moral dilemmas — and also provides examples of questions you can ask to determine the extent of someone's moral competence for leadership. It has three sections:

• ‘The moral continuum' observes that people are located along a moral continuum, and that this can be divided into both what is legally permissible and morally proper. It also notes that, in the absence of guides, most people are looking for leadership.
• ‘Preparing people to face moral dilemmas' tells ...