This WSJ article drives home the importance of CEOs and executives being willing to put the organization and good ethics ahead of their own benefit. This article was published in 2004, and one wonders if anyone outside a classroom read it because with the bursting of the housing bubble and the onset of the Great Recession, there certainly has been no shortage of disgusting levels of fraud, deceit, and greed perpetrated by individuals at the expense of the many. Perhaps I am just in a cynical mood, but does any of this thinking about leadership and ethics penetrate at all in the halls of real power, ala Goldman Sachs for instance? But I digress….
The article tells the story of Michael Leven, who heroically and admirably did The Right Thing despite risk to himself. Would that there were more of him. The point of the article, of course, is that truly great leaders are never self-serving. They always put the good of the whole as the first priority. They do not seek to hoard power. They seek to socialize it to benefit the many. They are humble, Collins’ Level 5ers. They are too few and far between.
