Sandbulte Lecture at College of Saint Scholastica

I am heading for Duluth!  Tomorrow I will present a lecture entitled, “Beyond Thou Shalt Not: Ethics for a Meaningful and Successful Life” to the School of Business and Technology at the College of Saint Scholastica.   I am grateful for the opportunity, which is supported by the Arend Sandbulte Endowment for Business Ethics.

I particularly welcome the opportunity to make a connection between our rich ethical traditions, and their constructive application in our professional lives.  Too often, that connection amounts to little more than a set of rules, codes of conduct designed to prevent (or punish) wrong-doers. 

Ethical Leadership is much more than that, of course.  As I am all too fond of saying, “ethical leaders empower others to improve the world.”   In deference to this educational setting, I will stay a bit closer and linger a bit longer on the underpinnings of ethical theory than I do with, say, a police or fire department.  I’ll apply these theoretical constructs not to a code, but to practical approaches for ethical leaders:

• Ethical decision-making
• Ethics to promote engagement
• The Power of Purpose to motivate and inspire others

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The title of the speech recalls a remark made by (now State Senator) John Harrington, when he was Saint Paul Police Chief.  I was pitching the Chief on an ethical leadership development program,  answering a series of increasingly sharp questions, when he suddenly smiled and said, “Ah, I get it!  You’re doing ethics without the `Thou Shalt Not.'” 

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

CAW