#10 How to Make Ethical Decisions

Welcome to a new episode of the 3x5 Leadership Podcast, where we champion intentional leaders who create significant impacts. Listen to the episode on Apple, Google, or Spotify! Or you can watch it on YouTube.

Have you ever found yourself facing a difficult decision, where it seems like two closely held values are at odds with each other? Perhaps a co-worker is absent without excuse, and you must choose between “covering” for them, or answering truthfully – what do you decide to do? These decisions are ethical decisions – where we must optimize our values and beliefs to the context we are in and make an ethical decision.

In this episode, we dive into the leaders’ responsibility to make ethical decisions. We differentiate between moral decisions and ethical decisions, explore a few of the main ethical approaches characterized in leadership literature, and then present an ethical decision-making framework that enables leaders to own the responsibility to make ethical decisions. We close out with six practical ways to employ the ethical decision-making framework in your spheres of influence. There is no promise that making an ethical decision equals making an easy decision. In fact, many times these are inherently hard decisions to make. Rather than wringing our hands over challenging ethical decisions, join us as we resolve to roll up our sleeves and apply the 3 C’s framework, giving thoughtful consideration to our character & core values, our constituents and commitments, and the consequences of our decisions.

Related Episodes & Resources

• Podcast Episode #6: How Leaders Make Decisions. Making effective decisions for our team requires us to think broadly and deeply. This episode presents two frameworks to make effective decisions and serves as the prequel to the Ethical Decision-Making episode.
• United States Military Academy Cadet Prayer: JJ referenced this in the closing of the episode. Check out the link for the full text!

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Take care, friends, and lead well!