Between Virtuous and Effective Leadership

Aspiring leaders need guidance, and there is no shortage of advice on the qualities required for successful leadership.¹ Not infrequently, models of leadership cluster around the far poles of a spectrum from domination on the one end to sainthood on the other. Sun Tzu’s (ca. 5th century B.C.E./2012)The Art of War, the Athenian delegation in the Melian dialogue (Thueydides, ca. 4th century B.C.E./2009) and Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532 C.E./1995) are classic examples of the former, and more recently one might point to Leo Durocher’s (2009)Nice Guys Finish Last, the portrait of Steve Jobs’ leadership style in Walter Issacson’s (2011)Steve Jobs, or Todd Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener’s (2015)The Upside of Your Dark Side. The Analects of Confucius (ca. 475-221 B.C.E./2014), Plato’s (ca. 375 B.C.E./1992)Republic and Marcus Aurelius’s (ca. 161-180 B.C.E./2006) Meditations are classic examples of the latter, and more recently one might point to Alexandre Havard’s (2014)Virtuous Leadership, Robert K. Greenleaf’s (2002)Servant Leadership, and Al Gini and Roland M. Green’s (2013)Ten Virtues of Outstanding Leaders. For good reasons, moral philosophers in the Western tradition have tended to gravitate toward the moral end of the spectrum. Seeking to dominate others can certainly work—there are plenty of historical examples of that—but too often it supports leadership styles that are short-sighted and self-destructive. Hence, many thinkers have counseled, we should embrace the virtuous approach to leadership.

Emphasizing the importance of virtue for leadership is entirely appropriate: moral virtue is crucial for strong leadership. The concern I wish to explore in this article, however, is that the qualities that make one morally virtuous and the qualities that make one an effective leader are not infrequently at odds with one another. If this is the case, then virtue-heavy leadership guidance may be of rather limited value to those who are seeking to be not only admirable, but also effective leaders. In what follows I argue for these claims and suggest how models of successful leadership can be modified to be of greater practical value to persons seeking leadership advice. The most useful approach to leadership guidance will provide leadership guidance in the gray areas between moral virtue and effectiveness.²

By “concern” I understand an organization of persons, or group of persons within a larger organization, that exists in order to meet certain goals, for which purpose it has established a hierarchy of authority and command consisting, at minimum, of a leader and the leader’s subordinates. This characterization is intentionally broad, and includes such entities as nations, counties, districts, companies, political parties, armies, regiments, activist groups, universities, departments, businesses, neighborhood associations, foundations, and the like.

By “leader” I understand a person who has, and is authorized to have, primary responsibility for the persistence and flourishing of a particular concern or aspect of that concern, where that responsibility includes achieving the specific goals of that concern, having responsibility for a cadre of subordinates or charges likewise tasked to achieve those goals, and discharging those responsibilities by having the authority to command, which authority lies on a broad spectrum between absolute and severely constrained. Leaders in this sense come in many forms and have widely varying breadths of responsibilities and powers, from presidents, chief executive officers, and generals to administrators, department heads, military officers of lesser ranks, directors of activist causes, and regional managers, to name a few. I will refer to leaders of this kind as fixed social leaders, given that these are people in positions of social power defined by the fixed responsibilities to their respective concerns. Although we commonly speak of persons who display leadership qualities or attempt to exercise authority without official mandate as leaders, in what follows I will focus attention on fixed social leaders alone.

My understanding of “virtue” is Aristotelian in inspiration. By it I understand a quality of character that manifests excellence of some kind. This definition is intentionally broad. Although virtue is often used as a synonym for morality or moral excellence, there are many forms of excellence other than the moral kind. We can speak, for example, of the virtues of a good artist, cook, patriot, or soldier, each of which may display excellence in ways appropriate to these different roles which will be unrelated to moral excellence.

By “moral virtue” I understand the quality or qualities of character that manifest specifically moral excellence. Although there is certainly disagreement about what should count as moral virtues, the qualities of honesty, compassion, justice, and benevolence are widely accepted examples of moral virtues, just as the qualities of deceitfulness, disrespectfulness, and sadism are widely accepted examples of immoral qualities. In what follows I will rely on commonly shared moral views of this sort rather than attempt to defend a moral theory. For the sake of economy, I will refer in the remainder of the essay simply to virtue rather than moral virtue.

By “leadership” I understand a constellation of qualities that allow leaders to perform their roles in their concern successfully. As before, although we certainly speak of persons displaying leadership in different ways, in what follows I will focus on leadership as a quality of fixed social leaders. Managers, generals, and directors are thus within my purview, while, say, outspoken students individually stumping for a favored agenda are not. Those who possess the virtues of leadership are effective leaders, which is to say that they accomplish the goals associated with their concerns readily and reliably, establish and maintain the conditions for continued success for their concerns, and inspire subordinates to productivity and optimism while keeping them within the bounds of their proper authority. Effective leaders are typically strong personalities who are focused, hardworking, persistent, highly organized, visionary, and keenly aware of threats to their concerns and how to handle them.

The claim that leadership and virtue go hand in hand is ancient and very much still alive today. In some cases, the argument is that leaders worthy of the name will be virtuous even if doing so brings about their ruin or the ruin of their concern. Not infrequently these arguments will be based on the view that moral dictates are intrinsic obligations the necessity of following which overrides any competing imperatives, prudential or otherwise. The Latin phrase Fiat justitia ruat caelum—let justice be done though the heavens fall—well encapsulates this view.

Sometimes, however, it is claimed that virtue is a condition of sound leadership because virtuous practices are reliable means to success. An excellent recent example of this approach is found in Al Gini and Roland M. Green’s (2013) admirable work, 10 Virtues of Outstanding Leaders: Leadership and Character. The book contains a sustained argument that leaders worthy of the name should make virtue their lodestone in leadership deliberations and decisions. Gini and Green are in fact not content to describe leaders that are at variance with this counsel bad leaders: they prefer to describe them as misleaders (p. 15).

Misleaders tend to be “utterly unethical and narcissistically self-serving” (Gini & Green, 2013, p. 13) they can be incompetent, rigid, intemperate, callous, corrupt, insular, and evil. (14-15) According to Gini and Green, misleaders suffer from a kind of solipsism, “a state of mind in which the self sees others only in terms of how they contribute to his or her agenda and are therefore considered useful” (p. 56). “Like a seducer, a”8216;misleader’employs his or her apparent talents and charms to achieve power over others to destructive ends” (p. 15). Gini and Green argue that although misleaders may appear to be successful, they “undermine the conditions for communal flourishing, [and hence ] ultimately defeat the purpose of leadership” (p. 15). Gini and Green give many examples of misleaders, including Mussolini, Custer, Trump, Madoff, Kim Jong-Il, Hussein, Gaddafi, Hitler, Machiavelli, Gordon Gekko, Jim Jones, and David Koresh.

By contrast, according to Gini and Green, “Leadership, at its core, is about character: specifically, a character attuned to its ethical responsibilities to others. The kind of character that, in regard to others, always tries to the do the right thing, for the right reason, or purpose” (2013, p. 35). Ethical leaders “put followers’ needs before their own” (p. xiii). Quoting Henry Ford, Sr., Gini and Green contend that the purpose of business is “to serve the general welfare” (p. 40) and they go on to claim that

According to Gini and Green (2013), “outstanding leaders abhor deception and misrepresentation” (p. 51) and

Gini and Green conclude that ethical leadership is crucial for organizational success: “without a larger ethical commitment to guide leaders’ and followers’ purposes, even brilliant technical competence will end in organizational failure and destruction”(2013, p. 198).

I think these arguments have obvious merit. Misleaders of the sort Gini and Green describe certainly set themselves up for failure in the long term, and virtuous leaders manifest behavior that, in a great majority of leadership situations, conduces to a higher likelihood of trust, loyalty, devotion, confidence, and respect amongst their subordinates, which will in turn often lead to greater encouragement, mutual esteem, cooperation, and personal accountability, all of which will often conduce to greater productivity and, in a word, success in relation to the concern in question. Virtuous leaders are, very often, singularly effective leaders. This cannot be reasonably denied.

The picture painted above is, however, incomplete when it comes to leadership effectiveness. It is notable that Gini and Green focus on the very worst end of the moral spectrum – this can be seen from their list of exemplar misleaders—but certainly there are important shades of gray about which aspiring leaders should receive guidance. Cases of gross moral misconduct aside, there are many times and circumstances in which leaders acting in accordance with the demands of virtue will, unfortunately, have a negative impact upon their effectiveness in the pursuance of the goals of their concerns.

Support for my claim is based on the fact that fixed social leaders inevitably work within constraints that sometimes make adherence to moral norms an impediment to the effective achievement of their responsibilities. These constraints can be grouped under two headings: (1) unfortunate but undeniable facts about human nature, and (2) the necessity for fixed social leaders, as fixed social leaders, to manifest partiality in relation to their concerns.

The first constraint requires little elaboration, as it has been confirmed throughout history by people from all walks of life. It is safe to say that no one whose eyes are even a quarter open believes that we are a species of saints. Lying, cheating, stealing, and otherwise harming other people, if not staples of human behavior, are at least very common, holding both for a leader’s subordinates and those in competition with a leader’s concern. An effective leader must acknowledge this.

The second constraint is arguably just as obvious, but it deserves to be unpacked a bit. Persons in positions of fixed social leadership are, in virtue of their positions, obliged to manifest partiality toward their respective concerns, in word and deed, at least to some extent. Leaders in this sense are advocates for their specific concerns; they are tasked with ensuring the success of their concerns vis-a-vis their rivals and competitors.³ Extraordinary circumstances aside, leaders who neglect this responsibility by refusing to take sides in normal circumstances can hardly expect to be effective guides and champions of their concerns. We need only imagine the president who is not partial toward her country, the chief executive officer who is not partial toward her company, the small business owner who is not partial toward his business, or the political party leader who is not partial toward his party in order to be convinced that leadership must be grounded in a basic kind of in-group favoritism if it wishes to be effective. It is not overstating the case to claim that abandoning this partiality is tantamount to at least partly repudiating one’s responsibility as a leader within a concern. As with the unfortunate facts about human nature mentioned above, an effective leader must acknowledge this constraint.

It would be a mistake to conclude that acceding to these constraints requires leaders to be suspicious and distrustful persons who are obliged to view all competition as a zero sum game and always to pursue the goals of their concerns with cutthroat methods. To consider this Machiavellian leadership style to be entailed by the foregoing would be to ignore the equally obvious facts that there are many good people in the world and that quite often virtue makes for effective leadership.⁴ My point is simply that effective leaders must be aware that they will sometimes have to face the necessity of dealing with morally questionable persons in the context of a work environment that requires partiality toward their concerns in circumstances of competitive striving. The upshot for the present essay is that situations will almost certainly arise in which strict adherence to the demands of virtue will clash with the demands associated with providing effective leadership for their concerns. Consider the following five cases.

1. A leader is tasked with answering a series of questions relating to the concern’s budget. The purpose of the questionnaire is to garner a comprehensive view of the concern’s finances. The manager is aware, however, that the questionnaire does not include a question relating to a specific failed venture. If this failed venture were reported, it would almost certainly lead to a substantial reduction of the concern’s operating budget. Omitting mention of the failed venture will prevent the budget reduction.

2. A concern is under scrutiny for a recent fiasco that was the result of an understandable oversight rather than malicious intent. Taking responsibility for the fiasco would likely lead to layoffs and disastrous public relations. By using distraction techniques, however, the leader can almost certainly manipulate coverage of the event to avoid responsibility for it and thereby prevent the looming disaster.

3. Concern A and concern B are competing for an extremely important but scarce resource. The concern that secures the resource will be poised for long-term success, and the concern that fails may go under. Concern A does not have the financial reserves to compete with concern B for the resource. However, the leader of concern A is aware that the leader of concern B is financially conservative, and reasons that if he employs an extravagant bluff, he may well force his competitor to withdraw from the bidding, thus securing the coveted resource for his concern without committing its modest resources.

4. A leader is aware that her concern is badly underperforming because her subordinates are habitually too complacent. Based on experience, she knows that the most reliable way to motivate them is through fear. She is also aware that she could intimate, without formally committing herself to the claim, that cutbacks might be imminent if productivity does not increase, and that doing so would almost certainly succeed in shocking her subordinates out of their idleness.

5. A leader is aware that creating strategic dependencies amongst his subordinates would greatly increase efficiency and productivity. Creating these dependencies, however, would almost certainly require giving preemptive favors that are not extended to all employees, and have little basis in earned merit. Properly handled, however, it is unlikely that other subordinates would find out about either the meritless favors or the wider plan for creating strategic dependencies.

The point of these cases is to show that being an effective leader for one’s Concern sometimes requires actions that run against the grain of virtue.⁵ Nothing in what I have written implies that these dilemmas are common, although I believe they are perhaps more common than some might like to think. The key point, however, is that they exist. And if they exist, leaders should be aware of them and have guidance regarding how to address them.

The upshot of all of this is that purely virtue-based approaches to leadership will inevitably overlook, or give short shrift, to an ineliminable and crucial portion of what it means to be a leader in a fixed social position, and to that extent such approaches will be of limited practical value. Leadership advice will be more useful to aspiring leaders to the extent that it hits the mean between providing idealistic exemplars and taking realistic constraints into account. In what follows I discuss six of the central features of an approach to leadership guidance that attempts to strike this balance.

1. Preface practical guidance with a serious account of what is at stake for leaders. Works providing leadership guidance should clarify at the very outset, and in the starkest terms, that what is at stake in relation to leadership decisions is very considerable, and that this holds both personally, in relation to one’s reputation, and socially, in relation to the success of one’s Concern. This insistence is of the first importance, for while it is true that aberrations from the path of virtue may sometimes be reasonable from the perspective of effectiveness, it must never be forgotten that being effective at the cost of violating moral norms will often be judged severely by others, and may have a highly damaging effect, not only on the personal reputation of the leader, but also on the leader’s ability to establish an atmosphere of trusted command that facilitates long-term success for her Concern.

2. Preface practical guidance with a clarification of the constraints that all fixed social leaders face. All aspiring leaders must be aware of the constraints faced by fixed social leaders discussed above. As with feature 1 above, this should be clearly articulated at the outset of any work on leadership guidance. This is advisable for three reasons: it establishes the parameters within which fixed social leaders operate (thereby satisfying the demands of realism); it explains the basis of virtue/effectiveness dilemmas; and it provides the centers of gravity around which a good deal of leadership guidance should revolve. Certain authors are especially helpful in underscoring these constraints. For example, Machiavelli is very useful in regard to the first constraint, given his grave and oft-repeated reminders of human falsity, weakness, greed, and selfishness.⁶Hobbes (1654 C.E./1982) and Balthasar Grecián (1647 C.E./1991) might also be mentioned in this connection. Hobbes is also a valuable source for the second constraint, as is Sun Tzu.⁷

3. Begin and end practical guidance proper by underscoring the deep importance of virtue for effective leadership. Leadership guidance between virtue and effectiveness should be based on a commitment to the claim that virtue is indeed part of “the best bet” for a flourishing command. This cannot be stressed too greatly, and for this reason this counsel should bookend any work on leadership advice, serving as the first and final orientation for the reader. Aspiring leaders should be counseled to choose the virtuous route whenever possible, as it stands as the most reliable strategy for establishing an environment for long-term success. This is, to my mind, the most important upshot of the work of Gini and Green and others who write in that vein. Concomitant to this, this approach should emphasize in the strongest terms that leadership effectiveness should only suggest straying from virtue when the prudential consequences for one’s concern are weighty indeed. No slight potential prudential advantage is enough to warrant running the risks associated with abandoning the path to virtue. In accordance with these points, it should be stressed that when the demands of effectiveness require abjuring from virtue in some respect, all care should be taken that virtue should be retained in as many other respects as possible. Reputation and effectiveness demand it. Virtue may be its own reward, but aspiring leaders should be well aware that virtuous behavior can also be supported on prudential grounds.

4. Give greater attention to leadership guidance that is not prohibited by virtue but is not virtuous per se. Leadership guidance that is heavily keyed on virtue will often devote less attention to leadership traits and related actions that are not overtly moral in nature. Yet this is unfortunate, given that many non-moral or marginally morally significant traits and actions can be helpful for effective leadership. A simple example is the trait of patience. Although exercising patience can certainly have moral significance in some contexts, there are many other contexts in which being patient is less an expression of virtue than a dictate of prudence. It can be the difference between a leader making enemies of her subordinates or tolerating them in the interest of maintaining a work atmosphere of peaceful productivity. Remaining silent is another example. Most people would not consider silence a classic virtue, but simply keeping one’s mouth shut at the right time can make the difference between inviting a potentially damaging audit or avoiding being audited altogether. An excellent resource in this regard is the work of Balthasar Gracian, who wrote The Art of Worldly Wisdom as a practical guide to achieving worldly success and distinction. (Gracian, 2012) Gracian counsels those who seek success to “keep matters in suspense” in order to invite interest and win admiration. 2. In a similar vein, he advises the following: “Don’t perish on account of someone else’s bad luck” (p. 161), “Use absence to win respect” (p. 159), “Don’t outshine your boss” (p. 4), “Don’t answer those who contradict you” (p. 158), “Don’t take payment in politeness” (p. 108), “Never compete with someone who has nothing to lose” (p. 97) “Know what insinuation is, and how to use it” (p. 21), “Surround yourself with auxiliary wits” (p. 9), and “Enter conceding and come out winning”(p. 81). In all of these cases, and innumerable others, a leader’s effectiveness is strengthened by observing rules of behavior that are prudentially beneficial yet apt to be overlooked by those concerned purely with the dictates of virtue.

5. Give greater attention to leadership guidance that runs mildly afoul of virtue. An approach to leadership guidance that navigates between virtue and effectiveness must also give place to prudential dictates that, while not constituting egregious violations of virtue, would likely be frowned upon by defenders of traditional virtue. Flattery provides a good example. While most defenders of virtue would frown upon flattering others, it is hard to deny that judicious use of flattery may help one to navigate others’ moral shortcomings or win an advantage for one’s Concern. Here again we may look to the work of Balthasar Gracian (1991) for help. For example, Gracian advised those who seek success to “place others in your debt” (p. 138), to “know how to contradict” (p. 120). to “learn to use scorn” (p. 115), to “know how to use your friends” (p. 89), to “know how to use your enemies,” (p. 47) to “let someone else take the hit” (p. 84), to “find each person’s”8216;handle,’ his weak point” (p. 15), and to “utilize other people’s privations” (p. 107). In a similar vein, Gracian advises: “Don’t let your sympathy for the unfortunate make you one of them” (p. 92), “Don’t lie, but don’t tell the whole truth” (p. 102), and “Don’t be bad by being too good” (p. 150). While this advice can certainly be quite imprudent in many leadership circumstances, it is entirely possible that in some situations the demands of effectiveness will speak in favor of these suggestions.

6. Emphasize in the strongest terms never to cross the line. In positions of fixed social leadership, behavior that displays partiality to one’s concern or involves minor acts of deception or manipulation is sometimes advisable (if not justifiable from the standpoint of virtue, of course). This is certainly unfortunate, but it is the reality. Yet this should not suggest, except perhaps under the direst conditions, that committing great crimes is ever advisable. These are to be avoided at all costs, if for no other reason, beyond their very injustice, than that discovery of just one such instance will be, for the vast majority of leaders, ruinous for their career, their concern, or even their lives. As Hume (1751 C.E./1998) noted, it is simply not worth the risk:

Underlying all leadership counsel, of course, is the imperative to develop and exercise good judgment. This holds equally in relation to observing the dictates of virtue and the tenets of effectiveness on behalf of one’s concern. I do not propose to provide an algorithm which with leaders can determine with certainty when and how to behave so as to navigate these intermittently conflicting demands perfectly. I seriously doubt any such formula could be found or constructed, given the intricacy, complexity, and particularity of the circumstances in which fixed social leaders find themselves. But this difficulty holds, I believe, for any model of leadership guidance, so my account is at least no worse than others’ for its lack.

The most pressing objection against this approach to leadership guidance is that it will give license to immoral behavior. The worry is that any approach to virtuous leadership that validates, even in part, the demands of effectiveness in a position of fixed social leadership might provide a ready rationale for any fixed social leader to turn a blind eye to the demands of virtue when a prudential benefit can be gained thereby. And if this is the case, what is to stop a leader who follows this advice from using this rationale to justify departures from virtue that are more egregious in nature? Do we want to encourage this? Perhaps focusing predominantly on virtuous approaches to leadership is preferable to running this risk.

This slippery slope fear is alleviated by the pointed insistence, given above, that whenever possible the path of virtue should have the ascendancy when conflicts between virtue and efficiency arise. Wise leaders will realize that forsaking the path of virtue in any serious way is accompanied by tremendous risks, both personal and professional. A full appreciation of these risks, combined with an understanding of the prudential benefits of virtuous leadership, should forestall hasty decisions to give the ascendancy to efficiency over virtue when they conflict. Of course not everyone will be given pause by the risk of ruin that accompanies carelessly preferring efficiency over virtue whenever the two conflict, and some leaders may reference any legitimization of efficiency to rationalize abandoning virtue whenever it threatens to undermine effectiveness, but this is an indictment of human weakness, not of the approach to leadership guidance that I have defended here. Those who follow the suggestions I have given above will, when in doubt, elect rather to follow the path of virtue, if not for moral reasons, then at least for prudential ones. The personal and professional risks of making common policy of abandoning virtue whenever it conflicts with efficiency are simply too great.

In the literature on leadership guidance there are excellent reasons why the path of virtue ought to be the default orientation for fixed social leaders, but given the constraints in which those leaders operate, it cannot be the whole story. Justice, compassion, and respect can work wonders, but absolute adherence to the dictates of virtue can, unfortunately, sometimes run afoul of the demands of effectiveness. Given this, it is advisable to craft leadership guidance that does justice to virtue and effectiveness alike. In this paper I have provided one possible model for how such an approach might be constructed. It is possible to endorse virtuous leadership and at the same time to accede that virtue and effectiveness will sometimes part ways; and if this is the case, then we must be open to the possibility that leadership guidance that seeks to do honor to the ideals of virtue while acknowledging the realistic constraints faced by fixed social leaders should try to find a balanced approach between virtuous and effective leadership.