Dr Matt Beard is the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship Program Director and one of Cranlana’s ethicists. Having recently seen another cohort of leaders flourish in the Fellowship, we invited Matt to share what he hopes for the people who choose to take part in the experience.
In this article, Matt uses the concept of an internal quest to understand the challenges leaders are up against in a modern world and introduces the idea that ethical leadership is not just about creating “ethical spaces” but about creating “space for ethics”.
If you were looking for a single phrase to capture the spirit of the current time, you could do worse than look to the naturalist and biologist EO Wilson, who famously said:
The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.
If that seems an apt summary for 2024, consider the fact that Wilson spoke these words in 2009, when the full wave of technological shifts – from social media to big data, cloud computing, remote work, and generative AI – had barely crested. Fifteen years later, we’re still facing similar challenges in addressing the various technologies driving climate change.
Add to that the increasingly medieval nature of political discourse in societies around the globe, and it feels like there is only one plausible conclusion; that the crisis has well-and-truly struck and exceeds even Wilson’s most pessimistic predictions.
Indeed, on more than one occasion this year, I’ve run a workshop asking leaders what they think future generations will condemn us for.
The workshop, based on the work of philosopher Kwame A. Appiah (R), starts from the premise that most of us know things that are happening today that, in the future, will be deemed as unthinkable as slavery, colonisation and the exclusion of voting rights for women and non-white peoples. And indeed, workshop participants can readily list a sweep of practices we’re doing today that we expect future generations to condemn us for.
This is the climate that the leaders who come to Cranlana exist in.
One in which they are confronted by intersecting crises whose moral stakes are high enough to make people feel deserving of condemnation. It’s understandable, therefore, that many leaders come to us seeking answers.
How should they lead in a time such as this?
What does good look like?
According to the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, the moral life really begins the moment we start to search for “a conception of the good”.
Quick, surface-level answers are insufficient for addressing the profound challenges leaders face today. If there are any “answers” worth knowing in order to address what is going on in the world, it is a life’s work to discover them.
What then, for leaders?
And specifically, what does this mean for leaders who come to Cranlana seeking help in light of the ‘metacrisis’ we now face? I’ve come to realise that the primary work for leaders is both more simple and far more challenging than we may think.
People often think about ethical leadership through the lens of impact.
It’s not unusual to define the traits of ethical leaders based on what enables them to determine ethical outputs. For example, humility is an important trait for ethical leaders, because leaders need to be able to learn to make the right decisions.
So, humility is used as a tool; important because of its role in having the real impact: the right decision.
One way of thinking about this approach to ethical leadership is to see it as the work of creating “ethical spaces”.
The leader’s job is to help create environments that reflect ethical principles, values and which avoid transgressing against any of our shared beliefs about right and wrong. An organisation, for example, becomes an ethical space when it is:
- inclusive,
- non-exploitative,
- contributes positively to the common good,
- pays a living wage to employees, and so on…
Given how broken our world often feels today, the responsibility of helping turn our organisations, society and planet into an ‘ethical space’ can feel hopeless. Even if it isn’t hopeless, it’s difficult to overstate the enormity of the task, and the significant role that determination, perseverance and courage will have to play in the work ahead.
Creating a space for ethics
But this is where it is helpful to turn to the second function of ethical leaders. As well as creating ethical spaces, the work of ethical leadership is to create space for ethics.
Leaders create space for ethics when they make it possible for people – themselves included – to exercise reflection, engage in open dialogue and allow themselves to learn (and unlearn) based on new ideas, perspectives and discoveries.
Unless leaders can create space for ethics, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to create truly ethical spaces.
This is partly due to the fact that, as I’ve already said, the path to truly understanding what’s good and right is a long one (I’ve been walking it day in, day out, as a moral philosopher for fifteen years and I haven’t cracked it yet). If leaders aren’t allowing space for continued reflection, learning and discussion around these questions, there can be no guarantee that whatever spaces they eventually create will be ethical in the way we’d expect.
It’s also because only the leader who has shown themselves to be willing and able to continually prioritise ethical practice – for themselves, their teams, their organisation and the society over which they have influence – is going to have the grit, will and skill to drive ethical change in a time of deeply systemic crisis.
But perhaps most importantly, it’s because the best way to understand whether a leader has created an ‘ethical space’ is to ask whether or not that space is conducive to the ethical reflection, dialogue and practice. A leader who is so preoccupied with acting ethically and making the world a better place that they stop asking what ‘better’ really looks like has achieved neither of their goals.
Conversely, as Appiah’s own research shows, moral revolutions – where a society lets go of an unethical practice that it has previously defended or valued – tend to happen quickly and unexpectedly. But they only happen when there are a sufficient number of people who have done the work to let go of something to which they previously held dear. That is, the ethical space only comes after there has been sufficient space for ethics.
Creating a space for ethics
But this is where it is helpful to turn to the second function of ethical leaders. As well as creating ethical spaces, the work of ethical leadership is to create space for ethics.
Leaders create space for ethics when they make it possible for people – themselves included – to exercise reflection, engage in open dialogue and allow themselves to learn (and unlearn) based on new ideas, perspectives and discoveries.
This is where the work begins: in finding the will, resources and courage to prioritise what is most important over what is most urgent; and to allow the work to happen in it’s own time.
Sometimes, I share this with leaders who have come to Cranlana seeking help. More often than not, I seek to show them – I create opportunities for them to fight for the space required to learn and reflect. It isn’t easy to find the time to look deeply at oneself, or the world, to understand what’s happening. But being uncomfortable isn’t the same as being unimportant.
I want leaders to leave their time with Cranlana with a slightly changed identity. Not as someone who is going forth to change the world, but as someone who is constantly seeking to change themselves.
If you’re ready to create space for ethics, explore our programs to find which is the best suited to the impact you want to make.
