INTEGRATING FOUR TYPES OF MORAL LEADERSHIP

Abstract: There are many types of moral leadership. We use allender’s typology of priest, king, and prophet to examine the reconciliatory, pragmatic and powerful, and visionary approaches to moral leading. We add a fourth type, the judge, as an integrative type. We suggest seven steps to integrate these types of moral leadership into both individual and community moral processes. Understanding and integrating these types will help organizations to create the dialogue to develop sustainable and generative views of ethics that will avoid two common extremes: legalistic judgmentalism and moral relativism. Both forms cripple communities with narrow moral thinking, naivety, and confusion.

 Keywords: Ethics, morality, types of leadership, integration, judgment “

Better two than one. And when there are three, it is even better.Together they help each other. When one fails, and that will happen, the others can help out to create better outcomes.” (Ecclesiastes  4:9–12, paraphrased)

Introduction

Graham Maxwell1, a theologian and professor, was fond of contrasting two types of Old testament leaders, the prophet and the king.

Prophets, he noted, were driven by personal revelation from God. they vividly saw the glory of God contrasted to the unfaithfulness of the people. they were frustrated by the gulf between what was and what could be. They called individuals back to the ideal and forward to the vision God had for them. Many worked for reform and challenged the status quo, and were voices crying in the wilderness, calling for repentance, change, and action. Often the prophetic call was a call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God (Mic. 6:8). Few followed. Prophets were often abused and killed, but they led anyway. Maxwell described their leadership as noticeably frustrating, such that the prophet is caricatured as ranting and pulling out his own hair in deep pathos for the extensive violation of the moral ideals.

Kings, on the other hand, Maxwell noted, led from the vantage of power. they enjoyed the blessings, burdens, and temptation of having authority. they could force and command in order to keep the social order and make individuals comply. they created the status quo and worked to preserve it by heavy taxation, forced human labor, and extensive military control. It appears that God did not want this centralized power and control (see 1 Sam. 8), but the Israelites wanted it. So with a stern warning, God gave them what they wanted. they quickly experienced kings that straight-jacketed them with rules and policies and conscripted them to be “warriors, bakers, and chariot-makers” to serve the kings’ bidding. Maxwell summed up the kings’ leadership differently from the prophets’ leadership. Instead of pulling out their own hair, as prophets did, kings led, sometimes morally or sometimes immorally, by pulling out other people’s hair.

In this paper, we explore varying moral impulses that form into various types or frames for understanding moral leadership. We then look for ways to integrate these into a broader moral leadership in organizations. two conceptual understandings from the lifework of Philip Selznick guide our process. Over 50 years ago, Selznick (1957) observed that effective leadership in administration avoided two deadly extremes: idealism, in which visionaries are most tempted to foster an unworkable plan that kills community, and opportunism, in which convenience dictates too cozy a relationship with one’s personal or corporate status quo. We agree with his observation, and that motivates us to see how effective moral leadership often is about blending moral views, impulses, and action into a moderating experience that avoids these extremes.

The second way Selznick (1992) guides our process lies in his belief that moral analysis needs philosophy and social science:

The distinctive feature of a moral or humanist science is its commitment to normative theory, that is, to theories that evaluate as well as explain. . . . at its best, normative theory is a fruitful union of philosophy and social science. On the one hand, philosophy acumen is necessary for understanding the complexity and subtlety of basic values and of value related phenomena, such as autonomy, fairness, rationality, love and law. Without sophisticated study of these interdependent variables—including how they have been understood in the history of thought—it is all too easy for values to be trivialized or shortchanged. On the other hand, philosophy alone, uninformed by social science, loses touch with empirical contingency and variation and with the insight to be gained from close study of actual experience. (p. xiii, emphasis supplied)

This article breaks discipline barriers by blending scholarship from theology and philosophy as well social science to think about moral leadership. Blending these disciplines facilitates a better understanding and explanation of moral leadership, and we embrace the legitimacy of evaluating these types of moral leadership even as we try to explain them. It is a delicate balance to evaluate and explain at the same time, but that is also what makes us moral creatures.

Types of Leaders: Useful Metaphors From Scripture

Maxwell’s image of the king and prophet present the tug-of-war of moral leadership that plays out in the thinking of many individuals or organizations. along with Maxwell, we have seen prophets or visionaries silenced by the policies and practices of those in power. We have seen the frustration as they have fought against the status quo and against inertia to create better ways of living. We think of individuals like Martin Luther King, Jr., and his namesake, Martin Luther, both reformers who worked from the bottom up, leading with ideals. We think of Gandhi, the prophet turned king. We have seen the faces of visionaries pale as they realized that significant moral compromises were being accepted naively or purposely by whole groups or nations.

We have even seen good visions and dreams silenced within our own minds by a just awareness that these views were deeply opposed to strongly held socially constructed concerns for the status quo. We have realized that the prophetic impulse is fragile, and that over time the conscience can be silenced, even in our own minds. this moral impulse is a serious concern for those who want moral leadership in their organizations to flourish.

But we have also seen a twist in morality, when the prophet’s voice can turn raw, mean, angry, and judgmental. We have seen radical visions that promised better days but only brought extensive damage that thwarted wiser and more useful “kingly” power that not only had better motives but promised better long-term ethical development for the individual or group. We all probably have a friend, relative, or neighbor who was trapped by some idealistic conspiracy theory that drove them by fear and paranoia to make and execute what they thought were strategic plans that were morally good but ended up wrong for their family or children. We personally have been carried off by our own radical thoughts only to be safely herded back to a more reasonable path by a calm and status quo leader who, understanding our moral impulse, saw a better way to meet the moral ideal we so feverishly wanted to meet. clear thinking is not only the impulse of the prophet but also at times of the king. the king’s experience can save from prophetic impulse gone wild. Furthermore, the decisive advice and action of wise leaders can save individuals and organizations a lot of pain. We have come to deeply appreciate the ability of authoritative and decisive leadership to refocus away from extreme idealism that can terrorize a person or a group.

What are we to make of these different observations about moral impulses in the moral lives of our organizations? What is the origin of these moral impulses and how can they be managed into more effective outcomes? how do we “benefit” from would-be reformers but make sure they don’t take the organization hostage? how do we refrain from silencing them without letting them dominate the whole moral conversation? how do we handle the staid leadership that plugs away through centralized moral leadership practices, keeping the organization steadily going in the same direction, when correction and new direction is needed? Lethargically doing the same old thing is a recipe for extinction chilled by the fear to change.

Allender’s (2006) analysis of leadership has helped us. his understanding about these types of leadership and his focus on the challenges and weaknesses inherent in leadership have given us new understandings of successful moral leadership. he reminds us that central leadership holds loneliness, abuse, and deep challenges and not just the temptations of power. he added to our king and prophet views of moral leadership another useful type or metaphor: the priest. In his paradoxical book, Leadership with a Limp, allender ends with a chapter on the three leaders an organization cannot live without: the powerful king, the visionary prophet, and the healing priest. he gets to that conclusion in a very creative way: by showing how the pain inherent in leadership requires many forms of leading to keep the organization healthy. his central argument is that we all walk better when we know we have a limp because we do have a limp, and being aware of the pathos and weakness in our leadership is part of what makes us receptive to others’ contributions to leadership. We are likely to listen better, have greater humility, and use sympathy and empathy that create more openness to the views of others. all of this works to increase moral conversations rather than dominate them into a solo perspective or eliminate them by apathy and poor engagement.

Allender contributed three central ideas to our work here. First, he added a type of leader, the priest, to our king-prophet continuum. his selection, and later our addition of a fourth type, the judge, helps to show more nuanced aspects of leadership beyond just the juxtaposition of change and status quo, or reform and tradition, that often polarizes groups. Second, he got us to define and contrast these types of moral leaders more clearly. We do that below. Finally, he suggested the route to get these different types of moral leaders talking together. It is pain and challenges and the humility they can bring which makes listening and shared submission more possible. We build on this observation to talk about ways these leaders can integrate and the steps in the judge’s work that can lead to integration.

Descriptions of Three Types: Priest, King, Prophet

Priests focused the community on the past and on the deep guilt and baggage of sin and wrong-doing. they brought their experience of the power of symbols of substitutionary sacrifice and reconciliation to repair and heal. these leaders were the ones that reminded us of our broken relationships, our miserable condition of evil hearts, and the sacrifice of and by God that alone can heal the fragmented relationships in our lives. these moral leaders were the ones who told us how sin separates us from God and from each other. they challenged us to see our common experience of sin that destroys all hope of saving ourselves and depending on self-righteousness. In their talk and actions, they reminded us that we are all beggars to the mercy of God. these leaders often seemed softer, more sensitive, maybe even too sensitive to “signs of sin” in our organizations. they often carried in themselves a deep pathos of the fragmentation of relationships and, by contrast, focused on the moral roles of reconciliation, nurturing, comforting, healing, and purging of the past. their moral calls were calls to better relationships and interpersonal healing.

The kings focused on the forces of evil pressing against productivity, economic cohesiveness, and the national social contract. they saw the need for safety and protection. they were sensitive to context and the threats against and opportunities for national growth. they vividly felt the pressing demands of meeting goals, and the restraints as well as the need of budget and personnel. From that vantage point, they made moral calls for harder work and smarter actions. these calls for services and actions to keep the machinery from rusting gave rise to the status quo and gave them reason to be concerned about chaos, threats, and disintegration caused by others. they expressed moral statements as commands for action not mainly because they were impatient (although they often were), but as a rallying voice, a moral voice to unite expressed in commands. armies and economies responded and that mobilization brought protection and energized the economy. to pull off all the work they saw that was needed, they turned to tax and force. they got projects completed and maintained the infrastructure, all a part of creating a better nation.

The prophets were the seers. they saw, with the priests, the degradation of relationships. With the king, they saw a need for swift action. they shared a concern about the loss of past values, but were also driven by future possibilities. they dreamed dreams. they were lured by righteousness and the potential for maximizing power. they encountered the moral ideal and despaired of those stuck in the past or present and laboring without passion or a cause. they strained themselves and others toward moral ideals.

This review shows the positives each moral leadership type can bring to an organization. We agree with allender’s (2006) observation that “each of us has skills and gifts that place us primarily in one category— prophet, priest, or king” (p. 186). We trust these descriptions will help you identify what you bring to the moral leadership of your organization. hopefully each of us can see our contributions and the moral impulse they most easily default toward—toward relationships, or protection and production, or reform. however, we also agree with allender that each type can bring moral narrowness to an organization. “Sadly, the crisis, complexity, betrayal, loneliness, and weariness of leadership transform most prophets into troublemakers, most priests into dogmatists, and most kings into dictators” (p. 186). Each type, and therefore each of us, can get off-base, partial in our moral vision, and potentially damaging to the moral life of our families, churches, places of work, and communities. Our strengths can also work against us personally as we can become overwhelmed by our own moral views and begin to criticize ourselves.

So the potential for moral success and failure are the same: we can succeed by using our moral strengths. We can fail by only using them. First, when the individual doesn’t live out her moral strength, she robs the group of a needed moral voice and contribution. Second, failure occurs when a leader lives only by her own moral mindset and the other forms of moral leadership are not valued or they are crowded out, first out of the leader’s own mind and then out of the life of the group. We have emphasized the positive of each strength which serves as an invitation to each of us to celebrate the moral voice, impulse and ideas God has given each of us. Now we turn to this last concern about the failure to see where our strengths can get us off track.

Priests fail us when the power of forgiveness, healing, and the focus on reconciliation are not clearly linked to the value of law and order. the sacrifice of God is cheapened because the seriousness of sin is dismissed or forgotten, or worse yet, the redemptive work of God is trivialized. Priests can also fail us when, like the priest Eli in the Old testament, they are focused on reconciling forgiveness but neglect the need for justice. they can become lax in discipline and fail to see the need for quick and decisive reward systems, even punishment and retributive justice. they may also forget the need for strict obedience to high ideals. they can let others below them—children or workers—wallow in bad behavior or be abused by those who do. they may be praying and hoping for change but fail to act in systematic ways to make change happen. this can be corrected by listening to other leaders who bring sober truth. In Eli’s situation, it was a very young boy who also had the gift of prophecy. the sober truth Samuel brought to the house of Eli is a solemn reminder to all reconcilers: “therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever” (1 Sam. 3:14, ESV). that is a sober reminder that God’s full moral leadership, though it clearly includes amazing radical grace, forgiveness, and atonement, also involves a strong justice that acts on people, even leading to their death. Kings and prophets are good at reminding us of that reality when they speak of judgment to come (Matt. 25).

Kings often seem to fail the most as moral leaders, or at least they got the most negative press in sacred history. this notoriety may be because “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It may also be because they had higher visibility than priests or prophets. It could be that they made more decisions, and therefore had more opportunities for mistakes. It could be that they just made more decisions that impacted more people and that led to more disgruntled individuals, which raised the level of press against kings.

While all these are part of the negative press of kings, it appears that there were both structural and relational reasons for this. In 1 Samuel 8, God through Samuel outlined clearly how a king-type structure would debilitate both its kings and the nation as a whole. “he will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses. . . . he will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. he will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves. . . .” (vv. 11–15, NIV). herein lies the structural reasons kings probably don’t get a lot of praise in Scripture. Notice the operative verb “take.” Kingship easily distorts natural relations to levels of hierarchy in which one feels privileged to take from another. For kings, that came in the form of forced labor, forced taxation, sexual exploitation, war drafts, and other coercive demands. that goes against the empowering process evident in priestly and prophetic office.

Centralization easily corrupts even the king with the best tendencies, tempting him to use force and power. Instead of engaging in appeals that require default to moral and spiritual reasons and justifications, the temptation to power held by a king is almost irresistible. commanding, while not all that bad, does have the ability to cripple the morality of those following so that they are not in the position to give correctives. Kingship is not only about the debilitation of the king by the temptation of power; it is also about the crippling of the followers.

Revisiting 1 Samuel 8 helps us see why God was so disappointed in the people. God does not run a kingship-like structure. and that has serious implications for moral leadership in an organization. the accumulation of power into a single leader or a small group of leaders has a structural flaw that often works against both the leaders and the followers to circumvent diffused moral and spiritual growth in an organization. Power accumulation and centralization tempts followers to put their own moral and spiritual thinking on cruise control and let others decide. It robs individuals of their own individual leadership initiative and thus stunts their development and injures the health of the organization. Without healthy self-initiating behavior, whole groups, organizations, and nations quickly become apathetic, disengaged, and under- developed. these ill effects of the king position work even when good people take the lead as king.

A close reading of 1 Samuel 8 shows who was most to blame. Israel’s choice was primarily a choice of convenience and laziness and a rejection of God’s method of guiding people. If they were true followers, as God had been working with them to become, they would have embraced God’s process, one that required them to be a different type of follower, more like the courageous follower engaged in managing toward the purposes of the nation and less focused on aggrandizing a person or place. Modern scholarship on followership strongly indicates that there is often a moral weakness in followers (chaleff, 2009). the “ease” of having a king organize them and protect them and buffer them from direct responsibility to God is a rejection of God’s creation of the individual human’s ability to think and to decide and take responsibility for her own actions.

We belabor this issue because it directly relates to morality in an organization today. In 1 Samuel 8, it does not seem that at the time any particular person was advancing his desire to be king in Israel. the people were the ones weaving their plan for a king. the people’s stated reason was that Samuel’s sons were not qualified to be good judges. that may have been true. But it appears that what most irritated God was the default choice to see the grass as greener in places where a king ruled. Why didn’t they ask for another judge? Why didn’t they plead for God to pick one of them to judge? What was it about judging and judges that so displeased them that having a king looked better? We return to this later when we speak of the need for judging as a moral leadership type.

Moving beyond the morality of the king and its inherent weakness, we now move to the prophets. they fare the best in Scripture when it comes to receiving less criticism. there are several possible reasons that these visionary idealist leaders get less critique. First, they tended to critique themselves more. they always seemed to be more responsive to an active and vivid conscience that pricked them when they veered off course. also, as spokespersons in communion with God, they stayed closer to his revelation. the low amount of correction prophets received may also be because they often lived at the margins of life— physically, financially, socially, and politically. Kings were constantly chasing them. Depravation kept them dependent on God. they were constantly at war with the status quo. there are obvious lessons in that lifestyle that would help to keep more of us on the straight and narrow path of truth, grace, and humility.

But prophets were not immune to moral misdirection. From Balaam (Num. 22–24, 31) to Nathan (who incorrectly told David to build a temple in 1 chron. 17), prophets have gotten issues wrong. thankfully, they were often quickly corrected directly by God. Oddly, it was also their moral strength that could lead to moral weakness. Jonah serves as a good example of this “failure” of rightness. he was a rather “righteous” prophet but had a lot of trouble with God’s mercy toward the Ninevites.

We won’t recount the story, except to remind the reader how it ended. after God showed mercy to the very bad Ninevites, Jonah was upset. In fact, we are never told if he ever fully embraced the new moral direction God was taking. It is evident from the story that the prophet’s conscience needed to be recalibrated. Jonah’s deep need for justice may have been an example of being blinded by your own right, your own morally defensible but impartial moral system. could it be that prophets can be so paralyzed by moral ideals that they themselves are blinded to better moral solutions like forgiveness or better outcomes than punitive judgment?

The lesson is clear: a hyper-sensitive conscience and strong moral visions can breed unrealistic and rigid moral laws and views. Jesus’ story of the prodigal reminds us of this truth. the elder brother, like Jonah, seemed more fixated on the moral right than on the welfare of his own brother. the hardworking, faithful elder brother, a good prophetic type, as Drummond (1978) put it well, had his own moral issues:

You know men who are all but perfect, and women who would be entirely perfect, but for an easily ruffled, quick-tempered, or “touchy” disposition. this compatibility of ill temper with high moral character is one of the strangest and saddest problems of ethics. the truth is there are two great classes of sins—sins of the Body, and sins of the Disposition. the Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder Brother of the second. Now, society has no doubt as to which of these is the worse. Its brand falls, without a challenge, upon the Prodigal. But are we right? We have no balance to weigh one another’s sins, and courser and finer are but human words; but faults in the higher nature may be less venial than those in the lower, and to the eye of him who is Love, a sin against Love may seem a hundred times more base. No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-christianize society than evil temper. For embittering life, for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off childhood; in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this influence stands alone. Look at the Elder Brother, moral, hard-working, patient, dutiful— let him get all credit for his virtues—look at this man, this baby, sulking outside his own father’s door. “he was angry,” we read, “and would not go in.” Look at the effect upon the father, upon the servants, upon the happiness of the guests. Judge of the effect upon the Prodigal—and how many prodigals are kept out of the Kingdom of God by the unlovely characters of those who profess to be inside? analyze, as a study in temper, the thunder-cloud as it gathers upon the Elder-Brother’s brow. What is it made of? Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, touchiness, doggedness, sullenness,—these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul. (pp. 28–29)

This powerful quotation, excerpted from a longer paragraph, dates to the 1880s and tells of a time when stronger moral claims on a community may have dominated. While some moral leaders would probably wish we had more rigorous souls following the rules today, what they forget is that moral rigidity does not a moral organization make. the resurgence of terrorism fueled by religious idealism is not a good solution to licentious societies. It is the blending and merging of moral claims and concerns that most promises to help us have organizations where the priest, king and prophet all work together to improve the moral culture of the place. this leads us to trying to understand better how these three types can relate to each other.

Confirming and Expanding the Model

Thus far, we have described three Old testament moral leadership roles and their contributions and limitations in a group. We now try to confirm our model from other literature and trying to find in both sacred and social science literature ways to integrate these frames.

One of the first insights that confirmed our model and helped us to add a fourth role was an analysis of how Israel was organized. the Israelite tribes were divided into four groups (three tribes each) around the tabernacle (see Num. 2). Each group was given a banner such that there were four images on those four banners: Ox, Face of Man, Eagle, and Lion (see Ezek. 1:10; Rev. 4:6–9). We saw a loose connection between this and the priest-king-prophet frame, but that became clearer when we saw how christians have used those four symbols in understanding the diverse views the Gospels give to explaining Jesus’ multiple ways of leading. Matthew presented Jesus as the King of Kings, which matched the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Mark presented Jesus as the working servant, the ox, serving the needs of people close to him, healing, teaching and ministering, much like a local priest. Luke presented the social aspects of Jesus’ leadership: Jesus eating with tax collectors, gaining respect from the Roman centurions, and interacting well with all ages. Finally, John presented Jesus partly as the prophet but mostly as a judge. Jesus’ decision to show judgment in redeeming the woman caught in adultery (chapter 8), and reinstating the man born blind to full equality with others, shows John’s desire to show that Jesus had authority to make radical judgments.

In table 1, we add the construct of judge to our types and align those with Lion (Matthew), Ox (Mark), Face of Man (Luke), and Eagle (John) to give support to the priest-king-prophet-judge moral frame model. as we do, we also show how our model matches other models of moral diversity and leadership diversity in the social sciences. We acknowledge that there is no perfect match between all these areas, but the main themes are clear.

The match between the Lion of Judah, the Gospel of Matthew and the King type are the strongest set to align. the others are less clearly aligned but demonstrate a pattern that validates many aspects of our model.

The links between the Ox of Ephraim, the Gospel of Mark, and the Priest are strong but less distinct. Mark was written to target those who may want to see christ’s servant leadership of taking care of human needs. as such, kingship and prophetic insight are less dramatic. By the middle of the first chapter of Mark, Jesus is already busy at work, deep into human need, healing and saving. Nothing is said about his unique and royal heritage. the deeply interpersonal elements of service are clear throughout, but Mark does share some commonalities with Luke.

The Face of the Man that we see in Luke is a focus not just on the Jewish people but on the whole human race. Luke traces Jesus’ lineage to adam. he then tells more stories than the other Gospels about non- Jews. the connection is social, but it could align with aspects of both the priest and the king.

The tribe of Dan, which carried the Eagle symbol, was considered a tribe of judgment. the name Daniel means “God is my Judge.” the book of Daniel is primarily about both prophecy and judgment. the Gospel of John is also about judgment. as such, the gospel of Eagle, the book of John, and the types of both prophet and judge align together. Jesus as both prophet and judge is clearly stressed in John. Interestingly, the book of John was written by John after he wrote Revelation (which also had the theme of Jesus as Judge and the coming judgment of the world). Judgment is commonly a focus of most prophetic works.

The closest alignment is probably between the type of prophets and judges; they both share with the eagle an ability for broad and far-see- ing vision to bring together the past, present, and future simultaneously. there is a level of divine understanding in the image of the eagle flying in the heavens. the metaphor of a high-flying eagle is a useful depiction of these two moral types that can look beyond the earthly to higher goals. they can look beyond the situation. they can see the other parts—the Man, Ox, and Lion—which are more grounded and local but not always aware of the larger picture. this is an ability the prophets had and also an ability the judges seemed to cultivate in their decisions for the good of cases while also having an eye to the good of the whole group.

But judges, like prophets, can also engage in a false sense of superiority, a point not missed in Scripture. Sadly, the tribe of Dan is one

Table 1 Four Types of Moral Leadership

 

	ROLE THEMES	PRIESTS	KINGS	PROPHETS	JUDGES AND A COMMUNITY OF JUDGMENT
	Other OT Social Frame	Ox Face of Man	Lion	Eagle	Eagle Face of Man
	Gospels Theme	Mark Luke	Matthew	John	John Luke
	Lead by . . .	Using rituals and teachings to fos- ter forgiveness and reconcilia- tion to God and others; breed community	Organizing groups and securing resources and power to work, build, feed, pro- tect, reward, and punish	Focusing on dreams of faith- fulness to God by appealing to past ideals and future vision; initiating reforms to change status quo; a voice for the marginalized	Bringing fuller understanding of past issues through investi- gation and wit- nessing and then using due process and appealing to laws to create just outcomes for both victims and criminals
	Time Focus	Past: Deal with guilt and shame	Present: Strategize and coordinate for current challenges	Future: Reform status quo to new vision of life	All: Gather past facts to deal with present inequity to punish or give deliverance and reconciliation
	Predominant Value	Mercy, Healing, Reconciliation	Order, Policy, Power, Reward	Social Justice, Rightness, Reform	Community Resolution and Understanding, Procedural
	Driving Ethic	Grace	Justice	Righteousness	Justice, Restoration Reconciliatory Restoration
	Effective in Solving Issues of . . .	Guilt, Sin, Shame, Unfaithfulness	Disorder, Danger, Inefficiency, Fragmentation	Lethargy, Apathy, Carelessness, Laziness	Conflict, Disagreement, Confusion
	Weakness	Reconciles before sin is clearly con- fessed and understood	Materialism, abuse of power; group think blinds; central- ization weakens people	Unrealistic; fear or nagging irrita- tion; low imple- menting processes; uncompromising	Too tedious and laborious with processes; slow because of need for consensus; creates fear of arbitrariness
	Modern Equivalents	Pastors, Counselors, “Maintenance” Occupations	Administrators, Managers, Supervisors, Engineers	Entrepreneurs, Inventors, Ethicists, Architects	Judges, Mediators, Arbitrators

 

	CONNECTION		TO	OTHER	LITERATURE
	Common Themes from Biblical to Secular	Reconciliatory, Care		Just, Authoritative	Visionary, Idealist	Just, Restore Community
	Themes	Nurturing,		Professional,	Creative, critical,	Lawful, fair,
		relational,		strategic, policy	idealistic,	policy oriented,
		interpersonal		productive,	reforming,	due process
				efficient	countercultural
	Moral Traditions	Care, Virtues		Utilitarian, Some Justice	Deontological, Social Justice	Justice, Narrative Eclectic
	Bolman & Deal Reframing Organizations	Human (family)		Structural (machine)	Symbolic (theatre)	Political (jungle)
	Alan Fiske	Communal		Authority		Market Pricing/
	“Human	Sharing/		Ranking/		Authority
	Sociality”	Equality		Market Pricing		Ranking
		Matching
	Cameron, et al. “Competing Values”	Collaborative		Control, Compete	Create	Compete, Control
	Furman “Ethic of	Ethic of Care		Ethic of Justice,	Ethic of Critique	Some of all five
	Community”			Ethic of		but mainly Ethic
				Professionalism		of Justice and
						Ethic of
						Community
	Ethics Game	Reputation Lens		Rights and	Relational Lens	The integrative
		with focus on		Responsibilities	with focus on	part of the Ethics
	Ethical Lens	Care and Virtue		Lens with focus	Justice	Game is to get
	Inventory			on Deontology		individuals to
						think through
				Results Lens		other people’s
				with focus on		lenses. This is a
				Consequentialism		very effective
						judgment
						process of
						“hearing
						witnesses”

 

tribe missing from the final list of tribes in the book of Revelation (compare Gen. 35:23–26 and Rev. 7:5–8). Oddly, according to theological interpretations, what got them off the list may be their critical spirit or the bitterness with which they engaged their fellow tribes (see Psalm 58:3–5, Rev. 7:4–8, Gen. 49:15–17; Amos 8).

The addition of judge to our model helps us see not only another type of moral leadership but a way to integrate all the types of moral leadership in a group. We believe judgment is the process judges bring that breeds success. While the tribe of Dan may have gotten deleted from the final list in Revelation because of judgmentalism, it was not because judging and judgment are against God’s character. In fact, cooper (2006) clearly shows that judgment is the only useful cure for judgmentalism. a quick and tempered self-righteous response to moral issues is not deliberate and redemptive, which is what is in keeping with a royal nation and John’s picture of heaven (Rev. 7 and 21:9–21). Judgment is not eliminated (Rev. 21:15–17); rather, it is strengthened to breed more caring and safe environments. the tribe of Dan failed to live up to its name, but others don’t have to fail. they can judge soberly (Rom. 12:3).

In moving to reading material outside of Scripture, we find that some ethics and social science models value leadership corroboration aspects of our four-type model better than others. We have listed those.

The history of ethics is too long and diverse to cover here except to show that the simplest contrasts between care and justice are the most confirming. these two approaches on morality were made famous in debates about the work of Kohlberg (Kohlberg, 1984; Kuhmerker, Gielen, & hayes, 1991) and Gilligan (Gilligan, 1982, 1988). Kohlberg looked at the development of principle-based justice thinking in children and youth. this research noted a proclivity for men to focus on issues of justice. however, Gilligan did her studies more on the way women process ethics slightly differently than men, looking at the holistic effect of moral decisions on relationships. this justice-versus- care approach has deep roots in the longer debate in ethics, reaching  back to the ancient Greeks and Israel. the ethic of justice (principled or rule-based decisions) and the ethic of care (relational, contextual) are evident in many models of moral decision-making and leadership (Starratt, 1991, 2004).

Added to these two ethical streams of justice and care have been models of critique, narrative (life story), virtues or character approaches (Frankena, 1963; Starratt, 1991). In table 1 we have tried to group these various moral frames into our four models of moral leadership.

The five most common moral frames, which are deontology (principle- based or justice), care (a mix of human concerns and contextualism), utilitarianism (a consequentialism focused on outcomes like professionalism and productive economics), narrative (life and biography/contextual meaning making) and virtues (what character does this action develop?). We have oversimplified the field of ethics to help define these five and match them to our model. Generally, the match is useful but not perfect. the pragmatic kings who want to get things done have a utility and professional ethic approach. the prophet is driven by both moral idealism (which is more principle based) and social justice. the priests are interested in a virtue and care ethic. the judge is more eclectic, taking almost all the moral frames into deliberation. Judges examine the personal characteristics and life story and compare those to the laws and principles accepted in the society, to find a means for reconciliatory as well as potentially punitive results.

In addition to ethics, Table 1 shows parallels in other forms of scholarship in organizational leadership. Morgan (1986) did much to get individuals thinking about framing movement organizational processes in his classic Images of Organization. Bolman and Deal (2008) adapt that to four areas in the life of the organization. these four areas match the type of moral leadership we detail above:

1. Structural: Leadership is evident when it has influence on and through organizational structures such as in formal policy and rules, established procedures, acceptable lines of authority and decision making, detailed protocols, and relates more mechanical and technical aspects of group dynamics and decision
2. Human Resource: Leaders manifest influence when they attend to intrapersonal and psychological issues in themselves and others, through motivation and attention to people’s needs and relational dynamics.
3. Symbolic: Leaders manifest influence when they use culture to craft and shape and communicate meaning through stories, images, metaphors, and
4. Political: Leadership also manifests itself by how well individuals develop coalitions that can get important tasks completed and how well the person advocates, negotiates and even

In the first area, structural, the organization is like a machine and the leader the machinist who keeps the parts running smoothly. In the second, the organization is a family, where feelings, personalities, aspirations and relationships have to be managed. In the third area, the organization is a play or theatrical performance where roles and meaning have to be continually reframed in relationship to the plot or story of the play. In the last frame, organizations are jungles, where coalitions have to be forged and the leader has to tame the tigers or be killed. they must be shrewd advocates who use power to tame extremes.

Another work that has helped us confirm our model as useful for examining moral leadership in organizations is anthropologist alan Fiske’s (1991) work on human sociality, which looks at the four frames of moral leadership. he studied group behavior in african tribes and other places around the world to come up with a basic model of how individuals relate to each other. his human sociality model matches aspects of our four strand model:

1. Communal sharing, where kinship and closeness create a shared experience where each freely contributes to the group and each then takes what is needed from the
2. Authority ranking, where subordinates in work situations look to superiors to give direction and meaning to their roles and also act in ways that take care of the needs of their “followers.”
3. Market pricing occurs when the interactions are set by only minimal relationship, are focused on a short duration, and a primary purpose is to exchange services or
4. Equality matching is neither a purely communal nor a purely hierarchical structure, but a friendship or a shared status in a group such that each person’s vote counts, but no ranking or deep social connection is needed for the social interaction to take place.

While there are many other sociological frames with four frames that match well our moral leadership model, the competing Values Leadership framework for organizations, created by cameron, Quinn, Degraff, and thakor (2006), is most helpful. It posits that groups within organizations often tend to operate from various value frameworks that at times compete but can also bring more holistic experiences:

1. Collaborative: Leadership is needed to facilitate people, build teams, and gather commitment through attention to motivation, communication, and personnel development. Like Bolman and Deal’s (2008) human resource frame and Fiske’s (1991) communal sharing, more emphasis is on intrapersonal and psychological issues and attention to people’s relational dynamics.
2. Create: Leaders manifest influence when they help to innovate, strategize new visions, create new practices, improve performance methods, or develop new or better products. this is similar to Bolman and Deal’s metaphor of symbolic management, in which the group is a play that needs its meaning formed and continually renewed with creative stories, images, metaphors, and continually renewed with creative stories, images, metaphors, and language.
3. Control: Leaders manifest influence when they use structure (like Bolman and Deal’s structural frame) to control the operations, bring more efficiency and effective operations, and attend to quality outputs that develop better technical outcomes.
4. Compete: Leadership also motivates by incentives that link personnel performance to rewards or demerits. Here the hard-driving leader pushes for better outcomes, creates some competitive engines of quality improvement, and looks at the bottom line of profits and purpose.

Gail Furman’s (2004) work has also added understanding to our four frame model. a leading researcher on school-community relations, she argued that most educational ethics were too focused on either individual decision-making processes or strictly care or principle-based ethics. She embraced the four ethics of justice, care, critique, and professionalism advanced by many theorists (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2001; Starratt, 1991, 2004) but adds her ethic of community as the integrative approach to combining these.

The last area we include is work from EthicsGame.com and their Ethical Lens Inventory. they have systematically developed an instrument we find useful for helping people identify four ethical lenses they most tend to operate from. We find the inventory very useful. While we don’t like the names they have chosen for some of their lenses, the underlying constructs are very useful and help to confirm many aspects   of our model. What we most like about their work is their attempt to  work toward integration of these components to create more mature moral  thinking.  the  work  toward  integration  is  crucial  in  our  model and is where the judge type becomes most useful.

Integration: The Judge and the Judging Process

The role of judge and judgment matches very well the final type of moral leadership that must operate in an organization for it to be morally mature. the judging process is one of adjudication in which varying and often conflicting views are examined and, ideally, woven together into a more mature understanding of the situation. conflicts can be used to bring a fuller outcome. While we think the judge can be the overseer of such a process, so can the community. In that regard, we see judgment not only as an individual role but also as the role of the community. Judging is a process by which an individual or group keeps one eye on the law (justice and the king’s concern for order, and the prophet’s ideals), one eye on the person or community’s relational need (care), and the other eye on a vision for the future (prophet’s vision).

Allender’s (2006) main contribution to our model of integration is his emphasis on the role of pain, weakness, loneliness and the other suffering aspects of leadership as crucial to keep integration possible. Leadership with a limp is not about faking a limp to get sympathy, nor superficially acknowledging a limp, but experiencing the struggle of the limp as a bridge to integration. a personal story or two might help to illustrate how this works.

One of us suffered from a decade-long struggle with legalism that led to a face-to-face encounter with the limits of idealism. this desire to be faithful to the ideal turned morally ugly when I developed a dogmatic spirit. My strong moral conscience nurtured a dark legalism, forming a strong judgmentalism and bitterness. that in turn fed into a social isolation that expressed itself in a strong moral self-righteousness, a rigid pursuit of truth, a distrust of others, and a view that others were evil. Miserable both internally and socially, social insulation sheltered me from the very perspectives that would have given me more morally mature views. Moral and spiritual distortion led to a meltdown, the inevitable result for every type of person who doesn’t operate in dialogue with the other types. this vicious cycle shut me out of moral conversations necessary for helping me to grow. Judgment became judgmentalism. I am thankful for the redemptive and patient labor of friends (and God, his angels, and the Holy Spirit) to help me form a better theology. Once back into moral dialogue, listening more than speaking changed my views of morality, ethics, religion, and spirituality.

We have seen this experience repeated in others’ lives. We saw a wonderful and morally gifted Buddhist, a feminist ethicist, get twisted by a rigid idealism. She was articulate and clear in her moral arguments and often very concerned about doing the right thing. She was focused on doing everything in community and in peace, but her precision made her hard to live with. her continual fear that ideals would be marginalized by bureaucracy or quick decisions made her obstructionist, irritating, and crippling to our group and its work. She bogged down herself as much as us she burdened the rest of us. We were constantly battered by moral questions, tentativeness, and hyper sensitivity. these and other experiences have taught us the limits of the conscience (covrig, 2009) as a moral guide.

As we have noted above, the prophetic type is characterized by this drive to follow ideals and principles, but living only with a moral conscience is living without other moral thinking. the drive of powerful personal or scriptural revelation can become distorting. Mediating perspectives can actually improve the situation. as we noted above in the story of the Elder Brother and in the reluctance of Jonah, virtue and idealism can paralyze us, keeping us away from new solutions like mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

As we noted, all the moral frames have a crippling side. the story of the seven years of mental breakdown of King Nebuchadnezzar (see Dan. 4) is the story of a king who failed to listen to ideals and to the prophet Daniel. Daniel’s warning was simple: “therefore, Your Majesty, be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue” (Daniel 4:27, NIV). the simple task of listening is the way we escape most dead ends of our own moral lenses or frames.

The first step a judge (or the judgment process) can bring to a group (or one’s own thinking) is to hear and heed moral invitations from others. Saying yes to an invitation to hear someone else’s moral thinking is not an acknowledgement that they are right; it is being open enough to hear them out. this comes most easily for those who are humbled by their own past mistakes, but one does not have to go through some great catastrophe of humiliation to become teachable (although this is often the case for kings).

This listening is the first step of integration—hearing and heeding moral invitations from others. It is probably the most important role because it is a challenge for us to take up the lens (as EthicsGame calls it) and see what another seeks to evaluate as moral in a situation. From there the other processes of integration flow well:

1. Invitation (listening to discovery)
2. Inquiry (thorough data collection or systematic investigation)
3. Interpretation (discussion and discernment of the data)
4. Innovation (the integration of dialogue into a creative plan)
5. Initiation (carrying out the creative plan)
6. Re-investigation (an added step if the innovation included a probationary period)
7. Stabilization

Inviting is one courageous work for moral leaders. Proverbs cautions, “In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right, until someone comes forward and cross-examines” (Prov. 18:17, NIV). Experienced leaders know that when a story surfaces they are often hearing only one side. that is an invitation to find other sides of the story. Some leaders are notorious for stacking their cabinet or counselors with yes people. In doing so they miss out on the fuller moral portrait that comes from discourse. thus, the invitation for others to share is not an easy act for some leaders, unlike abraham Lincoln, who created a cabinet of rivals (Goodwin, 2005). It also takes savvy political wisdom and planning to take that moral step.

Once invited, the judge or those working toward integration must engage the process more deliberately by exploring the data and ideas that back up or challenge the stories. a dedicated process is needed in which data is sought and systematic investigation occurs. the bigger or more controversial the issue, the more work is needed.

Inquiry starts dialogue and then investigation intensifies it, but as data piles up, stories have to be reinterpreted. the process of interpretation is one of meaning-making in which precarious views and ideas are let go and new ones are embraced. Interpretation is about choosing what in one’s mind needs to be rejected and what should be accepted. the same is true for interpretation in organizations.

Interpretation then leads to the need to decide. Decisions, however, can be very creative. Ultimately, the best ethics are not merely prescriptive nor even descriptive but imaginative and creative. Ethics occurs most seamlessly when a group can figure out ways to preserve more of their competing values when picking a solution. Finding a way of keeping the law and preserving mercy is the quintessential challenge. It takes more complex thinking than to simply default to either moral frame separately. Finding a frame that incorporates more of the stories and moral perspectives of the group can be a liberating, energizing, and fun process that raises the level of critical and creative thinking in the group. Jesus’ creative solution for the “victims” in John 8 and 9 shows the power of the judge’s role as a moral leader. Here, a woman caught in adultery seems destined for a stoning but gets acquitted. And the man ostracized since birth as a sinner is fully and emotionally embraced into the kingdom of God. Ethics never looked so sweet. Divine judgment never looked more beautiful.

The final stages of judgment can vary. Innovation requires initiation of the plan (carrying out the creative plan). however, if punishment is required, this may lead to a separate process of evaluating the severity of the sin. Initiation may be as simple as waiting and watching to see how the current process works out. this may require re-investigation, if the decision requires a follow up, either to see if a person complied, the policy was instituted, or the conflict was reduced. the final stage is one of stabilization, in which the parties involved receive the rewards or punishment or a negotiated ceasefire.

This is what judgment and the work of the judge bring to the moral processes in a group. When impasse exists, judges create processes for integration to take place. What makes this judgment process and thus the fourth type of moral leadership useful is that judgment can be initiated from within the moral frame of any of the other three moral types. the priest initiates judgment as the impulse to reconciliation (the moral frame of care). the king can initiate judgment in order to maintain order or to apply a kingdom law or policy. the prophet can initiate judgment out of a desire for truth (the prophet’s moral frame) or as a response to God’s ideals for the poor (social justice) or against a nation.

Because judgment is a community process that can be initiated by all other types, it is essentially an open path of moral leadership available to anyone in the organization. Anyone can respond to and invite others into a better moral process. Judgment is not a process of condemnation but of exploration, creativity, and dialogue. that process creates new patterns of thinking and brings liberation in deep ways in a group. It can lead a group to better processes, services, and outcomes. adjudicating the impulses of the king, priest, and prophet to find solutions that benefit the community is the goal of judgment. We think Paul had that goal in mind when he challenged the church in corinth to get their act together and do a better job of judging as a precursor to judging angels (1 cor. 6:3). Judging and judgment breed effective processes, dialogue, investigation, witnessing to a view, and techniques for moral collaboration and integration that improve moral thinking and action in a group.

Our model and our emphasis on the role of judgment matches some of the suggestions Furman (2004) makes for using community to integrate moral views. Furman puts it this way:

Thus an ethic of community centers the communal over the individual as moral agent—it shifts the locus of moral agency to the community as a whole. It leads to a practice of moral leadership that is clearly distributed and based first and foremost in interpersonal and group skills, such as:

• Listening with respect
• Striving for knowing and understanding others
• communicating effectively
• Working in teams
• Engaging in ongoing dialogue, and
• creating forums that allow all voices to be (p. 222)

Many of the steps she noted match our suggestion for the processes of judgment and integration. However, we like the construct of judgment better than her communitarian or ethic of community approach for at least three reasons. First, communitarians have always had a difficult time explaining the moral agency at work in communities. they tell us that a community needs to bring closure to moral disagreements, but they struggle to suggest who the agent is. Without someone doing something, the command to pull together is more nostalgia than moral agency. the mechanism of judgment can be personal, social, voted, or mediated and it can also be built into the community process of deliberation. However, just having a community is not enough for that community to embrace its actions.

Second, Furman (2004) is naïve about the security a democracy brings to morality. We prefer the model of a “republic.” a republic has some of the structures of a democracy but with built-in protection against the majority if the minority is being violated. In addition, a republic has agency, actually a lot of it, because it divides powers— legislative, executive, and judicial. With a combination of popular vote and appeal to some higher authority, usually a constitution, natural law, natural rights, or even divine revelation, a “republic” is preferred to a democracy. Here the minority can appeal to higher moral absolutes than just a majority democratic moral rule. the ability to appeal to a constitutional law or natural law and unalienable rights probably kept the United States after the american Revolution from becoming more like France after the French Revolution. a republic actually requires and helps cultivate a decentralized moral base better than a democracy. Nicholas Miller’s (2012) analysis of the religious roots of the First amendment shows systematically how the moral and spiritual voices of Americans were crucial in the development of the republic. he argued that belief in the private right of judgment related to Scripture was essential for the First amendment to become part of the U.S. constitution, and for the rights of the majority to be curtailed by the moral reference to claims beyond democracy and community (Miller, 2012). Once again, while community is essential, it is a community engaged in thoughtful judgment that most safeguards the group.

The final point of departure we have with Furman’s (2004) communitarian solution is that we embrace the individual far more than she does in her communitarian model. Communitarians have added much to the last 20 years of moral discourse. however, these individuals forget that the community can be as tyrannical as a king. as we noted earlier, kings can debilitate the morality of a group not only by their evil actions but even by their good actions that eventually weakened individual moral initiative. We feel the same about strong communitarian activity. It can create group think that robs individuals of their voice. human individuality is not the problem. the inability to engage others in thoughtful dialogue and in processes of judgment is the problem with much of the moral leadership in groups.

We share with Ellen White (1903) a belief in the human’s ability to judge:

Every human being, created in the image of God, is endowed with a power akin to that of the creator—individuality, power to think and to do. the men [and women] in whom this power is developed are the men who bear responsibilities, who are leaders in enterprise, and who influence character. It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers and not mere reflectors of other men’s thought. (p. 17)

It is essential that individuals do not surrender that power but learn how to integrate it through the process of shared dialogue and judgment.

Gary Hamel, one of the leading scholars on management, has repeatedly pointed out the limits of innovation, decision-making, and responsiveness to customers when centralized management dominates an organization. Working to empower individuals to manage their own area is crucial for organizations who want stronger morality in their ranks and in the minds of their employees. Motivating management and decision at the edges of the organization also improves performance and yields more satisfied clients (hamel, 2007, 2012; Journal of Applied Christian Leadership, 2012). We would extend his same concern for moral management and leadership in a group.

The temptation to improve society morally is always there for the elect in society, but even the very elect can be deceived about the best way to do that.

Returning to the offended God and Prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel 8 may help to bring home this crucial point. What about the king leadership process was so deeply offensive? Was the estimate of Samuel’s son’s wrong? Was the idea of using an apparently successful structure in other nations wrong just because other nations did it? Or was the main problem of their plan for leadership that they were by-passing the difficult work of careful judgment for quick fixes and big change? Judges had far different power and function than a king. Samuel, who was actually a super-judge, a blend between prophet, priest, and judge, was probably the best example of leadership in Scripture other than Jesus. and yet Israel showed that they trusted neither God nor themselves nor Samuel to be able to guide them in moral decisions, in judgment. Samuel had given them ample examples of judgment, but obviously the nation (and Samuel’s own children) had not learned from this example. they didn’t trust themselves to be able to follow what God revealed and to learn by trial and error and “talking and working together” to lead a nation together.

This has serious implications for moral leadership. Even centralized good leadership is not really good because it tends to cripple the initiative for decentralized decision making. the mediating aspects of discourse and dialogue that come from group decision making would be abandoned, and without dialogue only two outcomes could result. It would create followers who would vacillate between either blind obedience and support, or rebellion and strife.

This is the twist we hope our model drives home to the reader. Good moral leadership is not a lone ranger event. Moral leadership is a rich cultural process of engaged dialogue that leads to better mature thinking. that is messy, time consuming, and the temptation to abandon that process is always present.

And the result of finding a faster way is the jump to the king as central decision aker. “When the day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day” (1 Sam. 8:18, NIV). Sadly, two distortions would automatically come, regardless of the person. there would be oppression by the king. But even worse, the situation would be so bad that the character of God would be distorted and hidden from people such that God would not hear their cry. This suggests that even spirituality would be distorted by the institution of top-down, autocratic, centralizing power. And the point is that even if there was a good despot, a nation would quickly lose the power for dialogue, even with God. the subtle and destructive force of the “kingship” model cannot be stressed enough. The people welcomed and then eventually were overwhelmed by their own choice.

The loss of the Israelites’ confidence in leading and motivating themselves against the problems they faced was a huge blow against moral leadership in the nation; that decision has crippled most nations ever since. When people wish for and then wait around for someone to “lead” them, what is created is a vacuum against moral initiative and development, which creates a nation vulnerable to “would-be” leaders who promise quick fixes. Denying the ability to engage in self-leadership that God has designed into us and nurtured in us is ultimately an act of disapproval of God the creator. God has created us to have the ability to make decisions and to lead out; those who learn to respect and grow that in others, even children, catch the spirit of the Moral Government of God. “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Pet. 2:9, NIV). Hebrews 2:8-13 and 1 Corinthians 6:3 clearly show that humans were not only destined to lead out in the world but also to judge even the universe. the slow demise of the role of judge, which was usurped by the kings of the time, presents a strong metaphor for us to rekindle in our community the use of each of our moral voices to bring moral maturity to our communities.

Conclusion

This model presented three types of moral leadership—priest, king, prophet—that can be integrated with the help from a fourth type, the judge. In this model, each leader brings her own moral voice to the dialogue, and each, paradoxically, can weaken the moral growth of the group if she doesn’t adjudicate these “witnesses” into practice. Moral superiority kills morality because it kills dialogue that can work to create more creative ideas and outcomes. those who understand the weakness of their strengths keep that superiority at bay and seek dialogue that grows maturity. this is the engine of the judgment process. Each must embrace his moral voice and share it as a witness to the group while at the same time letting others share also.

A judgment process in the organization can make better moral leadership possible. It can breed the needed balance between varying views. Ethics via this judgment process promises to breed decentralized moral skill development and better moral innovation by dispersing authority and responsibility throughout the organization. Our model embraces the diverse moral leadership approaches each person can bring to a group. These frames can also help each member understand where the “other” is coming from. We don’t want individuals to abandon their unique moral views, but rather to realize their place in a broader framework.

We have come to appreciate the ability of authoritative and decisive leadership to re-focus groups which have lost their moral initiative or have poorly distributed moral processes. Sometimes strong leadership is the only way to neutralize cranky moralizers who can mesmerize followers with unhealthy and irresponsible fixation on ideals. In our work in universities we have seen idealistic professors get stuck by the “paralysis of analysis,” and only a strong administrative action could help to get them unstuck. however, the best way to do that is through empowering moral judgment. Leaders, we understand the need for centralization, but your job is to shovel out responsibility as fast as individuals shovel it into you.

Groups need both idealism and tough minded pragmatism; they need all the streams of wisdom which flow from the moralities we outline here. We need leaders who use and solidify systems and followers who resist arbitrary controls and push for new innovations. We need leaders who motivate us to change and followers who demand sustainable processes and practices so that each day at work is not a confusing rebirth of processes. We need these types of moral impulses in leaders and followers. and that is the challenge. It is a challenge to mentally hold opposing moral viewpoints simultaneously in one’s mind. It is even harder to hold them in a conversation. But holding opposable moral claims in one place makes for stronger organizations (Martin, 2007).

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Based on lectures in the 1990s at Loma Linda University Seventh-day adventist church in california.

Duane M. Covrig, Ph.D., is Professor of Leadership and Ethics at andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

Mordekai O. Ongo is a doctoral student (aBD) focusing on higher education in the Department of Leadership at andrews University. he holds two master’s degrees in software engineering and management. he has co- taught Issues in Research in the Department of Leadership and has served as a banker for several years.

Janet Ledesma, Ph.D., is the Educational Leadership Program coordinator and associate Professor of Educational administration at andrews University.