球拍，ISSUE 43

zhouhickUID: 2768760

TOPIC: ISSUE43 - "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."
WORDS: 477
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2010-2-28 9:17:57


Must an effective leader maintain the highest ethical and moral standards? In my view, I fundamentally agree with the speaker. With highest ethical and moral standards a leader can contribute more to their institutions and be idolized by his subordinates. Therefore, a good leader always becomes our model in moral and ethical fields.

On the one hand, a leader's behavior in his institutions indisputably is the concentration of the entire company and more or less influences on behaviors of his staff. Therefore, the better-and-worse of his institution, to large extent, depends on his level of morality and ethic. In the institution, staff more wishes to see their leaders who consider things on the basis of the profits of entire institutions rather than his own, thereby, the atmosphere of the entire institution are enhanced over other competitors. Consider, Jack Welch who was the most noted leader of GE of United States in 20 century, and he had very high level of morality and ethic because he always took time to talk with his staffs, even though his time was counted as gold.


On the other hand, ethical and moral standards of leaders directly decide the reputation of their institution in relevant fields whatever in companies or governments. Every action of leaders seems to be drastically concerned by their cooperators, media and even their competitors when they take part in public activities such as parties, ceremonies and so forth. If a leader's actions are little problematic in morality and ethics, his competitors will promote popularizing such harmful movement into public, and even leads to large scale of public criticism by extending the problem. Obviously, the company's reputation will be destroyed, and the leader will largely be slandered by public. For example, the famous "Watergate scandal" of the election in American history that Nixon wanted to get confidential information from his competitor by means of set machines in his competitor’s office in order to get elected, on the contrary, becomes an excuse for his competitor to demean him.

On the other way around, if a leader's moral and ethical standards are not persuasive enough to lend the credence for other people, the results seem to be severe that staffs are not willing to listen to him, their competitors attack to the company’s reputation by the reason of leader’s fault and even worse that staffs quit jobs and shift to his competitors. Moreover, it is possible that the company fires him for the purpose of retailing its reputation. For example, a famous leader Huang Guangyu who has been the richest person in China was being charged and went to the jail for the reason of embezzlement. Then the media of public use any means to demean him so that today he is the obvious contrast example of business.

In sum, I basically agree with the speaker that an effective leader should have the highest ethical and moral standards. However, most the leaders are not willing to contribute to society and sacrifice themselves, on the contrary, they work for personal benefits as possible as they can. Therefore, we should encourage the high standards of morality and ethics to the leaders.