Issue43 领导者与道德水平

cynthiasmileUID: 2735173

TOPIC: ISSUE43 - "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."

I agree with the author's claim with my own reservation that throughout history, to be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the high ethical and moral standards, yet not necessarily the highest.Also he or she should pay attention to other important skills.

Admittedly, maintaining high ethical and moral standards is one of the basic requirements for a public official to be an effective leader. When facing controversial problems such as human organ cloning and sacrificing the environment for economic development, a leader with higher ethical and moral standards will be more likely to choose the way which will safeguard the rights and interests of most people and consider more about the long-term development than the immediate interest. While on the other hand, the unethical or immoral characters just as selfishness, avarice, dishonesty, and lechery etc., are fatal for a public official to be an effective leader, because the one with these weaknesses in his character is easy to be influenced by allurements as money, power, beauty, and so forth which leads to the final wrong decisions.

However, it doesn't necessarily mean that only those who have the highest ethical and moral standards can be the effective leaders. The key evaluating standard of whether someone is an effective leader or not lies in how much has he or she achieved and how many people benefits from their work. Bill Clinton, for instance, whose affair with Lewinsky had brought him numerous troubles and he even was impeached for obstruction of justice. Obviously, Clinton did not keep the highest ethical and moral standards, since he cheated on his wife. But from my point of view, some moral issues like sexual sandal, to some extent, belong to private problems and these do not directly influence their leading ability. In reality, Clinton presided over the longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history, which included a balanced budget and a federal surplus. And he left office with an approval rating at 66%, the highest end of office rating of any president since World War Two. This illustrates that still many American people remember Clinton's remarkable contribution more than his sexual morality problem because it is from the first one that people can benefit from his leadership. Therefore, maintaining the highest ethical and moral standards is not essential to be an effective leader.

Apparently, common sense tells us that on the way to become an effective leader, one person should develope many other skills such as special knowledge, insight, management ability, creativity and so forth. Deng Xiaoping, regarded as the second greatest leader in People's Republic of China's history behind chairman Mao, helped China achieved great advances under his leadership. Having a sound intellectual framework for Marxism and good awareness of the problems with China at that time, he developed Socialism with Chinese characteristics and created a synthesis of theories of “socialist market economy". With the tangible the transcendence of visionary and great management ability, he opened China to foreign investment, the global market, and limited private competition which makes the advancing China into becoming one of the fastest growing economies in the world for over thirty years and vastly raising the standard of living of hundreds of millions of Chinese. His story tells us public officials, who want to become effective leaders should focus on not only maintaining high ethical and moral standards but also developing knowledge system and important soft skills.

In sum, one should maintain high ethical and moral standards but not necessarily the highest standards. What's more, on the way to become effective leaders, one should also pay attention on the development of knowledge system and other important soft skills.

江雪UID: 2790520

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