issue43【决战AW作文小组】第16次

sakuraanneUID: 2253519

TOPIC: ISSUE43 - "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."
WORDS: 482--650
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2009-2-25 10:52:21

Does maintaining the highest ethical and moral standards the indispensible requirement for an effective leader? In consideration of other factors which may influent a leader's effectiveness, we should admit the importance of moral and ethical standard without putting too many emphasizes on it.

To some extent, moral standard actually intertwined with a leader's effectiveness, especially when those leaders rise to a statue of moral symbol. When reminding Gandhi and Mandela, it is quite clear that they perform their leadership in their people's pursuit toward victory as a lighting tower which gives the masses courage to move forward. Their high moral standards deserve people’s respect and admiration, which as a result, guarantee their effective leadership. Such kind of spiritual leaders express a belief or a motto which require them to behave according to it in their daily lives. If they do not perform their beliefs themselves, people who follow them will definitely feel unconfident and consequently, lose their faith toward the pursuit.

In many circumstances, if the moral and ethical standard of a leader are not so bad that may lead to disasters of society, his effectiveness will more closely relates with his or her ability in working rather than the moral standard. And one's charisma, such as style and appearance, also plays a significant role in his leadership. Take President Kennedy for example, as a notorious womanizer, his marital discretion is widely recognized. However, this does not influence his popularity among voters as he managed the country very well with his unique personality. The same situation happened to President Clinton for he had an affair with Lewinsky. But nobody can deny their political contributions to the United States. People can tolerant the flaws of such leaders and in recognizing this, the leaders may appear more ordinary and familiar, like average person who makes mistakes.

Leadership of business also needs higher moral standard besides the prior consideration of ability, especial when an entrepreneur pursue more than the accumulating of fortune. Sometimes, a prevailing view of leadership in the realm of business says that business leaders are responsible for making more money and such goal of profitability often contradict with maintain one's morality. One should admit this pragmatic opinion from a short-sighting view; nevertheless, the essential thing is invisible to the eyes. A genuine business leader represents a value of business rather than a large quantity of money. The secret for an enterprise to thrive in a long time period lies in its inner culture and construction, what these values tell their customs and how they distinguish the products from others decides the company's future. In order to establish a reputation of the enterprise, they should produce high-quality products and modest to learn from others, either the customs’ feedbacks or the criticisms from their competitors. A leader of such kind of company should show his concerns toward customs and repay society in many ways as well as guarantee high quality of products. Bill Gates raises Microsoft's reputation with all his philanthropies. HP recycled all its problematic computers and gave customs new ones several years ago. Therefore, long-lasting enterprises have leaders highly awareness of morality to ensure their continuous development.

Admittedly, a leader shows an ethical and moral standard which below average level will lead a nation to disaster. After Hitler made European continent suffered through those terrible years and Stalin led Russia into a chaos of fear, to ignore the disadvantages an inadequate leader brought with is unwise. Their despising of the value of life and humanity destroys social system’s healthy operation. The society is not stable when its citizens live lives of dread and turbulence.

In conclusion, while admitting the significance of a leader’s ethical and moral standard, to call for a balance between leaders' morality and their ability is quite necessary. An effective leader may not have the highest moral standard but an average amount of it is unquestionably needed.