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Dr. Thomas Dillon, ThomasHDillion@gmail.com
Professor Emeritus in Occupational Therapy
“If I keep my good character, I shall be rich enough” (Platonicus). The importance of character, character development and ethical leadership are the focus of the council tasked with the creating the Watterson Ethical Leadership Center. The council has identified four pillars that are the focus of experiences created by the Watterson Ethical Leadership Center. These pillars include courage, compassion, integrity and humility. Last week’s column discussed the importance of living courageous and compassionate personal and professional lives. This column will focus on integrity and humility and how these qualities may help us to live more meaningful lives and productive careers.
The University of Findlay is blessed to have received the generous gift from the Watterson Family for the purpose of developing the Watterson Ethical Leadership Center. Students, faculty and staff will have numerous opportunities to enhance their understanding and skills regarding ethical leadership and how to apply them to their lives and work.
The tenets most commonly associated with integrity include honesty, accountability, humility, consistency and courage. These qualities allow leaders and professionals to establish a foundation for creating trust and having a strong moral compass to guide a variety of decisions, projects and relationships. Effective organizations have principles that are understood by all and guide organizational decisions. Without integrity individuals may attempt to take advantage of others, charge customers higher prices, bill for services not actually completed, provide misinformation and/or mislead or deceive others in many possible ways. As a former health care provider, I saw other health care professionals abuse access to client medications and fraudulently bill insurance companies. Subsequently those same providers be audited, pay severe penalties and be incarcerated as a result of those unprofessional actions that were not guided by an underlying spirit of integrity.
Leading with humility includes understanding one’s own strengths and weaknesses and not exaggerating one’s own achievements, self-perception and stature. Other qualities of humble leaders include modesty, self-awareness, acceptance of limitations, respect for others and a focus on others. Such leaders are more likely to be respected by their peers and are more willing to adapt as necessary while completing the important activities and/or experiences. In today’s world we often see various leaders in our culture who seek to have the focus on them through media outlets at the expense those who actually are doing much of the work without recognition. Some see humility as a quality of the weak, while others see humble foundational beliefs such as, having good relationships with and respect for others as essential and leading in a moral and ethical manner as cornerstones of effective leadership. Professional experiences have allowed me to see ineffective leaders attempt to gather all the credit for themselves at the expense of others who played key roles but were rarely acknowledged for their efforts. Such a lack of humility is quickly recognized by others and actually undermines a leader who desires all the recognition.
The council guiding the development of the Watterson Center for Ethical Leadership hopes to provide many learning opportunities and experiences to students, faculty and staff that will enrich their lives. Regular and ongoing activities focused on being a person of good character increase the likelihood for individual and collective successes. In our world today we cannot have enough people in our lives – colleagues, friends, family – who are of good character. Such people help to make our work lives more satisfying and productive. Having friends who are high character individuals may lead to high quality experiences that allow us to nourish ourselves and prepare for other aspects of our lives. Over the years students have expressed the importance of high character family members as role models. Those students who had such individuals in their lives felt fortunate, while those who did not believed their lives could have been better if they had had such role models. Through the Watterson Center for Ethical Leadership, we hope to provide many diverse character-building opportunities. And while those character-building activities are only being developed at this time, you can be assured these experiences will be fundamentally based on being courageous and compassionate, and having appropriate levels of integrity and humility.
