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Center for Enlightened Leadership
 
THE LENS – A QUARTERLY E-NEWSLETTER/JOURNAL

But Right According to Whom?
By CLAIRE SHEFF KOHN

  Claire Sheff-Kohn
 

Claire Sheff-Kohn
Senior Associate and Mentor

This edition of the Lens focuses on “fighting for what’s right.” For nearly forty years in my various school leadership roles—from teacher to counselor to building-level administrator to superintendent—I have found myself fighting for what I thought was right on any number of fronts: student, employee, curricular, budgetary, etc.

In my younger years, I was far more sure of my “rightness” because I saw the world pretty much in black-and-white terms. With age and hard-won experience, I developed shades of gray in my color spectrum of “rightness.” Along the way, I began to ask myself, “But how do I know what’s right?” And also, “Why should my interpretation of what’s right prevail?” I have asked myself if I should make decisions based on what’s right for the student? The teacher? The parent? The taxpayer? Should I decide based on certain principles, policies, or contractual agreements? Unfortunately, these various “rights” are often mutually exclusive. In other words, one often has to make a choice as to the “higher right.”

To help me with these mind-bending, spirit-testing choices, I attended an Ethical Fitness® Seminar offered by the Institute for Global Ethics (IGE). Rush Kidder, IGE founder, talked about the most difficult moral dilemmas as those involving “right versus right,” not those involving “right versus wrong.” He helped me understand that issues with more than one “right” position—and those in which competing, yet legitimate values are represented—are the most challenging for most of us. I found this enlightening, instructive, and true to my own experience. My decisions have not become any easier, but I now have a model for reflecting on moral dilemmas, associated decisions, and potential resolutions. The Ethical Fitness® Seminar provided me with a means for thinking about my own values, my decision-making process, and my thinking about what’s right.

The IGE model is based on a body of research and observation that has made possible the categorization of  moral dilemmas in terms of the following “right-versus-right” polarities:

• Individual vs. Community

• Truth vs. Loyalty

• Short-term vs. Long-term

• Justice vs. Mercy

In addition, the model provides three “lenses,” or moral approaches drawn from the “long history of moral philosophy,” by which moral dilemmas may be resolved. The three resolution principles for moral dilemmas are:

• The ends-based principle of utilitarianism: Do whatever produces the best consequences for the greatest number.

• The rule-based principle associated with Immanuel Kant: Do whatever establishes a pattern everyone ought to follow, regardless of consequences.

• The care-based principle of the Golden Rule: Do to others whatever you would have them do to you.

(Taken from Rushworth M. Kidder, “Moral Rudders and Superintendent Values: The Hardest Choices Arise When Both Sides Are Right. How Do Good Leaders Make These Tough Calls?” The School Administrator, May 2008.)

The four “right vs. right” paradigms, coupled with the three “moral approaches,” have provided me the means for analyzing moral dilemmas and for developing potential, workable resolutions. The following resources (in addition to the School Administrator article cited immediately above) may be of interest to you if, like me, you struggle with deciding what’s truly right:

• Patrick F. Bassett, Paul D. Houston, and Rushworth M. Kidder, “Building Character in Crisis,” Education Week, July 15, 2009.

• Rushworth M. Kidder, How Good People Make Tough Choices (New York: Harper, 1995).

• Rushworth M. Kidder, Moral Courage (New York: Harper, 2003).

While superintendents (and other educational leaders) need to articulate values, they are not appointed to dictate values. Yet the temptation to become the values guru—especially for long-term superintendents (and other educational leaders)—is always present.
-Rushworth M. Kidder


Center for Empowered Leadership ®
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