Ethical Leadership Model

Ethical leadership combines moral person (individual character—integrity, honesty, caring about people, fairness in decisions) with moral manager (actively promoting ethical behavior through communication, reinforcement, and role modeling). Research by Linda Trevino and Michael Brown shows that being a good person is insufficient for ethical leadership—you must also be visibly ethical and actively manage the ethical culture of your organization. Leaders who are ethical but invisible on ethics issues are 'ethically neutral,' and their silence is interpreted as indifference. The framework identifies specific behaviors: making ethical expectations clear, rewarding ethical behavior and punishing unethical behavior (not just talking about values), using ethics as a decision criterion alongside financial and strategic criteria, and creating safe channels for raising ethical concerns.

When to use it

When building or reforming organizational culture around ethics. When evaluating your own effectiveness as an ethical leader (are you a moral person, a moral manager, or both?). When diagnosing why an organization with good values on paper produces poor ethical outcomes in practice.

How it can help

If you lead people, you are the primary moral influence on their behavior at work—not policies, not training, not codes of conduct. Make ethics visible in three ways: (1) Talk about ethics explicitly ('One thing I'm weighing in this decision is whether it's fair to our customers'). (2) Reward people who raise ethical concerns, even when the concerns are inconvenient. (3) When ethical violations occur, respond visibly and consistently. Never let business pressures override ethical considerations without acknowledging the tension. For your own development, seek feedback on whether you're perceived as ethically neutral or ethically active.