Are We Equipping the Next Generation with Ethical Leadership in the Era of Sustainability Ethics?
“What are we doing wrong as a society?” You may have caught yourself asking this question as you learned about climate change, social injustice, racial profiling or unjust economic differences. But have you stopped to think about how we can better educate future leaders to help alleviate these problems? With so many world issues coming to light, now more than ever we need ethical leaders. So are we teaching the next generation of leaders about ethical leadership?
Students Learn Less Ethics
In years past, incoming freshman were required to take a course centered around ethics to prime young minds for moral dilemmas they may encounter in college. As colleges try to mold themselves to fit the needs of society, we see less of these stand-alone ethics classes. Ethics are now being combined with classes like “Introduction to Sociology.”
There are some serious problems with students learning less about ethics. What are they not learning about? If we as a society do not teach students about ethics, how will they become leaders that know how to cope with and create a better world? Sustainability will never be a concern for our future leaders if we do not teach them about ethics. According to Psychology Today, over 60% of college students feel unprepared to make ethical decisions when they get into the work force. We need to teach kids about ethics.
Why Should We Care About Sustainability Ethics?
Ethics concerning sustainability help people understand their moral responsibilities to the world around them. Teaching kids about sustainability allows them to think about their roles in helping (or hurting) the world. Pair these two together and you teach kids about caring for something bigger than themselves.
Millennials want to work for companies that care about sustainability. In fact, 70% of millennials would choose a company focused on sustainability over one that isn’t(BCG 2017 Millennial Survey). If we do not teach kids about sustainability ethics, they will not know what it means to help the world. Without understanding sustainability, how will we prevent our future leaders from making unethical decisions that may hurt others? We may never know what kind of effects our youth leaders have on kids if they don’t work in the same industry. However, there are so many industries that influence youth; from education to healthcare to grocery store workers and more. We have to start somewhere.
Youth Serving Organizations
One of the biggest things that influence kids is youth serving organizations. They teach kids what is important and what they should care about. If we want to better impact the next generation of leaders, we should start by incorporating sustainability ethics.
Example Programs and How to Implement
There are many ways to implement ethics into your youth serving organization. Below are some ideas to get you started.
Create programs that revolve around ethics. Not only will this provide a testing ground for your young leaders to learn what it means to care about something bigger than yourself, but they will also have the opportunity to learn about real world problems. A lot of youth serving organizations have already started to allow students to take part in responsible youth-led programs that help their community with pressing sustainability topics.
Revamp your current curriculum to allow kids to talk about everyday ethical dilemmas. It is important that kids have the ability to discuss what is happening in the real world. Whether it be a case study of another student or an actual event on the news.
Host workshops that allow kids to think about ethical decisions they would have to make. By creating real world situations, you will allow kids to work together to solve problems and see the consequences of their decisions.
Promote mentoring programs. A great way for kids to understand what ethics are would be to pair them with a mentor. Not only will they be able to talk about what ethics mean to them, but they can have a knowledgeable person to talk about real ethical dilemmas.
Get kids involved with the community. Whether it be driving them to volunteer at a soup kitchen or cleaning up lakes in the area. All of these examples allow kids to see how much of a difference ethical decisions can make.
Evaluate your program. It is important that you find a way to measure how you are including ethics in your program. You can use this data to improve your processes and ensure that you are still including ethics in your day to day tasks.The Path Forward
Conclusion
As I reflected on how we are teaching ethical leadership, I realized there is a lot of work to be done. We need to focus on including ethics in the curriculum as well as what youth serving organizations focus on. If we want better leaders that can help with today’s sustainability issues, we need to help our youth understand what ethics are and how they can help.
By asking ourselves, “Are we teaching the next generation of leaders about ethical leadership?” we are holding ourselves and others accountable for finding solutions to this problem. Anyone who reads this and cares about the future can find something to do to help. By helping kids understand ethics and sustainability, we aren’t just focusing on their success; we are focusing on the planets.
Do you want to believe that sometimes you may have to choose between two wrongs or two bad? If you allow the above statement to resonate, we can further assume that sustainable development is a moral good. Furthermore, we can summarize that sustainable development will have positive ethical implications when discussing societal equity.
If we agree that ethics tell us how we should live; when applying relational ethics we must determine how we should all live together because we are a part of something larger. Ethics would not only guide us when facing a dilemma but how we treat each other day in and day out. How we interact with the world around us both naturally and man made.
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