The challenge of acquiring moral leaders, a question of training and/or selection?^

Av Olav Kjellevold Olsen

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. (Pauls letter to the Romans, 7, 15)

The importance of ethically oriented operational leadership has long been recognized as a pre requirement for operational success in military (Department of the Army, 2006; The Norwegian Defence Staff, 2007) as well as corporate life (Bennis, 2007). To the inspiration for some and the annoyance of others, a flag officer seldom misses the chance to emphasize the importance of morals and moral character when addressing cadets or a public audience on the matter of his/her own “gold standard” of military leadership. Likewise, the list of politicians that lift the moral banner high when addressing the issue of military operations is long. This indicates that morals matter, one way or another. However, one thing is to recognize and explicate the relevance of moral operational leadership, another is to understand how we can actually acquire such leadership in a combat organization. A multitude of so-called moral scandals in corporate and military contexts the last decade (e.g., ENRON, Abu Grahib) remind us that the gap between espoused moral values and leadership practices “in the real world” may be quite wide. In other words, it seems to take more than public speeches and values on pieces of paper. So, what does it actually take? Where should we go?

Three possible pathways in the acquiring of moral leadership

In the research literature an interesting discussion is related to the question of whether morals (and moral leadership) is actually possible to learn. At the one end we find writers like Steven Pinker (2008) who claim that moral behaviour is the result of genetically predetermined instincts developed through evolutionary mechanisms, making the acquiring of moral leadership a matter of recruitment and selection (e.g., “get hold of those who has it”). At the other end, we find writers like Lawrence Kohlberg (Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999) and a social constructivist approach who find moral competence the result of social experience, making the acquiring of moral leadership a matter of education and practice (e.g., “create challenging education and training”). A compromise between these dichotomous pathways finds the acquiring of moral leadership a combination of traits and training. Accordingly, it is possible that some traits are pre-requirements for moral development. For example, it could be expected that moral leadership in so called “in extremis” military contexts (i.e., eminent physical danger, life or death situations; Kolditz & Brazil, 2005), requires leaders that are robust and resilient, often attributed to genetic dispositions, in order to be able to focus on other parties needs and to learn from such demanding experiences. In the following, I will utilize this combination-model in my quest for moral leadership. But where do we start? What should we target?

Context and person: Multi-level targeting

From social psychology we learn that a group may change the behaviour of an individual quite significantly. A person that is highly morally instilled may be “seduced” into evil doing by a group, sometimes even without noticing. For example, as the passivity of bystanders in a public crowd, witnessing transgressions like rape without helping (i.e., the "genovese syndrome"; Darley & Latanè, 1968). We also know that persons may change their behaviour when they go to work. Not only as a result of direct conformity to “in-group” influences, but as a response to the organizational culture (Schein, 2004). Some even claim that if we tell where we work, we reveal who and how we are at the same time, suggesting that organizational culture shapes our behaviour. In other words, our surroundings, both as group influence and organizational culture may have an impact on our ability to integrate moral concerns into our leadership, and hence should be targeted in a process of acquiring moral leadership in a combat organization.

Furthermore, one level “down the stairs” of analysis, empirical research also shows us great individual variation in behaviour and competence among people facing the same situations. Some people are able to figure out difficult moral dilemmas and implement them in a timely fashion, even during pressure, while others make significant self-serving choices at the expense of others. Such variation in behaviour has been linked to individual variation like cognitive moral development, ego-strength, intelligence, level of empathy and moral motivation, even when controlling for contextual influences (Aquino & Reed, 2002; Kohlberg, 1984; Rest, et al., 1999). Therefore, such individual characteristics should also be targeted in the process of acquiring moral leadership alongside contextual elements and training requirements, as illustrated in figure 1 (below).

Figure 1: Focus in the process of acquiring moral leadership

(Notably, given the extreme consequences often related to moral transgressions in military operational contexts (Krulak, 1999); the lack of empirical research on moral leadership in military operational contexts is striking. For example, little research has investigated antecedents of successful moral leadership in a naturalistic military setting. Therefore, in the following presentation, I will have to utilize evidence partially based on studies in civilian contexts and apply it to the military context).

What is it all about? A definition of moral leadership

Before we start attacking the targets identified above, a further definition of our overarching aim, moral leadership, is required. In a famous answer to Meno, Socrates states that: “I have no idea what virtue really is, so how can I then answer if virtue can be taught?” (Kohlberg, 1981, p. 39). This answer indicates that the definition of moral leadership is a crucial first step in the effort of developing training and selection strategies for moral leadership. Morals may broadly be defined as a practice that is in line with ethical ideas of what is judged good and right (Rhode, 2006). Within the field of moral leadership, morals and ethics are usually utilized interchangeably. According to Yukl (2010), moral leadership is lacking of a clear and unified definition, making assessment and subsequently development and selection a difficult task. For example, some define it as consistency between espoused values and behavior. However, a problem here is that these values may not be ethically oriented. You can be an honest and consistent abusive bully, and still score high on moral leadership according to this definition.

A more ethically oriented approach, in line with Mendonca and Kanungo (2007), view moral leadership as leadership practices in line with morally justifiable principles and values. Following Rest and co-workers, (1999), such moral principles include the principles of justice as well as care for people. This may meet Brown & Treviño’s (2006, p. 596) definition of ethical leadership as: “the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making”. This means that moral leadership presupposes more than just a moral person. A moral leader must also display and enhance moral values in the day to day leadership, so that it affects the moral orientation and practice of followers as well. This makes it a difficult task, which is illustrated in the two following examples.

Moral imperatives facing leadership realities – two examples of failures

In april 2004 the public was made aware of atrocities and torture of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Grahib prison in Baghdad. This moral scandal led to several investigations conducted by US Army and other authorities. One of the conclusions in the so called Taguba report (2004) was that these atrocities were clearly the result of lack of moral leadership among commanding officers at various levels of the organisation. In particular the commanding officer of the prison, Brigader General Janis Kerpinski, who was later demoted from General to Colonel as a result of her lack of leadership. But; why did she fail as a moral leader in a situation that desperately called for just such leadership? Some have pointed at her lack of experience, others that she was too weak, lacking robustness to stand up against intelligence people that conducted the interrogations, others claim that she was not sufficiently visible, lacking practical leadership skills, lacking the ability to create a moral culture. However, a relevant question in our investigation may be: what were the causes of her leadership failures? Was it lack of training? Or, maybe, lack of robustness rooted in her personality traits?

The second situation comes from personal experience some years back (Olsen, 2005). As responsible for the cadets’ moral leadership training at the Norwegian Naval Academy, the chaplain and myself felt we had conducted a very good educational year. We were very pleased with ourselves - and the cadets. The results from the theory exams were generally impressive, showing a well developed ability to reflect maturely upon moral dilemmas related to operational leadership. However, during a demanding 14 days’ combat simulation exercise concluding the training- and education program that year, we experienced that several of the candidates who had proven to be very mature in their theoretical moral reasoning (A-candidates), nevertheless, committed a series of moral transgressions as leaders in realistic combat situations. They committed these moral errors, not because they did not know better, but because they could not apply what they knew in a complex setting under pressure.

After the exercise, in a state of disillusion, one question troubled us: How can we help them to actually put what they know into their moral practice, even during pressure? It became obvious to us that it takes more than classroom discussions on moral dilemmas and ethical models on just war. Our response to these challenges was to include much more targeted practical training on moral leadership, in realistic field-exercises and in simulators. This change led to a “face validity” significant improvement in the officers’ ability to face moral challenges in the heat of the moment. Why this effect occurred, I will try to explain later in the lecture.

But first, let us start at “the top” and discuss how and why culture, or alternatively the moral climate, may represent a relevant factor in the acquiring of moral leadership.

Moral culture – framing moral behaviour

According to Treviño, Butterfield, and Mcabe (1998), an organization’s ethical context or ethical infrastructure may influence moral leadership. For example, the ethical context of an organization has been found to positively influence managers’ moral decision making intentions, as well as the reluctance to lie (Ross & Robertson, 2000). Most of the research in this field has emphasized what is referred to as ethical climate (Victor & Cullen, 1988) or ethical culture. Both refer to characteristics of the organization that do, or do not, support ethics-related attitudes and behaviours. Treviño and Nelson, (2007) operationalized ethical culture as formal and informal behavioral control systems, such as (1) leadership, (2) reward systems, (3) codes and policies, and (4) ethical norms, that can support either ethical or unethical behaviour in an organization. Interestingly, their studies showed that leadership and a reward system that support moral behaviour combined with a code support for such behaviour had large preventive effect on unethical behaviour. These findings are further supported by Ashkanasy, Windsor, & Treviño (2006), who found that transactional mechanisms like rewards and punishments had a clear impact on ethical behaviour among the members of the organizations.

But why does an ethical climate or culture stimulate the acquisition of moral leadership? Brown and Treviño (2006) found that a strong ethical climate influences leaders and members of the organization through social learning mechanisms. An organization with a strong moral climate may provide more role-models of moral leadership - and through formal policies and informal norms reinforce ethical leadership. In such environments, leaders “learn” that ethical leadership is desirable. This may also imply that leaders who are oriented towards destructive leadership will leave the organization, because of the misfit between their own preferences and the climate and culture they are exposed to.

Where, then, is the link to selection vs. training? According to Brown & Treviño (2006), the evidence demonstrates that a moral climate stimulates the development of moral leadership, probably through social learning. In other words; they find the enhancement of moral leadership a result of social influence and training. However, we could speculate that the demonstrated positive link between a moral climate and moral leadership, at least partially, can be attributed to self-selection mechanisms. Thus, it is possible that a strong moral culture in itself attracts already skilled moral leaders, making the demonstrated link between moral climate and moral leadership an artefact of selection as well as learning. Nevertheless, one pattern seems to emerge from this: Moral culture stimulates moral leaders, which again attract others to emulate them as moral role models. In other words: it takes moral role-models to acquire moral leadership, and moral role-models are brought “into life” by a morals-oriented culture.

The contagious process of moral role modelling

In an interesting 2009 study of 904 employees and 195 managers across 195 departments, Mayer and co-workers (2009) found that the moral leadership of top management colours the moral practices at all levels of the organization. Top leaders’ moral leadership was found to “trickle down” into the middle management, which again affected both positive and negative outcomes among followers “on the shop floor”. For example, a negative relationship was found between top leaders’ moral leadership and followers’ level of group deviance; defined as voluntary behaviours of members of a work group that violate norms of the group and threatens the well-being of the work group (Robinson & Bennett, 1995). Conversely, a positive relationship was established between the top leaders’ moral orientation and the followers’ commitment to the organization (i.e., organizational citizenship behaviour). In other words, a top leader’s moral leadership colours a sub leader’s moral orientation – which again influences the morals and efforts among followers further down the hierarchy.

Following Mayer et al. (2009) as well as Brown, Treviño and Harrison (2005), this cascading of moral impulses, this so called “trickle down” effect, works through a combination of social learning (Bandura, 1986) and social exchange mechanisms. Social learning theory, originating from Bandura, finds that we learn by witnessing and then striving to emulate the values and behaviour of models that we deem credible and attractive. Here, it is worth noting that individuals learn not only by direct experience, but also by observing others, and how they are being treated. Hence, Mayer, et al. (2009) emphasize that leaders influence their followers first and foremost by virtue of their position, as legitimate models of behaviour to followers. Leaders’ behaviours are observed by subordinates and serve as cues for appropriate moral behaviour. Conversely, unethical leaders are likely to have followers that engage in unethical behaviours.

Another source of influence and learning is related to how the leader rewards moral behaviour and/or punishes unethical practices. When followers learn that over time, moral behaviour is valued and rewarded, and immoral behaviour is punished, they are more likely to engage in, or refrain from such behaviour, as demonstrated in an intriguing study by Brown, Treviño, and Harrison (2005). From this, it follows that the acquisition of moral leadership presupposes moral leadership being “passed on” to new emerging leaders through moral role modelling and moral transactions.

This further underscores the claim that moral leadership can be stimulated through social influence. In other words, it is learnable. But, can we all learn to lead morally - in a military operational context– under pressure? Will all conform and adapt into a moral leadership through social influences, or is it the case that such learning requires some individual dispositions or traits?

Individual moral traits – building blocks in the acquisition of moral leadership

The term trait refers to a variety of stable individual attributes, including aspects of personality, temperament, needs, motives, and values (Yukl, 2010). A series of relatively stable traits has been related to successful leadership in general. Already in the early period of leadership research, traits like assertiveness, dominance, stress tolerance and persistency were linked to successful leadership (Stogdill, 1948, 1974). However, no explicit moral skills were identified in this early research. Accordingly, morals was not seen as a characteristic of effective leaders, and subsequently not something that organizations should look for in selection or focus on in their training and development. Nevertheless, it is worth nothing that studies of military operational leadership seem to confirm the relevance of traits. For example, Johnsen and co-workers, (2009) found that the trait hardiness, consisting of the subscales control, challenge, and commitment, predicted transformational leadership in a sample of military officers.

However, back to our task at hand: how can trait research assist us in acquiring moral leaders?

One approach is to identify traits that correlate positively and negatively with moral leadership, in order to support a controlled and good selection process. Yukl (2010) claims that most of the individual traits that are found to be related to effective leadership in contemporary research, are related to moral leadership as well. One way of interpreting this view is that general leadership requirements have a moral basis. Even though few studies have directly studied explicit moral leadership and traits, there are some indirect findings. For example, Rubin, Muntz and Brommer (2006) found the Big 5 personality trait agreeableness (i.e., an altruistic, trusting, kind and cooperative person) strongly related to transformational leadership and particularly the facet Idealized influence, which is the dimension that is comprised of explicit ethical content. According to Pidemont (1998) these personality dimensions have been found to have very good test retest stability, and therefore relevant in selection. However, it is rare to find studies in which traits explain more than 20 % of the variance in leader behaviour. This indicates that quite a lot of leadership competency “is left open” to learning.

More so, Lombardo and McCauley (1988) found that integrity, defined as a relatively stable trait, characterized leaders that were successful, while derailing leaders were found significantly lower on integrity, and more likely to betray a trust or to break a promise in order to advance their career at the expense of others. Another disposition usually presented as stable, is a leader’s power motivation. Howard and Bray (1988) claim that most studies show a positive relationship between need for power and advancement into higher levels of management. However, McClelland distinguished between individuals who use power for self-aggrandizement, so-called personalised power, and individuals with a desire to utilize power to the benefit of others (i.e., socialized power). Howell & Avolio (1992) found that these distinctions in power motivation could help distinguish between unethical charismatic leaders and more ethically oriented ones. More so, a somewhat related trait can be defined as Machiavellianism (i.e., the use of guile, deceit, and opportunism in interpersonal relations), a characteristic of people motivated to manipulate others in order to reach own goals. These tendencies are clearly in opposition to moral leadership and have been shown to predict immoral behaviour like willingness to bribe and willingness to lie for self-serving purposes (Ross & Robertson, 2000).

It is also worth noting that Bettencourt et al, (2006) find trait hostility, including high trait anger, combined with low agreeableness as predicting aggression towards followers, and abusive supervision in general. Bettencourt also shows that some traits are activated into behaviour only when conditions change, like trait anger in the face of provocation. In other words, negative behaviour related to the trait is not visible until a situation contains a provocation. Therefore, in a military setting, it is important to understand how certain traits influence behaviour and reactions during pressure like “life and death” situations, and not based on peace time requirements alone.

In sum this very sporadic review indicates that the identification of positive and negative traits can be an important challenge in the acquisition of moral leadership. But, how can we obtain these leaders of moral disposition and “moral traits”? According to Brown & Treviño (2006) such a challenge faces an organization with two specific tasks: (1) Attract candidates that have a moral orientation and disposition. (2) Select them into leader positions.

Recruitment – attracting the moral talent into the organisation

According to Cable & Judge (1996), individuals are attracted to, and selected into organizations on the basis of perceived person – organization values fit. In terms of moral leadership, this may implicate that individuals with strong moral values and characteristics will actively look for organizations with strong ethical cultures for the purpose of being selected by them. This means that the organization should signal their emphasis on moral leadership during the recruiting process. In this case, an explicit moral self-presentation is important. To be noted: this may also remind us why the illustration on the front page of the Norwegian Naval Academy recruitment brochure in the mid 90’s was somewhat misplaced, given that it consisted of a copy of a 100 kr note. Here, the message was clear. Join the Navy, we pay you to go to school here. Indeed an interesting value message from the Navy.

Selecting the moral talent

One thing is to attract moral talent; another is to actually pick the right persons. Johnsen and Pallesen at the University of Bergen distinguish between two somewhat different approaches in choosing the right candidates for a leader position; labelled negative or positive selection. In negative selection the main objective is to select away in order to avoid individuals with a negative disposition to enter the position. In negative selection, actively testing for immoral traits and tendencies will be an important part of the selection focus. Given the relatively stronger negative impacts of immoral leadership compared to the positive impacts of a morally oriented one (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001), the quality of such a selection process is of paramount importance. In this way, false positive choices implicating a misjudgement of moral character may be avoided. Here, a tool kit of assessment tests and procedures needs to be developed explicitly to support a nuanced negative selection-process, as well as aiding the organization in identifying desirable traits in a parallel positive selection.

A strong side of the selection into the Norwegian Military Schools, as I see it, is their combination of psychological testing, interviewing, as well as practical exercises, both team based and individual, over several weeks. This enables a broad spectre of observations of the candidates. However, to my knowledge, no exercises are specially developed to activate moral dispositions, like integrity, fairness or trait anger. This may be something to focus on in the future.

It is also worth noticing that no explicit and targeted selection at the basis of moral leadership, and dispositions for such leadership, is conducted in internal promotion processes for higher positions in the Norwegian Armed Forces. Given the demonstrated importance of moral role modelling, and the huge impact that leaders in higher positions have (or may have) on a large portion of the organization’s moral orientation, a thorough moral scrutinizy of these candidates would be a wise practice in order to “acquire moral leadership”.

In other words; ethical climate, moral role modelling, recruitment and selection may contribute to moral leadership. But what about critical “in extremis” situations, for example during combat, where civilians unexpectedly and suddenly obstruct your line of fire, providing an opportunity for insurgents to reorganize if you stop firing? It may be that moral leadership in such situations require more than role modelling and moral dispositions. Leadership during such conditions may also require task and contexts specific training. However, the evidence based literature on how to train moral leadership in such critical situations is sparse. Nevertheless, as a starting point, we could claim that a key challenge in moral leadership training is to stimulate those skills, attitudes, behaviours, emotions, etc, that are activated when a leader actually performs moral leadership - “there and then” - in a critical situation. In other words, we need to focus our training in the right direction.

What is “working” when we act morally? (What should we stimulate?)

Jonathan Haidt (2001) claims, in line with a so called social intuitionist approach, that in a naturalistic setting, moral behaviour, and subsequently, moral leadership is the result of intuitive processes driven by emotions, and not explicit moral reasoning involving the production of moral arguments. If Haidt is right, (and growing evidence is pointing in his direction), training should stimulate moral intuitive decision making and action, and not just theoretical classroom reflections on moral dilemmas. Haidt actually claims that such moral knowledge is irrelevant in split second decisions, serving only as after-rationalization, explaining moral errors after an act has been conducted.

This may explain why the academically competent cadets I described for you in the introduction failed “in the moment of truth” – i.e. when they faced a “real” moral challenge. Their well developed moral reasoning capabilities could not support them, because other “competencies” were required.

How can we develop moral intuition?

Few studies, if any, have investigated how moral intuition or gut feeling can be stimulated. But insights from the literature on naturalistic decision making may shed light on how to develop this practice-oriented intuition. Klein (1998) found, seemingly in line with Haidt, that experienced operational leaders, including fire fighters and military officers, when faced with a critical situation, made most decisions unconsciously and intuitively on gut feeling without explicit analysis of the problem. Hence, following Klein, these decisions were mostly made implicitly as the result of pattern recognition, and not as a product of an explicit analysis of the situation.

Accordingly, development of moral decision making and behaviour should provide leaders with mental patterns that enable them to recognise important moral cues in a situation, automatically and intuitively. To obtain such “intuitive” action, Klein (1998) suggested realistic and practical training as a fruitful avenue.

In an interesting study by Laberg and co-workers (2000), the learning effect of practical and situation-specific training on individuals’ ability to cope with stressful and challenging situations was documented. They found that four to five hours realistic pre-training two weeks before participation in an 18 hours POW exercise which involved capture, hard mental and physical pressure and interrogations, strongly improved performance compared to a control group that only received theoretical preparation on coping techniques, etc. The officers that had practical training disclosed much less information to the enemy forces than those officers that had no practical training in advance, and were assessed to cope far better in the situation. This can also be seen as moral leadership, given that exposure of vital information to the enemy may lead to drastic consequences for many. One possible explanation of this positive training effect may be that the pre-training created mental patterns that enabled better pattern recognition and intuitive adjustment to the situation the next time they encountered a POW situation.

Notably, a similar tendency can be found in training of situational awareness (SA; i.e., the ability to perceive a situation accurately), and performance under pressure. For example, Saus et al., (2006) conducted an intervention aiming at improving police officers ability to react correctly and shoot well in hostile situations, in order to protect themselves as well as potential victims (in other words, a moral component related to failure). The results showed that three repetitions of a realistic exercise in a shooting simulator improved the officers ability to handle such situations significantly, compared to a control group which had not received such training. These simulator situations were all complex and encompassed both innocent victims and legitimate targets combined with time- and evaluation pressure. In addition to the situation itself, this training-intervention included freeze techniques and instructors challenging the officers’ situational assessment through reflective questioning. Notably, as in the POW example above, we find that the utilization of repeated training sequences and freeze techniques improve performance, probably as the result of increased pattern recognition capacity.

In sum; this points at practical and realistic training as an important gateway to the development of morals and moral leadership. As a curiosity of sorts, this seems to support the Aristotle’s claim that virtue is the result of practice and repetition, more than academically oriented moral reasoning. It is also noteworthy that Yukl (2010) finds that a series of studies shows that leadership in general is better learned from experience than from formal training programs.

Meanwhile, we ought to bear in mind that experience and training do not necessarily equal learning. According to a study of officers in the US Army by Mumford and co-workers (2000), the learning effect of leadership training is dependant on (1) the degree of challenge, (2) the variety of tasks, and (3) the quality of feedback given the leaders. It is also worth noticing Avolio and Luthan’s (2006) claims based on a review of 200 leadership intervention studies that far too many untested assumptions prevail in the leadership development arena, and few can make a claim that they have a scientifically based method that will enhance leader development. When it comes to moral leadership, this is probably even truer.

The challenge of acquiring moral leaders- a matter of selection and/or training?

In relation to leadership in general, my point would be in line with Avolio and Luthans, (2006) that it takes a combination of both selection and training in order to acquire moral leaders. Some evidence may be provided for this assumption. Firstly, a series of studies relates stable traits to effective leadership as well as immoral leadership behaviour. In other words traits do matter. Further more, three studies from our research group in operational psychology at the University of Bergen may provide some further insights on the relationship between selection and training in the enhancement of leadership.

In the first study, Saus (ongoing/personal communication, 15 may 2010) found that a resilient personality type (i.e., trait) predicted the quality of situational awareness (SA) in a sample of police officers dealing with a complex situation. In a related study, Saus and co-workers (2006) showed that the SA was highly sensitive to training interventions as well. This indicates that the ability to interpret an operational context accurately, which has been found to be a vital element also in the production of moral behavior (Rest, et al., 1999) may be due to a combination of both personality traits and training.

But what about the interaction effect between traits and training?

Could it be that the effect of training presupposes certain traits, in order to be effective? Interestingly, Johnsen and co-workers (2009) found that the level of hardiness predicted how much officers benefited from stressful training interventions in terms of improved transformational- and transactional leadership. Both these leadership styles have been portrayed as encompassing a relatively strong moral leadership component (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999). Hence, there is at least partial empirical evidence that the acquiring of moral leadership presupposes a good interplay between selection, for example by providing candidates of high hardiness, and realistic training.

To conclude, as illustrated in figure 1 at page 3; I have now identified four interrelated factors: 1) moral culture/climate, 2) moral role-modeling, 3) moral traits and selection, and 4) targeted training, that I believe, in sum, may explain how we should focus our efforts in order to meet the challenges of acquiring moral leadership.

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