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George Washington's Ethical Leadership

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Imagine you were asked to lead a cobbled together army made of newly formed divisions and volunteers with minimal training against a world superpower in the pursuit of national liberty and freedom from a tyrannical king. Once you successfully overcame that challenge, you are offered kingship over your new nation, but you turn it down because of your values and ethics. After that, you are elected President of the new nation and are responsible for setting precedents and building a government that will ensure the principles of freedom will guide the country for as long as it stands. George Washington overcame all these challenges and became known as the Father of our Country because he was a visionary and ethical leader. In this paper I will discuss how he leveraged transformational leadership in how he led his men through war and leveraged diversity to build his presidential cabinet to be …show more content…

There was a contingent that wanted to make him King after the war. He refused the Crown and retired from the military to make sure that the political power will be in the hands of the civilian government (Rees, 2007). This decision showed effective use of intellectual autonomy by thinking for himself and not following popular opinion that he should be a King, and intellectual integrity by staying true to his own thinking in the belief that the power should be in the hands of the people. These examples also displayed his ethical leadership. When Washington surrendered power, he followed the Revolutionary principles avoiding the ethical trap of Drive for Success which, is “putting your own ambition ahead of rules, regulations and codes of conduct (BCEE, 2017d, p. 8). By being an Ethical leader in these examples, Washington promoted a positive ethical climate for the whole nation and set the standard for our democratic principles maintained even

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