ISSUE43

TOPIC: ISSUE43 - "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."
WORDS: 555 TIME: 00:57:34 DATE: 2008/7/31 22:48:48

The speaker asserts that in order to be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards. Actually, the highest ethical and moral standards are not the necessary requirements for an effective leader. Without these, there are many public officials become effective leaders.

To begin with, an effective leader must obey basic ethical and moral standards, which are the norms of our human beings, such as the honesty, integrity, credit and so on, but not the highest ones. Furthermore, if a leader can manage the higher standards, the possibilities of his being an effective leader would be much higher than the ones cannot. For example, Mandela, the political leader of South Africa, gained the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 because of his fighting for human rights and equalities. He was thought to be an effective and famous leader in the world.

However, under certain circumstances, an effective leader may be against the ethical and moral standards. For example, on April 26th 1986, the big exposure of Chernobyl in Soviet Union revealed that what an effective leader must do at the emergency. The political leader of Soviet Union did not reclaim the exposure to public soon, because on one thing they should know what exactly happened, and on the other hand, the prescribing of the news would calm down the public and therefore avoided more serious disaster. Although the leaders didn't tell the truth to the citizens, the trouble was solved eventually and the government prevented their people from much more losses. The other example demonstrated that to be an effective leader, sometimes he must be opposite of these ethical and moral standards. For instance, in the Second World War, the Japanese were not willing to surrender unconditionally, although the Germany and Italy have already given up. By measuring the future losses of the battle in landing on Japan, Truman, the president of the United States decided to use atom bomb, which was the unethical and unmoral weapon.

In addition, the lack of highest ethical and moral standards cannot prevent a public official from being an effective leader. Clinton, the president of America, was involved in the sex scandal, but his achievement in the economics of the United States cannot be concealed by this scandal. Due to his progressive leadership and hard-working, the economics in the United States developed fast than ever before which brought benefits to all the American or even to the people all over the world. It is demonstrated that an effective leader might go against to the standards, but it is actually a little case, compared with his big contributions. Not unique but as a double, the same thing happened on Nixon. Nixon, who made big dedication in the relationship between the United States and China, was the primary role in the Watergate scandal and therefore became the first one resigning and leaving the position of president. Although the Watergate, in fact, had bad efforts on Nixon, but nobody can deny his achievement as an effective leader.

Generally speaking, it is unnecessary for an effective leader to maintain the highest standards. In addition, there are more important factors for a public official to be an effective leader besides the ethical and moral standards, such as the abilities of organization, speech in public, human glamour and so forth.