Ethical leadership requires people with high moral character; you cannot be a great transformational leader unless you are a moral person. Ethical leaders influence the behavior of their followers and contribute to the economic success of their organizations. Unethical leaders destroy the trust and confidence that are needed for employees to have feelings of commitment and dedication. Four steps are involved in the development of ethical leadership: ethical awareness, ethical discernment, ethical motivation, and ethical internalization.

On a radio talk show during the summer of 1980, I claimed that no one could be a great leader unless he or she had a reputation for honesty and integrity. A caller phoned to say that my statement agreed with a high-ranking military officer who gave a graduation speech at one of the academies in which he told the cadets that none of them could be a great military leader if he were unfaithful to his wife. I tried unsuccessfully to discover who the speaker was and learn more about his talk.

The next summer I told this story while speaking at the American Psychological Association meetings and after the session two men in military uniforms talked with me. Although they didn't know anything about the graduation speech, one of them thought I would be interested in his experience. This is essentially what he said:

"For seven years during the 1970s I was the senior officer responsible for the US military near the demilitarized zone in Korea. During that time, we could tell when our officers had started fooling around with the women in town by simply reviewing the performance reports of their units. It was very sad every time we had to release an officer for poor performance and send him home. So we made the decision to intervene earlier the next time we saw an officer start to struggle.

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