The Effectiveness and Efficiency of Ethical Leadership

Becoming a leader requires personal habits of two types. The first set of habits refer to the forging of personal character, and the second have to do with professional competency. The latter might guarantee immediate success, but the former habits have to do with long-lasting leadership and form the basis for the deeper growth of one’s various competencies.
This is a concise presentation of personal leadership and how to build it within oneself, and furthermore upon an ethical foundation. It is written precisely for those who are interested in developing personal leadership but have little time to read long expositions on the subject.

The last chapter is a case study that helps the reader assess how well he or she has learned the themes presented.
Some years ago Stephen R. Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, happened to fall into my hands. I must say it stirred up great enthusiasm. It just so happened that in the same moment I managed to see a film that I had heard so much about and yet never had taken time to see– Twelve Angry Men (1957). I don’t really know why, but it spontaneously came to me to observe the various scenes of the film from the perspective of Covey’s book, which I had just finished reading. 

And so the idea was born to structure a course and add more material. I began teaching a course in the School of Church Communications at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, and then later to sereval groups of entrepreneurs and business managers, arranging it accordingly in ways that would satisty their respective needs. Later I began to give this course to groups of university students and different conference and film clubs.

Yet there remained one more desire: the intention to write these lessons down and make them available to all those who want to go further into the material. Of late it seemed that the time was right and the moment of continuing the work I started more than ten years ago had finally arrived.

I have always wanted this concise text, something useful to those interested in the argument but who have little free time. So, it had to be easy to read and capable of providing some points of deeper reflection. Behold the result!