Moral Intelligence

Moral Intelligence

The heart and core of this paper is to critically analyze the book “Moral Intelligence” by authors Doug Lennick & Fred Kiel, this paper will discuss about the morality and ethics of being a corporate executive and manager.

First of all this is a really good book! The authors have done an admirable job of discussing contemporary executive moral lapses (the book starts with George Kline, a VC convicted of insider trading and fined $5.25 million by the courts, for example) without getting righteous or preachy.

The main unacceptable thing about the book, is that the authors felt the need to identify yet another type of intelligence. First there was IQ, the ostensibly objective intelligence quotient, and then moral intelligence, and now everyone have to worry about moral intelligence? Next we'll be measuring empathy, as suggested in Blade Runner.

Moral intelligence is "the mental capacity to determine how universal human principles should be applied to our values, goals and actions." In the simplest terms, moral intelligence is the ability to differentiate right from wrong as defined by universal principles. Universal principles are those beliefs about human conduct that are common to all cultures around the world. Thus, we believe they apply to all people, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religious belief, or location on the globe.

You can see the challenge of writing a book of this nature, as summarized in that paragraph. How do you avoid being idealistic? How can you talk about "universal human principles" when we're all far too aware of the never-ending stream of atrocities and crimes groups impose on each other?

Further, corporations have two masters too: the primary requirement that they make money for their shareholders (which, in a capitalistic system, is job #1) and the requirement that they act in a manner that's congruent with the values and beliefs of their particular marketplace. For example, the manager of a gift shop in a historic church cannot use the same value system and make the same moral decisions as the manager of a pagan bookstore. Or can they?

Authors Doug Lennick and Fred Kiel address this by talking about the need for leaders to have a strong moral compass, something that this paper strongly resonate with personally. As they say: "We offer this book as a roadmap for leaders to find and follow their moral compasses... We are convinced that leaders who follow their moral compasses will find that it is the right thing for their business as well. This book is not about telling you what is right or wrong."

For this book, the authors interviewed an interesting array of leaders, a group that this paper hasn't mentioned in other leadership and business books. Out of the over 100 execs, the names that stand out to me are Paul Clayton, CEO of Jamba Juice, Douglas Baker, CEO of Ecolab, Inc., David Risher, former SVP at Amazon.com and Tom Schinke, Managing VP at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. Interestingly, there was zero overlap with the celebrity executives who are frequently profiled in ...