Ethical Leadership

BY SUSAN SALTER REYNOLDS

eidi St. Peter ’96, director of purposeful learning, acknowledges that leadership can be a word fraught with baggage. And college students get that, she says. They are willing participants in conversations that challenge and embrace the potential that ethical leaders have to change the world.

Leadership is perceived as a group activity, St. Peter explains, but as part of the new program in purposeful learning, students also explore the idea of leading the self. Qualities like self-awareness, integrity, critical thinking, reflection, and professionalism are just as important as teamwork, equity and inclusion, conflict resolution, and communication. These are all, she says, essential qualities for being human in the 21st century. Self-knowledge is a form of authentic leadership.

In the purposeful learning program, new students spend the first eight weeks of each semester exploring these and other concepts once a week for one and a half hours. In that first year, students learn to check in and ask themselves: “Do I like who I am becoming? What needs to shift?” In their junior year, during Junior Seminar, students engage with their career coaches and begin to consider career-readiness skills. The ethical leadership framework naturally leads into the skills the Boucher Career Education Center knows employers are looking for. The ethical leadership piece is a mandatory part of this program.

Crystal L’Hote, associate professor of Philosophy and Ethics and department chair, holds a statue of Socrates. L’Hote said the Greek philosopher’s pursuit of truth and wisdom inspires her own teaching and scholarship.

For St. Peter, Edmundites model the form of responsive, ethical leadership she hopes students will embrace in their own lives. Humility, compassion, and empathy are essential skills in leading others and leading the self. The traditional picture of a leader as someone with an enormous ego is not a part of this model.

Trish Siplon, professor of political science and director of public health, is in her 25th year at Saint Michael’s. She works on several committees at the College and is widely known on campus as an effective, empathetic collaborator. “I used to think that leadership meant being in the front of the room,” she says, “but now I see that the best leaders are in the back of the room.” Siplon says that she has been shaped by the people she has worked with at Saint Michael’s, particularly former colleague Bill Wilson, now an emeritus professor. “What would Bill do?” she sometimes asks herself. “He was so quiet, so good at showing up with physical presence and energy and supporting others.”

Siplon’s work as a leader in the global AIDS arena takes her often to Washington, D.C. She has learned to stand firm in the face of negativity, even when it means not giving people what they want. For her, in these situations, integrity is a key ingredient in leadership. “Academia is the only group left in our culture whose main job is to discern truth. Remember why you are doing the thing that you are doing!” Is she an activist? Yes. As an activist leader, her job is to inspire. As a teacher, and leader in academia, her job is to inspire students.

“Everyone comes into the classroom with a secret life. We’re all icebergs. The key to democratizing a classroom is vulnerability. I try to help people figure out the best version of themselves and go after it. I love it when people discover skills (like leadership) they didn’t think they had.”

Crystal L’Hote, professor and chair of philosophy, sees leaders as guides, who are themselves guided by a vision of the good. Leadership must, she believes, be grounded in—connected to—a vision. “To develop ethical leaders,” she says, “it is essential that students are exposed to different visions of the good.” In other words, leadership is learned. It requires an accumulation of wisdom that prepares future leaders to make ethical decisions.

Heidi St. Peter ’96, director of Purposeful Learning, poses with a memorial card of Rev. Michael Cronogue, SSE St. Peter said Fr. Mike was an inspirational leader for her in the many roles she has had on campus, from student, to director of MOVE, to associate dean, to her current role.

L’Hote adds an interesting ingredient to ethical leadership: calm. The history of philosophy, she reminds us, is full of leaders able to remain calm in crises and make difficult decisions. Moments of decision reveal the importance of deeper work, of cultivated wisdom. College students are at a good age to begin developing this wisdom. They are beginning to take themselves seriously, developing a sense of personal integrity and a willingness to stand up for things they believe in. They have the courage and honesty to reflect on their thoughts and actions. “I see this all the time in the classroom, and it is so impressive,” she says. “Students are willing to voice unpopular views. They have intellectual integrity. They know what they don’t know. Engaging your peers, raising your hand to speak is a form of leadership.”

L’Hote’s syllabus includes a culturally diverse cast of characters, including Lao Tzu, Plato, Kant, Ursula K. LeGuin, Sartre, and Ralph Ellison and other writers on racial justice. “Here, we see how moral anger can be a form of leadership, a source of energy and transformation. Students begin to see leadership as the power to change hearts and minds. They see how that kind of leadership begins in the self.”

Jay Curley ’02 has been at Ben & Jerry’s since 2008, and has served as the global head of integrated marketing since 2018. The company, widely known to nurture an ethical corporate culture inside and out, prides itself on leadership that is locally and globally responsive, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable. Curley has been lucky to be a part of this kind of corporate culture since graduating from Saint Michael’s. As an account manager at a design and marketing agency, one of his first clients was Patagonia. “Working with and later for Patagonia, I saw a way of doing business that was beyond ethical—it was a corporation actively enacting progressive change in the world. I thought, now there’s a mission worth devoting my life to.”

Curley explains that a company’s vision can be inspiring and ethical, but if the culture itself is not, it doesn’t work. Ethical behavior has to be organic, woven into the fabric of a corporate culture. The key ingredients? Courage, compassion, and collaboration. Courage to act on beliefs; compassion to put people, including the customer, first; and collaboration to make you check your ego at the door. Business is a team sport.

Curley is proud of Ben and Jerry’s commitment to racial and social justice. It’s a deep-rooted belief running through the company. And it hasn’t hurt business. “A bold stance never hurts the business. It may create turmoil, especially among people deeply invested in the status quo. And that’s OK.”

As a leader in the company, Curley stresses the importance of transparency and vulnerability. “The bigger my team, the less I rely on my own vision. Moving from doer to leader, I am less connected to the day-today and more focused on aligning vision and collaboration. I have to listen more and more to my inner voice. A real sense of self allows you to make hard decisions.”

At 43, after 15 years with Ben and Jerry’s, Curley is confident in his own leadership. Some of that confidence grew out of his experiences at Saint Michael’s College, playing lacrosse with coach John Hayden, and taking classes in psychology with Ron Miller. “John Hayden, like all great athletic coaches, developed us as human beings. Ron Miller wasn’t a charismatic leader, but he taught his students about the important roles great leaders play in social movements. And Marta Umanzour, professor of modern languages and literature, well, if I have any passion for social justice, it grew from the seed she planted.”