Ethics 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know

This book holds no mysteries about what is important in relation to ethics. It provides some useful statistical data, plus some different angles at why ethics can be important. The book itself is not revolutionary, it will not break new ground, but it is an easy read that helps the reader to remember some of the important things in life when living by certain personal standards. Go ahead, get the book and enjoy an easy, solid text that will remind you of why there is only one way to do things. JP

So you think you want to be a leader? Well what are the core essentials of leadership? If ethical behavior is not one of your answers then guess what a leader you will never be. Knowing right from wrong and applying it in one's life is essential and becomes crucial if one aspires to be leadership. You cannot be at peace in your life, nor a success in life if you don't know what it means to be ethical. Being an ethical person is not something that you switch on and off like a light switch, when it suits your needs. Maxwell in this book provides the primer to those starting on their leadership journey about the importance of ethics. For those who have drifted off course, Maxwell will help you set your course and life on the path that we all should follow.

This little book reminds the reader of what he/she has hopefully learned before but spends a lifetime trying to apply. The negative reviewer who is an academic finds this book disdainful because it offers "nothing" for he thinks the real dilemna of ethics seems to belong to to the halls of academia for only within those confines can one truly understand the ancients. Maxwell is delightful because of this lack of intellectual snobishness.

This book is fabulous! I used it for an Ethics book club class and virtually all the participants gave it high marks for readability and clear ideas. It's a little book with big ideas to live by.

John C. Maxwell, a minister, management consultant, and prolific author of inspirational and insightful business related books, believes that ethical principles can be summarized by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He documents that this rule, or some close variation of it, is found in all of the world's major religious traditions. This is not the book that offers guides to how the definition of ethics can vary from one legal code to another. It is rather a book that offers guides on how to live one's life and do one's job with longterm success. "If you want to do something that will make an impact beyond your own life," Maxwell writes in summary, "then treat people better than they treat you, walk the extra mile, help people who cannot help you, do right when it's natural to do wrong, and keep your promises even when it hurts." He divides the world into people who "go for the gold" and people who "go for the golden rule" and finds the latter are much more successful in ways that really matter than the former. This book is an excellent supplement and response to much narrower attempts by lawyers, college professors, numerous professional groups, state government ethics commissions, good government advocates and others to treat ethics as a legal code which one needs legal advice to interpret, honor, or defend oneself from. Ethics, Maxwell says, is not a complex issue. Ethics is about living a life worthy of self-respect, and the respect of family members, colleagues, and competitors.