Running head: ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
The Importance of Ethical Leadership in Football
Kenneth R. E. Sellers
E10722552

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
The Importance of Ethical Leadership in Football
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From the popular person in school to a major CEO in a fortune 500 company, leadership skills are important trait throughout life. Take leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther
King Jr. for example. Lincoln fought during the time of the Civil War to liberate the slaves during a time when people did not see the equality between black and white men. King continued that work to give equal rights to oppressed African American people. Through their actions we now look at those men as great leaders in a time that needed great leadership. Their principles, values, beliefs, and influential spirit are forever imprinted on us.
Like the great leaders before us they were men of prodigious ethical conduct. They conducted themselves in a manner that inspired people afterwards to become great ethical leaders. What makes an ethical leader? Ethical leaders are men and women that can inspire the ones around them to reach a common goal, and confidence to see and work towards the vision of the leader which, echoes the concept of both transformational and charismatic leadership.
Ethical leaders should make decisions ethically, and are able to lead in such a way that their attitudes and interactions reflect this when working with others. Good ethical leaders set a standard of morality and ethical conduct that in the end, transform others to act as they do.
An event that took place during the summer between my freshman year in college and my sophomore year. The summer of 2011 I was fresh out of high school and ready to begin the journey that we often call college. My first stop was a junior college in Kansas where I received a football scholarship to continue playing the game that I hold so dear. The head football coach, whose name I will not reveal, was a man of short stature. During the recruiting phase he seemed to be a great guy, but the night we arrived for a meeting that all changed. I later found out that

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP this is how most coaches sign the players they really want, by putting on a false persona. Once
3 the meeting started he began to swear at us and threaten us with different types of punishment if we did not practice and play the way he wanted us too. I was taken aback by his approach of addressing us and many of the players thought the same way. After that meeting I returned to my dorm and decided to sit out on the balcony. Five maybe six minutes later a group of guys started to make their way to the center of the courtyard, then in a quick second a fight ensued. I thought to myself that I had never been so afraid before in my life. Later that night the head coach arrived and he gathered everybody in the courtyard and began to tell us that if we wanted to fight we should take it off campus. I asked myself, “Is he really going to allow this?” and my question was answered when we started practice. On the first day, three fights and two team brawls broke out during practice all of which I had nothing to do with. We started the season in great fashion winning most of our games. We were a team with a lot of talent, but then another incident happened where most of our players were either expelled from school or asked to leave, and the season went down the drain. What that experience taught me was championship teams are not built on talent alone, but also with a leader that can lead. This is what is needed for a team to be successful and in the days following the incidents that head coach was terminated.
The next head coach that the college brought in was a man who had had great success at other colleges and that they thought could come in and make some changes. I was surprised by the changes that he made at the school. He eliminated player fighting from the whole campus and at practice. He completely changed the atmosphere and made it become a safe place that felt like home. He implemented a policy that turned a hundred individual football players into one team, a family that was united, and fought for one another. During this time we improved our record from the previous year, and this past year his team went 9-2, and advanced to a bowl

ETHICAL LEADERSHIP 4 game. I’m grateful I had the chance to meet such a man and when I do become a coach, he would be a man I would try to live up too.
Ethical leadership is defined as the process of influencing people through principles, values, and beliefs that embrace a kind of behavior that we perceive as right. Ethical leaders are those who use their values, beliefs, and decision-making abilities to create a respectable atmosphere of trustworthiness. Ethical leadership taught me that the acts of a leader can influence multiple people. It also taught me that a good ethical leader should serve in the best interest of the team or company and not in the interest of one’s self. I watched a man turn an angry football team into a family and into a brotherhood that can win games. Like other great leaders that I have read about, he was able to implement a change in the attitudes and values of his players. Through his empowerment we were able to internalize his vision for success and transferred that vision onto the playing field. Playing football I have seen and been a part of a fair share of adversity. With our old coach we crumbled, but with the guidance of our new coach, we were empowered to fight to victory. There are people out there in the world that just need some guidance to become an ethical leader. By learning and teaching ethical leadership we can make sure that those people are pointed in the right direction.