Character Moves the Mission
Thursday, April 30, 2026
I have always believed that the single most important element of effective leadership is trust.1 Without trust, your boss will find someone else to do your work and send you on your way. Without trust, your clients will not listen to your logic. Without trust, your customers will not purchase your product or service. And without trust, the organization falls apart.
There's a great book called The Speed of Trust written by Stephen Covey, who maintains that organizations with strong trust among clients and customers create the strongest teams and accomplish tasks and goals quickly, because it allows them to forgo the bureaucratic check-and-balance processes.2 But trust doesn’t happen automatically. According to Covey, trust is a function of character and competence.3 If someone is working for you and they are totally incompetent, I’m certain they will soon be replaced. And if someone has ethical issues, it will be difficult to trust them with any program or project, and they, too, can expect to be quickly replaced.
So, what does trust have to do with ethics? Achieving trust begins with building character, and ethics are nothing more than the values that define the organization and what it stands for. These same values establish acceptable and expected behavior, as well as unacceptable behavior within the organization. Over time, these values will ultimately shape the organization’s culture.
During Operation Iraqi Freedom, I served as an Army division commander in northern Iraq, overseeing 23,000 soldiers, all undertaking a tough mission under unforgiving conditions. We based our operations out of several compounds where we would sleep, eat, perform maintenance, and conduct the operational missions.
Over time, we experienced a number of violations of standards, rules and regulations, and almost all of them occurred within these compounds. All were properly investigated, and substantiated offenders were disciplined. The discipline not only punished the offenders but also provided them an opportunity to reflect, learn and develop, thereby improving their performance. The discipline also sent a crucial message about what is and what is not tolerated. Clearly, discipline is a key element of effective leadership, as leaders must ensure that subordinates maintain both operational and personal standards, and are responsible for holding those who violate these standards accountable.
As the senior commander, I took personal responsibility for adjudicating the discipline of senior officers’ and noncommissioned officers’ offenses. Our combat tour lasted one year, and about halfway through, I was alarmed by the number of offenses I had to adjudicate. I asked my lawyer what he thought was going on, and he said that we were no different from the other units. The offenses included violations of the general order (i.e., no alcohol), sexual harassment, creating a hostile environment, and failure to report to duty. In each case, the discipline included removal from their position of authority and a letter of reprimand.
But what was often a consequence of disciplining an individual leader was the impact on the unit’s ability to conduct its mission and execute its responsibilities. The offender’s immediate unplanned absence often resulted in an ineffective organization until a replacement could be brought in. This inevitably affected other affiliated organizations that had to pick up the slack for what this unit was no longer able to do. In other words, unethical behavior by a leader poses a significant risk to the organization’s ability to accomplish its mission.
Many case studies also illustrate the severe consequences of a leader’s unethical behavior in the corporate world. One notable example is the 2001 Enron collapse, when a previously successful energy trading company declared bankruptcy due to unethical accounting practices, faked profits, greed, and attempts to overlook or conceal bad financial outcomes. It was a classic example of poor corporate governance and a culture of dishonesty created by the corporate leader’s unethical behavior and conflicts of interest.4
On the other hand, outstanding foundational ethical leadership not only fosters a culture that embodies the organization’s values, but it also serves as the company’s true north, guiding it through difficult times, especially during crises.
An example is the 1982 Tylenol crisis involving Johnson & Johnson, when someone placed cyanide-laced capsules in bottles on shelves of Chicago-area drug stores, and seven people died. The financial impact on the company was devastating.
But chairman James Burke’s response was strong. He formed a strategy team, alerted customers, advised the public not to purchase or consume Tylenol, and halted production. He utilized the media, paid advertising and national press conferences to communicate with the public, as well as with employees. Overall, Johnson & Johnson’s handling of the crisis was considered a success.5
In an interview, former chairman Alex Gorsky attributed the company’s response to its strong ethical culture, a direct result of the Johnson & Johnson credo, written by company chairman Robert Wood Johnson II in 1943. The credo outlines what the company stands for, its core values, its responsibilities and the guiding principles that shape its moral compass, with the purpose of guiding the organization in both good times and challenging times.6
Coming from serving 43 years in the military with a final assignment as the superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, I gained a strong understanding of an organization’s profession — in the military, it is the “profession of arms.” All professions have clients, and it is essential to develop a relationship with them built on trust. And trust does not happen overnight. It is earned.
An organization’s ethic is created by its values. In the Army, those values are loyalty, duty, respect, honor, integrity and personal courage. Values define what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior for both individuals and the organization. That expected behavior will then create the organization’s culture.
One of the key Army values is “honor” — acting with integrity and truth in both personal and professional settings. It is doing the right thing, even when no one is looking. The objective of honorable living is to have a character that has internalized institutional and personal values. Leaders who live honorably are those who have embraced a life of character. They are considered “leaders of character,” and are also known as ethical leaders who build trust within their organizations and with their clients and customers.
One of the issues with ethical leadership is a leader’s toleration of nonethical behavior, or behavior that falls in the “gray” area of what is accepted and what is not. I have always felt that gray-area behavior must be held accountable as much as nonethical behavior. If a leader looks the other way and fails to hold nonethical behavior accountable, they create a new and lower standard of acceptable behavior. If lack of accountability continues, the standard will continue to deteriorate until it reaches its lowest point, with significant risk to the organization. Ethical leaders not only establish and maintain standards, but they must also have the moral courage to hold themselves and others accountable for their actions.
One other issue related to ethical leadership is whether one can recover from an ethical mistake. When I was the West Point superintendent, I had the responsibility of adjudicating all honor violations, with options to separate the cadet, have them repeat a year, place them in the Army for a year as an enlisted soldier, or keep them in their position. In all cases, however, they were required to participate in a six-month program with an assigned mentor, reflecting on their offense and how to recover. In almost every case, through reflection and introspection, the cadets emerged stronger in character. If you break a bone and it heals correctly, the bone becomes stronger where the break occurred than it was before. So, it is with character — if it heals correctly, character becomes stronger than it was. In every case, I was amazed at the maturity, growth and demonstrated strength of character. Regardless of the punishment, I was confident that through reflection and introspection, the cadet would return with integrity and strength of character that rivaled that of any other.
Trust is a function of both character and competence. Leaders move their organization toward its goals and achievements, but they do so in accordance with their values and what they stand for.
We all want to be part of a successful team, and we all appreciate leaders who get us there. However, success at all costs carries risk, as it can lead to poor, dishonest and even criminal outcomes that contradict our organizational and personal values.
Leaders are responsible for establishing the values of their organization and to ensure that those values are integrated into a culture of respect, honor, candor, and integrity. We all want to be leaders who succeed and win, but winning consistently with what our organization stands for is an added assurance that what we are doing is not only successful but being done the right way.
And at the end of the day, we can look at ourselves in the mirror and be proud of what we see.
1The Character Edge – Leading and Winning with Integrity, Caslen & Matthews, St. Martins Press, October 2020.
2The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey, Simon & Shuster, October 2006.
3Ibid
4Cabral, Carrie, The Enron Collapse: 8 Reasons Why It Failed, Shortform, 4 August, 2020
5Department of Defense Crisis Communication Strategies, Case Study: The Johnson & Johnson
Tylenol Crisis
6Interview with Johnson & Johnson Chairman Alex Gorsky 30 January 2025
References
Cabral, Carrie, The Enron Collapse: 8 Reasons Why It Failed, Shortform, 4 August 2020
Caslen, Robert & Matthews, Mike, The Character Edge – Leading and Winning with Integrity,
St. Martins Press, October 2020.
Caslen, Robert, Interview with Johnson & Johnson Chairman Alex Gorsky, 30 January 2025
Covey, Stephen, The Speed of Trust, Simon & Schuster, October 2006.
Department of Defense Crisis Communication Strategies, Case Study: The Johnson & Johnson Tylenol Crisis
In the Lead magazine is a collaboration between the Buccino Leadership Institute and the Stillman School of Business’s Department of Management. This edition reaffirms Seton Hall’s commitment to fostering innovative, ethical and impactful leadership. Stay ahead of the curve — explore the Spring 2026 issue of In the Lead.
Categories: Business