Virtues as the Pillars of Decision-Making for Montessori Leaders

While we can easily wax poetic on how important it is to develop essential virtues, the whole purpose of doing so is to be well equipped to make the myriad of decisions that a Montessori leader must make in the course of their days, weeks, and months.? I wish it were as simple as holding virtues in one’s mind but ethical dilemmas, especially in today’s accelerating world of complexity and polarity, seem to show up with stunning regularity. How, then, do we effectively navigate such decisions?

Montessori classroom pedagogy has a baseline answer for us, namely that the departure point for our work with children is that they have the right to choose as they see fit from the wisdom of an inner teacher, so long as their choices and subsequent behavior does not infringe upon the rights of their fellow community members. This is the sort of personal liberty Maria Montessori prized, so long as it was concomitant with one’s growing sense and execution of responsibility.?

But ethical dilemmas are not often a choice between right and wrong, meaning a simple case of “what is the right thing to do?”? but rather that true dilemmas are the convergence of choices between two competing goods, or two lesser evils. The frequency of such dilemmas may demand support beyond simple, solitary reflection and the idea of weighing only the personal liberty/responsibility matrix.

This is where I’m going to emphasize again that the highest performing leaders who seek their highest form of self-development actually choose to seek out expert coaching in order to get powerful, measurable, and tangible results by using the coach as a mirror--someone who is trained to maintain non-judgment, deeply listen, and ask powerful questions to help the leader self-reflect and arrive at a course of action.

Imminent decisions require leaders to answer, to the best of their ability, the question, “What is the morally right thing to do here?” Some decisions we can make without restraint as they are based on preferences we as leaders arrive at, and others are simply dictated by established laws. For example, leaving a tip at a restaurant is a matter of freedom to choose; leaving the restaurant without paying is not.

So exercising ethical decision-making, then, is best summed up by a Lord Moulton quote, as: “obedience to the unenforceable,” as ethical questions generally arise when we encounter decisions where behaviors are highly desirable but the law is mostly silent or perhaps ambiguous. Again as an example, no law requires us to notify a person if their car keys fall to the ground unnoticed, but most of us agree that witnessing this in progress is something we should inform the person of if they do not notice.

It’s worth saying again: Doing the right thing is often not this clear-cut.

School leaders have a difficult task when we understand the courage involved in working within a public arena in a morally conflicted society. Decisions must be made and there are often at least two possible choices, each of which will affect other people for better or worse, each choice able to be plausibly supported by way of moral principles. Many dilemmas are universal in nature involving fundamental moral rules we all grapple with -- telling the truth, respecting others, equity. School leaders are often in the position of needing to keep the school moving forward while dealing with forces that would disrupt this. Trade-offs are inevitable, and leaders cannot avoid ethical uncertainty. So how to approach resolving dilemmas in the best way possible?

One of the most useful frameworks for such reasoning comes from Kohlberg’s work who saw that moral progression essentially began as amoral and egocentric (in early childhood) to abstract, principled thinking (in maturity). He found that children tend to define what is right by immediate and personal consequences; whereas the thoughtful and mature adult reasons from universal principles with full awareness of obligation to others (this is assuming a lot, I know). Generally, we attempt to follow standards in ethical decision-making that come from those virtues that are universal: always tell the truth; share with others; keep your word; be fair; do unto others as you would have them do unto you. However, more deeply felt than this, school leaders will want to hold the following in regard:

1. Expressive liberty: people have the right to hold and freely express their views.
2. Montessori-style liberty:? people have the right to make choices about how they work (and live), except for when and how their behavior infringes on the rights and liberty of others.
3. Equality: Persons should generally be treated the same, but also be provided equal opportunity therefore the word equity enters the conversation where equality is measured from acknowledged differences in departure points.
4. Due process: people in violation of rules and laws ought to be given a chance to defend themselves accordingly before penalties are applied.
5. Democracy: Community members ought to have equal opportunity of participation and influence to make decisions that will affect them.

My name is Peter Piché and I help Montessori Heads as a personal leadership development coach, tailoring our work to your particular needs. If you want to chat about your set of current leadership dilemmas, I'd be glad to chin wag about it. You can use this link to set up a short phone call.