Dr. Craig Johnson - Casting Shadow or Light?

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Dr. Craig E. Johnson is professor emeritus of leadership studies at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon. Craig served as director of the George Fox Doctor of Business Administration program and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in leadership, ethics, management, and communication. While he has retired from full-time teaching, he serves as an adjunct professor and continues to publish thoughtful and engaging texts on the topic of organizational and leadership ethics.

Quotes from This Episode

• "I call privilege the evil twin of power. If you have more power, you typically have more privilege."
• "You cast a shadow if you’re inconsistent, and you also cast a shadow if your loyalties are to yourself and not in the right place."
• “It’s not enough just to have good character. Particularly in a large organization, people don’t know you personally. So you have to be active in terms of shaping the organizational culture.”
• (The work of Brown and Trevino) "really opened up a lot of research, which has revealed that ethical leaders finish first, not last."
• "It’s not selfish to find out your calling or vocation or where you can best serve because that’s where you’re going to best serve as a leader.”

Dr. Johnson's Textbooks

• Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow
• Organizational Ethics: A Practical Approach

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Brooks, D. (2013).  The road to character.  New York: Random House.
• Brown, M. E., Trevino, L. K., & Harrsion, D. A. (2005).  Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing.  Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97, 117-134.  
• Giridharadas, A. (2018).  Winners take all: the elite charade of changing the world.  New York: Knopf. 
• Koehn, N.(2017).  Forged in crisis: The power of leadership in turbulent times.  New York: Scribner.
• Padilla, A., Hunter, S. T., & Tate, B. W. (2012).  The susceptible circle: A taxonomy of followers associated with destructive leadership.  Leadership Quarterly, 23, 897-917.  
• Palmer, P. (1996). Leading from within. In L. C. Spears (Ed.), Insights on leadership: Service, stewardship, spirit, and servant-leadership (pp. 197–208). New York: Wiley, p. 200.
• Towles, A. (2016). A gentleman in Moscow.  New York: Penguin.  

Quotes Mentioned in this Episode

• “A leader is a person who has an unusual degree of power to create the conditions under which other people must live and move and have their being - conditions that can either be as illuminating as heaven or as shadowy as hell. A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside him or herself, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.” - Parker Palmer, Leading From Within
• “Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” - Frederick Beuchner, Theologian