Re-inventing the Approach to Leadership, Virtues, and Culture

This final chapter of the book addresses the core part of the problem, that is, individual agency and consideration of subjectivity should be the solution to achieving values-based leadership. In drawing from the struggles and challenges identified in the case study (Part II), this chapter discusses practical insights, implications, and applications that leaders within rules and compliance-based organizations should consider. In understanding “the road ahead” in achieving a virtues-based culture underpinned by virtues-based leadership two elements are addressed: 1. the impact of norms-based behaviors, whether they are toxic or virtuous, and 2. how the interpretation of rules can create contradictions and tensions. These elements are expanded in detail to consider how the tensions and contradictions highlighted in the case study can be resolved to support a virtuous organization encouraging values-based leadership. Concluding the book, I discuss the complexity of values-based leadership when there is a need to follow rules. Furthermore, considering how values-based leadership is understood and embodied in a rules-based organization, the practical application of what leaders can learn from the case study is provided.