“Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble,” - John Lewis
Competency 1: Lead and Manage
Discern and Apply Appropriate Legal and Ethical Standards
As a leader, I personally desire to foster an environment that is transparent, equitable, diverse, and intuitive. In being a public servant, there are legal and ethical parameters for public employees that must be maintained. In order to achieve these goals and uphold those parameters, I must therefore keep ethical principles at the forefront of my work, my interaction with communities, and my leadership style. In my Administrative Leadership and Democratic Governance course, the ethics reflection assignment required me to merge my personal and professional belief system and develop a plan of action to remain ethically centered as my level of influence in the workforce increases. After completing this course and assignment, I feel more prepared to discern and apply ethical principles that I have established for myself in my legal career. While this assignment has outlined my personal ethics approach, as a public servant I am also opened to analyzing competing approaches and applying the best methods to ensure transparency, equity, and diversity.
Distinguish among competing approaches to employee evaluation and conduct
Leading and managing in a public service setting requires public administrators to evaluate scenarios in the workplace and make ethical decisions. The decisions that leadership makes, directly impacts the quality of the service that the citizenry is receiving. My Public Personnel Administration course challenged us to assume the role of an HR Manager and required us to discern and apply managerial procedures and ideals learned in the course to the workplace issues of effective leadership styles and diversity initiatives. In completing this assignment, it was imperative to consider the legal and ethical parameters that exists outside of these specific organizations policies. This assignment expanded my knowledge of the varying kinds of issues that can occur in the workplace- as well as provided me with a set of resources to refer back to if I am to one day find myself in a managerial role in public governance.
