Last week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that the unchecked exponential growth of AI is a major threat. Within hours, both Elon Musk and Sam Altman, Anthropic’s competitors, agreed with him.
Character has been on my mind a lot lately.
In a world of rapidly evolving technologies and the ongoing discussion about human-focused leadership as its counterpoint, I can’t help but ask: why aren’t we talking more about the need for moral character?
My ongoing meditation on character coincided with my attending a half-day leadership event last week, where fellow executive coach Tricia Dege made a comment that really struck at my core. Her leadership lesson was to know your values ahead of time, so that when something challenges them, you’ll know how you want to react.
Integrity is asking: what is important to me? - and being willing to stick to that when things get tough.
Tricia followed it up with a personal story that included asking yourself, as a business leader: would I want all of today’s actions reported in tomorrow’s newspaper?
Because the reality is that very easily can, and does, happen when you’re not leading in a character-driven way.
While your motivation shouldn’t be to stay out of the newspaper, I do think it is a good check on oneself to ensure that your actions are something you could stand by in the future if you really needed to publicly justify them.
It’s a solid gut check that your moral fiber isn’t out of whack, and that you’re not being blinded by the pressure of the moment.
But it takes deep self-knowledge, and knowing what you will, and will not, sign your name to.
I absolutely consider myself to be a futurist. I believe, hopefully and optimistically, in the future of humanity. I’m a fan of AI and see its potential.
I also believe that with the tools we now have available to us, we’re on the brink of world-altering breakthroughs, and that we do have the ability to work out solutions to problems that plague our very existence.
And I also think we’ve lost connection to good old-fashioned value sets that used to keep people grounded when navigating this wild world. And this concerns me. How will our world evolve if we don’t have grounded leaders?
Religion - a place where many generations before us adopted their full value set from - is not the anchor it used to be decades ago. And arguably (and tragically), some religious institutions are no longer even well connected to their own professed value sets.
But this isn’t a post on the erosion of religion… It’s about what happens when we’re no longer anchored to a strong moral center, a core of aspiration that helps us self-edit our own behaviors and one that we can use as a measuring stick to monitor our actions against. For some, that center still comes from faith, but for others, it is built through more of a personal exploration. Wherever it comes from, we need one.
When Amodei says we need to slow down the rapid, unchecked evolution of AI because it needs to be done safely, with oversight and ethics, he is, at some level, quietly saying:
We can no longer only be driven by our blind desire for growth, greed, and control, and it is well time to bring online some deeper driving values - dare I say, altruistic ones.
That is a civic-minded plea and dilemma; not a commercial one.
It’s a call to think about the bigger whole, rather than the small thing in front of us. To think about our wider impact, rather than our measurable success. And it’s a warning that, unchecked, or without moral intervention, our current values-set is at risk of leading us straight toward disaster.
Whether Amodei, Musk, and Altman will get any support for this from the government is uncertain at this point. Perhaps because people don’t like regulation, rules, or restrictions in any way? They all fly in the face of “freedom”.
But is this the first smoke signal that we may have reached the far end of what individualism and an obsessive focus on “the self” can ultimately deliver in terms of our collective well-being?
Could we already be well on the way to our stubborn attachment to personal freedom becoming the very thing that ultimately undermines all of humanity?
All senior leaders face really hard decisions. When I’m there with them in a coaching conversation - talking about whether it is time to let someone go, or if a part of the business needs to close down, or if it’s time to recognize the model no longer works - I will often ask one simple question that brings them back to their center: What will allow you to sleep at night proud of the decision you made, even if making it is still hard?
That is a values question, but it extends further and asks them to check in with their conscience.
Ultimately, it is a simple consideration that encourages them to use the best judgment they absolutely can, knowing that all humans are imperfect, but to make a decision that keeps them aligned with the person they genuinely aspire to be.
Our current times, of complexity, chaos, and rapid change, are calling for leaders who are deeply grounded and steady.
We are desperate for leaders with character.
The job of a leader is to take care of many people… not just themselves.
And to unite people toward a common objective so that they can do more than they could do alone.
In the back-and-forth of the latest leadership theories, ideas, and fads, I think we’ve started to cut leadership up into a bunch of little skills, and we’re losing sight of the whole.
We’ve been overlooking the deeper principles of what makes a leader great, and in doing so, underestimating the importance of something that should always have been front and center in what it means to be an outstanding leader: character.
The world, our organizations, and we as a collective, need clear, morally guided, deeply considered leaders.
We need to start questioning the narrative that leadership is a bunch of skills that can be neatly packaged into perfected frameworks, and as long as you roll out the right skill at the right time, you’ll be a great leader. Or that leadership is proven through a list of resume titles.
The leadership the world needs now requires deep and considered judgment. We need leaders who are willing to step back for a moment, lead with conscience and conviction, and be decisive when the moment calls for it.
Great leaders lead from core principles, not tactics. And that isn’t what we’re seeing in today's leadership discussions.
The greatest leaders in history had moral character. They are the ones who, even when it was hard, did the “right” thing… not the easy thing. In fact, more often than not, the easy thing isn’t the right thing. We all know this to be true; it’s just hard to face it in the moment, but it is exactly what character looks like.
Truly grounded leaders aren’t constructed; they’re anchored. They are those who have done the work to understand themselves, know what they value, and recognize the lines they will not cross. They are led by an inner compass and can stay focused on its guidance even when the world starts pushing them around.
I think it’s well time to bring character, integrity, and good old-fashioned morals back to the center of the leadership discussion. In the chaotic and complex modern world we now inhabit, character is a non-negotiable core leadership attribute. Without it, we are left with leaders who don’t know how to stay steady themselves, let alone lead us through the current storms of modernity.
Challenges will keep coming, but great leaders know what they stand for ahead of time and how they want to show up before they do.
Based on my twenty years of practice, I’ve been working on a concept called Integrated Leadership. It’s focused on three core principles that I believe can bring us back to the heart of what great leadership looks like. By balancing Care for people, Character to keep us centered and doing the right thing, and ensuring Capability is a central leadership tenet, I believe we can find our way toward a simpler, principle-based model of great leadership. You can learn more about my thoughts on this here: https://www.katesnowise.com/integratedleadership. And subscribe to keep getting updates that align with this thinking.
Hi, I’m Kate Snowise - an executive coach, leadership advisor, and speaker. I’m a trained I/O psychologist, bringing together business and psychology in this Substack, Leadership Lately. I write practical thoughts for leaders who want to lead better on a real-life Tuesday, not a theoretical one. I live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, with my husband, two boys, and a pack of pups I adore. You can find out more about me and my work at katesnowise.com.