Moral Muscle

Can we get better at moral decision making? How is the capacity to exercise moral leadership developed? One answer to these questions is the notion of “moral muscle,” which is a combination of moral awareness (the ability to recognize situations that can be legitimately considered from a moral point of view), motivation for day-to-day practice, and the desire to build moral character in the long term. Moral muscle emerged from research into student experiences in “The Moral Leader,” a literature-based course on leadership I have taught for two decades at Harvard Business School (for a description, see The Moral Leader: Challenges, Tools, and Insights, a student textbook, and Teaching ‘The Moral Leader,’ an instructor manual).

This research identifies how students acquire moral muscle beginning from different starting points, and charts the paths through which moral muscle develops. The research has promise for helping managers and employees get better at making decisions with moral consequences in all the areas where trust can be built or lost.