Reflections on 21722 so far ...

A personal philosophy of Leadership, Mentoring and Coaching

The MD of King Gee at the time of the closure of the Kempsey factory had an interesting, unusual and praiseworthy approach to the closure.  He wanted staff to "leave with dignity" to celebrate the "life" of the factory rather than mourn its "death".  During class discussion, a comment was made that as MD he had "no choice" but to close the plants.  But I believe that managers always have a choice.  He could have refused to be involved, although this may not have been the best option for his employees.  He perhaps could have worked to have the factory handed over to local management and staff.  He may have had the ability years earlier to choose an approach that wouldn't lead to closure.

Hard decisions

The "hard decisions" of leadership are not necessarily those forced upon the leader or the ones that involve them sacking their followers.  The hard decisions are the ones avoided, ignored or not noticed;  that are made by default and are left unchallenged.

Competence and Morality

The structure of university management courses means that broad and underpinning topics - such as "Leadership" and "Change" - are addressed as self-contained almost independent subjects.  But I see a connection between management competence and morality.  For example, women represent 50% of the population but only 3-40% of managers are women (depending on level and industry).  Given that men and women, across the population, are of equal intelligence, an organisation where women are under-represented in management has a lower level of competence (or potential competence).
Similarly, employees who are treated as mature, honest, intelligent people (not "assets") are happier and more productive (as described in the Service-Profit Chain).
An organisation striving for high performance would therefore employ moral leadership.  Not to do so is incompetence.
The majority of organisations have incompetent management (see "Management Matters").  Improving the overall competence of management would therefore lead to more moral leadership of these organisations.

Incompetence and harm

Managers lack competence but not power.  Power allows undeserved harm to be done both deliberately and accidentally.  Even highly competent managers are capable of doing undeserved harm.  This capability can be prevented from causing harm when power is devolved.  Management approaches such as those of W Edwards Deming and Ricardo Semler devolve power to employees and so limit the potential for its abuse.
But such approaches are not the stuff of business schools.  The doing of harm continues.