Leadership and moral responsibility

Leadership concentrates both power and moral responsibility — the decisions made from positions of authority have consequences that extend far beyond the individual, and the leader who acts as though they are morally accountable only for their personal behavior and not for the systems they administer is avoiding the central ethical challenge of their role. Juana's world was full of leaders who used the apparatus of colonial church and state to impose suffering and called it order; the examined leader asks not only whether I acted with personal integrity but whether the structures I govern are just, and what I am doing when they are not.