March 29, 2016
The Ethical Coach Leader Book Review
Ethics are a growing concern in all sectors of American culture. From businesses to all levels of schooling, as well as nonprofit companies, the values that guide business and teaching criteria are under scrutiny. But, does it take a scholarly textbook to understand how to create an ethical culture? No, Dwight Johnson has delved into the problems and presents practical solutions in his easy to read book, The Ethical Coach Leader: Developing Honor and Integrity.
About The Ethical Coach Leader
A fiction book that has universal application, Johnson creates an intriguing story about a college coach who finds out that his star athlete failed a steroid test, putting the coach in the cross hairs of an ethical dilemma. During a couple of restless nights of sleep, Coach is visited by five ghosts: the Ghost of Example, the Ghost of Education, the Ghost of Experience, the Ghost of E-information, and the Ghost of Environment. Each has different advice for Coach on how to resolve his ethical dilemma. With the dreams haunting his every waking moment, Coach also seeks advice from two of his former mentors. The lessons Coach learns can be applied to any industry, business, school or individual life.
The Ethical Coach Leader challenges cultural mindsets and introduces new ideas on how to apply desperately needed teachings in ethics, integrity, honor and good character. This is a must read book for anyone who has influence on others or is in a leadership role.
My Thoughts
The Ethical Coach Leader was an interesting and different style of book then I would normally read. It took the topic of ethics (which can be overwhelming and difficult at times) and used a real world problem in the form of a story to teach the readers and give us advice on how to solve ethical problems.
In this story, a coach is faced with a positive drug test on one of his best players. He is faced with a difficult decision on what to do. He relies on “visits” from each of the ghosts to help him solve his problem and develop a unique solution to this specific problem. It was very interesting to see how the story played out and what the coach focused on and ignored in making a decision.
This would be an incredibly important book for any individual to read. We all struggle with ethical decisions, whether we realize it or not. It may not be sports related as it was in this example but we all play similar roles from parenting, to self and even into our work lives. We all need to learn how to look at the whole picture and pick out the important information and how to develop the honourable solution, which is not always the easiest solution.
You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Rating: 4/5
About the Author
Dwight Johnson resides in Colorado Springs where he works at the United States Air Force Academy. He is a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel who was a Squadron Commander three times and a Division Chief twice. He also served as the Department Head of Services at the Air Force Institute of Technology, where he taught Customer Service and Total Quality Service.
In 2012, Dwight was awarded the General Billy J Boles Mentorship Award for the Air Force Academy for mentoring cadets. You can connect with him online, Twitter and Facebook.
Book Trailer
The Giveaway
My US and Canadian readers can now enter to win one of five copies of The Ethical Coach Leader.
Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
