On Saturday the Koch Leadership Center held a student leadership conference in the Kanza room of the Memorial Union at Emporia State. A total of 20 ESU students attended the conference, along with six student volunteer members of the Koch Leadership Task Force.
The theme of the conference was “Adaptive Ethics.” Dr. Steve Lovett, co-director of the Koch Center for Leadership and professor of the Business College, described adaptive ethics as “pressures that encourage you to break, bend, and challenge your ethical position.”
“The conference will give students training in what to do when a decision is not black and white,” Lovett said.
“The problem is, in the military people are rewarded for sacrificing themselves for others. In business we are sometimes rewarded for sacrificing others for ourselves,” said John Koelsch, guest speaker at the conference and undersheriff of Lyon County.
Koelsch outlined five principles of leadership.
“Leadership is an activity, not a position,” said Koelsch. “Anyone can lead, anytime, anywhere. It starts with you and must engage others…You can help others around you even if upper management isn’t doing too well.”
Another objective of principled entrepreneurship, is how to run a business ethically, according to Lovett.
“Usually, ethics is centered on what should be black and white… but where businesses fail, it’s often because of what isn’t black and white,” Lovett said.
“Our goal was that we wanted to empower the students and let them guide the direction of the conference,” said Bronté Bailey, member of the task force, senior business education major.
The conference began at 8:30 in the morning and ended at about 1:30, and was free of charge to the attendees.
“I came in with a completely different mindset.” said Boone Cady, a junior computer and information science major. “(I gained) some very different ways of looking at ethics…This year (the task force) prepared, planned, and executed the conference.”
Aidan Johnson, member of the task force and sophomore psychology major, helped set up the conference.
“(Setting up the conference) was difficult at times, but then someone would spark an idea and it would just explode into a good result,” Johnson said.
“(The conference) achieved more than we expected,” Bailey said. “It exceeded our standards.”
“(Our objective) was not to teach, but build on ethical leadership… so people left not with our perspective but with that of everyone around them,” said Johnson.