Before Power: How Leaders Acquire their Moral Compass

Before Power: How Leaders Acquire Their Moral Compass

A leader sits alone with a decision that will define their tenure. A mistake has surfaced. It is costly, reputationally dangerous, and still containable. The systems allow for silence. Advisors offer cover. The law offers room. The moment is tense, compressed, and decisive.

The question most observers ask is simple: What will the leader do?

The better question is harder, and more uncomfortable: Where did this decision really begin?

It did not begin in that room. It did not begin with the title, the authority, or the pressure. It began years earlier, in places far removed from formal power, where values were first learned, tested, ignored, or reinforced. Leadership decisions are not spontaneous acts of character. They are the visible expression of a long moral formation that precedes authority.

This is the premise at the heart of values-based leadership, which treats leadership not as technique or charisma, but as the consistent application of internalized moral commitments under pressure. A growing body of scholarship and practice has shown that trust, ethical climate, and legitimacy rise or fall not with a leader’s competence alone, but with the moral foundations they bring into power roles. See, for example, this clear overview of values-based leadership and its implications for trust and judgment.

The challenge is that many leadership conversations begin too late. They focus on what leaders should do once they are already in charge, rather than how leaders become the kind of people who decide well when the stakes are highest.

Moral decisions are Downstream

Moral judgment does not suddenly activate at the moment of authority. It is downstream of long-running processes that quietly shape how individuals interpret right and wrong, loyalty and fairness, truth and consequence.

Research on moral development has long established that ethical behavior cannot be reduced to abstract reasoning alone. Classic stage-based models, associated with thinkers like Kohlberg, explained how people reason about moral problems, but later work highlighted the gap between knowing what is right and actually doing it. Darcia Narvaez and others advanced more process-oriented models that emphasize moral sensitivity, judgment, motivation, and character as interacting components rather than static traits.

For leaders, these processes begin forming early. Family stories about honesty and consequence. Cultural norms about authority and obedience. School environments that reward fairness or excuse favoritism. Faith or civic communities that model accountability, or selectively apply it. Each experience contributes to a growing internal script about what power is for, and what it permits.

Leader identity research reinforces this point. Studies of leader identity formation show that leadership is not something people switch on when promoted. It is a lifelong, iterative process shaped by intrapersonal reflection, relationships, and social reinforcement. Early experiences act as enablers or derailers long before formal leadership roles appear.

A Simple Framework for “Before Power”

For practitioners, it helps to translate this research into a usable frame. Three elements consistently appear in both scholarly work and real leadership stories.

Formative stories.
Every leader carries a private archive of stories that taught them what “good people” do. These stories are rarely formal lessons. They are moments observed and absorbed. A parent who returned extra change to a cashier. A teacher who punished cheating even when it embarrassed the institution. A community that protected the vulnerable, or failed to. These narratives shape expectations about integrity long before leadership is discussed explicitly.

Educational and developmental settings increasingly recognize this formative role. Programs aimed at cultivating a moral compass in young people emphasize narrative, example, and reflection rather than rule memorization. The lesson is simple but profound. Values are learned through lived meaning, not slogans.

Early power moments.
Long before corner offices and public platforms, most leaders encounter small doses of power. A class prefect role. Student leadership. The first supervisory assignment. These moments matter because they are rehearsals. They teach whether accountability is expected, whether misuse carries consequences, and whether transparency is rewarded or punished.

Research on leader behavior suggests that early experiences with responsibility strongly influence later comfort with accountability. Leaders who learned early that power is answerable tend to internalize restraint. Those who learned that power shields missteps often carry that lesson forward.

Moral reflection.
Not all formation is automatic. Growth often requires interruption. Feedback, failure, crisis, or exposure to alternative models can prompt reflection. Values-based leadership approaches emphasize reflective practice precisely because it allows leaders to examine inherited assumptions rather than act them out uncritically.

This reflective work is often triggered by discomfort. A decision that feels wrong even when it is legal. A loss of trust that cannot be explained by performance alone. These moments invite leaders to ask where their instincts came from, and whether those instincts still serve their responsibilities.

Applying the Lens to Yourself

If leadership decisions are rooted in formation, then development work must look backward as well as forward. One practical exercise is deceptively simple.

Map three formative experiences that shaped your sense of fairness, loyalty, or courage. Not achievements. Experiences. Ask what they taught you about truth, power, and consequence.

Then sit with questions drawn from values-based leadership coaching practice:

Who first taught you that telling the truth matters even when it costs you?
When did you learn what happens to people who challenge authority?
Which early leader made you feel protected, and which made you feel expendable?
What did your first experience of responsibility reward or punish?

These questions do not produce quick answers. That is the point. They surface the moral scaffolding beneath current decisions.

Why Bother?

Institutions increasingly demand ethical leadership while investing little in understanding how leaders are formed. Codes of conduct multiply. Compliance systems expand. Yet trust erodes when leaders’ internal compasses conflict with institutional values.

Work on moral identity shows that organizations take on the ethical character of their leaders. Ethical climates are not imposed by policy documents. They emerge from the moral commitments leaders bring with them and are reinforced through action.

If we want ethical decisions in moments of crisis, we must pay attention to who leaders were becoming long before they held formal power. Leadership development that ignores this formative arc treats symptoms, not causes.

Future essays in this series will examine how institutions either nurture or corrode moral compasses through promotion systems, incentive structures, and silence. But the starting point is clear.

The moral moment in leadership is never just a moment. It is the visible tip of a long, often invisible process that begins well before power arrives.

ALSO READ: How Leaders Become Who They Are

Babatunde Oladele is a doctoral researcher in Leadership focused on values-based leadership, institutional trust, and moral authority in public and organizational life. His work examines how leaders form values over time and how those values influence decision-making, legitimacy, and accountability under pressure. He writes Leadership & Values, a weekly column on leadership across political, civic, educational, and organizational contexts.