When it comes to leadership development models, one thing’s for sure: there’s no shortage. We have the great man, behavioral, situational, transactional, transformational, transforming, diamond, authentic, principled, adaptive, directive, supportive, group-centered, team-based, participative, servant and, let us never forget—the one-minute!

Many of these models broach the subject of ethics in leadership.^1,2,3 Usually it’s relegated to a subsection of the related book or article, sometimes a chapter. The Four-V Model of Ethical Leadership is different in this regard. Ethics is not an aspect of the model. It’s the whole enchilada, the model’s ends and its means. According to the Four-V model, ethics is the sine qua non of leadership, and an unethical leader is a contradiction in terms.

Dr. Bill Grace, founder of the Center for Ethical Leadership circa 1990, developed the Four-V model. Thousands of leaders have been trained in this methodology, as the center quickly grew from serving the Puget Sound area to working nationally, though partnership with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. This theory and practice of ethical leadership development is best expressed in Dr. Grace’s concise monograph on the Four-V model.⁴ His underlying premise is that true leaders do not exist for their own sakes or to maintain the status quo for a chosen few. Rather, the true leader’s calling is to leadership that advances the common good, which is to say justice and equity for all—at every organizational and societal touch point.

The Four-V model provides a framework for aligning internal factors (core values) with external events (speech and actions) in the interest of serving the common good. Therefore, people who want to be effective leaders must embark on an internal journey of integrity, while making an unwavering commitment to the common good. In this respect the Four-V model represents an integration of leadership development with moral development theory.⁵ Within its four V’s and three territories reside the four stages of moral development: moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, moral choosing, and moral action.

Major Elements of the Four-V Model

The four V’s of the model stand for values, vision, voice, and virtue. The first three V’s form a triangle that represents the key activities of ethical leadership, which lie along the outer circle representing the common good. Virtue sits at the center, as it is at once the impetus and outcome of all three ethical activities. Let’s break down the four V’s and their interstitial territories.

Values

Values sits at the triangle’s apex, the starting point for embodying ethical leadership. Ethical leadership starts with knowing one’s core values and developing the discipline to integrate them into daily life. This is not the litany of values seen alongside many a mission statement. Instead leaders are called to cull the list to just two topmost values, which have a way of subsuming other values. As such, actionable core values are finely focused. Knowing them and having the courage to live them out on a daily basis in service of the common good is the backbone of ethical leadership.

Service

Between values and the second V, vision, lies the territory of service. Values lead to vision by engaging in the practice of service. Vision is not merely a dream to strive for, but a reality revealed through service. Service is also transformative in that it prepares the heart for ethical leadership by nurturing within the virtues of generosity, compassion, wisdom, and courage. Service ultimately tests values experientially.

Vision

When values are tested and tried through authentic service to others, especially those with the least power, they reveal the vision latent in those values. This is not just a vision of what might be, but a realistic picture of what ought to be. Vision also includes the ability to inspire public action consistent with the values to create a desirable future for all.

Polis

Public action transpires in the territory of Polis, the Greek word for city and the derivation of the word politics. The Four-V model uses politics here in the same sense as Aristotle: the field that studies the supreme Good for a society. Leadership is always an attempt to persuade others to see something from a new perspective. Politics is the art associated with that intention. In the polis, or public square, leaders engage the public, the broadest collection of opinion and insight possible in any community.

Voice

Leaders claim their voice in the process of articulating vision to others in ways that motivate action. Voice in this sense encompasses all public actions that give life to vision. Writing, speaking, dialogue, listening, singing, acting, painting, debate, correspondence, and the use of traditional and new media all serve to actualize vision. Regardless of the medium, the spirit of voice is what determines effectiveness. For the vision to have life, the voice must have the life to inspire people to action.

Renewal

As voice returns to values, the territory changes from polis to renewal. Leaders need a break from the action on a regular basis to make sure voice and actions are congruent with values and vision. They also need to identify behaviors, rituals, and people that inspire recommitment to values and vision. Through renewal, leaders take time to gauge whether the common good is actually being served, not the status quo.

Virtue

Virtue, the hub of the model, requires ethical leaders to reflect further on how their values, vision, and voice support the common good. Leaders become what they practice, whether vice or virtue. There is no way to advance Good without practicing virtues. Indeed the practice of virtues required for a genuine commitment to common good is what molds ethical leaders. Without embodying ethical behavior and doing the right thing, virtue cannot be cultivated and leadership cannot stand.

Is the Four-V Model Practical in the “Real” World?

Considering leadership as the practice of serving the common good brings to mind the likes of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln—altruistic political and human rights leaders. This raises the question, which critics of the Four-V model have certainly raised, of whether the model is viable and practical for use in for-profit organizations such as modern corporations or for military organizations whose missions make no claim to serving the common good.

The issue isn’t black-and-white; however, a consideration of the responses of the auto industry to the 2007-2010 financial crisis is telling.

This financial crisis had a devastating impact on the auto industry across the globe. Fear and panic, along with major engineering and manufacturing redundancies worldwide, caused sales and profits to plummet. This posed a dilemma for two leading auto-making countries, the US and Germany: either slash costs and production or face bankruptcy.

The US auto industry responded by eliminating huge swathes of its workforce, shedding production capacity on a massive scale. Still, General Motors and Chrysler needed a government bailout to survive. The impact of the recession and labor-force reductions led to such widespread unemployment, poverty, and destitution that it literally created ghost towns in the Midwest. This decision put duty to shareholders and executives (a number of whom received huge bonuses) ahead of everyone else. This was transactional leadership at its worst, the antithesis of ethical leadership.

The German labor market is inherently more protected, which led to an entirely different outcome during the auto industry crisis. The German carmakers asked employees to voluntarily convert to part-time employment during the recession. This reduced labor costs, but without the pain, mass unemployment, and social disintegration of whole communities. This decision served the greater good, minimizing suffering to the extent possible by sharing its burden. The US response increased inequity and reduced distribution of wealth. The Germans enhanced social cohesion and were able to bounce back more quickly after the crisis—ultimately a win-win for all.

In serving the common good, ethical leaders must consider the impact of corporate actions on customers, employees, suppliers, the environment, the voiceless people of the future—in other words, everyone with skin in the game, not just stockholders and elite execs. Is such a notion, of an enterprise staking its leadership on serving the common good, just a pipe dream? Who can say? But that’s the heart and soul of the Four-V model of ethical leadership.

1. Kouzes, J. M. & Posner, B. Z. (2023). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations, 7th Ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
2. Northouse, P.G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice, 8th Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
3. Koestenbaum, P. (2002). Leadership: The inner side of greatness. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
4. Grace, B. (1999/2001). Ethical leadership: In pursuit of the common good. Seattle, WA: Center for Ethical Leadership.
5. Rest, J. (1979). Development in judging moral issues. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.