I recently came across a very interesting question: Is leadership morally neutral? In other words, can we regard dictators or “heads” of fascist countries as leaders?

From the LSmarts perspective, here’s an answer:
One of the five intelligences in the LSmarts framework is called “Ethical LSmarts.” This intelligence reflects the person’s ability to recognize and act upon the ethical dimensions of an issue. It is not about the ethical beliefs of a leader or how ethical you perceive the leader to be. It is also not about doing “good work” (as in “the ethical mind” that Howard Gardner of Harvard has proposed.) Rather, this aspect of intelligence reflects how capable the leader is of recognizing and understanding the ethical implications of a new situation. Ethical LSmarts bestow upon the leader a capacity to understand the ethical standpoints of people who may not share his or her personal ethics. This aspect of leadership intelligence makes the difference between why somebody like Mahatma Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln is called a great leader and why somebody like Hitler is called a demagogue.

To answer the question then, leadership is definitely not morally neutral—great leaders display the ability to lift the question of ethics from that of the personal and transform it into the ethics of all of humanity. For a demonstration of this, watch Richard Attenborough’s movie, Gandhi. Toward the close, there is a scene that depicts Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the immediate aftermath of Hindu-Muslim religious riots that followed the partition of India. Gandhi went on a fast-unto-death if the riots did not end. The scene that I mention shows that the riots have stopped, and rioters are going by the house in which Gandhi lies. They are throwing down the arms they used in the riots in front of Gandhi who lies on a cot. Suddenly a Hindu man rushes toward Gandhi’s bed, throws a piece of bread at Gandhi, and orders him to eat it; the man then breaks down and tells Gandhi of how he killed a small Muslim boy because the Muslims killed his young son. Gandhi’s answer: “Adopt a Muslim boy the same age as your son, and bring him up as a Muslim.”