Some employers contend that the college graduates they hire should have stronger communication and critical thinking skills upon arrival from their various college/university programs in which they majored. As higher education continues its efforts to meet the demands for employers, the authors contend that the benefits of participation in debate exercises can be incorporated into various courses as a teaching tool to increase facility with these soft skills. A practical application of debate in a specific organizational leadership course is presented, along with highlights of the student participants' reflections upon the experience, and the initial signs of positive impact on these skills. Suggestions of future application of debate into curricula are also shared.

The ethical failures of organizational leaders have led to the development of instruments seeking to measure ethical leadership. These instruments have primarily focused on followers’ evaluation of ethical leadership attributes of their leaders. Often leaders find themselves faced with making challenging ethical decisions. In the current article, we present a validated leadership self‐assessment tool that measures leader’s preferred ethical leadership style. The current article concludes that, when faced with making a decision addressing an ethical dilemma, leaders prefer a particular ethical leadership style. Knowledge of ethical leadership style is beneficial for leaders to understand the process they utilize when faced with difficult choices. This tool may be useful in developing and educating leaders, teams, and organizations to make better decisions, thereby reducing incidents of poor ethical choices.

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Our paper discusses the need for continued focus on ethical leadership and the importance and benefits of ethical leadership development. We propose integrating ethical leadership development, that uses cognitive development theory, into the Center for Creative Leadership's Assess, Challenge, and Support (ACS) leader development model to help address the continued failures of ethical leader development. Our extended framework includes values and morals as a component of the model, and ethical organizational culture as its backdrop, thereby incorporating an examination of ethical leadership into each component of the ACS model.We conclude with practical implications and suggestions for future research.