Ethical Leaders: Trust, Work-Life Balance, and Treating Individuals as Unique Tammy Cowart The University of Texas at Tyler Ann Gilley The University of Texas at Tyler Sherry Avery The University of Texas at Tyler Afton Barber The University of Texas at Tyler Jerry W. Gilley The University of Texas at Tyler This study examined the ethical behaviors of leaders and managers in organizations. Specifically, we explored the frequency with which employees perceive their managers to be ethical, as well as managerial traits that influenced employees’ perceptions. Respondents were asked to specify how frequently their managers exhibited ethical behaviors. We found that managers are not perceived as being routinely ethical. Interestingly, we found that trust, work-life balance, and treating individuals as unique positively influenced employee perceptions of their manager’s ethical behavior. The inter- relationship between work-life balance and treating individuals as unique emerged as an unexpected finding which is new in the literature. HUMAN SUBJECTS All human studies have been approved by the appropriate ethics committee and have therefore been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. Furthermore, all persons participating in the study gave their informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study. INTRODUCTION The Ethics Resource Center reports that two major drivers of ethical culture are senior executives and supervisors (NBES, 2011). According to the Ethics Resource Center’s 2011 National Business Ethics 70 Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics vol. 11(3) 2014