Morals have failed to curb business malfeasance. Maybe it’s time to try real ethics.
 

Moses with the Ten Commandments
Painting by Rembrandt

There have been many—probably far too many—articles in the media complaining about the corruption, greed and dishonesty apparent at every level of business in recent years. Solutions abound, usually linked to the idea of better moral and ethical teaching. The trouble is, morality has been around since the earliest periods of recorded history, and it has yet to prevent people from behaving in ways that break just about every moral rule.

If something doesn’t work, the only sensible course of action is to try another approach. It is also sensible, before doing that, to wonder why people go on behaving badly and defying society’s norms. Answers based on the supposedly debased nature of mankind, like the claim of original sin, don’t do it for me. They avoid the question by claiming mankind is inherently immoral. Even if that were true, it would explain nothing.

What I want instead is a way of understanding why conventional approaches to moral rules—based, as they all are, on a combination of stick-and-carrot and pleasing the powerful—are never make mankind any less inconsiderate and selfish than we are today.

I think I may have found one, based on understanding the fundamental difference between morals and ethics: morals are external, imposed rules; ethics are principles derived from individual thinking.

Thought is the basis of ethics

What started me on this track was an article on the HBR Editor’s Blog and the link there to a book by a fifth-grade teacher called Rafe Esquith, who for decades has been teaching groups of the children of Latin American and Korean immigrants at Los Angeles’ Hobart Boulevard Elementary School. Esquith has written a book about what he has learned from this, called “Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56.Æ

What Esquith uses to teach his students ethical behavior is a structure for thinking; a ‘template’ to help them grasp the basis of ethical behavior and why it depends on them, based on psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s Six Levels of Moral Development.

I have adapted my own version, which helps me understand why people approve of ethical behavior when asked, yet consistently fail to put it into practice in their lives. I call it ‘The Six Stages of Ethical Understanding’.

Many people, even highly educated ones, are stuck in Stages One and Two. Many more never go beyond Stages Three and Four. None of these stages require ethical thought, since they consist in doing what others want to gain reward or approval and avoid punishment. Only in Stages Five and Six, the least common, do you encounter a need for thought, reflection and personal choice.

Forget the stick and the carrot; ignore pleasing others

No stick-and-carrot, reward-based system of ethics ever works for long, since rewards lose their value and people find ways to avoid the punishments, either by concealing what they are doing or weaseling out of the consequences. One of the reasons why greed and dishonesty have been so rampant in business in recent years—and probably always were—is that the basic business attitude encourages nothing more that this ‘don’t be found out’ approach.

Being ethical only to please those in authority, like the boss, has similar drawbacks. Rules, it’s said, are made to be broken—or, at least, evaded with the help of cunning lawyers. Information rarely makes it to the boss if a subordinate is sufficiently determined that it shall not. It also encourages others to inform on wrong-doers as a way of advancing themselves.

True ethics arises when people take the time to think and question what values count for most, what standards are needed for a civilized society and why ethics are needed in the first place. By discovering their own needs and standards, they establish principles they are far less likely to break or evade than those imposed on them by others.

It’s easy to confuse ethics and morals, but they are quite different. Morals are sets of rules, imposed from outside, like the Ten Commandments. Ethics is a process of personal exploration and thought, with the aim of discovering what ways of behaving are necessary to have the type of life you want in the the kind of society you are happy to live within. Morals are authoritarian, derived from society at large and usually restrictive (“Thou shalt not . . . ”); ethics are democratic, individual and derived from living freely (“This is what I understand to be right for me . . .”). Morals come from control by someone of greater power than you; ethics come from within.

Give me ethics every time.

Technorati Tags: corporate ethics, business ethics, morality, honesty, integrity

Who are you when no one is watching?
 

Your character is your internal guideline: a moral compass that operates 24/7. If you leave it alone, it always points to true north. A flawed character has been tinkered with, like fooling with the odometer of an automobile, while retaining the appearance of authenticity. The direction in which it points has been shifted to something more acceptable and less likely to provoke an uncomfortable conscience.

Along the main road where I run in the morning, there is a side street through a winding residential neighborhood. If you turn right onto that side street, you can take a useful short-cut. But there is a sign just before this side street that reads, “No right-hand turn between 7:00 and 9:00 am.” You can’t miss it.
 
From time to time, I stop at this intersection to watch what happens. Recently, in one 15-minute period (7:40-7:55 am), eleven cars came by—and seven made an illegal right turn.
 
What piques my curiosity is what these people are thinking—assuming they are—as they make that right turn. What are their rationalizations and justifications for breaking the law?

 
One definition of character is who you are at 4:00 am in the dark when no one is watching. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.“ How we act in the world—even while driving—reflects character, or lack of it.
 

What twists character out of true?

Mostly pride, an inordinate sense of self-esteem, which morphs into hubris, an exaggerated sense of self-confidence. When this happens, people lose respect for others, for rules of right conduct and doing what they should, especially if it is inconvenient.

“. . . the thought manifests as the word; the word manifests as the deed; the deed develops into habit; and habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, and let it spring from love born out of all concern for all beings . . . as the shadow follows the body, what we think, so we become. (The Buddha)”

With pride and ego in charge, thinking becomes progressively warped and self-centered. Your character—your moral compass—gets twisted out of line. Gradually you become more self-serving, more self-centered, egocentric and uncaring about others. From this place, it’s easy to circumvent rules and fall into inappropriate, even illegal, behaviors. The justification becomes it’s OK as long as you don’t get caught.  It’s all about you and what you want. 

Making the illegal turn at 7:45 am

 You can imagine the excuses:
“I’m late for work.”
“I didn’t see the sign.”
“I had a spat with my spouse and was distracted.”
“A friend said it would be OK.”
“I have an important meeting to get to.”

Does it matter? I think it does.

Integrity and courage are the foundations of character. Once you start taking ethical short-cuts, even when no one is watching, you twist your character out of true. The toothpaste is out of the tube. If you compromise your values like this, it is well-nigh impossible to regain your integrity. Besides, in the long term, moral short-cuts and cutting ethical corners—‘turning right at 7:45 am’—find a way to catch up with you.

Blaming and deflecting responsibility

Blaming and deflecting responsibility are now art forms in our culture. Our obsession with blaming others, while excusing ourselves, is an indication of how much we’ve become a nation of narcissists, victims and adult-age children, using the adult form of “my dog ate my homework.”

It won’t wash. Emotionally mature adults make conscious choices and accept responsibility for them. As Helen Douglas said, “Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action.” 
 
We all face ethical challenges every day. Our character is tested when we make split-second choices about what to do and what not do. The next time you come upon the sign that says, “No right turn between 7:00 and 9:00 am,” and it’s 7:45 am with no one in sight, where will your character be? 

“Character is the foundation stone upon which one must build to win respect. Just as no worthy building can be erected on a weak foundation, so no lasting reputation worthy of respect can be built on a weak character.” (R. C. Samsel)

 
Here are some questions for self-reflection:

• What blocks you from acting with integrity?
• Do you believe you have character? What would others say?
• Have you lied, cheated or stolen recently? How about running a red light, a stop sign or a sign that says “No right turn?” What was your rationalization or justification?
• Do you use a different measuring stick to judge your behavior compared with how you judge what others do?
• Who are you at 4:00 am in the dark when no one can see you?

Technorati Tags: ethics, business ethics, character, values, integrity, authenticity

From business hero to criminal swindler. It has all happened before—if you take the trouble to look.
 

George Hudson ‘The Railway King’ (1800–1871)

Sometimes writers really do seem to foresee the future—though I suspect it’s more a case of stating what is clearly true, but people have temporarily forgotten. One of the attributes of chance events is that what goes around, comes around. Only recently, I was reading about an entrepreneur in Britain who got in on the huge boom in building railways in the 1840s. His name was George Hudson and people at the time called him ‘The Railway King’—until his ‘empire’ collapsed into bankruptcy, taking their savings along with it.

What was especially striking was the way in which his actions, nearly 170 years ago, mirrored everything from Enron to Bernard Madoff. Hudson bought up existing railways, promoted more and shamelessly used his position as a Member of Parliament to push his own interests and thwart those of his rivals. He published vaguely worded and heavily doctored accounts (sometimes no accounts at all). Like Madoff (and long before Ponzi), he paid huge ‘dividends’ to shareholders using the money paid in by new investors to buy more shares. He also creamed off vast sums into his own pockets to fund a lavish lifestyle and pay out ‘sweeteners’ on all sides.

When the bubble burst, he was charged with bribery, corruption and stealing the enormous amount of 600,000 pounds (probably close to Madoff’s billions of dollars in today’s money), fled to France and died in poverty. He wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last to act like this. It’s all there in the history books. I guess no one ever reads them or thinks about what they might teach us.

What happens when trust collapses?

Coming much closer to our present times, Charles Handy wrote this in a December 2002 article for Harvard Business Review (“What’s a Business For?” ):

“The markets will empty and share prices will collapse, as ordinary people find other places to put their money—into their houses, maybe, or under their beds. The great virtue of capitalism, that it provides a way for the savings of society to be used for the creation of wealth—will have been eroded. So we will be left to rely increasingly on governments for the creation of our wealth, something that they have always been conspicuously bad at doing . . . Trust is fragile. Like a piece of china, once cracked it is never quite the same. And people’s trust in business, and those who lead it, is today cracking.”

Macho management places suspicion and lack of trust at its center. Company executives not only distrust their own employees, suppliers, customers and society as a whole, they don’t even trust each other. Once their selfish actions come to light, of course, they also forfeit everyone else’s trust in them. Witness the way people all around the world have heaped abuse and derision, not just on those directly involved in the risks that broke the banks, but just about everyone else employed in financial companies.

Can we ignore the social impact of commercial actions? I think not. Business and trade used to be seen as the preeminent force for peace and civilization, replacing feudal bickering over land and titles with the solid co-operation essential to successful trading. Promoting wealth through trade, rather than stealing it by war and conquest, requires people to be honest, to respect contracts and collaborate readily with strangers. Over time, warlike kings became poorer and merchants richer, proving the point that the pen (and the ledger) is mightier than the sword.

Somehow we seem to have lost that. The cult of macho management denies any links between business practice and morality, citing pure self-interest as not just acceptable, but required for markets to operate properly.

But thinking this way inevitably leads to a loss of trust and legitimacy. History proves that again and again. Business today has become more merciless and warlike, even as warfare has become ever more dependent on society’s skills in technology and manufacturing, rather than the individual prowess of warriors on the battlefield.

Do you get it yet?

Even today, there are some who still encourage the kind of macho management that’s based on maximizing short-term profits and executive pay, while ignoring the wider public good. In a forthcoming book, “Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life” Donald Trump (hardly an exemplar either for trust in commerce or successful enterprise) says:

“Business is about making money. It’s about the bottom line. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll get a grasp about what business is. I’m very often surprised by people who think business is something else. They come in with lofty ideas and philanthropic purposes that have absolutely no place in a business meeting. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.”

With an attitude like this, it’s hardly surprising that many organizations still see themselves as somehow outside society—neither bound by its rules and norms, nor concerned with its stability or prosperity. How they expect that same society to have the money to buy their goods and services is beyond me.

Trust is crucial to a civilized way of life, but it is also very easy to abuse. As the present crisis graphically shows, too much is as bad as too little—though the laissez-faire approach of the past decade or so could better be described as apathy than trust. Badly burned by all that has happened, banks and businesses went overnight from trusting almost anybody to trusting virtually nobody.

How can we get back our trust in business? I would be very interested in your thoughts and ideas.

Technorati Tags: business ethics, honesty, trust, the purpose of business, business and society, corporate culture

My attention was caught recently by an article by John Baldoni from the Harvard Business Publishing blog, titled “Accountability Begins at the Top”. Commenting on the swift resignation of Britain’s top terrorism expert, Bob Quick, over an embarrassing breach of security, Baldoni draws some conclusions for leaders as a whole.

He points out that accountability—personal accountability—is fundamental to leadership and notes that the concept of shame seems still to survive in the military and in public service. He doesn’t actually say that leaders in the private sector have no shame at all, but the implication is there in paragraphs like this one:

. . . too often corporate leaders act as if consequences do not matter to them. They are exempt from accountability. Better to let the underlings fall than the top guy. After all, the CEO is special. That attitude fueled the steep rise in executive compensation that saw some at the top making 400 times what an average employee made.

Most corporate leaders certainly don’t seem to feel shame for their actions, even when those actions have been revealed to be based solely on self-interest or driven by high levels of incompetence. If they did, we would have seen a long list of CEOs resigning in recent months, followed by many (perhaps most) of their subordinate executives and other directors.

I wonder why this has come about? Have we, as a society, totally lost the notion that high office carries high responsibility? Have we come to see shame at bad behavior as unnecessary? Do we no longer expect people to suffer the consequences of their actions—unless they are too weak, poor and lacking in influence to find ways to avoid them?

Baldoni says:

“Unless a leader is willing to put the organization first, and to live by the consequences, we will continue to see continued excess and lack of accountability. That will only perpetuate the kind of reckless and greedy behavior that has brought so many of our once proud financial institutions to the brink of insolvency and left so many other companies bereft of responsible leaders.”

Too true, but that doesn’t offer any recipe for bringing back the sense of shame to the commercial world that might both prevent such excesses and cause those who continue to behave that way to resign.

I wonder if the only way is to make a harsh example of some of these guys? Maybe then, they might remember that they aren’t the owners of the corporations they run, merely agents, with a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, employees and the country at large.

Technorati Tags: corporate ethics, business ethics, shame, responsibility, accountability

Is it the real you—or just some make-believe to see you through the day?
 

I remember a Latin phrase we were taught in elementary school: ‘Age quod agis’. In essence, the phrase means, “do what you do”. Really do it; do it with all of yourself. When you act on this phrase and do what you do with your whole self, it means working from your center, your core—not only from the neck up.

When people work from the heart, we’re not talking about some airy-fairy, new-age, ‘soft’, religious, theological or subversive approach. We are, talking about a deeper approach—an approach that focuses on excellence, ethics and fairness and faces up to tough questions like these:

• What is a fair and just wage, compensation package or bonus?
• When are outsourcing, downsizing and layoff efforts justified?
• How can I find my true calling?
• How can we restore trust in the workplace?
• Can our workplaces be more ethical and humane?
• Can the ‘anti-Dilbert’ exist in the workplace?
• Can people do the right thing without management control?
• Why do so many, when they reach the top of the ladder, find it resting against the wrong building?

Warren Buffet said, “I’ve seen a lot of not-very-good human beings succeed in business; I wish it were otherwise.” There are probably many among us who would agree. With the downturn in the economy, people are discovering they are doing just fine with less, and feeling happier too. Why did they ever need more?

Can we do more with our whole selves?

More of us are seeking calm and well-being in the midst of the storm by re-evaluating our values and motivations; discovering in the process that when people come to work from a deeper place, they experience a greater sense of meaning than when driven by ego-based wants like greed and speed.

How does this look? Coming to work with your whole self probably means one or more of these actions:

• Focusing on who you really are (and how you truly want to be) within your team, your group, your organization and the wider community.
• Choosing to take the time to look up from the spreadsheets to focus on people and values; to speak out for what’s right and make an effort to act with compassion.
• Finding a perspective that engenders personal responsibility for—and self-management of—who you are and how you behave at work.
• Dealing with other people by first dealing with yourself. Getting a firm grasp of your core values. Developing the emotional maturity and courage needed to act with integrity.
• Playing an active role in creating a workplace where ethical behavior, trust, trustworthiness, respect and meaning inform all day-to-day activities.

Here are some questions for self-reflection to get you started:

• Are greed and speed the two major driving forces at your workplace? Why? Does it work?
• Do “not-very-good human beings” succeed in your workplace? How is this so? Does this work too?
• Do you check your values at the door when you show up at work? Why?
• Do you deal with the whole person in your relationships with others? If not, why not?
• Do you encourage others at work to see you as a whole person or simply as your function in the organization? What are you hiding?
• Do ‘anti-Dilberts’ exist in your workplace? Do people commonly do the right thing, even when no one is watching? What happens to them?

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” There’s no question people are becoming more introspective about who they are and how they are at work, given the cataclysmic storm of the unethical, immoral and illegal shenanigans we hear about daily. It’s up to all of us to decide whether to make this change permanent, or revert to business as usual, based on constant competition, fear, gossip, bullying and stress.

What will you do?

Technorati Tags: change, authenticity, being yourself, wholeness

Among the millions who watch the Super Bowl, many focus on the ads, not the game.
 

Year after year, people wait for the stoppages during the game, the time-outs and for half-time to see what’s new in the world of advertising—not the content of the advertisements, but the tools, technologies and visual effects; the style more than the substance, the sizzle more than the steak, the eye-candy more than the depth of the message.

I, too, look forward to the ads, not for the ‘cool’, but for the tone and tenor in which the ads come wrapped.

What I typically find, and found again this year, is the preponderance of abuse—physical, emotional and verbal—that runs through them, especially those that are created to be ‘humorous’.

For example, we see a fellow hit by a bus, an electrocution, someone hit in the head with a golf club, a terrible ski accident and a middle manager thrown out of a fourth-story window and crashing to the ground below. All this just in the game’s first quarter!

If life imitates art, surely art also imitates life

There’s a penalty in most sports for ‘unsportsmanlike conduct’. That is what it’s called when someone refuses to play by the rules or acts in a way that is not ethical, fair and honorable. Examples include throwing punches, deliberate physical contact with officials, or verbal abuse and taunting the opponent.

From where I stand, unsportsmanlike conduct runs through many of these ads. What I witnessed was the degree of deceit, violence, conflict and abuse that is now tolerated—even judged entertaining—by a significant number of viewers. The notion that disrespect of other human beings is an appropriate and acceptable way of life in our culture; that abuse, deceit, cheating and demeaning behavior can be funny. Is this really ‘business as usual’—just the way it is in our world?

Since advertising is all about the ‘demographic’, I’m curious to know where the agencies who make these ads (and the companies who sanction them) get their notions of American society. Where do they find the statistics that show violence, abuse and deceit sell?

How do we want our society to be?

Did we choose sometime to live in a culture where gratuitous violence, abuse and deceit are seen as acceptable? Have we become so numbed and inured to such a way of life that few stop to ask why we now seem to view violence, abuse and deceit as entertainment—even humor?

Does macho management merely reflect the machismo present in society as a whole?

This week’s food for thought questions are:

• Do you see violence, abuse and deceit as entertaining or humorous? How did this happen?
• Do you find it amusing when others have an accident or mishap? Why?
• Does the same attitude spill over into your working life? Do you engage in put-down humor at work? What about ‘road rage’ during your commute or ‘desk rage’—being insulting, throwing temper tantrums or becoming physically destructive if something upsets you?
• Do ‘normal’ levels of violence, abuse and deceit strike you as “no big deal?” What about using deceit or cheating to get what you want?
• Can you envision a life where people refuse to tolerate abuse, violence or deceit in any form?

Technorati Tags: unethical behaviour, accepting violence, abusive workplaces, putting others down, sick humor

For an organization, or a management team, to lose the trust of its workforce, its customers or its employees is the kiss of death. So why do so many today seem careless of the truth and casual with their peoples’ trust?
 

Creating and keeping trust is a huge business advantage at any time. In hard economic circumstances like today’s, it will make the difference between survival and failure—for products, for brands, for businesses and for retaining talent.

We’ve heard a lot recently about so-called ‘retention bonuses’ paid to certain employees, purely for sticking around for a specified period. Most of us have never been offered such payments. Indeed, it’s a sad world where employers need to bribe their staff to stay for 12 months. They are admitting that no one would do so for any other reason than the expectation of a fat, contractual payment.

What happened to trust and loyalty? When did we reach such a nadir of belief in the employment relationship that even those running an organization admit their employees will walk out on them quickly, unless they bribe them first?

The power of trust . . .

Trust is enormously powerful, since nearly all of us—employees, customers and investors—are making decisions today about where to put our time, money and effort going forward. None of us expect instant pay-offs, so those decisions must include the belief that today’s choices are more likely than not to pay back handsomely in the future.

We must trust in an expensive product to be around, with stable guarantees and service, if we are going to buy it now. We must believe that an organization will be able to deliver on its promises of good returns, before we invest our money in it. And we must trust our employer to have a job for us long-term, with the promised benefits and prospects, before we ‘go the extra mile’ today to help them cope with economic turbulence. Only an acknowledged lack of trust can explain why businesses would even consider paying ‘retention bonuses’.

How did this pervasive mistrust come about?

. . . and its brittle nature

Trust may be powerful, but it is extremely easy to break. If you catch an employer, a company or a brand out in even a single lie, your trust is instantly undermined. The more uncertain the times, the less likely any of us will give these entities the benefit of the doubt.

When you’re feeling nervous about your own future, finding someone has lied to you is bound to increase your anxiety about everything else they have told you. Is any of it true? Can you trust them at all? Should you get out now, before you maybe suffer a still worse betrayal?

What most people suspect—and many know from bitter experience—is that lying to employees has become normal in many organizations. People are given glowing pictures of exciting jobs and almost limitless future prospects to get them on board. Later, when profits are threatened, those same people are laid off without a second thought.

In a world in which it has become clear that firing staff is the first step in a downturn, not anything like a last resort, you can hardly blame people for withholding trust or loyalty from an employer they automatically accept has been lying to them about job stability.

Business is more than contracts

Employment is much more than a simple legal contract of payment in return for labor. If that were all, every employee would walk about with a notebook, adding up the work done and comparing it, piece by piece, with what the employer had paid for. Any shortfall would cause them to send their employer a bill for the amount underpaid.

Along with whatever is written down, employers and employees enter into unspoken, implied contracts that are far more important. The employer expects—and usually gets—extra effort and flexibility in return for the implied obligation to provide stable, long-term employment, steadily rising wages and prospects for individual advancement. If it seems the employer can no longer meet these implied obligations—as many fear today—employees usually increase their input of unpaid effort to help the employer get out of the mess, if they trust the employer is being honest with them about the situation.

If that isn’t so—if they come to believe the employer is knowingly making false statements to extract effort they have no intention of rewarding—you cannot blame anyone for trying to get out of that job as quickly as they can; or, if a bad jobs market is forcing them to stay put, for giving the employer as little additional effort or loyalty as they can get away with.

Lies, damned lies and management statements

Trust demands the truth. There are no two ways about it. Tell the truth, stick to it and people will trust what you say—even if they don’t like it. Tell lies, get caught in doing so (or, like some bosses, boast about it) and people will look out for themselves and grin happily if that causes you a problem.

In the past few months, we have seen so many egregious cases of lying it’s becoming tough to believe that anyone tells the truth any more. No wonder economies flounder because banks won’t lend and people won’t buy. How can either do so, if they don’t trust borrowers to be truthful or employers to have a job for them beyond the end of next week?

In a world where organizations employ ‘spin doctors’ (professional deceivers) to hide what they are doing from any scrutiny, trust has become as rare, and almost as mythical, as The Abominable Snowman or Bigfoot. The reason we need more and tougher regulation is not to hem businesses in, or block them from engaging in free trade, but to force them to tell more of the truth.

Until we do that, we will be stuck with crippled credit markets, consumers who don’t consume and staff who won’t even come to work unless you pay them extra (and not for long, even then). No economy can function like that. None of us can live like that. If we, the public, want to let go and vent our anger and frustration on a sensible target, we should forget bank bonuses and corporate jets and start rooting out the liars instead.

Technorati Tags: truthfulness, honesty, ethics, trust, corporate ethics, ethical management, truth in disclosure

The curious world of the ‘morally disengaged’
 

People routinely behave in unethical, immoral and untrustworthy behaviors, yet a good many hardly ever experience one scintilla of guilt. They behave dishonestly, then somehow rationalize their behavior to let themselves off the hook. Why do they do this? How do they live with themselves?

Psychologists tell us that ‘moral self-regulation’ and ‘moral disengagement’ can both lead to dishonesty. These two modes of reacting to a dishonest act allow the perpetrator off the hook. They either interpret what they do in a way that lets them link their act to moral goals or values (moral self-regulation); or they uncouple their dishonest behavior from their personal conception of moral values altogether (moral disengagement). What we seem to be experiencing now is more and more of the latter.

“The ideals which have always been before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness had never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.”—Albert Einstein

Dealing with ‘cognitive dissonance’

A person who behaves dishonestly and unethically usually experiences both a mental and physical reaction. Mentally, knowing that there is a disconnect between their action and their value system, they experience what psychologists term ‘cognitive dissonance’. Physically, there is a ‘felt-somatic’ sense in the body that is experienced as discomfort.

How do they come to grips with these sources of distress? To either see what they do as somehow morally permissible, or remove any moral aspect altogether, they resort to ‘moral disengagement’. They disengage their actions from their sense of right and wrong; for example, to benefit from other people’s dishonest or unethical behavior while buying cheap clothes from a company that ignores human rights and uses child labor.

Guilt, shame and self-regulation

The ego-need underlying moral disengagement is to absolve one’s self of guilt, blame or shame for dishonest actions. By deciding to act dishonestly, then morally disengage, people set themselves different standards to those they impose on others. Simply put, given the same dishonest behavior, they accept themselves as ethical and judge that you’re not.

The large number of hypocrites who have surfaced or been ‘outed’ recently—corrupt politicians, cheating sports stars, crooked financiers and immoral religious leaders—provide a prime example of the duplicity that moral disengagement perpetuates.

What do these people tell themselves? Perhaps things like these:
“I may have slipped this time, but overall I engage in more ethical behavior than others.”
“I am less unfair than many others. You’re simply picking on me.”
“Everyone does it. I’m just surviving like they are. It’s unfair to single me out.”
“I have a right to be more suspicious of others’ actions than they do of mine. I’ve been hurt too, you know.”
“Sure, I like money, but there are many others far more greedy and driven by money than I am.”

The truth is that everyone has the ability to view their actions and either act morally or not; we all face the choice to behave well or badly; and we all need to accept that others will—rightly—judge us by our actions. We choose to disengage morally or stick with our values and sense of ethical standards.

Workplace ethics

The ethical and moral bottom line is whether to consider ethical standards, a moral code, or inner values in deciding your conduct. Yet the degree to which any individual will do this often depends as much on the environment and culture in which they find themselves as the strength of their own ethical convictions.

As you reflect on your workplace environment, ask yourself what is the culture around notions like dishonesty, cheating, lying, or behaving unethically. What are the tacit, subtle or unwritten rules that are applied to dishonest or unethical behavior? Is moral disengagement a business-as-usual strategy? Is there a sense of pervasive dishonesty?

In the final analysis, you are responsible for your own actions. Excuses like “The devil made me do it” or “Everybody does it” do not apply—ever. You and you alone are responsible for moral engagement or moral disengagement. Whether you ‘go along to get along’ or choose to adhere to your internal values and sense of ethics and honesty is always your choice.

Given the strong force of peer pressure and the almost obsessive need to ‘fit in’ or be accepted as ‘one of us’, even those with a strong internal core-value system can still succumb to an unethical environment. Where opportunities, pressure or ‘silent consent’ drive people to lie, cheat and steal, even many of the strong-willed will do so.

Moral disengagement has become the ‘behavior-du-jour’. When we uncouple our behavior from our internal moral code, and detour from our moral compass with an ends-justify-the-means or everybody-does-it mindset, we are running the risk of accepting—even encouraging—a culture that may later turn around and bite us.

Here are some questions it may be worth asking yourself:

• Do you go along with a culture that invites dishonesty? In your workplace culture, is unethical behavior OK because others are doing it?
• Do the ends justify the means? Do you use euphemistic language to sanitize or condone moral disengagement?
• Is it usual to assume getting ahead is more important than how you get there? Is cheating OK “if no one gets hurt?”
• In your organization or department, are there open discussions about ethics and standards? If not, why not?
• Do you ever use moral disengagement to justify your own unethical or dishonest behavior? If so, why?

Technorati Tags: business ethics, workplace standards, corporate culture, why peole cheat, moral disengagement

Why taking responsibility and saying sorry is the mark of a good leader.
 

Saying sorry is one of the most difficult things that human beings can be asked to do. It’s hard enough in a family or a personal context, but in a hierarchical organization, no matter how small or informal, it’s a lot more difficult.

Why do most people so dislike apologizing? It makes their egos feel insecure to show weakness and look vulnerable. If they must do it, their usual reaction is to produce an apology that isn’t an apology at all, but a disguised power play with a hidden appeal for sympathy.

Let’s take an everyday example. You come back, tired and disheartened from a long and unsuccessful business trip. A report that you had asked to be completed during your absence isn’t ready. As your deputy or assistant now has to explain to you, another department on which you were relying has failed to come up with the information you needed. In your frustration, you explode in anger at your poor colleague, blaming everything on him or her.

The next day, with the benefit of a night’s sleep, you start to feel a bit stupid. You shouldn’t have behaved like that. So what are you going to do? You know that you ought to apologize, but your ego doesn’t want to appear weak or lose face. So you wind up bumping casually into your colleague in the corridor, and mumbling something along the lines of: “Sorry if I overreacted a bit yesterday. I realize now it wasn’t entirely your fault. But you have to understand I’d just come back from a long and frustrating trip where everything went wrong, and, to top it all, my plane was three hours late. Anyway, let’s forget about it shall we.”

It’s obvious, especially if you look at the italicized words, that this isn’t really an apology at all. It’s a self-justification. Rather than acknowledging that you behaved wrongly, it’s an attempt to put the responsibility on someone else for making you lose your temper. You should be sorry for me, it says. You should understand how much I’ve suffered. For their part, your colleague is likely to mumble something acceptable and move on. Few of us would find it very easy to demand a proper apology from the boss, especially in public.

What does this type of apology produce?

Very little. Nothing is settled. Inwardly, you still feel awkward and remorseful about your behavior, no matter how you try to justify things. Your colleague isn’t satisfied, since you’ve more or less put the responsibility onto him or her. You’ve probably done permanent damage to your relationship—and, if he or she reports what you said, perhaps to your image with others too. Until you apologize properly, the psychic tension is not going to go away.

What you need to say is something like this: “I’m really sorry for behaving like that yesterday. The fact that I was tired is no excuse. Now, is there something I can do to move things forward?”

Letting the ego take control

Part of the problem is that we live in a more and more ego-driven society, and we adopt its rules without really thinking.

The kind of person who is dominated by ego-based thinking—fearful, suspicious, aggressive, distrustful and driven by the desire for money and security—is held up as an example for us to admire and emulate. If you want to succeed, we are told, this is the model you have to follow. There is no room here for consideration of the needs of others—or even old-fashioned civility.

We’re all ‘victims’ now

Another part of the problem is that we live in a ‘society of victims’, where people compete with each other to gain sympathy and understanding. Being a victim, among other things, means never having to say you’re sorry.

Organizations are largely headed, nowadays, by weak people pretending to be strong. They are frightened, aggressive, insecure and scared to take responsibility for their mistakes, in case it reveals just how weak and vulnerable they are and gives others an advantage over them. That’s why, when things go wrong, they try to present themselves as victims.

Where you or I might see greedy and powerful people unable to acknowledge their responsibility for creating the greatest financial catastrophe of modern times, these same people look in the mirror and see themselves as mere victims of circumstances. Greedy Chief Executive Officers, who took insane risks and lied about the state of their companies, seek to portray themselves as helpless victims of a crisis that “nobody predicted”— so, of course, they have nothing to apologize for. Greedy millionaires who begged Mr. Bernard Madoff to make obscene amounts of money for them, without inquiring how he did it, now recast themselves as victims deserving of public sympathy and support.

“I admit that I’m to blame”

An apology means that you take responsibility for the consequences of your own actions, whether or not you consciously intended them. Taking responsibility—and being prepared to say sorry in a genuine way—is the act of a strong person, not a weak one. It is also part of being an adult, which is one reason why so much of today’s world looks as though it’s run by whining adolescents.

Leadership that will not accept responsibility is not leadership in any sense that I understand it. It’s not even adult behavior. Surely it’s high time for these people to grow up.

Technorati Tags: responsibility, leadership, apologizing, accountability, management essentials

However you get the word out, make sure to do it.
 

I know I could be accused of harping on about the necessity for leaders to communicate—and, more importantly, to know how best to communicate—but communication is a critically important activity. In today’s economic environment, communication takes on an even more important role.

Employees are not sure if their jobs are secure, partners are not sure if companies are viable, and what once was unthinkable has become commonplace. In times like these, communication can provide some sense of security, assurance and comfort. As Suzanne Bates suggests, think of Captain Sullenberger’s communications to both the air traffic control and to passengers during the recent plane ditching in the Hudson River.

“We’re gonna be in the Hudson,” he says to controllers. He never wasted words, but told people exactly what would happen. “Brace for impact,” he told the passengers, a signal that also prepared the flight crew to fall back on their training, remain calm, and get passengers safely off the plane.

No excuses!

What’s also worth noting is that, in today’s world, communication can take place in so many different ways—and from nearly anywhere on the planet. We aren’t constrained by geography any longer. Technological innovations have redefined what counts as ‘nearby’. Timing is no longer an issue either. Nearly everyone has some kind of message-taking system available to them.

Yet I still hear colleagues say they haven’t had a chance to reach out and let people know about something, or are simply “too busy to communicate.” To be honest, I doubt that either is true very often.

It’s hard to imagine anyone, despite how very busy many people are, not being able to find the few moments it takes to communicate with those that want to hear from us. Imagine going to a doctor for a biopsy and not hearing back from them because they are “too busy” to let you know the results. Where do you think your imagination would go after just a couple of days?

Just do it!

All it takes is some brief, to-the-point communication. The way you do it is much less important that the fact of doing it at all.

Write something. When did you last hand-write a note or letter? Use e-mail. What about cell phones? Text messaging keeps the communications pithy. Instant messaging is always there too— at least if you have those you want to communicate with on your buddy list (and they’re online). You could always distribute your message via Facebook or MySpace, assuming you don’t mind the public nature of it. Oh, and let’s not forget about Twitter. In just a mere 140 characters, you can still communicate a great amount to an enormous number of people simultaneously.

There are plenty of ways to get the word out, whether it means picking up the phone, writing an email, a text message or using on-line technology. The bottom-line is this: regardless of your communication weapon of choice, be sure to communicate. Inquiring minds want to know and silence is no longer an option.

Technorati Tags: communication, getting the word out, keeping people in touch, managerial necessities