Critique of Moral Intelligence

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More Praise for Moral Intelligence 2.0

“Lennick and Kiel demonstrate the critical importance of values-based leadership in building companies that last during difficult times.

—Charles W. Sorenson, M.D., President and CEO, Intermountain Healthcare

“Lennick and Kiel reveal the moral leadership practices of successful organiza- tions. It’s fascinating to learn how moral intelligence drives business success at companies like Cardinal Health, American Express, and Hormel.”

—Andrew Doman, President and CEO, Russell Investment Group

“Moral Intelligence 2.0 has given me insights that will help us with the continued evolution of our business and will enhance our long-term survival and prosperity.”

—Joe Dedin, Executive Director, Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center

“Rarely do books come out that become required reading for members of all Boards. Moral Intelligence 2.0 gives a masterly analysis of how to do the right thing in corporate life.”

—Peter Hogarth, Former Director London Stock Exchange and Senior Partner, LVA Partners

“I’ve discovered from this book that it is moral intelligence which I have found so critical to my years of leading others. This has surely been the formula for the suc- cess of my business.”

—Dale Larson, Owner, Larson Doors, Inc.

“Lennick and Kiel have brought focus to a subject has been undervalued for years. I found that if my senior team held firmly to these principles, we would safely nav- igate the most challenging of times. I strongly recommend this book for every CEO and leader in the business world.”

—Richard Harrington, Retired CEO, Thomson Reuters

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“The value of emotional intelligence in leadership has been well documented, but in this book, Lennick and Kiel solidify the absolute correlation between moral intelligence and business performance. This should be required reading for leaders at all levels.”

—Bill Shaner, President and CEO, Save-A-Lot Food Stores

“The authors show that rather than slowing down a business, moral intelligence is essential to success—even in the most difficult of times and when the competition is fiercest.”

—Gary Bhojwani, President and CEO, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America

“Lennick and Kiel provide a clear and compelling path for readers to understand the importance of strong moral values to their business and the way forward toward execution.”

—Michael E. LaRocco, President and CEO, Fireman’s Fund Insurance

“This important book challenges every leader, every citizen, to lead lives with pur- pose, intention, and a true north.”

—Roger Fransecky, Ph.D., Founder and Senior Partner, LVA Partners

“Lennick and Kiel confront leadership’s comfort levels with gritty questions such as whether alleged values are aligned with actual behavior. Moral Intelligence 2.0 is a no nonsense book to be valued by those willing to invest effort to achieve integrity and success.”

—Michael Sabbeth, Esq., Author of The Good, The Bad, & The Difference: How To Talk With Children About Values

“During these times of public mistrust and cynicism of government, corporate America, and mass media, this book is needed now more than ever. The companies highlighted by the authors are thriving examples that success and profit can be achieved without sacrificing integrity. Our business is our employees.”

—Yvonne K. Franzese, Chief Human Resources Officer, Allianz of America

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Moral Intelligence 2.0

Enhancing Business Performance and Leadership Success

in Turbulent Times

Doug Lennick • Fred Kiel, Ph.D. with Kathy Jordan, Ph.D.

Upper Saddle River, NJ • Boston • Indianapolis • San Francisco

New York • Toronto • Montreal • London • Munich • Paris • Madrid

Cape Town • Sydney • Tokyo • Singapore • Mexico City

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Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and the publisher was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters or in all capitals.

The authors and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this book, but make no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the information or programs contained herein.

The publisher offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk purchases or special sales, which may include electronic versions and/or custom covers and content particular to your business, training goals, marketing focus, and branding interests. For more information, please contact:

U.S. Corporate and Government Sales (800) 382-3419 [email protected]

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Visit us on the Web: informit.com/ph

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. For information regarding permissions, write to:

Pearson Education, Inc. Rights and Contracts Department 501 Boylston Street, Suite 900 Boston, MA 02116 Fax (617) 671-3447

ISBN-13: 978-0-13-249828-9 ISBN-10: 0-13-249828-6

Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at R.R. Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana. First printing April 2011

Associate Publisher: Tim Moore Executive Editor: Jim Boyd Development Editor: Russ Hall Managing Editor: Kristy Hart Project Editor: Jovana San Nicolas-Shirley Copy Editor: Apostrophe Editing Services Indexer: Erika Millen Proofreader: Water Crest Publishing Publishing Coordinator: Pamela Boland Cover Designer: Chuti Prasertsith Compositor: Nonie Ratcliff

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To our wives, Beth Ann Lennick and Sandy Kiel, who have helped us fine-tune our own moral compasses over the years—and to our children,

who always lovingly challenge us to live in alignment! Alan, Mary, and Joanie (Doug) and Kelly, Amy, Bryn, Anna, Jordan and Freda (Fred)—

and to our parents, whose early nurturing provided our foundation— Albert and Martha Lennick and Orville and Mabel Kiel

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Foreword by Richard Leider . . . . . . . . . xiii

Foreword to Previous Edition by Richard E. Boyatzis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix

Leaders Interviewed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxiv

Thought Partners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxvii

PART ONE • MORAL INTELLIGENCE

1 Good Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Moral Stupidity Act 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

What Does Moral Leadership Look Like? . . . . . . 15

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

2 Born to Be Moral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

What the Best Leaders Believe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

A Visit to the Nursery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Nature Versus Nurture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Growing Up Moral. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Learning to Be Responsible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

When Things Go Wrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Inside Your (Moral) Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Contents

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It’s All in Your Head . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

The Moral Map of Your Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Why We’re Good and Why We’re Bad . . . . . . . . . 46

So What Goes Wrong?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

The Neuroscience of Moral Decision Making . . . 48

Can We Actually Change Our Brain? . . . . . . . . . . 52

Moral Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

3 Your Moral Compass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

The Morality of Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Put It in Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Frame 3: Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

4 Staying True to YourMoral Compass. . . . 81

Endnote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

PART TWO • DEVELOPING MORAL SKILLS

5 Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Acting Consistently with Principles, Values, and Beliefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Telling the Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Standing Up for What Is Right . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Keeping Promises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

6 Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Taking Responsibility for Personal Choices . . . . 115

Admitting Mistakes and Failures. . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Embracing Responsibility for Serving Others . . . 121

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

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7 Compassion and Forgiveness . . . . . . . . 125

Actively Caring About Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

Letting Go of Your Own Mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Letting Go of Others’ Mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

8 Emotions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Self-Awareness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Understanding Your Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Personal Effectiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Deciding What to Think . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Self-Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Nurturing Emotional Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Interpersonal Effectiveness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Empathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Misplaced Compassion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Respecting Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Getting Along with Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

Endnote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

9 Making Moral Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

How Roger Used the 4 Rs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

PART THREE • MORAL LEADERSHIP

10 The Moral Leader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Performance Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Endnote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

CONTENTS ix

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11 Leading Large Organizations . . . . . . . . 197

The Fabric of Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Is There Such a Thing as a Morally Intelligent Organization?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

The Morally Intelligent Organization— An Aerial View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Morally Intelligent Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

The Principles That Matter Most . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

Cultivating Organizational Integrity . . . . . . . . . . 203

The Responsible Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

The Compassionate Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

The Forgiving Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

Recruiting for Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

Reinforcing Values Starts at the Top . . . . . . . . . 218

The Power of Formal Rewards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Success Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Ideal Versus Real . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Values and the Global Organization . . . . . . . . . . 222

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

12 Moral Intelligence for the Entrepreneur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Moral Values in Small Organizations. . . . . . . . . . 228

Last Words About Business Start-Ups . . . . . . . . 242

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

Epilogue Becoming a Global Moral Leader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Raising the Stakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

Watch Your Wake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Give Back. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

Create the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

x CONTENTS

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A Global Business Opportunity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

A Strengthening Your Moral Skills . . . . . . 251

A Look in the Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Using the MCI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

The Right Frame of Mind for Completing the MCI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Scoring and Interpreting Your MCI . . . . . . . . . . 253

Prioritizing Your Moral Development Efforts. . . 254

The Road Less Traveled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

The 80/20 Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Your Moral Development Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Putting Your Moral Development Plan into Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

Breaking Bad Habits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

Reward Yourself for Positive Change . . . . . . . . . 259

Surround Yourself with Positive People . . . . . . . 259

Do I Really Need to Change? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

Books, Audio, and Video Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Workshops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Personal Counseling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Executive Coaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Endnote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

B Moral Competency Inventory (MCI) . . . 263

C Scoring the MCI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

Moral Competencies Worksheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

What Your Total MCI Score Means. . . . . . . . . . . 274

CONTENTS xi

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D Interpreting Your MCI Scores . . . . . . . 277

Total MCI Score (Alignment Score) . . . . . . . . . . 278

Highest and Lowest Competency Scores . . . . . . 279

Individual Item Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

Reality Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

Do Your Scores Matter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

Now What? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

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Foreword

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I find the wisdom of poets useful in my life and work. With a few words, the right poem at the right time can speak with a clear voice and help us see things new in the world.

This poem by William Stafford provides us with a helpful place to return if we feel confused about a moral choice or challenge in the world.

“The Way It Is”

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread.

—William Stafford

Moral Intelligence 2.0 provides us with the helpful guidance to choose and to follow the “thread” of our own moral compass.

Each day we face a series of “moral moments”—personal choice points. These are moments that require some decisions to serve others

Credit: William Stafford, “The Way It Is,” from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Copyright (cr) 1998 by the Estate of William Stafford. Reprinted with the per- mission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

www.graywolfpress.org

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xiv MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

or to be self-absorbed. We are likely, at times, to find ourselves in moral dilemmas. Each choice we make can feel as if we are either holding on to or letting go of our thread.

We find the purpose path through our own life by following our own moral compass, holding on to our thread. How do we do such a thing? How do we follow some invisible thread that runs through our life? How can we even know it exists?

One of the most helpful answers I can give is to simply read this book. It will help you look at the story of how your own life of moral intelligence has unfolded. It will help you see the thread that, perhaps invisible at the time, helped you choose whether to say yes or no, right or left.

The authors have set out to illuminate a very complex subject—that of the moral compass in us all. And I found their insights revealing. Chapter 2 “Born to Be Moral” is worth the price of the book. I found myself again and again reflecting on the story, “A visit to the nursery.” The notion of our inborn capacity of empathy struck a deep chord within me.

If we can trust that we are born “hardwired” to be moral, if we can trust that our hearts know how to recognize our thread, then this book will provide a blueprint, a manual of specifics to follow it.

What practices, what knowledge or resource do we turn to in order to find our way? First, as the authors show us, we begin by choosing to uncover and express our purpose. Next, we clearly define the distinction between “how” we make choices, and “why” we make them. How often have we allowed the how of our choices to overshadow why we made them?

Holding on to the thread, listening to your moral compass, may seem insignificant, but it is no small thing. It dramatically shifts the way we see, the way we choose, and the way we lead and live. It determines whether we lead a life of anxiety and stress or a spacious life of purpose and meaning. You don’t ever let go of the thread.

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Bottom-line thinking might now prevail, but the moral compass journey has deep roots. It also has deep resonance. One might say, in fact, that it’s not so much an idea whose time has come, as an idea that has always been with us—it’s just that we need to be reminded. I’m pleased that so many people’s lives have already been changed for the better through this reminder and I hope that the 2.0 edition will add to the number of those who are on the purpose path.

—Richard Leider

Bestselling author of The Power of Purpose and Repacking Your Bags

FOREWORD xv

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Foreword to Previous Edition Building a Better Culture

There are few issues with more significant impact on life in and out of organizations today than that of moral action. Crusades and jihads are moral righteousness taken to harmful and even evil extents—hurting others and demanding homogeneity of beliefs. The moral righteousness involved in trying to fix, save, or punish others has led to some of the most horrible episodes in human existence. Beyond the tragic loss of life, there is the subjugation of the human spirit. There is the loss of dreams and possibilities—the loss of spirit. Ironically, this travesty of moral imperialism comes at the same time as people worldwide are voicing the need for more spirituality and religion.

Most of us know right from wrong. In hundreds of studies of the characteristics that differentiate outstanding from average leaders from their less effective counterparts (both average and poor performers), integrity has never appeared to distinguish high performers. Is this evi- dence of a morally bankrupt system? No. It is that the moments of “out- tegrity” are so egregious and shocking that we become preoccupied with them. In the process, we miss the many tests of our morality and humanity that we face each day. For example, deciding how to promote a product or service is enacted in the context of one’s values and an organizational culture that encourages consistency with a set of shared beliefs and norms.

The essential challenge of moral intelligence is not knowing right from wrong, but doing versus knowing. There are people who are suf- fering from mental illness and a small percentage of the population that are psychopaths or sociopaths. All of these people may not “know” right

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from wrong. But most of us are not in that category. So why don’t we act appropriately more often? Most of us do—most of the time. Of the hundreds of decisions we make each day, most of us consider what is “right,” what will be better and help our community, organization, and fellow humans. But we don’t always agree on what is right.

Values and Operating Philosophy This is where values and philosophy come into play. Our values are based on beliefs and determine our attitudes. A value typically includes an evaluation (i.e., good or bad designation) of an object or subject. Sets of values form proscriptions and prescriptions (i.e., statements of what not to do and what to do) that guide our daily life. Values also affect how we interpret and perceive things and events around us. But decades of research on values have shown little correlation to behavior.1

To understand people’s actions, we have to look behind specific val- ues to uncover how an individual determines value. This can be called a person’s “operating philosophy.” Research into typical operating philosophies has resulted in a test that allows us to measure a person’s relative dominance among three different ways to determine the value of a act, a project, a decision, how to spend your time, and so forth.2

Our philosophy is the way we determine values.

For example, a consultant lists “family” as a dominant value, but still spends five days a week away from his wife and two children, trav- eling for his job. He says he’s enacting his value by providing enough money for his family’s needs. By contrast, a manufacturing manager who also lists “family” as his dominant value has turned down promo- tions so he can have dinner each night with his wife and children.

The difference between those two men might be in how aware they are of their true values, how aligned their actions are with those values, or in the way they interpret their values. Accordingly, they reveal deep differences in how each values people, organizations, and activities. Such differences may reflect disparate operating philosophies—the

FOREWORD TO PREVIOUS EDITION xvii

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most common of which are pragmatic, intellectual, and humanistic.3

And although no one philosophy is “better” than another, each drives people’s actions, thoughts, and feelings in distinctive ways.

The central theme of a pragmatic philosophy is a belief that useful- ness determines the worth of an idea, effort, person, or organization.4

People with this philosophy often measure things to assess their value, and believe that they’re largely responsible for the events of their lives. No surprise, then, that among the emotional intelligence competencies, pragmatics rank high in self-management. Unfortunately, their individ- ualistic orientation often—but not always—pulls them into using an individual contribution approach to management.

The central theme of an intellectual philosophy5 is the desire to understand people, things, and the world by constructing an image of how they work, thereby providing them some emotional security in pre- dicting the future. People with this philosophy rely on logic in making decisions, and assess the worth of something against an underlying “code” or set of guidelines that stress reason. People with this outlook rely heavily on cognitive competencies, sometimes to the exclusion of social competencies. You might hear someone with an intellectual philosophy say, for example: “If you have an elegant solution, others will believe it. No need to try to convince them about its merits.” They can use a visionary leadership style, if the vision describes a well- reasoned future.

The central theme of a humanistic philosophy is that close, per- sonal relationships give meaning to life.6 People with this philosophy are committed to human values; family and close friends are seen as more important than other relationships. They assess the worth of an activity in terms of how it affects their close relations. Similarly, loyalty is valued over mastery of a job or skill. Where a pragmatist’s philoso- phy might lead her to “sacrifice the few for the many,” a humanistic leader would view each person’s life as important, naturally cultivating the social awareness and relationship management competencies. Accordingly, they gravitate toward styles that emphasize interaction with others.

xviii MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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Each one of us believes in these three value orientations (i.e., pragmatic value, intellectual value, and human value). But most of us will prioritize three value orientations differently at different stages in our lives.

The point is that we have to be more aware both of our values and how we value—our philosophy. We need to be sensitive to those who have different values and different philosophies if we are to live together and make the world a better place. And we need to be sensitive to such differences if we are to have adaptive, resilient, and innovative organizations. Diversity brings us innovation, but only if we are open to it and respect it.

In this book, Doug Lennick and Fred Kiel define moral intelligence as, “the mental capacity to determine how universal human principles should be applied to our values, goals, and actions.” They argue we are “hard wired” to be moral but often stray from the path. Within each of us are the values and basis for our moral compass. Each of us should pay attention to our moral compass often—more often than we do. Lennick and Kiel’s exploration of this topic could not have come at a more important time.

Cultural Relativism and Moral Horizons of Significance We are exposed to the vast differences in the world on the Internet, tel- evision, movies, and newspapers. We see it in our organizations and schools. We see it walking down the street of most cities of the world. Is every culture and subgroup within it assured that its values and phi- losophy are “OK” with the rest of us? Maybe not.

In his 1991 book, The Ethics of Authenticity, McGill University Professor and prominent philosopher, Charles Taylor, claimed that cul- tural relativism and postmodernism both violated basic ethical stan- dards.7 He claimed that cultural relativism (“everyone has their own morality based on their situation and culture”) taken to its ultimate con- clusion becomes moral anarchy. It breeds a form of egocentrism and

FOREWORD TO PREVIOUS EDITION xix

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selfishness. It suggests everyone is in their own world. Similar to the argument in Moral Intelligence, Taylor suggests that there are, among humans and society, “moral horizons of significance.” These are the universals that Lennick and Kiel propose are so crucial to organiza- tional success. We know it is wrong to kill another human. But we can be brought to that point by contingencies. Is it acceptable to kill some- one to defend your family? To get food for yourself? To take their shirt or sneakers because you like them and cannot afford to buy them? Because they annoy you? Because they have insulted your faith? Taylor’s concept is central to the application of the ideas in this book. How do we determine what exceptions to moral universals are justified and which show a lack of moral intelligence?

But this brings us back to whose values and philosophy are right or more right than the others? Without a high degree of moral intelligence, Lennick and Kiel illustrate in their book with marvelous and moving stories, we fall back into fighting to defend our own views as best—and imposing them on others.

In deconstructing the components of moral intelligence, Lennick and Kiel show us how four clusters of skills integrate to form this capability: integrity, responsibility, compassion and forgiveness, and emotions. They offer many ideas as to how we can use our moral intelligence to evoke moral intelligence in others. Their combined effect will be more effective organizations. Why? First, we will be proud of where we work and for what it stands. Therefore, we will feel more committed to the organization, its culture, and vision. Third, we will access and utilize more of our own talent (and that of others around us) because we are free from guilt and shame. And fourth, it is the right thing to do!

Believing and Belonging There is another crucial business impact from values, philosophy, and collective moral intelligence—they form the basis of our organizational vision, purpose, and culture. We want to believe in what we are doing.

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We want to feel that we are contributing and our work has some mean- ing. But looming labor pool demographics and skill shortages suggest that, as McKinsey and Company said, we are in a “war for talent.”8 This will become a battle for the hearts and minds (and even the spirit) of people your organization wishes to attract, keep, and motivate. Over the course of the next decades, an organization’s vision, sense of purpose, and culture will become even more significant recruitment differentia- tors to discerning job applicants.

Moral Intelligence In the following pages, you will be provoked into reflecting on your own beliefs and style of using them. You will be inspired by reading about effective executives with high moral intelligence. You will be ashamed and embarrassed reading about ineffective executives who do not seem to be able to spell moral intelligence, nonetheless, live it. The apparent simplicity of their argument and smoothness of their writing style should not be misunderstood. This material is deep and significant. The impact of moral intelligence is much more than the long-term success of your organization. It is the preservation of our civilization and species.

—Richard E. Boyatzis Coauthor of Primal Leadership January 31, 2005

Endnotes 1. Michael Hechter. “Values research in the social and behavioral sciences.” In

Michael Hechter, Lynn Nadel, and Richard E. Michod, (eds.). The Origin of Values. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1993.

2. Gordon W. Allport, P.E.Vernon, and Garnder Lindzey, Study of Values. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960.; Chris Argyris and Don Schon, Theory in Practice Learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1982.; Clyde Kluckhohn. “Values and Value-Orientations in the Theory of Action.” In Talcott Parson and E.A. Shils, eds. Toward a General Theory of Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

FOREWORD TO PREVIOUS EDITION xxi

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University Press, 1951. pp. 388-433.; Florence Kluckhohn and Fred Strodtbeck. Variations in Value Orientations. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson & Co, 1961.; Milton Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values. New York: Free Press, 1973.; Shalom H. Schwartz, “Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, volume 25. NY: Academic Press, 1992. pp. 1-65.; Michael Hechter, “Values Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences,” In Michael Hechter, Lynn Nadel, and Richard.E. Michod, eds. The Origin of Values. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1993. pp. 1-28.

3. “Assessing Your Operating Philosophy: The Philosophical Orientation Questionnaire” measures the relative dominance of each of these three for the person. Richard E. Boyatzis, Angela J. Murphy, and Jane V. Wheeler, “Philosophy as a Missing Link Between Values and Behavior,” Psychological Reports, 86 (2000): pp. 47-64.

4. The Pragmatic Operating Philosophy emerged from “pragmatism” (as reflected in the works of John Dewey, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Richard Rorty, ), “consequentialism” (as reflected in the works of C.D. Johnson, and P. Pettit), “instrumentalism” (as reflected in the works of John Dewey), and “utilitarianism” (as reflected in the works of Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill). See the Boyatzis, Murphy, and Wheeler article cited earlier for the full references.

5. The Intellectual Operating Philosophy emerged from “rationalism” (as reflected in the works of Rene Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Benedict de Spinoza), and the various philosophers claiming rationalism as their etiological root, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Jurgen Habermas, as well as the philosophical structuralists (Claude Levi-Strauss and Jean Piaget), and post- modernists (Friedrich Nietzsche). See the Boyatzis, Murphy, and Wheeler article cited earlier for the full references.

6. The Human Operating Philosophy emerged from “communitarianism” (W. F. Brundage), “hermeneutics” (Hans-Georg Gadamer), “humanism” (Francesco Petrarch and R.W. Sellars), and “collectivism” (R. Burlingame and W.H. Chamberlin).

7. Charles Taylor. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.

8. Elizabeth Chambers, Mark Foulon, Helen Hanfield-Jones, Steven Hankin, and Edward Michaels, III. The War for Talent. The Mckinsey Quarterly, #3, 1998.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to give a special thanks to Orlo Otteson, our original “cracker- jack” researcher who, over four years, helped us successfully tackle the mountainous job of reviewing the vast literature on this subject.

We wish to thank all our colleagues and friends who have been so important in helping us sharpen our thinking on moral intelligence. Just as important, they encouraged us to continue our research efforts when the word “moral” was not a word one easily used in public discourse.

These people also inspired us by their own demonstration on a day- to-day basis of what it means to live in alignment!

A partial list from Doug: Kay May, my office manager and friend for more than 30 years and now one of my business partners; John Wright, the best man at my wedding and my partner in launching my writing career more than 25 years ago with The Simple Genius (You); the CEOs I have been fortunate to work for and learn from—in order of their appearance, they include Harvey Golub, Jeff Stiefler, Dave Hubers, Jim Cracchiolo, and Ken Chenault; my colleagues at Lennick Aberman—Rick Aberman, Jim Choat, Jim Jensen, Kay May, Kris Petersen, Judy Skoglund, Ben Smith, Chuck Wachendorfer, Chris Ambrose, Ryan Goulart, Teresa Hanratty, Ray Kelly, Elaine Larson, Teresa Lombard, and Leela Rao; the talented team of senior executives I was privileged to lead at American Express Financial Advisors before changing roles in September 2000—Teresa Hanratty, Brian Heath, Jim Jensen, Marietta Johns, Steve Kumagai, Becky Roloff, Sam Samsel, Norm Weaver, and Mike Woodward; Steve Lennick, my cousin, friend, and confidant; Carol Lennick, my sister; Bob Day and Tom Turner, the two men who took a chance on me when I was eager to

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xxiv MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

start my business life at the ripe old age of 21—they trained and devel- oped me; Roy Geer, Row Moriarty, Richard Leider, Larry Wilson, and Doug Baker Sr.—all five are mentors and friends for many years; and, very important, all the people I’ve had the opportunity to serve as either their leader or their follower or both.

A partial list from Fred: My partners Kelly Garramone, Richard Aldersea, Kim Merrill, and my other colleagues at KRW who have encouraged me on this journey: Randi Birk, Peg Howell, Nancy Bologna, Nikky Heidel, Cari Bixel, Heather Smallman, Mark Edwards, Donna Zajonc, Doug Bamford, Keith Taylor, Gayle Bunge, Heather Richetto-Rumley, Kathryn Williams, Glenn Schenenga, Tom Ferguson, and my close personal friends—Wayne and Joni Finnegan, Mark and Marsha Gorman, Keith and Kitty Baker, John Manz, Tom McMullen and the guys in my book club for 20 years, Dwight Cummins, Paul Harris, Bruce McManus, Michael Nation, Paul Brown, Ron Ellis, and Dave Strofferahn.

Finally, we wish to acknowledge each other, Esmond Harmsworth, and Jim Boyd. This book has been a labor of love, and we have loved laboring together.

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xxv

About the Authors

Doug Lennick

Doug’s career as an executive, a sales manager, and a developer of people is legendary. Today, in addition to his work as CEO and found- ing member of the Lennick Aberman Group, Doug continues to work directly with Jim Cracchiolo, CEO of Ameriprise Financial, formerly American Express Financial Advisors. Although no longer full time, Doug retains the title of EVP at Ameriprise Financial. As a senior advi- sor to Jim, Doug’s focus is on workforce culture and performance. As a leader, a coach, and a mentor, Doug has taught thousands how to be successful in both their personal and professional lives.

Doug is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, Morris, with a degree in business management.

In the early 1990s, Doug was one of two (the other being Jim Mitchell) senior managers at American Express responsible for cham- pioning, developing, and implementing the Emotional Competence training program that was recognized by the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations as a model program. Doug’s work and American Express’s Emotional Competence program were recognized in Daniel Goleman’s Working with Emotional Intelligence and in Educating People to Be Emotionally Intelligent, edited by Rueven Bar-On, J.G. Maree, and Maurice Jesse Elias, and in Tony Schwartz’ Fortune magazine article on the same topic. In The Power of Purpose, Richard Leider referred to Doug as the “spiritual leader” of the company.

Doug lives in Edina, Minnesota, with his wife, Beth Ann. Their youngest daughter, Joan, attends graduate school at St. Mary’s

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xxvi MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

University in Minneapolis and has an undergraduate degree from Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. Their oldest daughter, Mary, has an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota and is a graduate student at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Doug’s son Alan is an actor and a manager/financial advisor for Ameriprise Financial and is living in Minneapolis with his teacher/actor wife Sari, and their son, Dylan.

lennickaberman.com 612-333-8791 [email protected]

Fred Kiel, Ph.D.

One of the pioneers in the field of executive coaching, Fred began chal- lenging senior executives in the mid-1970s to improve their leadership skills. Trained as a Ph.D. counseling psychologist, he left the private practice world in the mid-1980s and has since devoted his full-time career as an advisor to CEOs and senior leaders in large organizations. In the late 1980s he co-founded KRW International, one of the durable and highly respected “boutique” firms in this space. He is also the founder and executive director of the KRW Research Institute, which is conducting research on the hidden beliefs and biases CEOs hold in their heads and hearts. These findings will be reported in a book scheduled for publication in 2012 and currently titled, What CEOs Believe and How It Impacts the Bottom Line.

Fred lives on his organic farm in Southeastern Minnesota, in the midst of cold running trout streams and Amish farms, along with his wife, Sandy. Sandy is the innkeeper for the Inn at Sacred Clay Farm—their country inn bed and breakfast with five luxury guest rooms and meeting space for small groups.

krwinternational.com 612-338-3020 [email protected]

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS xxvii

Kathy Jordan, Ph.D.

Kathy was the collaborating writer with Doug Lennick and Fred Kiel for the first hardback and paperback editions of Moral Intelligence, and with Doug Lennick for his book Financial Intelligence: How to Make Smart Values-Based Decisions with your Money and Your Life. She is also co-author of Becoming a Life Change Artist: 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life.

Kathy has a Ph.D. in counseling and human systems from Florida State University. After working for large organizations (AT&T Bell Laboratories and later Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation), she has flourished as an independent coach, consultant, and writer. Kathy lives in Saint Augustine, Florida, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she enjoys family time with her daughter Erin, son-in-law Doug, and granddaughter, Mackenzie Kathleen.

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In 2005 we were fortunate to publish the first edition of Moral

Intelligence. In the book, we argued that sustainable business perform-

ance was only possible when leaders and their organizations acted in

concert with certain core universal principles, including integrity,

responsibility, compassion, and forgiveness. We described the skills that

were needed for leaders to behave in ways that were both moral and at

the same time financially smart for their businesses. We demonstrated

through the lives of some of the United States’ most highly regarded

leaders the essential relationship between moral competence and busi-

ness success.

Still reeling from the corporate accounting scandals of the early

2000s, such as Enron and WorldCom, we hoped that Moral Intelligence

would serve as a call to action for leaders to “do the right thing” for

their stakeholders and themselves. Since the initial publication of Moral

Intelligence six years ago, countless leaders have heeded that call to

action. Sadly, other leaders continue to bury their moral compasses,

choosing greed over integrity. In some cases, the choice to ignore moral

principles and values has proved nearly catastrophic: By the fall of

2008, the global economy was about to implode. Much of the blame—

though certainly not all—goes to financial services industry leaders

who prioritized short-term financial gain for themselves and their firms

Introduction

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over everything else, including their responsibility to customers,

employees, and the survival of nations.

Mark Sheffert, Chairman and CEO of Manchester Companies,

headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, offers this perspective

regarding the moral issues that underlie the financial crisis and global

recession:

I truly believe in my heart of hearts that the underpinning in the

financial crisis was greed, power, and corruption with people

grabbing for their unfair share of the economic pie. Financial

institutions, Wall Street, Main Street, investors, rating agencies,

people selling, people buying. Whether it was Ponzi schemes or

backdating stock options or something else, it didn’t matter. It

was all justified somehow by the notion that ‘I deserve it’. The

country has lost its moral compass. The Johnson Institute did a

study recently that revealed 56% of MBA students and 43% of

law students admit they cheat, and 93% of them say cheating is

justified, and more than 90% said they have no moral dilemma

about doing so. Remember, these young cheaters and liars are

our business leaders, politicians, and professionals of the

future. Greed and lack of ethics have permeated every aspect of

our society and it’s a systemic issue. This greed and lack of

ethics has resulted in an upside-down economy with massive

unemployment, and it’s not going to get better soon for a lot of

reasons. Many companies went out of business and aren’t even

here to employ someone. Starting businesses in this environ-

ment is nearly impossible. Big companies are doing more with

less. Six percent of the nation’s GDP is related to the cost of

dealing with fraudulent behavior. If your company generates

$100 million in revenue, then your company is spending $6

million per year dealing with fraud and the lack of ethics.

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Kim Sharan, chief marketing officer and President Financial Planning

and Wealth Strategies for Ameriprise Financial, underscores Mark

Sheffert’s analysis of the financial costs of ignoring moral principles:

Mistrust in the marketplace is very high. How do you reinforce

to the consumer[s] that you’re focused on doing what’s right for

them when every day there is a new scandal or fraud in the

news? What has happened over the past three to five years is it

has gotten harder to rise above the noise. I’m sure what hap-

pened to Enron at the turn of the century was felt by every

energy company. What happened with Lehman and Bernie

Madoff has created a halo effect that is felt by every company

and everyone in the financial services industry. Because of the

proliferation of social media, the viral nature of the situation

has resulted in a high degree of mistrust of the entire [financial

services] industry.

For us at Ameriprise, we have to figure out how to show our

clients that we have acted with integrity and excellence in all

we do, doing the right thing for the consumer at every turn—all

of that is critical. At the heart of building a brand is taking

charge of delivering a great experience for the consumer. Every

advisor and every employee has to deliver on certain principles

every time. Those principles are actively caring about the

client, behaving with integrity, standing up for what is right,

and accepting responsibility for serving them. When it comes to

moral intelligence, all of us have to be very real. It’s always

been critical for sustainable success, but it’s more obvious now

than at any other time.

With this edition of the book, Moral Intelligence 2.0, we intend to

underscore the message that moral competence is critical not only to the

success of individual leaders and business, but [also] to the survival of

INTRODUCTION xxxi

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the global economy. For today’s leaders, it is even more clear that moral

competence is not a “nice to have;” it is a “must have.”

The integrity crises of the first decade of the 21st century have been

devastating. But they have not yet convinced enough leaders of the

importance of morally intelligent leadership. How many wake-up calls

do leaders need to get the message that their ultimate success depends

on moral leadership? Will leaders get another chance to do the right

thing? Given the precarious nature of today’s global economy, we fear

that this wake-up call to choose integrity over greed might very well be

our last.

In a spring 2009 conversation with author Doug Lennick, American

Express CEO Ken Chenault observed, “Business has focused too much

on capitalism and profit versus capitalism and societal good.” If the

CEO of an iconic institution such as American Express thinks business

should be paying a lot more attention to moral values, how can any

leader afford to ignore the call to put moral values at the center of what

they do? Leaders must hold themselves to a high standard, a morally

intelligent standard.

Moral intelligence is not an issue only for American business lead-

ers. It is a universal leadership imperative. For example, leaders at

Deutsche Post, a global mail and logistics services provider, continually

reinforce the importance of its corporate values: to deliver excellent

quality, to make our customers successful, to foster openness, to follow

clear priorities, to be entrepreneurial, to act with integrity, and to

accept social responsibility. Deutsche Post has weathered tough times,

including a large layoff in its U.S. based workforce in November 2008

as the world began to experience the impact of the financial crisis and a

global recession. After suffering revenue losses in 2009, Deutsche Post

rebounded in 2010 with 13.9% consolidated revenue growth by the end

of the third quarter. It is no coincidence that Deutsche Post’s commit-

ment to its values and moral principles has contributed to its ongoing

financial success.

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Back in the mid-1990s, well before the early 2000 corporate

accounting scandals, well before the dot.com bubble burst, and before

we could have even imagined the global financial crisis that exploded in

2008, we had a conversation both authors vividly recall. Doug was then

executive vice president, Advice and Retail Distribution for American

Express Financial Advisors. Doug was well known for developing a

high-performing sales force of approximately 10,000 financial advisors

and was an early champion of emotional intelligence skills training at

American Express. Fred, a pioneer in the field of executive coaching,

was a psychologist and co-founder of a leading executive development

company and then as now, actively engaged in helping senior executives

improve their personal performance as leaders.

As we talked, we realized that we had some common ideas about

the ingredients of high performance that we were both struggling to

conceptualize. We agreed on the importance of emotional intelli-

gence—the constellation of self-awareness, self-management, social

awareness, and relationship management skills that are now commonly

regarded as critical to success in the workplace. We discovered, though,

that neither of us thought emotional intelligence was sufficient to assure

consistent, long-term performance.

In the course of nearly 30 years, we had collectively worked as

business executives, entrepreneurs, and leadership consultants to chief

executives and senior leaders of Fortune 500 companies, large privately

held companies, and start-ups. We had each coached hundreds of lead-

ers. The most successful of them all seemed to have something in com-

mon that went beyond insight, discipline, or interpersonal skill. We also

spoke about noted public figures with masterful emotional intelligence

skills who would sway like reeds in the wind when faced with morally

loaded decisions. We hypothesized that there was something more basic

than emotional intelligence skills—a kind of moral compass—that

seemed to us to be at the heart of long-lasting business success. Our

ideas became the focus of the first edition of Moral Intelligence. In

INTRODUCTION xxxiii

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retrospect, we may have been ahead of our time: Given the financial

crises of the late 2000s, our initial insights about the central importance

of moral intelligence to business success seem more relevant than ever.

We offer this book as a roadmap for leaders to find and follow their

moral compasses. In the pages ahead, you will hear from leaders who

are committed to morally intelligent behavior. Although we believe that

doing the right thing is right for its own sake, recent history has demon-

strated that leaders who follow their moral compasses can find that it is

the right thing for their organizations as well. In this book, we hope you

find the tools to become the best leader you can be. You—and your

organization—deserve nothing less.

Leaders Interviewed We are deeply indebted to the large group of leaders who contributed to

our thinking and research. Our interview subjects were especially gen-

erous with their time and candid in their self-assessments.

Douglas Baker CEO, Ecolab Inc.

Dan Brettler CEO and Chairman, Car Toys, Inc.

Kenneth Chenault CEO and Chairman, American Express Company

Paul Clayton Former CEO, Jamba Juice

Stan Dardis CEO and President, Bremer Financial Corporation (retired)

Lon Dolber President, American Portfolio Financial Services

Jeff Ettinger CEO, Hormel Foods

Lynn Fantom CEO, ID Media

Paul Fribourg CEO and Chairman, Conti-Group Companies

Peter Georgescu Chairman Emeritus, Young & Rubicam

Harvey Golub Director, Campbell’s Soup Company and Chairman and CEO (retired), American Express Company

Brian Hall Former CEO, Thomson Legal & Regulatory Group

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Don Hall, Jr. CEO and Vice Chairman, Hallmark Cards

Dick Harrington Chairman of The Cue Ball Group, former CEO, The Thomson Corporation

Brian Heath Owner, Grape Creek Vineyards

David Hubers CEO (retired), American Express Financial Advisors

Mike Hughes President, Safeco Insurance

Sally Jewell CEO, REI

Ken Kaess Former CEO, DDB Worldwide, now deceased

David Kenny President and Director, Akamai Technologies

Ken Krei President Wealth Management Group, M&I Bank

Mike LaRocco President and CEO, Fireman’s Fund Insurance

Dale Larson Owner and Chairman, Larson Manufacturing

Dan May President, Advisor Net

Rowland Moriarty, CEO and Chairman, Cubex Corporation; Ph.D. Founding Director, Staples; Founding Director,

PetsMart

Don MacPherson President, Modern Survey

Mark Oja CEO, ACTIVEAID

Larry Pinnt Chairman, Cascade Natural Gas

Michael Phillips Former Chairman, The Russell Investment Group

Keith Reinhard Former Chairman, DDB Worldwide

John Schlifske President and CEO, Northwestern Mutual

Spenser Segal CEO, ActiFi

Mayo Shattuck CEO and Chairman, Constellation Energy

Mark Sheffert Chairman and CEO, Manchester Companies

Dale Sperling Former CEO, Unico Real Estate Company

Jay Sleiter Former CEO and Chairman, BWBR Architects

Lynn Sontag President, Menttium Corporation

Kim Vappie CEO, Menttium Corporation

Charlie Zelle CEO and Chairman, Jefferson Bus Lines

Roger Arnold EVP and Chief Distribution Officer, Wealth Enhancement Group LLC

INTRODUCTION xxxv

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Brenda Blake Senior Vice President, Global Leadership; Marketing, American Express

Walt Bradley Financial Advisor, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans

Sam Bronfman Former Senior Vice President, Seagrams, Inc.

George Brushaber Former President, Bethel University

Cindy Carlson Former President, Capital Professional Advisors

Michael Connolly Operating Partner, Legal Tube; Managing Partner, Atlas Digital Partners; Chairman, Table Trac

Dave Edwards Senior Vice President, Client Experience, TIAA Creft

Patrick Grace Former Senior Vice President, The Grace Corporation

M’Lynn Hoefer Principal, Tapaidra

Lori Kaiser Former Senior Vice President, Cray Computer Co.

Gary Kessler Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Honda America

Diane Kozlak Vice President Sales, Modern Survey

Karen Lane Former Governor’s Staff, State of Washington

Harvey Leuning Associate Pastor, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, St. Paul, MN

Ann Levinson Deputy Director, Seattle Monorail Authority

Pam Moret Senior Vice President, Strategic Development, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans

Gary O’Hagan President of Coaches Division, IMG

Carla Paulson EVP, Chief Human Resources Officer, Bremer Financial Group

Tom Perrine Senior Vice President IT, Cardinal Health

Mark Phillips SVP Distribution, UnitedHealthcare Medicare and Retirement (United Health Group)

David Risher Former Senior Vice President, Amazon.com

Pat Roraback Senior Vice President, M&I Bank

Jim Ruddy Former CLO, Safeco Insurance (Retired)

Joe Schlidt Private Family Office Director, Godfrey & Kahn SC

Tom Schinke Financial Advisor, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans

xxxvi MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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Kim Sharan President Financial Planning and Wealth Strategies and Chief Marketing Officer, Ameriprise Financial

Ben Smith Partner, Lennick Aberman Group; former CEO, American Partners Bank

Caroline Stockdale SVP and Chief Talent Officer, Medtronic

Jim Thomsen Senior Vice President of Distribution, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans

Michael Wilson Chief Operating Officer, Comerica Wealth Management

Mike Woodward Senior Vice President, Marketing & Communications, Ducks Unlimited

Thought Partners We greatly appreciate our many colleagues and mentors whose input

has helped sharpen our thinking about the moral dimensions of leader-

ship. They include the following:

Rick Aberman, Ph.D. Psychologist, emotional intelligence expert, and co-author of Why Good Coaches Quit—and How You Can Stay in the Game

Reuven Bar-On, Ph.D. University of Texas Medical Branch, in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, where he directs research in emotional and social intelligence

Richard Boyatzis, Ph.D. Professor and Chair of the Department of Organizational Behavior at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, and co-author of Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence

Kate Cannon President, Kate Cannon and Associates

Robert Caplan, Ph.D. Director, Beach Cities Health District, an organiza- tion charged with promoting mental and physical wellness in three adjacent communities in Southern California

INTRODUCTION xxxvii

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Cary Cherniss, Ph.D. Director of the Rutgers University Organizational Psychology Program, professor of Applied Psychology and co-author of The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace

Stephen Covey, Ph.D. Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People whose conversations with Doug in the early 1990s reinforced early versions of our alignment model

Vanessa Druskat Associate Professor, University of New Hampshire, Whittemore School of Business and Economics

Robert Emmerling, Ph.D. Consultant and researcher specializing in the application of emotional intelligence concepts in the workplace

Jim Garrison President and co-founder (with Mikail Gorbalhev) of the State of the World Forum and author of America as Empire

Roy Geer, Ph.D. Psychologist, consultant, and co-author (with Doug Lennick) of How to Get What You Want and Remain True to Yourself

Daniel Goleman, Ph.D. Co-director of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University, author of Emotional Intelligence, Working with Emotional Intelligence, and co-author of Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence

Marilyn Gowing, Ph.D. Vice President for Public Sector Consulting and Services with the Washington office of AON Consulting

Darryl Grigg, Ph.D. Psychologist

Jennifer Hugstad-Vaa, Ph.D. Professor, St. Mary’s University Minnesota

Dorothy Hutcheson Head of School, Nightingale-Bamford School for Girls

Ruth Jacobs Director of Research and Technology at McClelland Center for Research and Initiatives, The Hay Group

xxxviii MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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Stuart Kantor, Ph.D. Co-founder and principal of Red Oak Consulting, an executive development firm

Stephen Kelner, Jr. Global Knowledge Manager, Egon Zehnder International, Inc.

David Kidd Partner, Egon Zehnder International, Inc.

Carol Keers Co-founder, Change Masters, Inc.

Art Kleiner Editor-in-Chief, Strategy + Business Magazine

Kathy Kram, Ph.D. Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Boston University School of Management

Richard Leider Founding partner of The Inventure Group and author of Repacking Your Bags, the Power of Purpose, and Life Skills

Jim Loehr, Ph.D. Performance psychologist and co-author of The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal and author of Stress for Success

Fred Luskin, Ph.D. Senior Fellow at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation, co-founder of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, and author of Forgive for Good

Matthew Mangino Consultant Director, Johnson & Johnson

Jim Mitchell Executive Fellow, Leadership at the Center for Ethical Business Cultures in Minneapolis

Tom Mungavan President and co-founder, Change Masters, Inc.

John Nicolay, MBA MBA instructor, University of Minnesota

Hy Pomerance, Ph.D. Co-founder and principal of Red Oak Consulting, an executive development firm

Richard Price, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology and Business Administration at the University of Michigan, and Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research

Helen Reiess, M.D. Director, Empathy Research and Training, Associate Clinical Professor, Harvard Medical School

Fabio Sala, Ph.D. Associate Director, Learning and Development, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

INTRODUCTION xxxix

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Jeffrey Schwartz Psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, Harper Perennial, 2003

Tony Schwartz Co-author of The Art of the Deal and The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal and author of What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America

Hersh Shefrin, Ph.D. Professor of Finance at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, and author of Beyond Greed and Fear

Judy Skoglund Partner, Lennick Aberman Group

Lyle Spencer, Ph.D. President, Spencer Research and Technology, co-founder of Competency International, Cybertroncis Research Fellows, Director, Human Resource Technologies

Therèse Jacobs Stewart, Ph.D. Master Psychologist

Jeff Stiefler Former CEO, Digital Insights

Redford Williams, Ph.D. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Professor of Medicine, and Director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Duke University Medical Center

Larry Wilson Founder of Wilson Learning and Pecos River Learning Center, author of The One Minute Sales Person and Changing the Game: The New Way to Sell and co-author of Stop Selling, Start Partnering

Lauris Woolford EVP, Fifth Third Bank

xl MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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PART I MORAL INTELLIGENCE

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Jim Thomsen, senior vice president of Member Services for Thrivent

Financial, a membership-based financial services company, recalls the

financial meltdown in September 2008 all too well: “I was really mad at

our industry,” Jim said, “but initially I wasn’t worried about our com-

pany.” Thrivent’s solid standing compared to its competitors at the end

of 2008 was well earned. In the several years leading up to the eco-

nomic crisis, when “everything was hot,” some members of Thrivent’s

field sales force had put a lot of pressure on company management and

the Thrivent Bank to be more aggressive and to do some of the things

other firms were doing. But Thrivent management resisted.

When it came to home lending, for example, we stayed with

the fundamentals that have worked over time. We actually

required things like 20% down payments for homes, and

we used independent appraisers to determine property val-

ues. We had no subprime mortgages in our portfolio. It was

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hard to maintain that position when so many other compa-

nies were being aggressive and making lots of money doing

so, but it was the right thing to do, and we did the right

thing.

Jim thought that Thrivent had dodged a bullet thanks to its more conser-

vative investment practices. But not completely. As Jim describes it

It was near the end of 2008. I had just been through a week

where our executive team had been meeting, and we had

just gotten a lot of good news. We had very little exposure

to Lehman. We were well capitalized. We had no reliance

on short-term debt. We were in a really strong position and

prepared to weather a very difficult storm. I was feeling

pretty good.

Later that evening, Jim attended a charity event at the famous Depot in

downtown Minneapolis.

I was walking around the silent auction with a neighbor of

mine, and he introduced me to an acquaintance of his who

was an executive with another company. He asked me what

I did for a living. I told him I was in the financial services

industry, and he said, ‘That used to be an honorable pro-

fession!’ When he said that it was like a slap in the face.

That comment to me was really an eye opener. I had been

thinking we were immune because we had done the right

thing, but I realized then we were going to be judged guilty

by association. And I thought ‘If I’m feeling this way,

[then] the men and women meeting with our clients every

day must really be feeling it.’

Jim realized in that moment that Thrivent would have to work hard to

differentiate itself from its industry peers:

4 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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My personal reputation and the reputation of the firm

[were] taken into the cesspool along with our industry. This

was very hard on our employees and our representatives,

and I realized I personally needed to take responsibility

and serve their needs for information and understanding. I

had to support our representatives and give them the confi-

dence to be proactive and make contact with their clients

and our members. Other executives and I made sure our

representatives understood why our clients could and

should have confidence in the company and their represen-

tative. A lot of advisors in the industry went into hiding,

but we went on the offensive and increased our communi-

cation and contact with clients.

To a large degree, the strategy Jim and his fellow Thrivent executives

adopted in the wake of the financial crisis has been successful. “We’ve

actually had three of our best years ever,” says Jim, “because we had

the courage not to follow the lemmings. We really do make decisions

with the best long-term interests of our clients in mind.”

Jim’s biggest fear today? “I worry that the world has short-term

memories. Some of the leaders who took the industry down are gone,

but I’m seeing some of the same behavior again that hurt the industry.”

Moral Stupidity Act 1 Jim Thomsen’s fear is well taken. In the last ten years, the corporate

landscape has been through two waves of major financial misdeeds. The

first part of the decade was marked by corporate accounting scandals

that all had their roots in moral weakness on the part of corporate

executives:

Former energy company Enron became the poster child for corpo-

rate corruption in 2001 when it was revealed that its financial status was

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fabricated through deliberate and extensive accounting fraud. In May

2006, former CEOs Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted of

criminal fraud and conspiracy. In a dramatic twist, Ken Lay died—

before he could be sentenced—in July 2006 of “natural causes” related

to cardiovascular disease. In October 2006, Skilling was sentenced to

24 years and four months in prison. Ex-Enron CFO Andrew Fastow had

pleaded guilty to fraud in 2004 in exchange for a ten-year prison sen-

tence. In November 2006, Enron executives Andrew Fastow and his for-

mer chief aide Michael Kopper, received sharply reduced sentences

because of their cooperation with prosecutors to help convict Ken Lay

and Jeffrey Skilling. Between 2004 and the end of 2009, Enron

Creditors Recovery Corporation paid out about $21.6 billion to Enron’s

creditors and litigation related to Enron’s collapse continues.

In July 2004, cable company Adelphia founder and former CEO,

John Rigas, and his son Timothy were found guilty of conspiracy, secu-

rities fraud, and bank fraud. Charges against them included concealing

$2.3 billion in loans and embezzling, bankrupting what was then the

nation’s fifth-largest cable company.

In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Lucent

Technologies (later acquired by French telecommunications equipment-

maker Alcatel) with fraudulently recognizing more than $1 billion in

revenues and $470 million in pretax income during fiscal 2000. It also

charged individual executives for their alleged roles in the case. Lucent

settled the SEC Enforcement Action in May 2004, paying a $25 million

penalty. Ten executives who were charged in the matter reached individ-

ual settlements involving sizable penalties over the course of the ensu-

ing two years.

In 2005, HealthSouth former CEO Richard Scrushy was acquitted

in a $2.5 billion fraud scheme to overstate earnings and inflate stock

prices during a period between 1996 and 2002. The acquittal was sur-

prising to many because there had been extensive testimony that he was

knowledgeable about the fraud, and because 15 former executives had

6 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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already pleaded guilty and a 16th had been convicted by jurors. But

Scrushy’s legal woes were not over. In August 2006, the Alabama

Supreme Court ruled that Scrushy must repay $48.8 million in bonuses

he received during the period of the fraud— at a time when the com-

pany was sustaining massive operating losses.

In 2006, antivirus and security software provider McAfee fired

President Kevin Weiss, and its CEO and Chairman George Samenuk

retired after a stock options investigation found accounting problems

required financial restatements.

David C. Wittig, the former CEO of Kansas utility company Westar

Energy, Inc., was sentenced in April 2006 to 18 years in prison for con-

spiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and circumventing internal con-

trols. Wittig served 13 months in prison before he was released on bond

in January 2007, following a Federal appeals court reversal of several

convictions.

Moral intelligence could have kept each of these companies, and

their leaders, out of the courts. Instead companies, employees, and

shareholders all suffered. Despite the damage caused by this raft of cor-

porate corruption, despite the photos of executives being carried off in

handcuffs, it seems that corporate America still hasn’t learned the les-

sons of moral intelligence. Such corporate scandals represent just the tip

of the iceberg for bad business behavior.

Financial Services Take the Stage

Nowhere has the absence of moral competence been more glaring than

in the financial services industry. Looking at financial services with a

moral lens, a financial services firm is supposed to exist to serve the

financial needs of its clients, thereby generating profits for itself. But

during the last decade, many financial services firms turned that mission

on its head. It certainly appears they prioritized their own financial gain,

often at the expense of the clients whose financial objectives they had a

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responsibility to serve. In looking back over the last few years, Ken

Krei, president of the Wealth Management Group of M&I Bank

observes:

There’s been a great deal of momentum for the industry to

sell the product that is easiest to sell, bonds, now and option

rate securities earlier. Companies try to drive revenue with

this momentum, but it hurts the seller eventually because

eventually what’s easiest to sell is not necessarily what’s

best for the buyer.

Dale Larson, CEO and president of Larson Manufacturing Company,

the largest U.S maker of storm doors, echoes Krei’s sense about Wall

Street’s priorities:

I’m kind of cynical about Wall Street. They think the more

complicated they make the product, the easier it is to sell

and everyone will think they’re smarter than anybody else.

I think the derivative investments were way over the top. I

think a lot of people knew what they were selling and

didn’t care. In the 1950s, only 6% of profits were made by

financial institutions. Now it’s about 35%, so a lot of people

are making money by passing paper around.

By fall of 2008, a growing number of industry observers were con-

vinced that greedy executives in the financial services industry were not

just cheating individual clients—they were likely major perpetrators of

a massive economic crisis that threatened to take down the entire global

economy. In contrast to the fate of the previous generation of corporate

lawbreakers, most architects of the worst financial downturn since the

Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s have so far escaped prosecu-

tion or any major sanctions.

Former mortgage lender Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo has

been widely reported in the media as a prime suspect in the economic

8 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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crisis that began to brew by 2007. On June 4, 2009, the SEC filed

charges against Mozilo and two other Countrywide executives.

According to an October 15, 2010 Securities and Exchange (SEC) press

release:

…they[Countrywide executives] failed to disclose to

investors the significant credit risk that Countrywide was

taking on as a result of its efforts to build and maintain

market share. Investors were misled by representations

assuring them that Countrywide was primarily a prime

quality mortgage lender that had avoided the excesses of its

competitors. In reality, Countrywide was writing increas-

ingly risky loans and its senior executives knew that

defaults and delinquencies in its servicing portfolio as well

as the loans it packaged and sold as mortgage-backed secu-

rities would rise as a result.

The SEC’s complaint further alleged that Mozilo engaged in insider

trading in the securities of Countrywide by establishing four 10b5-1

sales plans in October, November, and December 2006, while he was

aware of material, nonpublic information concerning Countrywide’s

increasing credit risk and the risk regarding the poor expected perform-

ance of Countrywide-originated loans.1

In September 2010, Daily Finance reported the following:

During the 2008 mortgage meltdown, Mozilo’s remarkable

copper-colored visage became synonymous with executive

excess. In addition to his impressive yearly salary and com-

pany-funded memberships at three country clubs, Mozilo

also received millions of dollars in Countrywide stock,

more than $406 million of which he liquidated to increase

his bottom line. Over $140 million worth of these shares

went on the block in 2006 and 2007.

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While Mozilo was getting rid of his Countrywide shares,

the company was also loosening its mortgage guidelines,

getting deeper and deeper into the risky subprime mort-

gages that later proved its downfall. These relaxed stan-

dards proved very helpful to Mozilo’s friends—including

Ed McMahon, Senator Christopher Dodd, and dozens of

Fannie Mae employees—who received sweetheart mort-

gage deals from Countrywide. They were less helpful to

stockholders, who were left holding the bag when

Countrywide failed.2

In October 2010, Mozilo avoided trial on charges of fraud and insider

trading by striking a deal to pay the SEC $67.5 million, the largest sum

ever paid by a public firm senior executive in an SEC case. Those funds

will be used to help repay harmed investors.

Prior to its collapse and sale to JPMorganChase in 2008, former

financial giant Bear Stearns had been recognized multiple times as the

“Most Admired” securities firm in Fortune magazine’s “America’s

Most Admired Companies” survey, and second overall in the security

firm section. The annual survey is a prestigious ranking based on

employee talent, quality of risk management, and business innovation.

Fortune magazine reported that in July 2007, while two Bear Stearns

hedge funds holding toxic mortgage-backed securities were nearing col-

lapse, CEO James “Jimmy” Cayne was playing bridge in Nashville. In

March 2008, while the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, Cayne

was again playing bridge—this time in Detroit. Two weeks later, right

after JPMorgan raised its bid for the company, Cayne sold all his equity

in the company, earning $60 million. Bear Stearns clients were not so

lucky. Cayne later admitted some responsibility for the downfall of the

once stellar firm. “I didn’t stop it. I didn’t rein in the leverage,” he told

Fortune magazine.3

According to Peter Chapman, author of a 2010 history of Lehman

Brothers, “Lehman Brothers died when over 150 years later a once

10 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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proud institution was caught peddling junk to the world.”4 Lehman’s

former CEO Dick Fuld, who presided over the death of one of Wall

Street’s most esteemed firms, has infuriated former clients and the gen-

eral public alike. Fuld is especially reviled for refusing to apologize for

his responsibility for the Lehman bankruptcy (the largest in U.S. history

with $613 billion in outstanding debt), As one commentator pointed out

“Even Bernie Madoff said he was sorry.”5

Ken Lewis, former CEO of Bank of America, who helped orches-

trate the acquisition of Merrill Lynch, was reported by numerous media

outlets to have concealed information about huge bonuses that subse-

quently went to Merrill employees—bonuses funded by federal TARP

funds. In February 2010, following an investigation by the SEC and

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Cuomo sued Bank of

America for defrauding investors and the government when buying

Merrill Lynch & Co when it failed to disclose the Merrill bonus agree-

ment. The bank agreed to pay a $150 million fine to settle a related law-

suit by U.S. regulators.6

Goldman Sachs initially seemed like the shining exception to the

epidemic of greed that had unraveled other investment firms such as

Lehman, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch. But it may turn out Goldman

Sachs is not immune to the moral lapses that have infected so many

other firms. While the rest of the financial services industry might have

felt reassured by Goldman Sachs’ capability to pay out big bonuses in

the midst of epic Wall Street failures, United States government offi-

cials were puzzled about its success. On April 16, 2010, the Securities

and Exchange Commission charged Goldman Sachs with fraud in struc-

turing and marketing collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) tied to sub-

prime mortgages. According to the SEC announcement:

The SEC alleges that Goldman Sachs structured and mar-

keted a synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO) that

hinged on the performance of subprime residential mort-

gage-backed securities (RMBS). Goldman Sachs failed to

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disclose to investors vital information about the CDO, in

particular the role that a major hedge fund played in the

portfolio selection process and the fact that the hedge fund

had taken a short position against the CDO.

“The product was new and complex but the deception and

conflicts are old and simple,” said Robert Khuzami, direc-

tor of the Division of Enforcement. “Goldman wrongly per-

mitted a client that was betting against the mortgage

market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to

include in an investment portfolio, while telling other

investors that the securities were selected by an independ-

ent, objective third party.”

Kenneth Lench, chief of the SEC’s Structured and New Products Unit,

added, “The SEC continues to investigate the practices of investment

banks and others involved in the securitization of complex financial

products tied to the U.S. housing market as it was beginning to show

signs of distress.”

The SEC alleges that one of the world’s largest hedge funds,

Paulson & Co., paid Goldman Sachs to structure a transaction in which

Paulson & Co. could take short positions against mortgage securities

chosen by Paulson & Co. based on a belief that the securities would

experience credit events.

According to the SEC’s complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for

the Southern District of New York, the marketing materials for the CDO

known as ABACUS 2007-AC1 (ABACUS) all represented that the

RMBS portfolio underlying the CDO was selected by ACA

Management LLC (ACA), a third party with expertise in analyzing

credit risk in RMBS. The SEC alleges that undisclosed in the marketing

materials and unbeknownst to investors, the Paulson & Co. hedge fund,

which was poised to benefit if the RMBS defaulted, played a significant

role in selecting which RMBS should make up the portfolio.

12 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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The SEC’s complaint alleges that after participating in the portfolio

selection, Paulson & Co. effectively shorted the RMBS portfolio it

helped select by entering into credit default swaps (CDS) with Goldman

Sachs to buy protection on specific layers of the ABACUS capital struc-

ture. Given that financial short interest, Paulson & Co. had an economic

incentive to select RMBS that it expected to experience credit events in

the near future. Goldman Sachs did not disclose Paulson & Co.’s short

position or its role in the collateral selection process in the term sheet,

flip book, offering memorandum, or other marketing materials provided

to investors.

The SEC alleges that Goldman Sachs Vice President Fabrice Tourre

was principally responsible for ABACUS 2007-AC1. Tourre structured

the transaction, prepared the marketing materials, and communicated

directly with investors. Tourre allegedly knew of Paulson & Co.’s undis-

closed short interest and role in the collateral selection process. In addi-

tion, he allegedly misled ACA into believing that Paulson & Co.

invested approximately $200 million in the equity of ABACUS, indicat-

ing that Paulson & Co.’s interests in the collateral selection process

were closely aligned with ACA’s interests. In reality, however, their

interests were sharply conflicting.

According to the SEC’s complaint, the deal closed on April 26,

2007, and Paulson & Co. paid Goldman Sachs approximately $15 mil-

lion for structuring and marketing ABACUS. By Oct. 24, 2007, 83% of

the RMBS in the ABACUS portfolio had been downgraded and 17%

were on negative watch. By Jan. 29, 2008, 99% of the portfolio had

been downgraded. Investors in the liabilities of ABACUS are alleged to

have lost more than $1 billion.7

In the wake of the SEC charges, on April 27, 2010, Goldman Sachs

was called to testify before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on

Investigations because of concern that Goldman Sachs had been “set-

ting up the firm’s own securities to fail and betting secretly against

those securities, or helping clients do so.”8

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Behavior such as that alleged against Goldman Sachs may not be

illegal, but according to many industry leaders, it is certainly unethical.

Christopher Whalen, managing director of financial research firm

Institutional Risk Analytics, summed up the significance of the SEC

charges against Goldman Sachs in this way: “Once upon a time, Wall

Street firms protected clients. This litigation exposes the cynical, savage

culture of Wall Street that allows a dealer to commit fraud on one cus-

tomer to benefit another.”9

Although Dan May, president of AdvisorNet Financial, a leading

U.S. distributor of financial products, believes, “It’s appalling to think

that firms in the industry with 150-year reputations responded as they

did with the pressure to make more money.” He also insists that individ-

ual financial advisors, not just big firms, bear some of the responsibility

for unethical sales practices:

I do believe financial advisors have some culpability.

There’s no way we can control the market but advisors

could have better prepared people for the certainty of

uncertainty. Advisors have to ask [critical] questions and

must have the integrity to lose a client if it means doing the

right thing. We have to expect more out of ourselves. We

have to make sure this never happens again.

More Fallout

But it isn’t only Wall Street’s customer base, the investor, that has suf-

fered from greed in the financial services industry. As of 2011 in New

York State alone, the economic collapse will have caused the loss of

almost 300,000 jobs in the financial sector, with most of them focused

in the combined sales and related/office and administrative support

occupational category. In other words, lower-paid employees in finan-

cial services firms have borne the brunt of the mistakes made by their

highly compensated superiors.10

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When it comes to causing a potentially catastrophic meltdown of

the global economy, you could argue there is a lot of blame to go

around: greedy Wall Street executives, corrupt politicians, and derelict

regulators. If all these allegations prove to be true, it will be obvious that

what they all have in common is a shortage of moral competence. And

though the jury is still out on the legal responsibility of numerous finan-

cial industry leaders for exposing all of us to an economic catastrophe,

one thing is undeniably clear: The global financial woes we are still

experiencing could not have happened if more financial industry lead-

ers had been paying attention to the moral consequences of their busi-

ness decisions. And it’s also clear that the economic crisis in which we

are still engaged is not the responsibility of a “few bad apples.” What

has led us to the brink of economic disaster is more like an epidemic of

moral incompetence by business leaders, regulators, politicians, and

yes, even consumers. But it is our business leaders who bear special

responsibility for managing their enterprises within a moral framework.

What has gone wrong? It’s as though corporate leaders have turned the

switch off on their moral intelligence. There’s been a major power fail-

ure, and only a return to moral principles by our nation’s corporate lead-

ers can turn the lights back on. Only a renewed emphasis on the

importance of moral intelligence will restore public confidence in big

business in general, and in the financial services industry in particular.

What Does Moral Leadership Look Like? Despite the crowd of morally compromised executives who have domi-

nated the news of the last decade, there are many examples of morally

intelligent leaders to inspire us. Thrivent’s Jim Thomsen, whom we met

at the beginning of the chapter, illustrates the importance of doing the

right thing in the face of pressure to “follow the lemmings.” Such moral

courage doesn’t develop overnight. Most successful leaders are morally

gifted, but few of them are moral geniuses. They all make mistakes

CHAPTER 1 • GOOD BUSINESS 15

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from time to time and, earlier in their careers, they typically made moral

mistakes more often. But because of their high moral intelligence, they

were quick studies. They held themselves accountable for their moral

lapses, learned from them, and moved on. Consider Jay Coughlan’s

story. Today, Coughlan is chairman and CEO of XATA and until 2005,

was CEO of Lawson Software, Minnesota’s largest software company.

But no one would have predicted his rise to that top spot back in 1998

after he fell asleep while driving intoxicated, causing a devastating acci-

dent that left him seriously injured and his father dead. The accident

was the beginning of a remarkable personal transformation marked by

a reawakening of his religious faith, a stronger relationship with his

family and involvement in the community, and an intensive commit-

ment to Lawson. Coughlan pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and

was sentenced to one month in jail, five months of house arrest, and ten

years of probation. But because of Coughlan’s honesty and the support

of the community, the judge reduced his offense to a misdemeanor after

he had served more than three months of his sentence. Meanwhile, dur-

ing his absence from Lawson, the health care division that Coughlan

had launched was flourishing. “That’s when I learned I actually was

successful as a leader,” he told The Wall Street Journal, “when you can

pull yourself out of the machine and it can still run.”11

Coughlan’s financial results were impressive and likely were the

most significant factor in his subsequent promotions. The accident

would have been a career-ending event for most people in Coughlan’s

shoes, but his response to the accident was extraordinary. “Jay, to his

credit, stood right up and took responsibility; there was no hesitation,”

says Richard Lawson, the company’s co-founder and co-chairman of

the Board of Directors. “To me that is what counts. It’s not the mistakes

you make, it’s how you react to those mistakes.”

Gary O’Hagan’s story offers yet more evidence of how adversity

can contribute to our growth as moral leaders. Gary O’Hagan is presi-

dent of the Coaches Division of the International Management Group,

the world’s largest sports marketing and talent representation agency.

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Gary is an intense, competitive, and imposing man who looks like the

football player he once was. As a young man, he was drafted, then cut

by the San Francisco 49ers, and then picked up and cut by the New

York Jets. Gary was devastated but determined to find another route to

high achievement. He got a job as a financial trader with Solomon

Brothers and attended law-school classes every weekday night. When

his grandfather died, Gary was expected to attend the wake, the funeral,

and represent the agency. Gary was anxious about falling behind at

work and school, so he thought he could attend the funeral, make a

quick appearance at the after-funeral lunch, after which he’d head back

to work. But when he got to the restaurant, the significance of his fam-

ily’s loss finally registered, and Gary realized that his priorities were out

of whack. He called his boss and told him he wasn’t coming in to work.

His boss was concerned and upset, but Gary stayed. He knew that if he

didn’t have the compassion to help his family in that moment, he would

never amount to much either personally or professionally.

Lynn Fantom, CEO of ID Media, the largest direct response media

service company in the United States, is another morally gifted leader.

It is late in the afternoon one cool spring day when Lynn walks back to

her corner office in a New York City skyscraper. The Empire State

Building is visible out one window, the Met Life and Flat Iron building

out the other. Lynn barely notices the spectacular view. She goes

straight to her desk and opens an email from a human resources man-

ager at her parent company, Interpublic. HR, it seems, is worried about

how overloaded she is. They wonder if it is the best use of her time to

respond to the employee comments and questions she gets on the “Ask

Lynn” column on the company’s intranet. Her public relations folks are

also concerned about her schedule. They’ve recommended that she stop

spending precious time posting her thoughts on media and marketing

trends on the intranet. But Lynn thinks her personal responses to

employees are an important part of the ID Media culture. She thinks

that “Ask Lynn” gives her an opportunity to demonstrate that she cares

about her workforce. She thinks that she has a responsibility to her

CHAPTER 1 • GOOD BUSINESS 17

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workforce to share her business insights. To her, it’s time well spent.

Lynn is certain that employees like knowing they can ask her about any-

thing and that she will give them an honest response. They also like

knowing that she understands market trends and shares her understand-

ing with them. “In exchange,” says Lynn, “I really get their commitment

to help us succeed.” Lynn is sticking to her principles. She won’t be giv-

ing up her intranet contributions anytime soon.

Jay, Lynn, and Gary are only a few of the many leaders we know

with high moral intelligence, those who do their best to follow their

moral compass. They do it because they believe it’s the right thing to

do. A funny thing happens when leaders consistently act in alignment

with their principles and values: They typically produce consistently

high performance almost any way you can measure it—gross sales,

profits, talent retention, company reputation, and customer satisfaction.

We think this is no accident. The successful leaders we know invariably

attribute their accomplishments to a combination of their business

savvy and their adherence to a moral code.

Doug Baker, CEO of Ecolab, a $4 billion dollar cleaning-products

manufacturer, tells us that “living by my personal moral code is one of

the key reasons I have this job.” Ed Zore, former chairman and CEO of

Northwestern Mutual, says, “Being moral—which to me means being

fair, predictable, up-front, and not devious—all of this has been very

important in my career. Everybody knows what I stand for. People

know that we will never, ever be deceitful. We won’t leave a nickel on

the table, but in the end our word is our bond, and this is a real advan-

tage in business.” Gary Kessler, senior vice president of Human

Resources, Administration and Corporate Affairs, at American Honda

Motor Co., Inc., credits his principles and values for his career success.

“I was VP of a business unit at Bausch and Lomb when I was 36 and at

Honda when I was 45. I think I had the good fortune of working with

people who recognized that I had sincerity and a conviction to do the

right thing along the way.”

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A Special Kind of Intelligence

Most of the leaders you meet throughout the rest of this book are

morally gifted. They are high in moral intelligence. Most of us are

familiar with other kinds of intelligence, such as our cognitive intelli-

gence (IQ) and our technical intelligence. IQ and technical intelligence

are undeniably important to a leader’s success. Leaders need to be good

learners (IQ) who have expertise about their particular business (techni-

cal) areas. We call cognitive and technical intelligence threshold com-

petencies because they are the price of admission to the leadership

ranks. They are necessary but not sufficient for exceptional perform-

ance. They don’t help you stand out from the competitive crowd

because your rivals’ leadership teams have as much basic intelligence

and business savvy as you do.

Intelligence That Makes the Difference

To outpace your competition, you need to cultivate different kinds of

intelligence we call differentiating competencies. Moral intelligence

and emotional intelligence are two types of intelligence that are difficult

for your competition to copy. Many corporate leaders ignore these dif-

ferentiating competencies because they are often considered “soft

skills” that are difficult to measure. In recent years, however, an increas-

ing number of organizations have realized the performance benefits of

emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman deserves enormous credit for

bringing emotional intelligence out of the academic closet and into the

tough-minded halls of commerce. His books on emotional intelligence

provide a rich and compelling case for the importance of emotional

skills to corporate leaders.12

Although emotional intelligence is widely recognized as a business

tool, its definition is still evolving. In 1990, Professors Peter Salovey of

Yale University and John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire

first coined the term. Their original definition of emotional intelligence

CHAPTER 1 • GOOD BUSINESS 19

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was “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings, to discrimi-

nate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking

and action.”13 They identified the components of emotional intelli-

gence:

• Appraising emotions in self and others

• Regulating emotions in self and others

• Using emotions adaptively

Salovey later expanded those into five domains, which Dan Goleman

adapted in 1995 in Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More

Than IQ:14

• Knowing one’s emotions (self-awareness)

• Managing emotions

• Motivating oneself

• Recognizing emotions in others

• Handling relationships

In 1997, Salovey and Mayer recharacterized emotional intelligence as

“the ability to perceive, appraise, and express emotion accurately and

adaptively; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge;

the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate

thought; and the ability to regulate emotions in ways that assist

thought.” The revised components became:

• Perceiving and expressing emotion

• Using emotion in cognitive activities

• Understanding emotions

• Regulation of emotions15

Other experts in the field of emotional intelligence offer slightly differ-

ent twists, but the definitions are consistent with those of Salovey,

20 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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Mayer, and Goleman. For instance, Barbara Fredrickson’s recent book

Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the

Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive

offers scientific evidence on the importance of positive thoughts in

boosting emotional intelligence and enhancing personal and profes-

sional performance.16

Moral intelligence is new to the playing field. Just as emotional

intelligence and cognitive intelligence are different from one another,

moral intelligence is another distinct intelligence. Moral intelligence is

our mental capacity to determine how universal human principles—like

those embodied by the “golden rule”—should be applied to our per-

sonal values, goals, and actions. This book focuses on four principles

that are vital for sustained personal and organizational success:

• Integrity

• Responsibility

• Compassion

• Forgiveness

Integrity is the hallmark of the morally intelligent person. When we act

with integrity, we harmonize our behavior to conform to universal

human principles. We do what we know is right; we act in line with our

principles and beliefs. If we lack integrity, by definition, we lack moral

intelligence.

Responsibility is another key attribute of the morally intelligent

person. Only a person willing to take responsibility for her actions—

and the consequences of those actions—can ensure that her actions con-

form to universal human principles. Compassion is vital because caring

about others not only communicates our respect for others, but also cre-

ates a climate in which others will be compassionate toward us when

we need it most. Forgiveness is a crucial principle, because without a

tolerance for mistakes and the knowledge of our own imperfection, we

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are likely to be rigid, inflexible, and unable to engage with others in

ways that promote our mutual good.

Compassion and forgiveness operate on two levels: first in how we

relate to ourselves and second, in how we relate to others. Because we

have yet to meet a person with perfect moral intelligence, putting prin-

ciples into action requires that when we make inevitable mistakes, when

our behavior fails to conform to universal human principles, we need to

treat ourselves with compassion and forgiveness. If we are not gentle

and forgiving of ourselves, we will not have the energy to move for-

ward to build our moral capacity. Similarly, to inspire others to enhance

their moral intelligence, we need to treat others with compassion and

forgiveness.

Research tells us that emotional intelligence contributes more to

life success than intellectual or technical competence. Emotional intel-

ligence can help you behave with great self-control and interpersonal

savvy. But emotional intelligence alone won’t keep you from doing the

wrong thing. Moral incompetence surfaces in moments when personal

or business goals conflict with core values. Just about everyone has

worked with someone who had great interpersonal skills but dropped

the ball on a moral issue—perhaps an employee who let a colleague

take the blame for something that was undeserved or a manager who

gave an inflated performance rating to the boss’ nephew. But until now,

no one has paid much attention to systematically developing moral

intelligence—even though the best leaders know it’s their secret

weapon for lasting personal and organizational performance.

Some competencies that appear on lists of emotional competencies

have a definite moral flavor, such as the ones listed here (from Daniel

Goleman’s Working with Emotional Intelligence17):

• Have a guiding awareness of (personal) values and goals.

• Voice views that are unpopular and go out on a limb for what is right.

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• Act ethically and are above reproach.

• Build trust through their reliability and authenticity.

• Admit their own mistakes and confront unethical actions in others.

• Take tough principle stands even if they are unpopular.

We believe it is more accurate to describe them as moral competencies.

They are aspects of the four principles we describe and, in this book, we

explore these attributes and the other competencies we see present in

integrity, responsibility, compassion, and forgiveness. Perhaps it has

been safer to think of these clearly moral competencies as emotional

competencies because the culture of business in the last half century has

discouraged all of us from talking about the “m” word. If there is a sil-

ver lining to the recent corporate scandals, it is that moral lessons are

inescapable. The time has come to openly acknowledge the contribution

of moral intelligence to effective leadership and sustainability.

Although both emotional intelligence and moral intelligence come

into play when moral decisions are at stake, they are not the same.

Emotional intelligence is values-free. Moral intelligence is not.

Emotional skills can be applied for good or evil. Moral skills, by defini-

tion, are directed toward doing good.

Emotional intelligence and moral intelligence, though distinct, are

partners. Neither works in a truly effective way without the other. In

Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence,18

Goleman and his co-authors, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee,

tackle the boundary between emotional and moral intelligence when

they discuss how good and bad leaders can use the same emotional

competencies:

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Given that adept leaders move followers to their emotional

rhythm, we face the disturbing fact that throughout his-

tory, demagogues and dictators have used this same ability

for deplorable ends. The Hitlers and Pol Pots of the world

have all rallied angry mobs around a moving—but destruc-

tive—message. And therein lies the crucial difference

between resonance and demagoguery:

Demagoguery casts its spell via destructive emotions, a

range that squelches hope and optimism as well as true

innovation and creative imagination (as opposed to cruel

cunning). By contrast, resonant leadership grounded in a

shared set of constructive values (our emphasis) keeps emo-

tions resounding in the positive register. It invites people to

take a leap of faith through a word picture of what’s possi-

ble, creating a collective aspiration.19

Without a moral anchor, leaders can be charismatic and influential in a

profoundly destructive way. As Primal Leadership emphasizes, truly

effective leadership is “grounded in a shared set of constructive values.”

Without knowledge of those values—in other words, moral intelli-

gence—the skills of emotional intelligence are ultimately ineffective in

promoting high performance.

Moral intelligence is not just important to effective leadership—it

is also the “central intelligence” for all humans. Why? It’s because

moral intelligence directs our other forms of intelligence to do some-

thing worthwhile. Moral intelligence gives our life purpose. Without

moral intelligence, we would do things and experience events, but they

would lack meaning. Without moral intelligence, we wouldn’t know

why we do what we do—or even what difference our existence makes

in the great cosmic scheme of things.

A Renewable Asset. The more you develop your moral intelli-

gence, the more positive changes you will notice, not only in your work

but also in your personal well-being. Staying true to your moral

24 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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compass will not eliminate life’s inevitable conflicts. Will you have to

compromise sometimes between your beliefs and the demands of your

work environment? Yes! Will you make mistakes? Will you sometimes

say the wrong thing out of jealousy or greed? Definitely! But staying

the moral course will give you singular personal satisfaction and profes-

sional rewards.

Your “Moral Positioning System.” Think of moral intelligence as

a “moral positioning system” for your life’s journey, analogous to the

global positioning system used in some cars as a navigational tool. You

can be a great driver, and your car can have a powerful engine and four-

wheel drive, but when it’s dark and you’ve never been in this neck of the

woods before, you have directions that were given you by someone who

doesn’t know street names, and you cannot see the map you got from

AAA, you are lost. Despite all your tools and resources, you have no

idea if you are headed in the right direction. But if your car had a global

positioning system, it would be virtually impossible for you to get lost.

Like having a GPS for your car, your moral intelligence enables you to

better harness all your resources, your emotional intelligence, your

technical intelligence, and your cognitive intelligence, to achieve the

goals that are most important to you—whether on the job or in the rest

of your life. Unlike today’s GPSs, moral intelligence is not optional

equipment. It is basic equipment for individuals who want to reach their

best creative potential and business leaders who want to capture the best

efforts of their workforce.

Moral Intelligence and Business Success. Though leaders may

attribute their companies’ success to their commitment to moral princi-

ples, their evidence is based only on their personal experiences. So far,

there has been no quantitative research that specifically studied the busi-

ness impact of moral intelligence. But there are objective indications

that moral intelligence is critical to the financial performance of your

business. One measure of the influence of moral intelligence on busi-

ness results comes from Ameriprise Financial (formerly American

Express Financial Advisors) that implemented a highly effective

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emotional competence training program. American Express Financial

Advisors defined emotional competence as “the capacity to create align-

ment between goals, actions, and values.” The program emphasized

development of self-leadership and interpersonal effectiveness and

demonstrated how those emotional skills led to business and personal

success. The bottom-line impact of the program was impressive, with

participants in a pilot group producing sales that were 18 percent higher

than a control group that didn’t have the benefit of the training—no

small change in a company that managed or owned assets in excess of

$232 billion at the time. At the heart of the program was a special sub-

set of skills that helped people to discover their principles and values

and then create goals and action steps that flowed from those deeply

held principles and values. American Express Financial Advisors’ lead-

ers realized that it was this overriding moral framework, that is, the

emphasis on principles and values, which accounted for much of the

success of the program. American Express Financial Advisors had

already found from internal studies that the most successful advisors

were highly confident, resilient under adverse circumstances, and, most

important, acted from a strong core of principles and values. To form

trusting partnerships with clients, advisors needed to be genuinely trust-

worthy. To be seen as trustworthy, advisors had to act in accordance

with worthwhile personal values. If advisors practiced the self-manage-

ment and social skills they learned in the training, but failed to operate

from moral principles and values, they would fall short of sustainable

success.

Although American Express Financial Advisors’ data demonstrates

the importance of an individual advisor’s moral intelligence to financial

performance, other businesses have discovered that they produce the

best results when their company overall is known for its moral intelli-

gence. Market research tells us that consumers judge a company’s rep-

utation mainly on the basis of its perceived values. A company’s

reputation translates straight to the bottom line: A recent study jointly

conducted by Cone and Duke University provides behavioral proof that

26 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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consumers prefer to make purchases from companies that are known for

their ethical practices.20

The business case for moral intelligence gets another boost from a

study done at DePaul University in Chicago. Researchers from the

School of Accountancy and MIS compared the financial performance of

100 companies selected by Business Ethics magazine as “Best

Corporate Citizens” with the performance of the rest of the S&P 500.

Corporate citizenship rankings were based on quantitative measures of

corporate service to seven stakeholder groups: stockholders, employees,

customers, community, environment, overseas stakeholders, and

women and minorities. The study found that overall financial perform-

ance of the 2001 Best Corporate Citizen companies was significantly

better than the rest of the S&P 500. The average performance of the

Best Citizens, as measured by the 2001 Business Week rankings of total

financial performance, was more than 10 percentile points higher than

the mean rankings of the rest of the S&P 500. According to Strategic

Finance magazine, which reported the study, “It casts doubt on the per-

sistent myth that good citizenship tends to lead to additional costs and

thus negatively impacts a firm’s financial results.”21

Moral Intelligence and the War for Talent. Everyone agrees that

talent is a key corporate asset, no matter what the state of the economy.

A company’s best employees can walk out the door at any time. They

are much more likely to take their expertise and potential elsewhere if

they don’t like the ethical or moral tenor of their workplace.22 Nancy

Jones, chief marketing officer, Allianz Life Insurance Company of

North America, believes that when the job market recovers from the

Great Recession, companies that aren’t treating employees with

integrity and compassion now won’t keep them later:

The environment of constant sacrifice being expected of

employees these days is not sustainable. People get burned

out and start looking for other jobs. Leaders have to estab-

lish a balance between what the business result is and how

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business gets done. Otherwise productivity suffers and

eventually you lose talent. As the economy improves, com-

panies will discover that they can’t maintain so much pres-

sure on their people. Today people stay where they are if

they can because there are no other options. But when the

opportunity comes up, people will start looking for better

hours, the chance to be more creative, make more money,

or whatever. Then belatedly, companies will try to create

incentives to get people to stay, and it won’t work.”

Don MacPherson, president of Modern Survey, underscores the scope

of the problem, noting: “In a survey we conducted and released in 2010

we learned that the level of workforce disengagement in America is at

or near historic highs across virtually all industries. And it is especially

high in the financial services industry.”

When good employees leave, sometimes it is a reaction to an entire

organization that lacks a climate of moral intelligence; at other times,

employees leave simply because their immediate supervisor or boss is

lacking in moral competence. A number of years ago, a young man we

know abruptly quit a job that he had been thrilled to get only a few

months before. He loved the work and loved the product—selling sports

hospitality packages of high-profile sports events to large corpora-

tions—but couldn’t tolerate the moral climate. Some years before

beginning his job, his company had run afoul of a major sports associa-

tion for using misleading and unethical tactics to get people to buy tick-

ets for a major golfing competition and was now under a court order

that prevented them from lying to get people to buy tickets. The com-

pany’s solution was to create two sales scripts for the golfing competi-

tions—an “official” sales script for marketers to keep by the phone and

show to the CEO if he stopped by. The actual sales script used by the

marketers was the same kind of misleading pitch that had gotten the

company into hot water in the first place. The final straw for this young

man came when he was asked to start selling tickets for a major tennis

event using the same misleading pitch.

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It’s not just current employees who yearn for a morally intelligent

workplace. First-time job seekers increasingly rate the ethical character

of prospective employees as a consideration in their decisions about

where to work. Patrick Gnazzo, vice president of business practices for

the manufacturer United Technologies Corp. in Hartford, Connecticut,

reported in The Wall Street Journal article that a growing number of

their job candidates apply for positions with UTC based on the job

seekers’ research into the company’s ethics program.23 Since 2005,

United Technologies Corp. has worked diligently to create the kind of

ethical climate that inspires employees’ best efforts and strong business

results. Today it boasts an unusually robust corporate ethics program,

and in 2010 UTC received the Ethics Resource Center’s prestigious

annual Leadership in Ethics award in 2010.24

Moral Intelligence and the Consumer. Most perpetrators of the

recent economic meltdown have escaped legal prosecution. However,

they haven’t escaped moral condemnation in the eyes of the public. The

business impact of bad behavior in the financial services industry of

moral incompetence is substantial. According to a 2009 survey, 59% of

investors state that they have been let down by the financial markets;

48% now distrust financial institutions in general; and nearly half of

investors have lost trust in government.25 Imagine how investor confi-

dence will impact the health of financial services firms over the long

term. If investors can’t trust the financial services industry in general, to

whom will they turn for financial advice? If they haven’t given up on

the whole industry, it’s likely that investors will be checking out their

financial advisors much more carefully in the future to ensure that their

financial well-being is in the hands of professionals with high integrity.

Lack of trust in government, another key player in the recent economic

disaster, was a major factor in the outcome of the November 2010

United States mid-term elections. Many formerly “safe” political

incumbents, especially Democrats, were defeated in a populist wave of

antigovernment sentiment. Voters appeared to be particularly upset

about the governing Democratic Party’s inability to make a dent in an

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exceptionally high unemployment rate. First-time Republican candi-

dates for Congress helped the Republicans regain control of the House

of Representatives.

If the public doesn’t trust you, it will vote you out, no matter what

business you are in. Business leaders across industries should not rest

easy about their reputations. Last year’s annual Gallup poll on Honesty

and Ethics showed that only 12% of the public rates business execu-

tives’ ethical standards as high or very high.26

Today, more than ever, consumers are likely to shun unethical com-

panies, and they won’t hesitate to make their displeasure known. More

than 70% of American consumers have, at some point, punished com-

panies they view as unethical, either by avoiding a company’s products

or speaking negatively about the company to others. A recent study

demonstrated that consumers punish unethical practices more than they

reward ethical practices. Automobile manufacturer Mitsubishi felt the

effects of consumer punishment when its Japanese sales dropped 40%

in fiscal year 2005 after it was discovered that company officials had

suppressed information about widespread vehicle defects. The rapid

rise of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter has tur-

bocharged consumers’ ability to use word of mouth to reward ethical

companies and punish unethical ones.

The evidence is clear—moral intelligence plays a big part in sus-

tainable corporate success. Without it, your organization risks devastat-

ing financial failure. What are the implications for your personal

leadership effectiveness? If you pay attention to your own moral intelli-

gence as a leader and encourage development of moral intelligence

throughout your organization, you will inspire trust in your customers

and vendors, as well as the best efforts of your workforce. That’s the

formula for ensuring sustainable optimal performance. It is possible to

get ahead without moral intelligence: The corporate accounting villains

and disgraced financial industry executives who have caused so much

pain in the last decade are proof that you can do well despite moral

30 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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lapses—for a while. But without moral intelligence, long-term business

success is ultimately not sustainable.

Obviously, moral intelligence isn’t the only determinant of sustain-

able business performance. You also need solid business skills, and you

need a product or service that people want to buy. It’s hard not to won-

der what the financial services industry and the economy in general

might be like today if more industry leaders had used both their busi-

ness smarts and their moral smarts to execute their firms’ strategy.

Moral intelligence won’t completely immunize your company from

the financial ups and downs of doing business in a volatile economy.

But you need it to stay in business over the long haul. So, take your

leadership to the next level—go beyond the usual formulas for leader-

ship success.

But how do you begin? Exactly how does moral intelligence pro-

duce better business performance? What are the specific moral skills

you need to inspire the best efforts of your workforce? How can your

organization—whether large or small—use moral intelligence to create

high-performing work environments? You find answers to these ques-

tions in the pages that follow.

Endnotes 1. http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-197.htm.

2. Bruce Watson, “Where Are They Now? Seven Villains of the Financial Crisis,” Daily Finance, September 15, 2010. http://srph.it/9bTrGJ.

3. William D. Cohan, “The rise and fall of Jimmy Cayne,” Fortune, August 25, 2008. http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/31/magazines/fortune/rise_and_fall_ Cayne_cohan.fortune/index.htm.

4. Peter Chapman, The Last of the Imperious Rich: Lehman Brothers, 1844–2008, Penguin, September 2010.

5. Gary Weiss, “No Need to Apologize,” Portfolio, September 7, 2010. http:// www.portfolio.com/views/columns/2010/09/07/no-regret-from-former-lehman- ceo-dick-fuld/#ixzz14L75yUtB.

CHAPTER 1 • GOOD BUSINESS 31

http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-197.htm

http://srph.it/9bTrGJ

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/31/magazines/fortune/rise_and_fall_Cayne_cohan.fortune/index.htm

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/2010/09/07/no-regret-from-former-lehman-ceo-dick-fuld/#ixzz14L75yUtB

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6. Karen Freifeld and David Scheer, “Ken Lewis, Bank of America Sued by Cuomo for Fraud (Update5),” Bloomberg Business Week, February 4, 2010.

7. http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-59.htm.

8. John D. McKinnon and Susanne Craig, “Goldman Is Bruised, Defiant in Senate,” The Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2010.

9. Stevenson Jacobs, “Guilty or not, Goldman’s reputation takes a hit,” Associated Press, April 18, 2010.

10. “Turmoil on Wall Street: The Impact of the Financial Sector Meltdown On New York’s Labor Market,” New York State Department of Labor Division of Research and Statistics Bureau of Labor Market Information, June 2009. http://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/pdfs/wall_street.pdf.

11. Reported by Marcelo Prince, “Manager Discovers Leadership in an Accident’s Aftermath,” The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2002.

12. For example, Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. New York: Bantam, 1995, and Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam, 1998.

13. Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. (1990). “Emotional intelligence.” Imagination, cogni- tion, and personality, 9(3), 185–211.

14. Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. New York: Bantam, 1995.

15. Mayer, J. D. and Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey and D. Sluyter (Eds). Emotional development and emotional intelli- gence: Implications for educators (pp. 3–31). New York: Basic Books.

16. Barbara Fredrickson, Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive, Crown Archetype, 2009.

17. Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam, 1998.

18. Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee, Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

19. Ibid.

20. For example, the 2008 Cone/Duke University Behavioral Cause Study and the 2008 Cone Cause Evolution Study. http://www.coneinc.com/stuff/contentmgr/ files/0/8ac1ce2f758c08eb226580a3b67d5617/files/cone25thcause.pdf.

21. Curtus C. Verschoor, “Best Corporate Citizens Have Better Financial Per- formance,” Strategic Finance, Vol. 83, No. 7, p. 20, January 2002.

22. Reported by Kris Maher, “Wanted: Ethical Employer: Job Hunters, Seeking to Avoid an Enron or an Andersen, Find It Isn’t Always Easy,” The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2002.

23. Ibid.

24. “United Technologies Corp. and CEO Louis Chênevert Win ERC’s 2010 Pace Award for Leadership in Business Ethics,” Ethics Resource Center (ERC), October 28, 2010. http://www.ethics.org/news/pace2010.

32 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-59.htm

http://www.labor.ny.gov/stats/pdfs/wall_street.pdf

http://www.coneinc.com/stuff/contentmgr/files/0/8ac1ce2f758c08eb226580a3b67d5617/files/cone25thcause.pdf

http://www.ethics.org/news/pace2010

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25. Sullivan Insight on Affluent Investors for Financial Marketers, 2009.

26. Gallup, 2009, Honesty and Ethics of Professions poll. http://www.gallup. com/poll/124625/Honesty-Ethics-Poll-Finds-Congress-Image-Tarnished.aspx.

CHAPTER 1 • GOOD BUSINESS 33

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What makes a leader effective? Turns out, the best leaders are not the

charismatic or heroic types lionized in years past. According to the lat-

est research, they are “quiet leaders” who accomplish great things mod-

estly and without fanfare.1 Leaders at the helm of the perennially great

companies all share a common trait—humility.2 They inspire high per-

formance in others through their sensitivity to their followers’ needs.3

The best leaders think “we,” not “I.”4 They are, quite simply, good peo-

ple who consistently tap into their inborn disposition to be moral. They

follow a moral compass—even when it’s tempting not to. They make

hard choices between right and wrong, or even between two different

“rights.” Great people—and great leaders—share common moral val-

ues. They believe in honesty and in being responsible for themselves

and others. They show compassion for their fellow humans and know

how to forgive others—and just as important—themselves.

Born to Be Moral

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What the Best Leaders Believe The most effective leaders hold to a common set of principles and con-

sistently use those principles to guide their day-to-day actions. They

don’t make up their values as they go along; they listen carefully to the

call of moral values that already lie within all of us. The principles busi-

ness leaders follow are the same set of principles that all human soci-

eties throughout time have believed to be “right.” These fundamental

beliefs have been embedded in human society for so long that they are

now widely recognized as universal.

Our extensive work with senior leaders of major corporations sup-

ports the notion that there are principles we all share in common. Our

results echo that of noted anthropologist Donald E. Brown, who found

in his research that the moral codes of all cultures include recognition

of responsibility, reciprocity, and ability to empathize.5

Other studies have confirmed Brown’s findings. Genuine differ-

ences in behavior in different cultures may distract us from what we

have in common with all people—a universal moral compass. Consider

a study that compared children in India with American children.6 The

differences in values were predictable: Indian children displayed more

deference to elders and acceptance of tradition, whereas American chil-

dren valued personal autonomy and freedom. But their moral codes

were virtually identical. Both groups of children believed that it was

wrong to lie, cheat, or steal, and both thought that it was important to

treat the sick or unfortunate with kindness.

In another study, researchers Richard T. Kinnier, Jerry L. Kernes,

and Therese M. Dautheribes identified a short list of universal princi-

ples by analyzing earlier lists and examining the official tenets of major

world religions.7 Their rationale was that the principles held in common

by major world religions are the ones most likely to be universal and

enduring. They found the following principles espoused in common by

all or most religions, and by secular organizations including American

36 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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Atheists, Inc., the American Humanist Association, and the United

Nations Declaration of Rights:

• Commitment to something greater than oneself

• Self-respect, but with humility, self-discipline, and acceptance of personal responsibility

• Respect and caring for others (that is, the Golden Rule)

• Caring for other living things and the environment

Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,

offers more evidence of universal principles. “From my experiences in

working with different people and cultures,” he says, “I find that if cer-

tain conditions are present when people are challenged to develop a

value system, they will identify essentially the same values. Each cul-

ture may express those values differently, but the underlying moral

sense is always the same.”8

Finally, noted psychologist Martin Seligman and his colleagues in

the field of Positive Psychology have conducted research that led them

to identify six universal virtues honored in all cultures in the world: wis-

dom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.9

Although the labels might vary slightly and though each culture may

express these principles differently, the underlying moral sense is

always the same. We believe that these universal principles exist, even

though we know they are not universally applied. We believe that living

in alignment with these principles is crucial to our individual and orga-

nizational survival and success.

Good leadership is not a function of some rare talent for inspiring

others. Each one of us can be a good person and a great leader because

we are all “hard-wired” to be moral. We were born that way. A glance

at the news headlines might make that hard to believe, but here’s why

we think it is so.

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A Visit to the Nursery Walk into a hospital nursery, and you enter another world. It’s bright

and bustling, and its residents—most not more than a day or two old—

are amazingly social. In the nursery, there is no such thing as one cry-

ing infant. When one begins to cry, the others join in. Psychologists

who study newborn behavior call this neonate responsive crying. The

newborn is crying in reaction to another person’s distress. How can a

baby only a few hours old respond to someone else’s pain? Researchers

aren’t sure how, but they have ruled out other explanations for the

infant’s response. It seems newborns don’t cry when they hear a record-

ing of their own crying—so it can’t be the noise itself that’s bothering

them. Many psychologists believe that neonate responsive crying is the

first indication of an inborn capacity for empathy. To become compas-

sionate moral beings, we first need the ability to see the world through

others’ eyes (or hear their world through their cries!). Empathy is a key

step in which infants appreciate that others exist independently of them

and that others have their own separate needs. Yet the simple apprecia-

tion that others have emotions and physical needs and are completely

separate from us is not sufficient to make us moral beings. We can still,

as many children (and adults) do, decide that the search for our own

pleasures justifies our causing others pain.

Nature Versus Nurture The explanation? Moral hard-wiring is not enough. We also need moral

software, the programming that our moral hardware relies on to make

moral choices. Like any other human capacity, morality is a combina-

tion of our biology (our nature) and our experiences (our nurture). Take

language, for example. You speak at least one language fluently. But

you couldn’t speak a word when you were born. You had to learn to

speak. We know that speech is a learned proficiency because children

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invariably speak the language of their caregivers. But we also know that

language requires an inborn capacity to speak and comprehend.

Development of our morality follows a similar path. No one could teach

us right and wrong unless we were wired to acquire, and act on, a moral

compass. But just as we don’t come out of the womb spouting

Shakespeare, we are not born with a fully operational moral compass. It

takes time—and the right set of experiences—to become fully moral.

Noted UCLA neuroscientist and author Jeffrey Schwartz puts it this

way: “As a young child you’re taught the moral values of society. We

wire our brains with them by paying attention to them.”10

Growing Up Moral Let’s pick up the story of our moral development as we leave the nurs-

ery. Our newborn crying response sets the stage for a more mature

empathy that emerges gradually during our early childhood. By the time

we are two or three months old, we begin to respond to the emotional

expressions of our primary caregiver. We play with our parents by mak-

ing faces and exchanging excited noises with each other. By five

months of age, we can tell that there is a difference among different

emotional expressions of others. By the time we are one year old, we

can tell that facial expressions or changes of voice intonation have par-

ticular emotional meanings. We then know that other people have feel-

ings distinct from our own. If you have been around one-year-olds, you

may have seen them checking out other people’s reactions to figure out

how they themselves should respond to a situation. Parents often take

advantage of this habit to prevent a child from getting upset over a

minor tumble. If a child falls down, she will look to her parent to see

how that parent is reacting. If the parent stays calm, it is likely that the

child will also. Empathy development continues at a rapid clip through-

out the second year. By 15 to 18 months of age, we share, cooperate,

and give care, as long as the situation is not too stressful. Think of the

CHAPTER 2 • BORN TO BE MORAL 39

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16-month-old who tries to pat someone who is crying. By two years of

age, we are very empathic people. We try to comfort people in distress.

We express sympathy. We make suggestions. We bring a tissue to some-

one who is crying.

Learning to Be Responsible But more than empathy is developing. By age two, we begin to show

some grasp of justice, responsibility, and blame. We have all heard chil-

dren as young as three or four respond to real or imagined injustice with

an emphatic, “That’s not fair!” Many of us begin at an early age to do

things we know will be upsetting to others. Being negative is an impor-

tant part of learning to be moral. If we didn’t do bad things once in a

while, it would be difficult to understand the difference between right

and wrong behavior. Think of the earliest time you can remember doing

something wrong. How old were you? What did you do? How did you

know it was the wrong thing to do? Most of us can recall getting in trou-

ble with our parents for some early childhood infraction. They used

those incidents to teach us some version of the golden rule—treat

others as you would want to be treated. Think of others. Don’t take

something that belongs to someone else. Tell the truth. We learn to be moral, not just from being scolded for bad behavior, but by being loved

unconditionally for who we are. We grow morally through the interplay

between our biological disposition to be empathetic and through our

loving relationship with our parents. Because they love us, we love

them, and because we love them, we work to please them. Eventually,

we adopt our parents’ values because we want to be like them.

Throughout our preschool years, we grow in empathy and in our moral

sense. By the time we are six or seven years of age, we can tell right

from wrong and feel guilty if we do something we know we

shouldn’t.11

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When Things Go Wrong We tend to take the natural process of moral development for granted

until we see a situation in which it doesn’t happen. It can’t happen, for

instance, if we are born with certain neurological problems. Moral

development also goes off course if our caregivers are not willing or

able to provide the right kind of early nurturing. Our parents don’t need

to be perfect. They do need to be “good enough” to treat us well most of

the time.12 They need to be consistently affectionate and dependable.

They must show us how to be empathetic, and they must help us

develop positive beliefs about ourselves.

If our parents don’t provide that kind of support, we won’t develop

into those amazingly empathetic two-year-olds and, later on, into

morally competent adults. Again, moral development is much like lan-

guage development. If you happened to be raised by wolves for the first

five years of your life (as a rare number of people have been), you’ll

learn how to howl, but you’ll probably never learn to speak normally.

No amount of inborn ability to develop language can help you if you

weren’t also exposed to the right set of experiences at the right time.

Inside Your (Moral) Brain In the previous section, we looked at our moral development from the

outside in. We saw that our moral development, like language develop-

ment, depends on both biology and learning. We saw that our relation-

ship with our parents is key to our growing moral understanding. But

we can’t learn positive values and altruistic motivation before we are

neurologically ready to acquire them.

Let’s recall once again the crying babies in the hospital nursery.

The empathic response of newborns happens so immediately that it is

most likely genetically based rather than learned.13 Think about the

CHAPTER 2 • BORN TO BE MORAL 41

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biological priorities involved: Before we can crawl or speak, we can

respond empathically to our peers. Empathy must be incredibly impor-

tant. We also learn that by age two; those of us who have been exposed

to “good enough” parenting spontaneously demonstrate helping behav-

ior. What is going on in our brains at age two? The brain of a normal

two-year-old who has had “good enough” parenting also happens to

have a normal limbic system—the part of the brain involved in emo-

tional processing. But if we haven’t had good-enough parenting, our

brains do not grow normally. When a child has been abused or neg-

lected, the cortical and subcortical areas of the brain are roughly 20 to

30% smaller than normal. In addition, the brain “wiring” isn’t as dense

or complex so that abused or neglected children are lacking some brain

organization that would enable them to make strong connections to

other human beings.14 Without those connections, no empathy is real-

ized, and without empathy, you have impaired morality.

It’s All in Your Head Scientists who study the relationship between brain function and behav-

ior are beginning to chart the moral anatomy of the brain. They’ve

learned how the brain affects moral behavior by studying both normal

and brain-injured individuals. Perhaps the most famous case of moral

impairment caused by brain damage happened more than 150 years

ago. Phineas Gage headed up a group of men who were laying track for

a new rail route across Vermont. Admired by family and friends, Gage

also had a great reputation as a strong, intelligent, and efficient worker.

But something went wrong one hot summer day in 1848, when the

group was preparing to blast through rock to pave the way for the new

track. The explosive went off prematurely, propelling a 13-pound iron

rod through the prefrontal cortex of Gage’s brain. Miraculously, Gage

survived with his faculties intact—or so the doctors thought. He

remained conscious, was able to speak and walk immediately after the

injury, and survived a serious infection around the wound. Within two

42 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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months, the doctors considered him cured. Gage looked the same as he

always had, but his personality was completely altered, and his family

and friends soon realized that the man they had known was gone. No

longer able to work as a railway foreman, Gage began a downward spi-

ral of impulsive, aggressive, and socially disconnected behavior that

ended with his death from severe epileptic seizures in 1861.

Gage’s chroniclers don’t tell us whether his value system was

destroyed by his prefrontal injury or whether he was simply unable to

act on a value system that survived his injury. For practical purposes, it

did not matter—either way, Gage could no longer function as a moral

being. But there is a big practical distinction between moral intelligence

(our internal moral compass) and moral competence (our ability to act

in alignment with what we know is right). Most of us know what’s right.

Sometimes, though, it’s a struggle to do what we know is right—when

we lack the moral competence to act in alignment with our moral com-

pass. Researchers have discovered that our brain makes the same dis-

tinction. When neuroscientists compared the behavior of two adults

who had suffered prefrontal brain injuries as infants with patients who

had suffered similar injuries as adults, they found a striking difference

in their post-injury capacities.15 One patient, a woman, was run over by

a car when she was 15-months-old. Although she recovered from her

physical injuries, her parents were dismayed to discover that by the time

she was three-years-old, she simply did not respond to verbal instruc-

tions or even physical punishment. Although her intelligence was nor-

mal, her behavior became increasingly disruptive, and she could not

function in a regular school. As a teenager, she shoplifted, stole, lied,

and was verbally and physically abusive. She showed no remorse for

her behavior, blamed her misdeeds on others, and seemed incapable of

empathy. The second patient, a man, had surgery for a brain tumor

when he was three-months-old. He seemed to recover fully from his

surgery, and his parents were relieved that his physical development

was normal, given that he began to walk and talk on a typical timetable.

He seemed a little behind academically in early elementary school, and

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by age nine, his overall behavior was becoming cause for concern. He

was generally unmotivated, had few social contacts with peers, and

lacked normal expressiveness, although occasionally he would lose his

temper. He got through high school, but after graduation, his behavior

deteriorated. He sat around watching TV or listening to music, ate his

way into obesity, and neglected his personal hygiene. He could not keep

a job and committed numerous petty crimes. Like the first patient, he

showed no guilt or remorse for his bad behavior and seemed incapable

of empathy for others.

What actually caused the behavioral problems of the two brain-

injured individuals? Both came from middle-class homes with attentive,

college-educated parents, so we can assume they had “good enough”

parenting. Neurological testing showed that both were normal on tests of

basic mental ability. But when they were tested on tasks that required

them to use reasoning to guide social behavior, they had trouble. Their

moral capabilities were severely impaired. On moral reasoning tasks,

they could think about moral situations only from the perspective of

avoiding punishment, much like that of children before nine years of age.

They lacked any capacity for moral reasoning based on the golden rule

or any ability to consider what is fair from an empathetic perspective.

Because the two suffered their brain injuries so early in life, their

moral capabilities were more severely affected than those of people

who suffer brain injuries later in life. People whose brains are injured as

adults show different levels of moral impairment. People with adult-

onset injuries have already acquired their moral reasoning ability as part

of normal childhood development. They may have had years of experi-

ence in applying moral judgments in actual life situations before

becoming injured. If you ask people who have suffered an adult-onset

brain injury to respond to a hypothetical moral reasoning scenario, for

example, should someone steal a drug to save someone’s life, they are

quite able to tell you what the morally correct decision should be. In

real life, however, they don’t seem able to put their abstract moral sense

into practice. Researchers speculate that the part of the brain that holds

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emotionally related knowledge essential for good, moral decision mak-

ing has been disabled or disconnected by the adult-onset brain injury,

even though the individual retains factual knowledge of moral rules.

Young children who suffer a prefrontal brain injury apparently never get

the chance to learn the moral rules because the part of their brains that

would have allowed them to develop moral reasoning has been unalter-

ably damaged. The impact of the time of injury is considerable. Adult-

onset brain injury patients suffer impairments in their social and moral

behavior but generally do not display the kind of antisocial or criminal

behavior characteristic of people who suffered prefrontal brain damage

in infancy.16

The Moral Map of Your Brain Studies of brain-damaged individuals tell us what general area of the

brain is involved in moral reasoning and decision making. They don’t

tell us exactly how our brains typically function when confronted with a

moral decision. To find out, scientists have been studying the brains of

normal individuals (if you can call college students who are the most

common research subjects “normal”) using a technique called functional

magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). fMRIs resemble the MRI proce-

dures that you might have undergone to diagnose an injury or illness.

Regular MRIs produce “snapshots” of thin slices of body tissue, whereas

functional MRIs use an advanced scanner that detects changes in blood

flow to areas of the brain. When a particular part of the brain is involved

in a certain activity, the fMRI image of that area “lights up.” For exam-

ple, if you were put under an fMRI scanner and you heard a loud noise,

the area of your brain that processes sound would show a lot more activ-

ity. fMRI technology is now used to chart the unique parts of the brain

involved in our moral intelligence. One study, for example, found that

viewing pictures with moral content (such as physical assaults, poor chil-

dren abandoned in the streets, and war scenes) activated distinct areas of

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the brain that were not activated by any of the other types of pictures,

including those with strong emotional content.17

Why We’re Good and Why We’re Bad It’s clear we are programmed to be moral. But why? Though many

philosophers and psychologists believe that truly moral emotions are

uniquely human, anthropologists have found evidence of altruism, fair-

ness, and empathy in other species. A whale, for instance, might go to

the aid of a sick member of the pod, or a squirrel might risk its own

safety by giving a warning call about a nearby predator. Perhaps the rea-

son we are programmed to be moral comes not from our uniqueness as

a species, but from what we have in common with other species such as

whales, squirrels, or chimpanzees—we all live in social groups. As

members of social societies, we need others to help us survive and pros-

per. Most of us are familiar with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural

selection, the idea of “survival of the fittest.” Darwin believed that

plants and animals with physical characteristics that help them survive

are more likely to reproduce—carrying their survival-friendly genes

forward into future generations. Similarly, it is likely that altruistic and

cooperative behavior is part of basic human behavior today because it

was crucial to the survival of our early human ancestors.18 People who

banded together were better able to master the elements, fight off pred-

ators, and acquire food. Individuals who cooperated and helped others

tended to live longer. They were more likely to procreate and thereby

get their traits into the gene pool. As an example, the tendency to pro-

vide care for helpless infants would be an advantage to our species, pro-

tecting us from extinction. Because early humans lived in small groups

of related individuals, we would expect to see in our own behavior

today a tendency to care for our relatives. Given the complexity of con-

temporary society, it’s likely that evolution has favored the genes of

those who extended their cooperation beyond their immediate kin.

What would have guided those cooperative relationships of our earliest

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ancestors? It’s not hard to see how the golden rule might have

evolved—treat others as you would like to be treated—is a practical

principle for living harmoniously and working for the common good.

So What Goes Wrong? If it is true that we have been wired over eons to follow the golden rule,

how then can we explain all its flagrant violations? We could try to

write off crime and cruelty as mutations of normal human nature. Most

of us, however, realize that there is a dark side to our own nature. There

are times when selfishness prevails and when other needs overtake us,

and we will not, or think we cannot, do what we know is right.

According to Harvard Business School professors Paul Lawrence and

Nitin Nohria, we all have four basic human drives created by evolution

to improve survival.19 Our drives can sometimes conflict. For example,

the competitiveness generated by our drive to acquire will often act at

odds with our desire to cooperate, driven by our desire to bond. We see

the conflict play out in young children who want exclusive use of a new

toy at the same time that they want to play with their friends. We see it

in corporations where senior managers rake in salaries that are 100 or

1,000 times greater than that of some employees, while preaching to

their employees—and honestly believing—that “we’re all in this

together.” In the battle between competing drives, selfishness often wins

out. We may want to live by the golden rule, but in some cases, the drive

to acquire or defend overtakes our drive to bond. Lawrence and Nohria

also point out that there is a “dark side” to each drive. Even the drive to

bond, arguably the foundation of human morality, has a dark side, set-

ting us up to define an “in group” and an “out group.” We bond with our

“in group.” It is a series of short steps from connecting with our own

group to demonizing an “out group.” Early humans flourished by

expanding their definitions of their “in group.” At this time in history,

our survival may depend on expanding our “in group” to include all the

people on Earth. With the inevitable march of globalization, in which

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economic trouble in one country reverberates throughout the global

economy, the need to recognize the importance of interdependence is

even clearer. Radioactive material from nuclear warfare or HIV and

H1N1 viruses do not recognize cultural or governmental boundaries.

Balancing competing drives and managing the dark side of our human

nature is the essence of moral intelligence. Choosing among competing

desires is the essence of morality. There is no morality without choice.

Making decisions between our sometimes competing drives requires us

to make moral choices.

The Neuroscience of Moral Decision Making The work of choosing between competing drives is complicated by the

way our brains are wired. To understand how we make moral decisions,

or decisions of any kind, we first need to understand how our brain

operates. The brain is divided into three major sections (see Figure 2.1).

48 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

Autonomic

Emotional

Rational

FIGURE 2.1 Simplified Model of the Brain

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In the outer layer is the brain’s rational center, which handles com-

plicated cognitive processes such as objective thinking and rational

decision making. The brain’s rational center is largely composed of an

anatomical section of the brain called the cerebral cortex. In the middle

layer of the brain is its emotional center, which processes emotions,

motivations, and drives. The major anatomical component of the brain’s

emotional center is called the limbic system. Within the limbic system

is the amygdala, which translates outside stimulation into specific emo-

tions such as fear or excitement. The inner part of the brain, the habit

center, processes everything we do automatically without thinking. The

major anatomical component of the brain’s habit center is the basal gan-

glia. It includes not only habits, but also basic body functions such as

breathing, circulation, movement, and sensation. These three parts of

the brain—the rational center, the emotional center, and the habit cen-

ter—work together. They are connected to one another by neural cir-

cuits, that is, pathways that use special chemicals to send information

back and forth among different parts of the brain.20

Here’s an example of how the three parts of the brain are con-

nected: Imagine you are a junior executive in a meeting with the senior

executive team. Prior to the meeting, you met with your fellow junior

executives (who were also participating in the meeting). Based on the

premeeting with your peers, you were aware of some sensitive informa-

tion going to be brought up in the meeting with the senior executives

(one of whom is your boss). The junior executives had chosen a

spokesperson to present the information to the senior group. You knew

that this information would not be well received by the senior execu-

tives, but that it was important for the group of junior executives to

share. During the meeting with the senior executives, the junior execu-

tives’ spokesperson raises the hot-button issue. Your boss explodes,

looks directly at you and says, “Did you know this was going to hap-

pen?” In the heat of the moment, you blurt out, “No.” As soon as you

say that, you know you have made a mistake. Not only did you lie, but

your lie made your peers more vulnerable to the senior team’s anger and

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jeopardized your relationships with your fellow junior executives. So

why did you lie? What happened to those connections between the three

parts of your brain? The answer: Your emotions of fear and anxiety

were so strong that they disabled the rational center of your brain—the

part of your brain that you need the most to make effective moral deci-

sions. It’s not that you weren’t thinking at all—or that you don’t under-

stand what’s right and wrong—but that your strong feelings affected the

quality of your thinking. The message that your brain’s rational center

received had already been “spun’ by your brain’s emotional center. Out

of fear for yourself, you did the morally incorrect thing and in so doing

threw your colleagues under the bus. Your lapse in moral judgment hap-

pened because the triggering event—your boss’s anger—was emotion-

ally stimulating. When we’re in such an emotionally charged situation,

our brain acts reflexively: We do things automatically, without thinking

clearly. So you defaulted to a habit, in this case a habit of saying what-

ever you need to say to deflect others’ negative emotions. You haven’t

yet established the habit to do the right thing instantaneously under

pressure.

If our emotions are highly negative, they activate the brain’s loss

avoidance or danger system, a complex set of neural circuits that com-

municate across all three anatomical sections of the brain whenever we

perceive threats or dangers in our environment.21 If our emotions are

highly positive, they activate the brain’s reward system, a collection of

neural circuits running across the three divisions of the brain that scans

our environment in search of things we want.22 When our reward sys-

tem is highly activated (in the presence of highly positive emotions,) it

turns off our danger system. When our danger system is activated, it

neutralizes our reward system. As far as our brain is concerned, there

are no shades of gray: We are either excited and pursuing rewards, or

we are fearful and trying to avoid danger. Perhaps you’ve had the expe-

rience of feeling so worried about something that it was impossible to

enjoy a normally pleasurable event. That’s because in the presence of

either highly exciting or anxiety-producing financial situations, our

rational brains are MIA. In the example of the angry boss, for instance,

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anxiety and fear blocked the junior executive’s ability to make a rational

decision to tell the truth.

The Danger System

The danger system is the circuitry in the brain that gets activated when

we feel threats to our survival. Neuroscientists have not yet definitively

mapped the brain anatomy of the danger system. However, it is believed

to largely involve structures in the limbic system, including the insula,

which registers pain or disgust; the amygdala, which processes emo-

tions; and the hippocampus, which processes long-term memory. The

danger system also is thought to include the hypothalamus, which

secretes hormones that send messages to other systems in our body,

including the endocrine system. When our danger system is activated,

the whole body is involved. Our adrenal gland produces two chemicals:

cortisol (often referred to as the stress hormone) and epinephrine (AKA

adrenaline), which are secreted into the bloodstream, preparing our

body to fight or flee the danger we are facing. Cortisol gives us the

energy to deal with physical threats by increasing our blood pressure

and blood sugar. Epinephrine prepares the body for action in emergency

situations. It boosts the supply of oxygen and glucose to the brain and

muscles, while suppressing nonemergency bodily processes. Some

signs that your danger system is in charge are shaking, sweating, breath-

ing quickly, or feeling panicky. But just because you don’t feel any of

those symptoms doesn’t mean that your danger system isn’t active.

When your brain’s danger system is in charge, fear or anxiety may keep

you from doing the right thing because your decision-making ability is

impaired. Effective moral decisions almost invariably involve doing

what’s best for others, rather than optimizing your personal gain. But

when your danger system is in charge, “survival of the fittest” is in full

swing, and you automatically do what your emotions and existing

habits dictate—not what your rational brain would have chosen to do,

that is, act in the best long-term interest of you, your work colleagues,

or the common good.

CHAPTER 2 • BORN TO BE MORAL 51

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The Reward System

The reward system is the set of circuits in the brain that helps us iden-

tify and acquire things we want. It is made up of a bundle of neurons in

the midbrain that send projections throughout the prefrontal cortex,

affecting the rational processing ability of the brain. The neurons in the

reward system communicate primarily by releasing a chemical called

dopamine. When we see something potentially desirable (chocolate, an

attractive person, or a higher-paying job), our reward system turns on,

motivating us to want this thing that has come to our attention.23 What’s

interesting is how dopamine helps motivate us to go after what we want

by making us feel good. That’s why dopamine is typically referred to as

the pleasure chemical. Thanks to dopamine, we feel good when we

anticipate getting what we want, and we feel good when we’ve gotten

what we wanted. Just as with our danger system, when our reward sys-

tem is running the show, our automatic response mechanisms take over

because our rational decision making is impaired.

What’s worse, our reward and danger systems tend to operate with-

out our knowing it. As psychiatrist and neurofinance expert Dr. Richard

Peterson explains,“When the reward system is turned on it disables the

danger system, and when the danger system is turned on it disables the

reward system.”24 That means we can be under the sway of emotions

we’re not consciously aware of, making decisions that we delude our-

selves are moral—when what we’re actually doing is simply avoiding

personal danger or pursuing immediate gratification.

Can We Actually Change Our Brain? Given the way our ancient brains are wired, how can we possibly make

smart moral decisions under duress or in the thrall of an exciting oppor-

tunity? We can change the way our brains respond to the moral chal-

lenges life and leadership present us. Our brains have an amazing

capacity to create new response patterns and new habits. And it is this

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ability to change our brains that allows us to live up to the promise of

our innate moral intelligence. We are all disposed to be moral. But it

takes practice to behave consistently in a moral way. A violin virtuoso

is born with musical talent, just as we are born with a “talent” to be

moral. But if the would-be violinist doesn’t practice, she will never

reach her potential to join the elite group of top violinists in the world.

And if we don’t practice moral decision making, we’ll never reach our

potential to be compassionate, responsible, forgiving, and trustworthy

members of the human community. We’ll also never reach our potential

to be inspiring business and organizational leaders.

Fortunately, recent neuroscience research has revealed that the

brain is “plastic.” As Jeffrey Schwartz explains so powerfully in his

book, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental

Force,25 neuroplasticity means that we can change our brains. We can

create new habits so that when faced with morally challenging choices,

we can respond in ways that optimize not just our own best interest, but

also serve the best interests of family, friends, and the work colleagues

whom we lead. With practice, we can develop control over our typical

reactions to morally charged situations, and establish new, morally

competent responses that involve the logical parts of our brain. And the

first step to reprogramming our brain is to align our behaviors with the

principles and values we would like our moral decisions to reflect.

Moral Software By now, you should have a flavor for the compelling evidence that we

are biologically wired to be moral. We have used the analogy that our

innate moral disposition is our “moral hardware.” We come into the

world with rudimentary skills, such as empathy, which are the building

blocks for our moral intelligence. Before we are two years of age, we

seem naturally to help others in distress, and by the time we are four or

five, we have a good idea of what our parents and caretakers think is

right and wrong. Our moral hardware is preinstalled, and the upgrades

CHAPTER 2 • BORN TO BE MORAL 53

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come online surprisingly quickly. But we’ve also learned that there are

physiological brain dynamics that can interfere with our ability to make

wise, moral choices. Developing our moral skills in the face of a primi-

tive brain requires two major ingredients. First, we need to be grounded

in our “moral software,” those moral principles and competencies that

guide our actions and decisions as moral leaders and principled human

beings. Second, we need a process for neutralizing the primitive brain

mechanisms that can keep us from making decisions out of alignment

with the fundamental moral principles we all hold dear. Chapters 3

through 7 focus both on our “moral software,” that is, the contents of our

moral compass that form the underpinnings of our moral decisions, and

the moral competencies that make those principles come alive. Chapter

8, “Emotions,” highlights the emotional competencies that work in tan-

dem with our moral intelligence to help us stay aligned with our princi-

ples and values. Chapter 9, “Making Moral Decisions,” lays out a simple

and powerful process (The 4Rs) that successful leaders use to activate

the logical parts of their brains required to make optimal moral deci-

sions. Throughout the book, you will see that it is the leaders’ commit-

ment to moral principles, and their willingness to do the hard work of

developing their moral competencies, that account for the enduring suc-

cess of their organizations.

Endnotes 1. Joseph Badaracco, Jr. Leading Quietly, Boston: Harvard Business School Press,

2002.

2. Jim Collins. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t, New York: Harper Collins, 2001.

3. Dan Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee. Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

4. Peter Drucker. “What Makes an Effective Executive,” Harvard Business Review, June 2004.

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5. Donald E. Brown. Human Universals, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991.

6. Reported in Damon W. “The Moral Development of Children,” Scientific American, August 1999.

7. R.T. Kinnier, J.L. Kernes, and T.M. Dautheribes. “A Short List of Universal Moral Principles,” Counseling and Values, October 1, 2000.

8. Covey SR. “Universal Principles,” Executive Excellence, May 1, 2000.

9 Christopher Peterson and Martin E.P. Seligman. Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004.

10. Personal interview with Doug Lennick. April 2009.

11. Jerome Kagan and Sharon Lamb (eds.). The Emergence of Morality in Young Children, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

12. English Pediatrician D.W. Winnicott’s concept of “good enough” parenting as described in Robert Cole’s The Moral Intelligence of Children, New York: Random House, 1997.

13. Interpretation of Martin Hoffman’s work on empathy by author William A. Rottschaefer in The Biology and Psychology of Moral Agency, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

14. Bruce Perry and Ronnie Pollard. “Altered brain development following global neglect in early childhood,” Society for Neuroscience: Proceedings from Annual Meeting, New Orleans, 1997.

15. Steven W. Anderson, Antoine Bechara, Hanna Damasio, Daniel Tranel, and Antonio R. Damasio. “Impairment of Social and Moral Behavior Related to Early Damage in Human Prefrontal Cortex,” Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 2 No. 11, November 1999.

16. Ibid.

17. Fabio Sala. “Do Programs Designed to Increase Emotional Intelligence at Work- Work?” Research Report, Hay/McBer Group and Consortium for Resarch on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations (http://www.eiconsortium.org/ research/do_ei_programs_work.htm).

18. E.O. Wilson, author of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1975, a pioneer of sociobiological theory.

19. Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria. Driven: How Human Nature Shapes our Choices. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, October 2001.

20. Adapted from Peterson, Richard L. 2007. Inside the Investor’s Brain: The Power of Mind Over Money. Hoboken, New Jersey, John Wiley & Sons, pp. 23–25 and Zweig, Jason, 2007. Your Money & Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich, New York, Simon & Schuster: pp. 14-18.

21. Peterson, Richard L., 2007. Inside the Investor’s Brain: The Power of Mind Over Money, Hoboken, New Jersey, John Wiley & Sons: pp. 25.

CHAPTER 2 • BORN TO BE MORAL 55

http://www.eiconsortium.org/research/do_ei_programs_work.htm

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22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Personal interview with Doug Lennick, May 2010.

25. Harper Collins, 2003.

56 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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As we’ve just seen, nearly all of us have an inborn “talent” to be moral.

But talent is never enough. Think of the major league baseball teams

who spend fortunes on rookies and then send them off to farm teams for

a few years to hone their skills. Professional ball players begin with

baseball intelligence, but they must train hard to turn their baseball

intelligence into on-the-field baseball competence. So they practice

technical skills such as batting or pitching, along with nontechnical

skills such strategy, judgment, and emotional composure. Why do they

work so hard? Because they want to satisfy their goals and desires.

Maybe they like winning, or money, or adulation, or they love playing

the game. Successful ball players know that getting what they want

means doing whatever it takes to reach their goals. In other words, the

best ball players make sure that their talents, skills, and actions are

aligned with their goals.

Reaching our own personal goals also requires alignment. When we

decide to start a daily exercise program but never get on the treadmill, we

Your Moral Compass

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feel uneasy because our actions are inconsistent with our goals. If we

want to go on vacation, we feel good when we book the flight because

we’re doing something to reach our goal. Similarly, most of us want to

be moral because we crave that experience of consistency between our

moral values, our goals, and our actions. We call that state of moral con-

sistency living in alignment.

As important and satisfying as it is to make decisions based on val-

ues, aligning your decisions with values doesn’t come easy. There are

lots of landmines: emotions, such as fear or excitement, mental biases,

such as overconfidence in our leadership smarts, and a brain that was

built for hunting woolly mammoths, not riding the roller coasters of life

and leadership in today’s complex organizations. In the following chap-

ters, you learn skills to deal with all those obstacles to moral decision

making. But first, you need to understand what living in alignment

means because that is the foundation for becoming a true leader.

Think of living in alignment as the interconnection of three frames,

as shown in Figure 3.1.

58 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

Moral Compass

Principles

Values

Beliefs

Goals

Purpose

Goals

Wants

Behavior

Thoughts

Emotions

Actions

Living in Alignment

FIGURE 3.1 Living in Alignment

The first frame contains your moral compass—basic moral princi-

ples, personal values, and beliefs. The second frame holds your goals.

Your goals range from the lofty (your life’s purpose) to the ordinary (a

new house). The third frame contains your behavior, including

thoughts, emotions, and actions. Living in alignment means that your

behavior is consistent with your goals and that your goals are consistent

with your moral compass. Living in alignment keeps you on course to

accomplish your life purpose and achieve the best possible performance

in all your life roles.

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Mark Phillips, SVP Distribution, Ovations (a United Health Group

company), discovered that living in alignment can be difficult, espe-

cially when you’re bucking a popular business trend. When Mark was

SVP of Sales for Schwab Bank, he would frequently have to turn away

business that he knew Schwab’s competitors would grab in a heartbeat:

I was the front line, where issues escalated to me, and I

would sometimes have to say, “We’re not doing that kind of

business because it’s wrong for the customers and it’s

wrong for us.” We had to turn away business we knew

others would do because we focused on doing the right

thing. People were coming to us for loans when they had no

way to demonstrate their ability to pay us back. When we

said, “We can’t give you this credit,” it was a tough conver-

sation, but we did it. We turned them down, and some of

them were clients who would say they would take their

other business away from us, and some of them did. This

upset our brokers. But I could already see the problems

coming by 2006. Eighteen months later things imploded.

There were companies that had been writing credit at all

costs. Now we know what happened to them.

Despite the challenges of living in alignment, smart leaders recognize

that acting consistently with values ultimately pays off. Spenser Segal

is CEO of Actifi, which makes innovative software supporting the

financial services industry. As Spenser tells it, living in alignment was

key to helping his company navigate the 2008 economic downturn.

I really used the alignment model well in being really trans-

parent with my people. Because of that, we haven’t lost any

people. The senior management team and I bore the brunt

of the financial implications. 2007 had been our best year

ever, but then revenues dropped precipitously in 2008. Top

line improved slightly in 2009 and the bottom line got much

better, and now in 2010 we’re back. The congruency with

CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 59

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values and goals that is the heart of living in alignment car-

ried us through. Having weathered this makes us know we

can get through anything.

Living in alignment is an approach to life, not just an approach to

leadership. New Jersey mathematics professor Dr. Rich Bastian is

passionate about teaching the next generation the skills needed to help

the United States remain competitive in engineering and the sciences.

Rich also is deeply devoted to his family and deliberately lives near his

daughter and her three children. When he accepted a position at a local

college, he made sure his schedule would enable him to align his

actions with both of his passions. Four days a week he teaches classes

and meets with students. Each Friday he spends time with one of his

three grandchildren. He rotates their schedule so that at least once a

month, each grandchild gets quality time with their granddad. In addi-

tion, Rich and his partner Louise host a weekly dinner for the kids,

along with their mom and dad, Rich’s daughter Jessica, and her husband

Erik.

Living in alignment may sometimes be difficult, but it doesn’t

require superhuman acts. It is about the day-to-day steps we take to do

what we need to do to reach our goals. One of our colleagues used to

avoid speaking engagements before large audiences, preferring to work

with people one on one or in small groups. Eventually, he realized that

he could not effectively communicate his values and beliefs if he lim-

ited himself to small group presentations. So he joined Toastmasters,

the worldwide organization that helps people develop their public-

speaking abilities. Our friend’s desire to have a positive impact on the

world led him to work on overcoming the anxiety of large group presen-

tations.

Living in alignment is also not accidental. It requires doing things

on purpose and for a purpose. Living in alignment is a two-part process:

First, you build your own personal alignment model, by understanding

what is inside each of these three frames:

60 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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• Moral Compass—What do you value, and what are your most important beliefs?

• Goals—What do you want to accomplish personally and profes- sionally?

• Behavior—What actions will allow you to achieve your goals?

Then, after you build your own alignment model and know what should

be in each frame, you work consciously and consistently to maintain

alignment among your frames—simple, but as you might already sus-

pect, far from easy.

Frame 1: Moral Compass

CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 61

Frame 1

Moral Compass:

Principles

Values

Beliefs

This frame contains the core moral principles and values that are the

foundation of who we would ideally like to be as productive and ful-

filled human beings. Principles and values overlap. They key difference

is that principles are virtually universal: People everywhere tend to

believe in their importance. As noted in Chapter 2, “Born to Be Moral,”

these fundamental beliefs have been embedded in human society for so

long that they are now widely recognized as universal. Four primary

principles held in common globally are especially significant for effec-

tive leadership:

• Integrity

• Responsibility

• Compassion

• Forgiveness

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It’s no coincidence that successful leaders, no matter what their

style or personality, all seem to follow the beat of the same drum. They

listen carefully to the call of moral principles that already lie within all

of us. The leaders studied and interviewed for this book consistently

demonstrated the importance of these principles. They were at their

most effective when acting in alignment with principles. When they

ignored them, business results suffered. Integrity and responsibility are

essential minimum requirements for effective leadership. Lynn Sontag

is President of Menttium Corporation, which helps companies nation-

wide coordinate mentoring programs for high potential emerging lead-

ers. As Lynn points out, “Leaders who don’t step up and do the right

thing will be left behind, because in today’s world with new technolo-

gies and social and business networking, there is no place to hide.”

Compassion and forgiveness are equally important. They make the dif-

ference between a good leader and a great one. Consider the following

example of the business value of compassion. Don Froude, president of

Ameriprise Financial’s The Personal Advisor Group (TPAG) tells this

story:

A year ago I became aware of a situation involving an advi-

sor who was new to the firm and was behind his require-

ments to keep pace. When I talked to the advisor, I learned

that his family responsibilities in the wake of his father’s

recent death had made it impossible for him to dedicate

enough time to his work. His leaders thought they had to

follow the rules about dealing with every advisor, [no] mat-

ter what their situation. I told his leaders, “I can get a robot

to just follow the rules. I need you to demonstrate some

leadership judgment. That’s what I’m paying you for.” I’ve

always believed that if someone doesn’t succeed, it’s

because we have failed as their leaders. In this case, the

leaders made an exception for this advisor, and that judg-

ment paid off. The advisor is still with us and is now suc-

cessful and meeting all of his performance requirements.

62 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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Values

Values differ from principles in that values are more personal beliefs

about what is important to us as individuals. They are usually consistent

with principles, and they enable us to put our own stamp on the mean-

ing of the principles. For example, responsibility is a key principle, but

our values help us choose how we individually express the principle of

responsibility. We may value competence, challenge, or creativity. In

each case, we can align our life choices both with those values and with

the principle of responsibility. Will I be responsible by using my com-

petence, by taking on challenges, or by finding creative solutions to

areas such as work or family needs?

As we grew up, we learned a set of values, those qualities or stan-

dards that parents or caregivers considered important to our well-being

and that of others. Over time, we came to adopt those values as guides

to our own behavior. Families vary in the weight they place on certain

values. Families often emphasize a variety of values, such as helping

others, creativity, knowledge, financial security, or wealth accumula-

tion. Early in our lives, we typically adopt our families’ values, and as

we mature, we often add our own. By selecting, interweaving, and pri-

oritizing our values, we define who we are—or at least who we want to

be. Just as we recognize people by their physical characteristics such as

hair color, height, or the way they laugh, we also come to know people

by the values they embody. As we get to know friends or people with

whom we work, we begin to recognize what means the most to them.

Do they crave excitement, care about the environment, or seek status?

We evaluate others based on how well our values mesh with theirs. You

might value personal time for creative work more than social activities,

while I might value relationships and family time more than profes-

sional recognition. We feel comfortable around people who share our

most important values and often avoid those who don’t. If you value

loyalty, for example, you may not like working with people who are

self-serving.

CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 63

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Discovering Your Values

What is the set of values that anchors you? How would you want others

to think of you? It’s no coincidence that successful leaders consistently

make decisions aligned with their values. To act in alignment with our

values, we must deeply understand what they are.

Try this: In the next 30 seconds, say out loud your five most impor-

tant values. If you’re like most, you may be stuttering, or struggling to

think. “Uh… family…financial security. Umm….” Our values are typi-

cally not top of mind. It’s so hard to figure out our values, that most val-

ues clarification exercises provide a “cheat sheet” list of common

values. Steve Pavilla, a noted personal-development blogger, offers a

list of 374 values on his web site. Author Doug’s company, the Lennick

Aberman Group, created a pack of values cards, akin to trading cards,

each of which names and explains a value. The following exercise,

designed to help you become more aware of your values, is based on the

Lennick Aberman Group values cards.

64 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

Exercise: What Are Your Top Five Values?

Review this checklist of values and select the five that are most important to you. If you have an important value not on the list, use the blank spaces below to record other values. Don’t rush through this exercise. Take some time to reflect on what really matters most to you.

Adventure � Autonomy � Challenges � Change

Community � Competence � Competition � Cooperation

Creativity � Decisiveness � Diversity � Environment

Education � Ethics � Excellence � Excitement

Fairness � Fame � Family � Flexibility

Freedom � Friendship � Happiness � Health

Helping Others � Honesty � Independence � Integrity

Leadership � Loyalty � Meaningful Work � Money

Order � Philanthropy � Play � Pleasure

Power � Privacy � Recognition � Relationships

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CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 65

Religion � Safety � Security � Service

Spirituality � Status � Wealth � Work

___________ � ___________ � ____________ � ___________

The Morality of Values Not all values are created equal, as in the previous example. Without

some context, values are neither moral nor immoral. It is only when we

need to make decisions that have moral consequences that values take

on moral significance. In the wake of the recent economic crisis, exam-

ples of values misalignment are plentiful. For example, what were

heads of many United States banks and some other financial services

companies thinking when in 2009 they accepted federal TARP funds

but refused to use the cash infusion to ease lending for responsible busi-

nesses and qualified individuals?

When we make a decision that does not have any particular moral

significance, as in deciding where to go on vacation, we might indulge

our desire for adventure without a second thought. But when we make

a decision that involves others, as is the case when considering a career

move that would affect family members, the priorities we assign to our

values must be consistent with universal principles. In that instance, we

must honor the principle of responsibility. We may realize that our

desire for adventure, growth, or more money would come at the cost of

our responsibility to family.

What Your Decisions Reveal About Your Values

Sometimes, we don’t actually value what we say we do. If, over time,

you find yourself behaving inconsistently with your espoused values,

you have a choice. You can learn to better align your behavior with your

values by developing your moral and emotional competencies, or you

may simply accept that you value some things that you did not realize

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Exercise: What Your Decisions Tell You About Your Values

To find out what your outward behavior can tell you about your values, keep a running log of all your decisions over the course of a few weeks. For each decision:

• Write down the values that influenced your decision. • Ask yourself, “If people who did not know my inner motiva-

tions saw the outcome of this decision, what value or values would they think this decision reflected?”

Sample Decision and Values Log

were important to you. Either path is fine, as long as your actions don’t

violate the universal principles.

66 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

Problem and Decision What Values Drove Your Decision

What Values Others Might Think Drove the Decision

Example: Financial shortfall in division led to laying off the three newest employees.

Responsibility to preserve jobs for the most by stabilizing the division.

Loyalty to longer-term employees.

Power—being seen as a take-charge leader.

Financial gain—for com- pany and for manager’s bonus.

Example: A senior employee with many years of loyal service but a mixed reputation for competence is promoted to a new position.

Responsibility to reward and promote loyalty to organization.

Compassion.

Friendship—in this case was more important than merit in promotion decisions. Order—making pro- motions predictable.

This exercise can give you some insight into personal motivations that

you might not have admitted to yourself before. Consider whether the

values others might attribute to your decision may actually have some

bearing on your choices.

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Uncovering Values Conflicts

After you identify what you value, ideally and actually—look at your

list of values and compare it with the universal principles. To ensure

that your values are consistent with principles, ponder questions like

these:

• Is my desire to achieve financial results so strong that I behave as if the end justifies the means?

• Does my desire for high achievement lead me to lack compas- sion for an employee whose family crisis takes him away from

work at a critical time?

• Does my need for economic security discourage me from speak- ing out with integrity about an unethical corporate practice?

If you accept the importance of universal principles, you must—as a

morally intelligent leader—reprioritize your values in line with the prin-

ciples. We are not saying that you should not value what you value. But

in some cases, it will be important to find a way to honor your values

while upholding principles. You can honor both principles and personal

values when you look for answers to questions such as, “How can I

arrange my financial affairs so that I am protected if my ethical position

gets me fired?” Or “How can I creatively allocate resources to preserve

or improve group productivity while an employee is out on leave?”

It should be clear by now that values can be applied in a morally

negative, neutral, or positive way. Consider, for example, power, which

is a value important to many leaders, but many leaders often don’t want

to admit that power motivates them. That’s because a desire for power

often gets a bad rap. Power has the potential to be seductive, intoxicat-

ing, or lead to abuse. When power is abused, individuals and organiza-

tion suffer. But like most other values, power can be leveraged for good

or ill. Power used to promote universal principles is a tremendous force

CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 67

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for organizational success and global advancement. As the late Robert

F. Kennedy said

The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use

rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use—of how to

get men of power to live for the public rather than off the

public.1

Beliefs

Beliefs are the third component of our guidance system. For each of us,

our beliefs are the “executive summary” of our individual world view.

Beliefs represent our self-understanding about what we think is impor-

tant and how we think of ourselves in relation to the outer world. They

are the condensed version of our moral compass. Beliefs capture our

larger list of principles and values in a streamlined form that is easier to

communicate. Beliefs are the language we use to describe our values

and our understanding of principles to ourselves and others. They con-

nect our understanding of principles with our choice of values. You

can’t actually know what your values are unless you can make a state-

ment about what you believe.

Identifying Your Beliefs. You probably have 10,000 beliefs about

yourself, your world, and human nature. But most people have a rela-

tively short list of beliefs that they hold as their “convictions”—beliefs

they use to guide decision making when the going gets rough. Many of

these might even operate at an unconscious level most of the time, but

with a little thought, most people can bring them up to the surface.

What do you believe? You can use the following exercise to reflect on

your top-ten beliefs.

68 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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By this point, you have identified the key elements of your moral com-

pass. You have chosen the universal principles you embrace, you have

articulated your values, and you have summarized your beliefs.

Understanding your moral compass is essential for effective decision

making. Living in alignment means that you hold yourself accountable

for decisions consistent with your moral compass. But before you take

action, you need to understand your goals and wants.

Frame 2: Goals

CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 69

Exercise: My Top-Ten Beliefs

Take a few minutes to record your top-ten beliefs here. Remember…try to focus on your beliefs about yourself, your world, and human nature.

1. ___________________________________________________

2. ___________________________________________________

3. ___________________________________________________

4. ___________________________________________________

5. ___________________________________________________

6. ___________________________________________________

7. ___________________________________________________

8. ___________________________________________________

9. ___________________________________________________

10. ___________________________________________________

Goals:

Purpose

Goals

Wants

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Scientists who study behavior tell us that humans have an innate need to

make sense out of their lives. We constantly develop theories to explain

why events happen as they do. We have an even deeper need to under-

stand the meaning of our lives. How do our day-to-day events combine

to create a coherent whole? What is the point of doing what we do? If

we can begin to answer those questions, we have the beginning of our

highest goal—our life’s purpose. Not everyone develops and follows a

life purpose. People who were seriously brain-injured or severely neg-

lected or abused might lack the capacity to formulate a meaningful pur-

pose. But most of us are hungry to make sense out of our lives, so we

create goals. Everyone’s life purpose is distinctively theirs, but each

must be consistent with universal values, compassion, and forgiveness.

Albert Schweitzer once said, “I don’t know what your destiny will be,

but one thing I do know: The only ones among you who will be really

happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” Oprah

Winfrey, who created one of the wealthiest entertainment empires in the

United States, says this about purpose: “I’ve come to believe that each

of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint—and that

the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way

to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allow-

ing the energy of the universe to lead you.”2 Perhaps you already know

your life’s purpose. Many of us have only a vague sense of it.

Discovering your life’s purpose usually takes a period of reflection. One

of the best resources for clarifying your life purpose can be found in

Richard Leider’s book Repacking Your Bags: Lighten Your Load for the

Rest of Your Life.3 Use the following purpose exercise to help provide

you more insight about your life’s purpose.

70 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

Exercise: What Is My Life’s Purpose?4

Take some quiet time to reflect on the following questions. Answering these questions can help you clarify the high-level meaning and direction that you would like your life to take. You may also find it useful to discuss your responses with a family

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Setting Purpose-Driven Goals

For each of us, our purpose is the major thing we want to accomplish in

life. Our goals are more concrete things we’d like to accomplish to ful-

fill our purpose. The more aligned our goals are with our life purpose,

the more effective we’ll be as a person and as a leader. An easy and

powerful way to decide on your life goals is to use the Widdy Wiffy

process Roy Geer developed and which he and Doug Lennick detailed

CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 71

member or friend. Sharing your ideas with those closest to you can give you more confidence about what you are truly meant to do with your life.

1. What are my talents?

2. What am I passionate about?

3. What do I obsess about, daydream about?

4. What do I wish I had more time to put energy into?

5. What needs doing in the world that I’d like to put my talents to work on?

6. What are the main areas in which I’d like to invest my talents?

7. What environments or settings feel most natural to me?

8. In what work and life situations am I most comfortable expressing my talents?

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in their book How to Get What You Want and Remain True to Yourself.5

Widdy Wiffy is the phonetic pronunciation of the acronym WDYWFY

which stands for “What Do You Want for Yourself?” The title contains

a bias: Getting what we want is good. Our goals can be at the same time

“selfish” and morally aligned. Getting what one wants for oneself is a

rightfully selfish process provided that what one wants is in alignment

with our moral compass—our principles, values, and beliefs.

The WDYWFY process involves five profoundly simple steps:

• Have a goal (and write it down)

• Have a plan (and write it down)

• Implement the plan

• Control direction (keep score and when necessary redirect)

• Throw off discouragement (stay on track despite setbacks) The importance of having specific goals is to ensure that what we actu-

ally do helps us create meaning out of our actions. Without goals, our

ability to fulfill our life’s purpose would be a matter of chance. Setting

deliberate goals allows us to satisfy our wants in a way that is aligned

with our moral compass.

Not only does your goal frame help you satisfy your personal

desires within a moral framework, paying attention to your goals also

increases the odds that you will actually accomplish what you desire. If

you don’t work on your goal frame, there is a random occurrence of

achieving your goals. Career expert David Campbell made that point

famously in his book If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, You’ll

Probably End Up Somewhere Else.6 Apparently, it’s not enough to have

a set of goals in your head. You will boost your ability to achieve your

goals when you write down your goals and your plans to achieve them.

Why do written goals have such a positive impact? The most basic rea-

son is that we tend to forget things. The physical process of writing

helps our brain retain and recall the things we want to accomplish.

72 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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When we write down goals, we have an opportunity to reflect carefully

on what we actually want and consider the best ways to accomplish

them. When we record our goals, we can use our list as a reminder to

stay on track. The process of writing down goals enhances our commit-

ment and capacity to be responsible for the choices we make. We have

all known of highly intelligent individuals who never lived up to their

potential. Goal setting can help you leverage the power of your moral

intelligence to have a positive impact on your organization and the

world.

Why Leaders Love Goals

Every effective leader we know has crystal clear goals. Goals are cru-

cial to effective leadership because they move you beyond awareness or

good intentions to specific actions. Effective leaders accept responsibil-

ity for their choices by “getting on the record” with their goals. Effec-

tive leaders have goals that they truly care about. They also encourage

their followers to develop personally satisfying goals. One of the most

powerful motivational tools of a good leader is to show that you care

about the wants and goals of the people who work with you. Employees

with that rare boss who shows genuine interest in their goals—and who

spends time helping them chart a course to reach those goals—respond

with loyalty and commitment.

Actifi’s Spenser Segal is one such leader. “I take the WDYWFY

thing seriously, and I really know what my people want. I use the align-

ment model to learn what people value and what their goals are. Money

is never most important to my people, but meaningful work and making

a difference is.” Spenser’s focus on his people’s goals contributed

greatly to the company’s capability to weather the economic downturn.

Although Actifi restructured and deferred compensation, it did not lose

any employees during the downturn, and the company has emerged

stronger than ever.

CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 73

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Your Goals

What exactly do you want for yourself? What are your goals? The

majority of us want to play the roles we have in life well. Most people

who are parents want to be good at it. Even terrible parents want to be

good at it. There are few of us who don’t care about how we perform.

How many of you want to be part of a family that you are proud of?

How many of you want to be part of an organization that you are proud

of? What do you have to do to accomplish that?

Put It in Writing Whether you are developing new goals or reinforcing long-standing

goals, writing your goals down here can make them more real. Keep in

mind that there are two kinds of goals. Some goals are a state of being

goal, such as “I have three children. I want to be a good father now.”

Another type of goal is a future-based goal, for example, “I want to

retire within five years” or “I want to lose weight.” We recommend that

you include goals of both types. We also recommend that you be clear

with yourself about goals in three different areas: professional, per-

sonal, and self-development.

74 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

Exercise: My Most Important Life Goals

1. _______________________________________________________

2. _______________________________________________________

3. _______________________________________________________

4. _______________________________________________________

5. _______________________________________________________

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You don’t need to abandon any goal that would make you wildly

happy. But you will find that your overall happiness and effectiveness

will be enhanced if each of your goals is strongly aligned with your

moral compass.

Frame 3: Behavior

CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 75

Exercise: Goal Alignment Test

Think about your top long-term goals. How well do your goals fit with your principles, values, and beliefs?

Sample: My goal: Buying a family vacation home.

My values and beliefs: I have a responsibility to care for others who are in need. I believe that it is important to do things to increase my family’s happiness.

Potential goal alignment: Buying a vacation home would support my commitment to my family’s happiness.

Potential goal misalignment: Spending money on a vacation home could reduce the amount of money I have to support charitable causes.

Behavior:

Thoughts

Emotions

Actions

The behavior frame puts the “living” in “living in alignment.” Your

behavior frame represents what you actually do, including your

thoughts, emotions, and outward actions. Your behavior frame takes

your values and beliefs from frame 1, and your goals from frame 2, and

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makes them real. We cannot be successful leaders—or human beings—

unless we embrace principles and values, set clear goals, and act

accordingly. Although we don’t get to choose our emotions, we do get

to choose our thoughts and actions. And wonderfully, we discover the

thoughts and actions we choose actually do influence the emotions we

experience. When we make choices that are not in alignment, we may

give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, but our families, our colleagues,

and our financial institutions do not. So keeping our behavior in align-

ment with our moral compass and goals is an essential task of a good

leader.

Thoughts

What makes thoughts part of our behavior frame? Psychologists recog-

nize thoughts as a form of cognitive behavior. Thoughts profoundly

affect our emotions and our outward behavior. And the trouble with

thoughts is that they often mask as facts. Even when we think we are

being logical and objective, often that’s not the case. Most of us are

biased about many things, and some of those biases get baked into our

logic. For example, if I’m an avid fan of my local football team that just

made it into the Super Bowl, I might find it easy to justify spending a

few thousands of dollars to travel across the country to see the big

game. I may unwittingly “underestimate” the cost of the trip, because I

really want to go. And I might justify the expense even if it will add to

my credit card debt or cause me to miss my daughter’s birthday.

We also tend to rely on rules of thumb, or mental shortcuts for mak-

ing decisions. One of my rules of thumb might be “only hire people

who graduated from Ivy League colleges.” But how effective is my rule

of thumb? What are the consequences of taking a mental shortcut when

making hiring decisions? My rule of thumb might help me shrink the

pile of resumes sitting on my desk. But by routinely ignoring potential

employees who didn’t attend certain schools, I probably lost the oppor-

tunity to hire some talented people who could have made significant

contributions to my organization.

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So always question your logic. It’s important to think through your

choices relative to your moral compass and your goals. Even careful

questioning won’t mean you will always be right. There is no silver bul-

let for making optimal leadership choices. But challenging your logic

can make it more likely that you make the most of all your cognitive

and technical abilities in support of your organization.

Emotions

Everyone has them, even the most rational and composed of us.

Emotions have a strong influence on our view of financial situations

and our response to them. That’s because your brain is hard-wired to

encourage emotional decision making. When we’re in the presence of a

strong external event—say a looming merger or downsizing—the part

of our brain that processes emotions gets the message first. In other

words, the triggering event stimulates our emotional intelligence before

it stimulates our cognitive intelligence. Our emotional intelligence sac-

rifices accuracy for speed. We act on a flood of emotions—fear or

excitement before the logical part of our brains gets a chance to evalu-

ate the situation objectively. Why does our brain do something that can

make it so difficult to apply our moral intelligence? As we learned in

Chapter 2, our brain evolved to promote our physical survival, to keep

us out of danger, and to encourage us to nourish ourselves. When we

sense danger, our brain’s “danger system” activates. It immediately sets

off a whole host of physiological changes that help us get away from the

source of the danger. Our danger system turns our analytical centers off,

as if to say, “You don’t have time to figure out the nuances of this situ-

ation. Just get out of here!” But even when we’re not in physical danger,

our automatic danger response still kicks in with a flood of emotions

that are better suited for escaping from a bear than dealing with a busi-

ness crisis. When we truly are in a life-threatening situation, we need a

speedy response. It saves us. But business challenges, although often

emotionally painful, are not life threatening. So sacrificing the accuracy

CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 77

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of our thinking brain for the speed of our emotional brain begins to

work against us.

Now take the case of a business opportunity that seems promising,

not scary. As soon as we feel stimulated by such a positive opportunity,

our brain’s reward system turns on. It secretes a chemical called

dopamine, which gives us a sense of security and confidence that

enables us to pursue opportunities. But when our reward system is

turned on, our danger system is turned off. So we can’t notice the risk

that may be involved.

Keep in mind that emotions, in and of themselves, are neither good

nor bad. They are simply emotions. But because strong emotions,

whether positive or painful, can get in the way of effective decisions,

emotions must be managed. The most effective leaders know how to

regulate their own and others’ emotional responses in a way that pro-

motes a positive and high-performing work environment. If leaders lack

emotional control or insight into the emotional needs of their followers,

the work environment suffers.

Earlier in her career, when Menttium President Lynn Sontag was a

senior leader in executive development at a Fortune 100 company, she

once made the mistake of transferring a call from an irate executive

spouse to her boss. The caller, who had considerable clout, was having

a temper tantrum about something that the organization wouldn’t as a

matter of policy give her. Lynn realized too late that she should have

prepared her boss for the call so that he wouldn’t get stuck in a political

bind. She still has vivid memories of his reaction and the impact on her

subsequent performance:

I can visualize the whole thing. My office was kitty corner

from the executive director, and I could see his expressions

as he talked to her, and it was pretty visual. His door was

closed, but I could see him through his window, and I knew

where he was heading as soon as he opened the door. He

78 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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blew up in front of me and everyone else around. The next

day he calmed down, and we walked through it and

processed it so that it wouldn’t happen again. We got

through it, but I was derailed on a personal level for a long

time. I still had to work with the woman for another year

and a half. It took me more than a couple months to let go.

It hit me right where my confidence was. I didn’t trust my

own judgment, and I became unwilling to make decisions

without checking with a lot of people first.

Actions

We all know that actions speak louder than words. Having a moral com-

pass and admirable goals is worthless unless we do what it takes to

make them real. Failure to act in concert with our values and goals is

worse than worthless. It is a failure of the core principle of responsibil-

ity. It does harm to everyone and everything we care about—family,

co-workers, and community. And it does us harm. Often we lose some-

thing extremely precious—other people’s trust and respect.

In Search of Alignment

Now that you see the canvas inside each of your frames, how do you

keep your frames aligned? Most people agree that the notion of living

in alignment makes sense. If that’s true, then why is living in alignment

so hard? Why is it so difficult to use our inborn moral intelligence to

make smart choices that support our values and goals? In the next chap-

ter, you begin to discover the obstacles to living in alignment—and the

secrets for overcoming them.

CHAPTER 3 • YOUR MORAL COMPASS 79

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Endnotes 1. Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968), “I Remember, I Believe,” The Pursuit of

Justice, 1964.

2. Oprah Winfrey, O The Oprah Magazine, September 2002.

3. Richard J. Leider. Repacking Your Bags: Lighten Your Load for the Rest of Your Life, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995.

4. Based on an exercise in Richard J. Leider. Repacking Your Bags: Lighten Your Load for the Rest of Your Life, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995.

5. Doug Lennick and Roy Geer. How to Get What You Want and Remain True to Yourself, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Lerner Publications Company, 1989.

6. David Campbell. If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, You’ll Probably End Up Somewhere Else, Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1990.

80 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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Knowing who you want to be—an honest, responsible, and compas-

sionate leader—is one thing. Knowing how to become your best self is

another. Actually doing what you know you should is still another mat-

ter. That is the essence of alignment, a shorthand term that means “your

goals and your behaviors are consistent with your moral compass.” We

need three qualities to help us keep us in alignment:

• Moral intelligence—Part of us that shapes our moral compass and ensures that our goals are consistent with our moral compass

• Moral competence—Ability to act on our moral principles

• Emotional competence—Ability to manage our and others’ emotions in morally charged situations

Staying True to Your Moral Compass

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Moral intelligence. Can you interpret this formula?

82 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

d dx

f(s)ds = f(x) x

Here’s a hint: The equation here represents the “fundamental theorem

of calculus.” It expresses that differentiation and integration are inverse

operations of each other. Now do you understand? If you’re like most

people, that explanation helps a little, but not much. You can tell that the

diagram is a mathematical equation, and you’ve heard of calculus, but

you might not understand or remember the distinction between differ-

entiation and integration. For people who are mathematically inclined,

the fundamental theorem of calculus probably looks as simple to them

as 2 + 2 = 4 does to the rest of us. A complicated equation makes sense

to the mathematician because she has two qualities—mathematical

intelligence (basic aptitude) and mathematical competence (learned

skills). Mathematical intelligence isn’t sufficient to be good at math, but

no amount of practice can make you a good mathematician if you don’t

have an underlying aptitude. Moral intelligence is another kind of apti-

tude. Without it, no amount of training can turn us into moral leaders.

Recall the brain-injured toddlers. No matter how hard their parents tried

to instill positive values, they simply lacked the basic neurological

equipment to distinguish between right and wrong.

Moral intelligence is our basic aptitude for moral thought and

action. We call on it to make sense out of moral principles (the “funda-

mental theorems” of morality). Moral intelligence enables us to develop

moral values and beliefs and to integrate those values and beliefs into a

coherent moral compass. Because it’s the part of us that knows what’s

right, we use it to ensure that our goals and behavior are in alignment

with our moral compass. Like a smoke detector, our moral intelligence

sounds the alarms when our goals or actions move out of synch with our

moral compass.

When Charlie Zelle was a young New York investment banker, his

family’s Midwestern transportation and real-estate business went into a

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financial tailspin. After he returned home to help save the business,

company lawyers called a meeting of management and key family

shareholders to decide the firm’s fate. When lawyers and family mem-

bers began to talk, Charlie was astonished at how glib they all seemed.

It was clear that they had already decided to throw in the towel and no

one seemed all that upset about it. Charlie got angry—his moral intelli-

gence alarms were deafening. He thought shutting down the company

was unfair and a selfish move on the part of his family. If the company

folded, 500 employees would lose their jobs, and people in the commu-

nity would lose access to the public transportation they provided.

Moral competence. Although moral intelligence involves knowing

what to do, moral competence is the skill of actually doing the right

thing. How do we do what we know is right? How do we do the right

thing even when we are scared or pressured? For that, we need moral

competence. We need it to understand what goals will enable us to be

true to our principles, and we need moral competence to act in align-

ment with our values and beliefs. Charlie Zelle’s moral intelligence told

him that it was selfish for his family to simply cut their losses at the cost

of fairness to employees and the community. But it took moral compe-

tence for Charlie to act on that awareness. He was just a kid, but fueled

by his anger and encouraged by a mentor, Charlie found his voice. He

found some investors, formed a new company, bought the buses back

from bankruptcy court, and rehired all the employees from his family’s

old company. The odds of success were low, but with the help of a sen-

ior vice president who knew and loved the business, they survived.

Fifteen years later, Charlie’s company, Jefferson Bus Lines, is a thriving

regional bus operator.

Emotional competence. To live in alignment, we also need to be

emotionally competent. Emotional competence helps us manage our

emotions and the emotional quality of our relationships with others. It’s

almost impossible to be morally competent without being emotionally

competent as well. For example, most of us value honesty and most of

us have the moral competence to be truthful. After all, we’ve told the

CHAPTER 4 • STAYING TRUE TO YOUR MORAL COMPASS 83

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truth countless times. But if we’re such experts at telling the truth, why

then do many of us lie so often? A UK women’s magazine survey, for

instance, found that 94% of women admitted that they tell lies, half of

them lying on a daily basis. Emotional competence helps us answer

questions like these:

• What makes it hard to tell the truth in a particular situation?

• How will others act if I tell the truth or fail to tell the truth?

• How can I tell the truth in a way that will preserve my relation- ships with others?

Emotional competence enables us to understand our own emotions,

especially those that can get in the way of doing the right thing.

Emotional competence also helps us understand and respond intelli-

gently to the emotions of others. That ability to respond to others’ emo-

tional needs in turn creates a positive work environment in which

people feel safe enough to do what is morally right—and not inciden-

tally, perform at their best.

When leaders lack emotional competence, they create a negative

climate that encourages self-protection rather than integrity. Lori

Kaiser, Pacific Northwest Managing Partner at Tatum LLC, ran into an

emotionally incompetent manager at a previous company where she had

worked early in her career. He was a foul-mouthed senior manager who

routinely harassed his juniors. Everyone knew he was obnoxious, but no

one called him on it. Lori tolerated it for years. Then while on maternity

leave, she realized how great it felt to be away from him. When she

returned from leave, she took advantage of her newfound status as the

company’s most senior woman to draw a line in the sand. Lori told her

superiors she would return only if she did not have to work with the

obnoxious manager. Her superiors agreed but did nothing to correct his

behavior. Other employees, in part weary of dealing with him, began to

leave the company. Only then did management begin to pay attention to

his behavior, but by then, they had lost some valuable people—largely

84 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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because of the negative environment created by one emotionally incom-

petent leader.

Lori faults herself for failing to act sooner. She tolerated his nega-

tive behavior for a long time because the company paid her well to do

the kind of work she wanted to do. Though she was not the source of a

negative environment, she believes she was partially responsible for

allowing it to continue. “Even though I may be able to tolerate difficult

people,” says Lori, “the people who follow me need someone who can

speak up. If I condone bad behavior in front of junior men or women,

it’s unacceptable. Now I speak up for all of the people who are junior to

me and can’t speak up, even if it makes me look like I’m not one of the

gang.”

Staying aligned. When you consistently use your moral intelli-

gence, moral competence, and emotional competence, you will find that

you are spending more and more time living in alignment with your

moral compass. When your three frames are in synch, you feel as

though you are “in the zone,” and your creativity and performance are

at their best. When you are in a leadership role, your state of alignment

is palpable and appealing to followers. Your state of alignment con-

tributes to an emotionally positive and high-performing work environ-

ment for others.

Think of the leaders who have inspired you the most. They are

almost invariably those who consistently demonstrate their commitment

to principles that you also believe in. Lynn Fantom, CEO of ID Media,

says of her former boss, David Bell, now Chairman Emeritus of parent

company Interpublic, “I would do anything for him because he shows

respect to me and everyone in the company by doing simple things like

sending short email messages of appreciation.”

Moral misalignment. The most successful leaders spend the major-

ity of their time in alignment. But all of us experience times when it is

hard to stay in alignment, times when our moral intelligence doesn’t

seem to be having an impact on what we want or what we actually do.

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Instead of being connected to our ideal selves—who we would like to be

at our best—we disconnect from our moral compass. Misalignments

don’t usually happen because we lack moral or emotional skills.

Typically, they occur because moral viruses or destructive emotions

are interfering with our ability to use moral and emotional competencies

that we have successfully used in the past.

Moral viruses are disabling and inaccurate negative beliefs that

interfere with alignment (see Figure 4.1). Moral viruses infect our

moral compass and lead us to adopt goals that are inconsistent with our

moral compass.

86 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

Moral Viruses

Moral Intelligence Moral Competence

Emotional Competence

Moral Compass

Principles

Values

Beliefs

Goals

Purpose

Goals

Wants

Behavior

Thoughts

Emotions

Actions

Destructive Emotions

Alignment

Misalignment

Alignment

Misalignment

FIGURE 4.1 Alignment Model

Diagnosing a moral virus. Moral viruses are unfounded negative

beliefs that are in conflict with universal principles. Like computer

viruses that infect a computer’s operating system, moral viruses invade

your moral compass and often lead to breakdown. Moral viruses remind

us of computer “adware,” the insidious advertising software programs

that are installed on your computer via the Internet without your con-

sent. Suddenly, your computer desktop is overwhelmed by pop-up ads,

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and when you try to find and delete the adware program, you find it’s

difficult. Your antivirus software probably will not work. The unwanted

program has the capability to hide its files and to resist attempts to

remove it. Like adware, moral viruses sneak into your moral operating

system. They hide themselves well: At a conscious level, you may artic-

ulate a set of principles, values, and beliefs that are admirable, without

realizing that you are secretly harboring an unsavory belief that affects

the quality of your goals. Your “official” goals are in alignment with

your moral compass. But without your awareness, you have adopted

some “unofficial” goals that are at odds with your moral compass. The

end result is that you do things that are inconsistent with your moral

compass, and you are probably pretty confused about the reasons why.

Consider the experience of John Simmons (pseudonym), founding

partner in a growing professional services firm. He was attending a part-

ner’s meeting for his firm. Compensation was on the agenda, and dur-

ing the discussion, John found himself insisting that his fellow owners

adopt a lot of legalistic provisions that he thought necessary to ensure

he would be compensated fairly for all his efforts. During the discus-

sion, John became increasingly rigid, frustrating his partners. Finally,

they told him he was acting as if they were his enemies rather than peo-

ple who shared his goals. John knew instantly they were right, but it

took a few hours of reflection to figure out why he had behaved with

such suspicion.

John explains, “When I was about four years old, I got into an argu-

ment with my older brother and I bit him! My father insisted that I apol-

ogize. I refused. Before I realized the stakes of the game I was playing,

my father said, “If you don’t apologize, you can’t be a part of this fam-

ily.” He proceeded to take me about a half a mile away from our farm-

house and dump me off in the pasture. I recall running back home,

crying as I ran. My false conclusion was that when it comes to basic

needs like personal safety you really can’t trust anyone, even those close

to you. Even people who have never actually taken advantage of you

might still turn on you in unpredictable ways. Always be on guard!”

CHAPTER 4 • STAYING TRUE TO YOUR MORAL COMPASS 87

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When John uncovered his “moral virus,” he went back to his fellow

owners to own up to the negative beliefs that had infected his moral

compass and disrupted their meeting.

Common Moral Viruses

• Most people can’t be trusted.

• I’m not worth much.

• I’m better than most other people.

• Might makes right.

• If it feels good, do it.

• My needs are more important than anyone else’s.

• Most people care more about themselves than anyone else.

• People of other (races, religions, and nationalities) are not as good as people of my (race, religion, and nationality).

Dealing with moral viruses. A good way to manage moral viruses is to

scan for them in your thoughts. To figure out what you are thinking,

tune in to your “self talk”—the continuous internal conversation that

you have with yourself. Like computer antivirus software that periodi-

cally scans for new viruses, you should regularly scan your self talk to

stay aware of the internal beliefs that are influencing your daily actions.

In addition to regular moral virus scans, we recommend that you scan

your self-talk for possible moral viruses whenever you experience

strong emotion, either positive or negative. Because thoughts and emo-

tions mutually influence each other, it is especially important to under-

stand the beliefs that may be the root cause of uncomfortable emotions.

Disabling a moral virus. When you have detected a moral virus in

your thoughts, you have the opportunity to replace it with a thought or

belief consistent with your moral compass. Countering a moral virus is

88 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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effective in the moment, but it is not a permanent fix. Moral viruses

sometimes act like certain biological viruses that lurk indefinitely

within us. For example, the virus that causes shingles, a relative of the

chicken pox virus, is a chronic virus. After an outbreak of shingles, the

virus doesn’t die. It retreats to the base of a bundle of nerves, where it

lies dormant unless the affected person’s immune system is weakened

by another illness, allowing the old virus’ symptoms to reappear.

Similarly, when we are under stress, the symptoms of a moral virus can

once again resurface. In the example just described, John Simmons fig-

ured out how he had been infected by a moral virus, but he knows he

may run into the same virus in the future. John is not “cured,” but his

awareness can help him to recognize moral virus symptoms and move

quickly to minimize its negative affects in the future.

Because none of us had a perfect upbringing, most of us will have

at least one moral virus lying in wait to overtake us in a difficult

moment. That is why it is important to scan our thoughts regularly and

why it is necessary to actively remind ourselves of our more desirable

Frame 1 beliefs. A good rule of thumb is this: When you find yourself

doing something that is puzzling to you when you say to yourself, “I

don’t know why I behaved that way…,” you are likely dealing with

some sort of moral virus. That is a good signal to talk it out with a good

friend or trusted advisor. Like a virus that thrives in the dark, moral

viruses brought out into the light often wither and die.

Destructive emotions. Destructive emotions are the most common

culprits in keeping us from acting consistently with our goals. Emotions

such as greed, hate, or jealousy are powerful and can overwhelm our

normal ability to act in a morally and emotionally competent manner. It

is human nature to experience periodic emotional “breakdowns”—not

usually the kind that sends us off for a long rest cure, but the more com-

monplace stresses that can lead us to become emotionally overwhelmed.

Our moral compass is intact, and our goals are clear, but in the heat of

the moment, we act in a way completely inconsistent with what we say

CHAPTER 4 • STAYING TRUE TO YOUR MORAL COMPASS 89

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we want. We lose control and allow destructive emotions to take hold.

Greed is an especially destructive emotion, one that likely lies at the

heart of the corporate accounting scandals of the early 2000s and the

more recent economic crisis of the late 2000s. It’s hard to imagine that

any of the executives implicated for accounting or securities fraud in the

last decade needed more money than they already had. For an executive

in the throes of greed, however, enough is never enough. We’re all too

familiar with the impact of greed-driven schemes—employees deprived

of jobs and retirement funds, shareholders betrayed, homeowners being

evicted, and companies going out of business.

Managing destructive emotions. There will always be occasions

when you feel negative emotions. Your goal should not be to eliminate

all traces of negative feelings from your experience, but rather to

develop the emotional control to manage destructive emotions so they

don’t derail you. Managing destructive emotions is vital to a successful

leadership career because left unchecked, they are a frequent cause of

career derailment among executives. A senior manufacturing executive

interviewed for this book notes the importance of managing potentially

destructive emotions: “Someone will renege on something or not do

something they promised, or they’ll misrepresent things and I just want

to get even. I’ve had to develop a lot of self-control. I don’t often lose

my temper and if I do, I try to do it behind closed doors with my team.

So the challenge is treating people the way I’d like to be treated versus

the way I’d like to treat them because they screwed me. I don’t feel like

I’ve had to be extremely sensitive so much as I’ve needed to control my

revenge motive and be professional.”

A powerful antidote to negative emotions is the deliberate cultiva-

tion of a positive emotional state. Controlling emotions must come from

within. No one having a temper tantrum—child or adult—wants to be

told by others to “calm down.” Fortunately, we can learn how to short-

circuit highly charged negative emotions. Deep breathing exercises,

deep muscle relaxation exercises, and meditation, are just a few of the

scientifically documented ways to produce more positive emotional

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states.1 Depending on your personal preferences, activities as varied as

hobbies, community service, spending time in nature or with family

members, even washing the dishes can trigger a positive mental state.

They work because you cannot have two incompatible physiological

states at the same time. You cannot be angry when you are happy. You

cannot be anxious when you are calm. Regular practice of your pre-

ferred technique is key to your ability to manage your emotions.

Through practice, you can create a calm and peaceful internal state that

automatically kicks in when you need it. When you deliberately culti-

vate a positive and relaxed emotional state, you can call upon that posi-

tive state whenever a destructive emotion is beginning to take hold.

The experiential triangle. We each operate within an experiential

triangle of thoughts, emotions, and behavior, all of which mutually influ-

ence one another. Although we discussed moral viruses and destructive

emotions as though they were separate phenomena, in reality, they are

typically found together and often reinforce the negative effects of each.

Emotions are usually the product of our thoughts. When we admire

someone, for example, our happiness in seeing that person stems not

from their physical existence, but because of the ideas we have about

them. Similarly, when we are in the throes of a destructive emotion, we

have a reason. Our negative feeling is prompted by some thoughts or

beliefs we have about the situation we are in. You think, “I knew I could-

n’t trust them,” or “I should have gotten more,” and you feel terrible. The

worse you feel, the more likely it is that a moral virus has invaded your

belief system. Destructive emotions such as anger and jealousy are the

“fever” that often accompanies a moral virus. But emotions also stimu-

late thought processes. When a destructive emotion overcomes you, it

can negatively influence the way you think about yourself or others,

thereby causing a moral virus. Finally, our thoughts and emotions affect

our behavior. The behavioral impact of moral viruses and destructive

emotions is widespread and obvious. For a leader, the effects of moral

viruses and destructive emotions can be career-ending. At the very least,

your performance suffers along with that of your co-workers.

CHAPTER 4 • STAYING TRUE TO YOUR MORAL COMPASS 91

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Consider these contrasting experiential triangles.

92 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

A Case of Alignment

The situation: My boss is hiding the extent of a new product line’s manufacturing problems from the senior management group until performance reviews are completed. Thought: I know that my boss’s actions are violating the principle of integrity and I have a responsibility to get involved. Emotions: Some apprehension about challenging my boss’s deci- sion, mixed with confidence and determination. Behavior: I confront my boss about her actions and urge her to pro- vide accurate information about production problems.

Suppose, on the other hand, that you found yourself unable to con-

front your boss. Would it be because you were unaware that what she

was doing was wrong, or because you did not know how to raise the

issue? Probably not. More likely, your failure to act would be the result

of your beliefs about the situation. Your beliefs create a context, or

framework, for deciding how to respond to your boss’s actions. You

might then be operating in an experiential triangle that operates some-

thing like this:

A Case of Misalignment

Thoughts: What other people do is none of my business. Human nature being what it is, I will probably be punished for standing up for what is right. If I do get involved, my boss might retaliate and I could lose my bonus or even my job. Emotions: Fear and anxiety. Behaviors: I look the other way, or I help my boss conceal the extent of the production line problems.

In this example, we can detect a moral virus in the belief that one

should “mind one’s own business,” coupled with the belief that others

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will do you harm if you challenge their negative behavior. This moral

virus is likely contaminating more positive beliefs about human nature

and our responsibility to do what is right. But a moral virus can deacti-

vate positive beliefs in a difficult moment, replacing them with negative

beliefs about other’s motives and our own responsibility. In this exam-

ple, we can also see the destructive power of emotions such as fear and

anxiety that further reinforce negative beliefs and the misguided actions

that result.

Preventive maintenance. Staying in alignment requires regular

tune-ups to monitor and prevent damaging effects of moral viruses and

destructive emotions. But most important, alignment depends on con-

tinuously developing our moral and emotional competence. But how?

What are the practical day-to-day actions we must take to stay in align-

ment? For that, we need to be proficient in a group of specific moral and

emotional skills—as you see in the next several chapters of this book.

Endnote 1. Many techniques for inducing positive emotional states can be found in Herbert

Benson, M.D. and William Proctor’s The Break-Out Principle, New York: Scribner, 2003.

CHAPTER 4 • STAYING TRUE TO YOUR MORAL COMPASS 93

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PART II DEVELOPING

MORAL SKILLS

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Every individual, like a statue, develops in his life the laws of harmony, integrity, and freedom; or those of deformity,

immorality, and bondage. Whether we wish to or not, we are all drawing our own pictures in the lives we are living….

—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875), U.S. Physician and Feminist

To starve to death is a small thing, but to lose one’s integrity is a great one.

—Chinese Proverb

Integrity

The

Integrity

Competencies

• Acting consistently with principles, values, and beliefs

• Telling the truth

• Standing up for what is right

• Keeping promises

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Acting Consistently with Principles, Values, and Beliefs This is the primary moral competency that encompasses the others.

Acting consistently with principles, values, and beliefs means being

purposeful in everything you do and say. Integrity is authenticity. It is

saying what you stand for and standing for what you say. Awareness is

the first step to acting with consistent integrity. That’s why it’s so

important to be clear about what’s in your moral compass. Acting con-

sistently with your moral compass also means letting others know the

principles that are most important to you, and holding yourself account-

able for decisions and behaviors consistent with that. Before becoming

an advisor with financial services company Thrivent Financial for

Lutherans, Walt Bradley spent 20 years selling cars. One day, a young

woman came on the used car lot to buy her first car. The only car she

could afford had a lot of miles, a few dents, and a leaky exhaust. Walt

told her that if she bought the car, they would check out the leak and fix

it. “When we inspected it, the pipe was shot,” says Walt. “My boss said

to just patch it. I argued with him, but he said, ‘I don’t give a shit. Just

get it out of the building. There’s no warranty.’ Right in front of my

boss, I told the mechanic not to do that—to fix the car right. My boss

and I got into a shouting match about it, but the mechanic fixed it.”

Asked how hard was it to stand up to his boss, Walt replies, “I hate con-

frontation, but the woman trusted me, and I know that if my word isn’t

any good, then my product isn’t any good.”

The high cost of inconsistency. Leaders who blatantly ignore uni-

versal principles do great harm to their constituencies and ultimately to

their bottom line. But just as bad are leaders who pay lip service to

integrity while ignoring it in practice. Take this example of Kevin

Reynolds (pseudonym), CEO of a $400 million dollar consumer prod-

ucts company. Kevin talked a lot about integrity in his speeches to

shareholders, employees, and his board. But Kevin’s direct reports

didn’t trust him at all, and each could cite numerous examples of

betrayal or deception on Kevin’s part. None of Kevin’s direct reports

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was willing to go out on a limb for their company in the environment

that he had created. Some of them spent a lot of time planning how to

protect themselves from his treachery, while a few braver souls openly

threatened to leave if the board did not fire him. The final straw came

when, at the end of a financially troubled year, Kevin manipulated the

bonus pool to get his maximum year-end bonus, leaving his team with

unfairly low payouts. For a time, Kevin managed to conceal his bonus

scheme by withholding information and presenting confusing data, but

eventually, his mishandling of the bonus money leaked out. The board

asked for his resignation. No one mourned Kevin’s departure. His repu-

tation for dishonesty dogged him in the industry, barring him from land-

ing a top executive post anywhere else.

In corporate settings, a lack of integrity usually signals a lack of

moral competence, as was the case with Kevin. But at times, a lack of

integrity stems from a deeper lack of moral intelligence. There are some

people whose moral compass is badly dented, like Jeff Walsh (pseudo-

nym), who applied for a job as regional sales manager for a large

Fortune 500 company. On paper, Jeff had a great track record in sales

and management and an MBA from a prestigious university. The vice

president of Sales was so impressed after interviewing Jeff that he was

ready to hire him on the spot. “Don’t let that one get out the door,” he

told the recruiter. But when the recruiter checked his credentials, he dis-

covered that Jeff had no undergraduate college degree, let alone an

MBA; he had never taken a single college course. When the recruiter

confronted him, Jeff broke into a sweat and admitted that he had faked

his resume. You might think that the sweat on Jeff’s forehead was evi-

dence that he knew right from wrong. But Jeff recovered his composure

quickly and promptly talked his way back into the VP of Sales’ office

to try to convince him that it really wouldn’t matter that he did not have

his MBA. Without a functioning moral compass, Jeff completely

missed the notion that lying about his credentials was a big deal. He

might sweat because he was caught—but not because he had a guilty

conscience.

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Telling the Truth Susan Desimone (fictitious name) was chief financial officer for a major

division of a huge financial services firm. Her CEO, a demanding and

explosive character (in actuality a high-profile top executive), was

determined to meet Wall Street’s expectations for the quarter’s profits—

no matter what it took. The financial analysts who worked for Susan

were stressed. “The CEO is badgering us to make these numbers work,”

they complained. “If we show him the results we have right now, he will

blow his fuse.” Susan knew they weren’t exaggerating, but she also

knew she could handle her CEO’s tantrum without letting it unhinge

her. “What is the worst thing he can do to us?” she replied. “He’ll yell

at us for sure, but he’s yelled at us before, and we are going to tell the

truth.” Susan’s moral stance did more than keep her company out of the

scandal section of The Wall Street Journal. She provided “cover” for the people in her finance unit and by her actions made it safer for them

to do what they knew was right. Her truthful response to the CEO’s

pressure was both morally skilled and fiscally smart. She motivated her

people to keep working for the company during an economic boom

when their skills were highly marketable and corporate attrition was at

record high levels.

Leading with the Truth

Imagine that you are captain on a sailboat cruising through the

Caribbean. When you left dock a few hours ago, it was warm and sunny

with a gentle breeze pushing the boat forward. Then the weather turns

suddenly ugly. Before long, the wind is fierce, the waves are pounding,

and your passengers are afraid. What should you do? You tell them the

truth. You say, “This is a dangerous storm. Something bad could hap-

pen. You need to keep your life jackets on and stay below deck while I

get us through this. I have been through storms like this before, and I am

very optimistic that we are going to weather the storm.”

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In organizational settings, telling the truth often means defining

reality under challenging circumstances. When times are tough, leaders

need to tell the truth while providing people with real reasons for hope

and optimism.

Sally Jewell, CEO of outdoor gear retailer REI, agrees: “Over the

past two years we have learned some tremendous lessons, and one is

about the importance of consistently telling people the truth about

what’s going on.” Sally continues

Shortly before things started falling apart in the fall of

2008, we started sending weekly messages to employees

about the storm clouds on the horizon and what we were

doing about it. At the time we felt that perhaps we were

even over-communicating. But we’ve discovered that trust

in senior management went up during that period. The

confidence in the company went to an all time high. It fell a

bit this year and we realized that we haven’t been commu-

nicating as consistently this past year as we did during that

period. We weren’t over-communicating at all—this is

what we need to do all the time!

We also had a layoff during 2009. We were upfront about

this as well, and gave the business reasons why we needed

to do this. We worked really hard to train managers and to

role play with them how to answer questions. Afterward,

multiple people who had been laid off sent me messages

about this. Some said they obviously didn’t like being laid

off but they understood why it had to happen. Many said

they’d come back to work for us in a heartbeat.

So, what did we learn? Taking the mystery out of the situa-

tion and speaking the truth right up front was the lesson we

learned. The more we communicated the more we were

reinforced for communicating. And people expressed their

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appreciation. Several said things like, “Thank you for being

on top of these things.” It was a great opportunity for our

leaders to reduce the uncertainty that people were feeling.

Larson Doors’ Dale Larson is another advocate of the need for leaders

to tell the truth:

We had a period of time when we lost a big account—

Home Depot. We had to tell everyone that their jobs might

be in jeopardy. I guess we could have held off that informa-

tion for a while, but we felt that we needed to be honest

with our employees about what was happening. And

because we did, we came bouncing back and are a lot bet-

ter for it today. We did have to lay off a lot of the factory

workers for three or four months but many of them came

back. And at least we were able to give them as much time

as possible to prepare for tough times.

Lon Dolber, president and CEO of American Portfolios Financial

Services. doesn’t shrink from telling unpleasant truths either. He’s dis-

covered it’s the only way to secure the trust of employees and cus-

tomers. Until a few years ago, American Portfolios used two firms to

clear financial transactions. Then Lon realized that it would be best for

the business to merge into one clearing firm. But there was a catch: The

clearing firm’s charges would result in financial gains for Lon’s busi-

ness, while lowering brokers’ compensation. As Lon relates:

I could have said we had to consolidate, that we had no

choice. The truth was I decided that we needed to do this to

be competitive. I didn’t hide the fact that the brokers would

make less and the efficiencies we gained would actually

mean more profit for us. I pointed out that we need to do

this to grow and sustain ourselves during the economic

downturn. I explained why I did it. I could constantly

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blame the government and regulators, but I never do that.

I’m always honest about it. I say, “We are doing it and

these are the reasons.” So I’ve developed more trust with

the brokers. If you’re truthful, you’ll develop trust. You’ll

develop loyal customers [the brokers] with trust. I believe

that truth leads to trust and trust leads to loyalty and loyal

customers are the best customers. Our customers recognize

and feel very comfortable with that.

Telling the Truth About Performance

Many of us are afraid to discuss poor performance with a subordinate.

We imagine that people will be upset, and we don’t want to be respon-

sible for causing them pain.

Paul Clayton, former president of Burger King North America, and

former CEO of Jamba Juice, is not known for pulling his punches. The

only time he can recall when he has withheld the truth was when he had

to sit down with someone and talk about his or her performance. “I have

made mistakes in not being direct enough. I had to give a negative per-

formance review and circled around the issues, and I’ve had that happen

to me as well. I’ve always been critical of my communication skills, but

for a long time, no one said a word to me. I knew that if someone had the

courage to tell me sooner that I needed work, it would have helped me.”

We have all heard horror stories about co-workers who got a glow-

ing performance review coupled with a bonus, only to be fired a month

later. When that happens, it is usually because the manager has not been

honest about the employee’s performance problems over some period of

time. Some managers are so nonassertive that employees who are being

given negative feedback have no idea that they are being criticized. We

know of several extreme examples when an employee who was fired on

a Friday showed up for work as usual on Monday because she didn’t

realize she had been terminated.

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Exceptions to the rule of honesty. A seemingly contradictory

aspect of the competency of telling the truth is that it includes knowing

when not to tell the truth. Consider an example posed by 18th century

philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Imagine that a murderer comes to your

door, wanting to know where your friend is—so that he can kill her.

Your friend is hiding in your bedroom closet. Most people would prob-

ably agree that your obligation to your friend overrides your general

obligation to tell the truth. For some brave World War II Europeans, this

scenario was not hypothetical—they risked their lives sheltering Jews

from the Nazis. The Diary of Anne Frank is a famous telling of the story

of a Dutch Jewish family hidden by a former employee of Anne Frank’s

father. When the Nazis made their regular sweeps of their Amsterdam

neighborhood in search of Jews, the family protecting the Franks would

have failed in moral competence if they had told the truth about what

they were doing.

Honesty is often complicated for business leaders as well. At times,

a leader has information that cannot be divulged. This is common in sit-

uations involving downsizings, initial public offerings, and mergers

and acquisitions. When planning workforce reductions, for example,

leaders know that employees would find it helpful to get advance warn-

ing that their job could be at risk. On the other hand, leaders have a

responsibility to owners not to divulge information that could be harm-

ful to the market value of their companies. To tell the truth prematurely

would be a disservice to the business, yet to say when asked that no

reorganization is looming would be dishonest. If there are legal require-

ments to withhold information, the leader should simply acknowledge

that. A leader can still be truthful by saying something like, “We do

have plans but we cannot discuss them at this time. Please know that we

will implement the plan with high regard for our employees, our cus-

tomers, and the people who own the company.”

Withholding information is also justified to protect the privacy of

employees. Consider computer programmer, Jeanetta Shaw (pseudo-

nym) who discovered that her husband and his family were all involved

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in criminal activity that was about to hit the newspaper headlines. Her

distress was obvious to her co-workers, and they began to ask their

manager what was going on. The manager decided to tell the truth, but

not the whole truth. He told Jeanetta’s colleagues that there were per-

sonal circumstances beyond her control that were causing her a great

deal of stress. He expressed his commitment to help her get through a

rough time and asked others to do the same.

The painful truth? Telling the truth and tact are not incompatible.

Some of us pride ourselves on being honest to a fault. We might say

things others would be afraid to say, but it doesn’t necessarily add up to

more truth. Some of us use “honesty” as an excuse to vent our hostility.

We might make cruel, competitive, or aggressive comments under the

guise of “calling it like you see it” and then excuse ourselves by claim-

ing, “I’m only being truthful.” According to Jefferson Bus Line’s CEO,

Charlie Zelle, the disclaimer “‘I’m just being honest’ is a classic

Minnesota passive-aggressive way of being hurtful.” When we go out of

our way to communicate a hurtful truth, we are usually not being hon-

est with ourselves. So, when we feel obligated to tell another something

“for his own good,” we need first to examine our own motivations. Are

we competitive? Are we jealous? Are we trying to even up an old score?

And we might be wise to add one more question: Is there a way we can

be compassionately honest versus brutally honest?

Good intentions. Truth telling works best when paired with the

emotional competency of self-awareness. We need self-awareness to

understand how our own goals and desires influence what we say to

others. Leaders who limit information about pending changes should

rigorously examine their motivations. Although it is important to pro-

tect their companies, leaders who withhold information because they

put personal stock option considerations over employee well being,

clearly violate principle of integrity.

We also need emotional competencies to understand other’s

emotions and discuss the truth in ways that people can accept and use

productively. Employees sense when their leaders make self-serving

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decisions or shade the truth about pending changes. The resulting neg-

ative impact on morale and performance can undermine the implemen-

tation of any change effort.

How truth fuels performance. Truth telling has a huge impact on

leadership effectiveness and workforce engagement. When people work

for a dishonest leader, they censor information to protect themselves

from a negative or unpredictable reaction. The dishonest boss creates a

climate dominated by political intrigue. Instead of working produc-

tively, people who work for dishonest superiors spend a lot of time won-

dering about their manager’s agenda, trying to gather information,

trying to jockey for power, and doing only those things they think will

keep them out of harm’s way. In contrast, leaders who are known for

being honest generate a powerful climate of trust. People who work for

honest superiors relax because they know there will be no hidden sur-

prises coming out of the organizational woodwork. People accomplish

more and can work with great creativity when they don’t have to waste

energy watching their back.

Standing Up for What Is Right Leaders who live the principle of integrity inevitably must take princi-

pled stands.

Ben Smith began his career as an attorney and has extensive exec-

utive experience in the banking industry as a former Co-CEO of

American Partners Bank, former EVP of Wells Fargo and former EVP

at GMAC. Ben relays this story about taking a stand when it was diffi-

cult to do so:

One of our top loan officers was a great guy and well liked

by everyone at the bank. It came to my attention he would

do more than one loan per year to quite a few of his cus-

tomers to both keep them from default and to generate new

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business for himself and the bank. What he was doing

wasn’t illegal, but it wasn’t right. Sometimes he would give

three loans to the same customer in one year. I knew this

wasn’t good for those customers because it enabled them to

stay current on loans they couldn’t really afford, and it

wasn’t good for the bank long term even though it gener-

ated income for the bank in the short term. It also gener-

ated commissions for the loan officer. I chose to terminate

him, and that was hard to do because I liked him person-

ally and because people liked him at the bank, but that was

the right thing to do.

Ben’s leadership approach also highlights how often the principles of

integrity, responsibility, and compassion are interrelated. On one occa-

sion, American Partners Bank had a job candidate for an underwriting

position. Ben really wanted to hire her. But she had a young child and

wanted the flexibility to work from home, so Ben agreed. She quickly

became one of the banks’ best underwriters. When American Partners

Bank was sold, Ben made sure that the new owners retained all but two

of their employees. After the acquisition, the new owners planned to lay

off a woman who had just had a baby. Ben knew she really needed the

income, so he persuaded the new owners to retain her in a contracting

role for another year. Was Ben demonstrating integrity? Responsibility?

Compassion? Clearly his behavior demonstrated he was aligned with all three principles.

American Portfolio’s Lon Dolber is another role model for standing

up for what is right. When clients are unhappy about the results of an

investment, it’s tempting to heed the lawyers’ advice to “Make it go

away.” It’s one thing if a broker does something that’s not good for the

client. In that case, Lon believes the firm should stand by the client and

make it right. But most investment losses are not the fault of the brokers

who sold them. So there are instances when Lon believes he must stand

up and fight. One time, for example, his firm had a sophisticated client

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who bought an investment that he wanted through a broker and the

investment went bad, so the client took the firm to arbitration. As Lon

recalls:

[He was] an accredited investor and knew the risk, but [he]

got an aggressive lawyer who was looking to pin it on us. It

was absolutely not a case of an uninformed investor or a

broker misleading an investor. Well, we won the case. If I

hadn’t won, it would have made me rethink the business

I’m in. If we could be taken to arbitration for everyone who

loses money, it would be a loser of a business. So, in fighting

this, we gained more trust from our brokers and we stood

up for what’s right, and the employees and the customers

all see that. It’s smart both ways.

University of Washington e-commerce professor David Risher recalls

this incident of standing up for an employee during his tenure as a

Microsoft executive:

One day, we were in the middle of a meeting, and my

strong-willed boss started to beat up on a young, new

employee of mine, asking her questions she couldn’t possi-

bly have answered because she was so new. My boss was a

hard person to stand up to, but in this case, I did. I remem-

ber that it caused a bit of a commotion in the room because

people couldn’t believe I was standing up to her—she was

just that strong. When I later went to Amazon.com, my

former boss ended up working for me. She ended up being

a supporter of mine, and I think it was because she

respected me for having been willing to stand up for people.

Gary Kessler, senior vice president of Human Resources, Adminis-

tration and Corporate Affairs with American Honda Motor Company

recalls a time when he took a quiet but vital stand. He discovered that a

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member of his team who was also a personal friend had fabricated his

academic background. Gary knew that he could forgive his friend, and

he knew he could keep anyone else from finding out what his friend had

done. But Gary believed that to ignore his friend’s deception would be

deceptive on his part. It would devalue the efforts of others who were

expected to have a certain level of academic training. So he steeled his

courage and fired his friend.

Unlike Gary’s admirable private stand, most principled stands must

be taken in the face of stiff resistance. Don Hall, Jr., is the president and

CEO of Hallmark Cards. Early in his career, Don headed product devel-

opment. Don had a fine-tuned sense of what customers expected from

Hallmark. He steadfastly resisted proposals to save on production costs

by cheapening their product. To maintain customer loyalty, Don insisted

that quality, rather than cost, be the company’s primary focus.

Defying conventional wisdom to make a principled stand can be

challenging. In most organizations, there is a lot of pressure to agree

with popular positions. People who take unpopular stands can put their

career advancement or their livelihoods at risk. Acting with integrity

means that you accept the risks that come with taking a principled stand

because the moral consequences of looking the other way are unaccept-

able. Think of the hazards that have resulted when no one stood up for

what was right—buildings that collapse because of poor construction,

lives lost because a bridge’s need for repair was ignored, bankruptcies

caused by predatory lending practices in low-income neighborhoods,

and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger after NASA execu-

tives ignored engineers’ concerns about faulty O-rings.

Keeping Promises Keeping promises is a hallmark of integrity because it demonstrates that

we can be trusted to do what we say we will do. Keeping promises is a

competency highly valued in organizational settings, but in our wired

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24/7 world, it’s a competency many of us have a hard time practicing

consistently. We have good intentions but may let our ever-expanding

to-do list overtake our earlier promises. This was the case with Kari

Wang (pseudonym), a senior executive in a professional services firm,

whose career was in jeopardy and whose team was delivering inferior

results. Kari had lost the respect of her colleagues because of her poor

track record in keeping her commitments to them. When a high-profile

project came her way, Kari dug in and took over all the detailed work

herself, saddling herself with more work than even an overachiever like

Kari could handle. Kari resisted delegating, rationalizing that she’d be

happy to delegate if only she could find someone who could do a good

enough job. When Kari did reluctantly delegate, she routinely forgot to

provide all the information needed for the work to be done successfully.

She changed her mind about priorities seemingly every hour and then

failed to communicate those changes to her staff. Kari was incapable of

saying “no”—she agreed to do so many things that she inevitably

dropped the ball on some important commitments.

People who knew Kari well did their best to work around her bad

habits, believing that though her execution was poor, her motives were

good. People who did not know Kari personally saw only her lapses.

They mistrusted her and labeled her a liar. Her harshest critics viewed

her missteps as deliberate efforts to advance her own career by sabotag-

ing others. Fortunately, Kari’s boss proposed that she use a leadership

coach to help her make the transition from high-powered individual per-

former to leader of others. As a result, Kari came to recognize the costs

of her actions and developed the disciplined work habits that would

eventually enable her to rebuild her credibility with her team.

Keeping promises usually requires assistance from a few emotional

competencies–the self-awareness to recognize the inconsistency

between our intentions and actions and the self-control to adopt disci-

plined work habits that enable us to keep our promises.

Honoring confidences. One of the most frequent promises leaders

are asked to keep is to preserve the privacy of others. A common

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complaint about low-integrity leaders is that they have failed to keep

confidences. Some leaders betray confidences with good intentions

because they believe that sharing the information with someone else

will help the person who revealed private information. Others wrongly

believe that it is acceptable to share confidential information about a

third party that they trust will not pass the confidential information on

to others. It’s ironic that some of us expect a third party to keep a confi-

dence that we ourselves have betrayed. When you discuss private infor-

mation about another person with anyone, you can assume that it will

become public—and that the person whose confidence you betrayed

will know that you were the source.

When leaders betray confidences, they lose more than the respect

of their work associates. They also dry up valuable sources of informa-

tion because their employees and colleagues learn to withhold sensitive

information from a loose-lipped leader.

Leaders who pass on confidential personal information do not suf-

fer as much career damage as those who lack other dimensions of

integrity. If the leader has an otherwise good reputation, people may try

to compensate by emphasizing forcefully to the leader that certain

information must be held in confidence. When a well-intentioned leader

hears the urgency of the request, he will usually get the message.

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Acting on Confidences Without Betraying Them

If you hear something in confidence that you strongly believe needs to be shared with others, ask for permission to share the confidence, or work with the person who disclosed the information to find a way to communicate about the issue in a protective way. Finally, if you hear something in confidence that you have a legal requirement to disclose, inform those who provided the information that you have that obligation.

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I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

—Bob Dylan

We’ve gotten to the point where everybody’s got a right and nobody’s got a responsibility.

—Newton Minow, former chairman of the FCC

Responsibility

113

The

Responsibility

Competencies

• Taking responsibility for personal choices

• Admitting mistakes and failures

• Embracing responsibility for serving others

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The Buck Stops Here. That was the saying on the plaque on President

Harry Truman’s desk in the Oval Office. He referred to it on several

occasions to underscore the idea that an American president didn’t have

the luxury of passing off accountability for decisions to anyone else.

That the expression has survived for over half a century is testament to

the importance of the responsibility principle. Needing the reminder is

an indication of how difficult it can be to live in alignment with the

responsibility principle.

Irresponsibility is nothing new. In biblical lore, the first human

excuse followed close on the heels of God’s creation of the species:

When God caught Adam eating the forbidden fruit, Adam promptly

claimed, “Eve made me do it.” We live in a culture that tolerates a high

degree of daily responsibility-dodging, but when it gets to the level of,

say, widespread corporate scandals, it’s the failures of responsibility

that upset us most. As one example, until the day he died, Enron CEO

Ken Lay never admitted that he had any idea former CFO Andrew

Fastow was manipulating the accounting ledger. Fast forward to the

economic crisis of the late 2000s. As The Wall Street Journal reported

in December 2008:

For the U.S. securities industry to unravel as spectacularly

as it did in September, many parities had to pull on many

threads. Mortgage bankers gave loans to Americans for

homes they couldn’t afford. Investment houses packaged

these loans into complex instruments whose risk they

didn’t always understand. Ratings agencies often gave

their seal of approval, investors borrowed heavily to buy,

regulators missed the warning signs.1

Despite this seemingly obvious and widespread irresponsibility on the

part of financial services companies, regulators, politicians, and even

consumers, no one seems to accept responsibility for the part they

played in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. No one

has admitted that they or their organizations were at fault in any way.

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And so far, no one has gone to jail. It seems that no one involved in the

corporate accounting scandals or the subprime mortgage debacle ever

heard about the sign on Truman’s desk. Leaders are responsible. It

comes with the job. We can shirk it, and we can make excuses when

things get tough, but we do so at our peril. We suffer and so does our

business. But as challenging as it may be to accept responsibility, the

rewards of accepting responsibly are great. As with every other moral

competency, we do it because it’s morally right and then discover that

it’s right for our business as well.

Taking Responsibility for Personal Choices The hallmark of personal responsibility is our willingness to accept that

we are accountable for the results of the choices we make. Everything

we do follows the law of cause and effect. When we cause something to

happen, there is an effect, usually more than one effect. Some of the

consequences of our actions are planned; other consequences come as a

surprise. Owning personal choice entails that we take responsibility for

all consequences of our behavior, both anticipated effects and unin-

tended consequences.

Middle managers frequently struggle with the responsibility com-

petency because they often feel caught between their responsibility for

the people they lead and the demands of their senior managers.

Frustrated middle managers often complain that they have all the

responsibility and none of the authority. That complaint may be code

for “I am not really responsible for my actions because my boss made

me do it.”

Responsibility is a radical competency because it requires that we

accept personal responsibility for everything that we do, even though

we each live in a complicated world where bosses, family members, and

friends all exert pressure on us to act in certain ways. Responsibility

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means no excuses, even though none of us is perfect and all of us have

good explanations for failing to do what we know is right.

No excuses. Mike Manning (pseudonym) loves golf. Ironically, his

passion for golf led him to a moral crossroads early in his career. Mike’s

goals at one time were to be successful in business, be a great golfer,

and be a good father. Mike was clear about what he needed to do to be

successful in his work. He knew what he had to do to become a better

golfer—he had to get in a certain number of rounds per week to

improve his game. “The trouble is,” Mike said, “I don’t have time to be

a good father if I want to do well in business and excel in golf.”

Someone suggested he kill two birds with one stone by golfing with his

kids. Mike was scornful. “That wouldn’t work at all,” he complained.

“It wouldn’t be fun, and it certainly wouldn’t help my game.” But on

reflection, Mike came to this realization: “Saying I don’t have time to

be a good father makes it sound like it’s not my responsibility, as though

time is at fault. Being a good father is a more important goal than being

a good golfer. If I want to be a good father, I have to make choices about

how I spend my time.” At first, Mike thought he would have to give up

golf, and then he realized that the idea about golfing with his kids was a

good one. He could enjoy playing golf and let go of the need to aggres-

sively improve his game. Mike admitted responsibility for his choice to

put other goals above his desire to be a good parent. Only when he real-

ized that the choice was his could he take steps to be a more responsible

father.

Accepting responsibility for personal choice does not mean mind-

lessly holding to decisions no matter how unproductive they turn out to

be. But neither does it mean that we have to be sure we have made the

perfect choice. Responsibility is not about making the perfect choice.

Instead, it is about making the choice you have made the perfect choice

for you. Some leaders make it a priority to find work consistent with

their moral compass, even if it involves declining promotions or passing

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up tempting external job offers. Jim Thomsen, senior vice president of

Member Services with Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, says,

What has kept me with this organization is that I can make

a difference while honoring my values. I’ve had opportuni-

ties to make more money, and I’ve had opportunities that

would give me more prestige. But values have played a cen-

tral role in my decision to work where I work.

Other leaders who have been seduced by jobs, with attractive compen-

sation and perks, come to feel trapped in roles that might not reflect

their most deeply held values. They may sense a need for change, but

out of a misguided notion of responsibility cling to their current posi-

tion. “I took this job, so I need to see it through.” A leader who senses

he or she is in the wrong job can demonstrate responsibility in one of

two ways—help reshape the organization so it is worth remaining or

have the courage to make a values-driven career change.

Admitting Mistakes and Failures Another important aspect of responsibility includes the willingness to

take responsibility when things go wrong. Many of us grew up naively

assuming that when we turned 21, graduated from college, got married,

or got our first job, we would then be perfect finished products. Others

have found that career success has enabled them the illusion that they

are indeed perfect. The higher you go in an organization, the less likely

it is that people around you will give you accurate feedback, so it

becomes easy to forget that you are as flawed as the most junior staffer.

What’s more, the higher you go in an organization, the easier it

is for you to confuse power with perfection. So, the best advice to

senior managers is, “Don’t believe your PR.” The more elevated your

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organizational status, the more important it is for you to actively solicit

feedback on your weaknesses.

Even if you know you are not perfect and even if you realize that

you make mistakes, it may be frightening to admit it. Some organiza-

tional cultures are punitive, and the cost of failure can be high. You may

worry about losing a raise, a promotion, or even a job if your mistake is

discovered. The irony is that punishing mistakes dampens the risk-taking

and experimentation so crucial to sustainable business performance.

If you work in an organization that does not tolerate mistakes, our

advice is to get out as soon as you can.

Fortunately, most of us work in organizations that tolerate our mis-

takes, even if they aren’t happy about them. Even more fortunately,

admitting mistakes and failures can enhance our leadership reputation

more often than it damages it. Caroline Stockdale, senior vice president

and chief talent officer for medical technology company Medtronic, can

attest to that. As Caroline recalls:

Earlier in my career, I was two weeks into a new senior job with a company. I’m a bit of a data geek and I started looking under the covers right away to see what was going on. I discovered we had an issue with our own benefits plan for our people. The people working on the program were good people but were inexperienced, and I discovered a major and potentially very expensive mistake. I went to the CEO and shared with him the problem and suggested he had two possible courses of action: one, eat a several million dollar mistake without passing on the cost of the mistake to the employees; two, go back to the employees and tell them you aren’t going to be able to honor the com- mitment you had given them just a couple weeks before. He knew and I knew that trust is hard to build and easy to break. He chose to eat the expense, and that was the right choice. He kept his promise. He did what was right.

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Don MacPherson of Modern Survey can also attest to the positive

effects of admitting mistakes. “One time, we had prepared a report for

the SVPs of a Fortune 500 company. We made a mistake in some top

line data. We inadvertently didn’t include all the survey responses in the

results, and it seriously distorted the picture. Of course, we realized that

if we didn’t tell them about our mistake, they would have no way of

knowing that the report was inaccurate. But we didn’t want them to

make decisions based on faulty data, so we never debated whether or

not to tell them, only how we should go about it. I called my client con-

tact, let her know the extent of the problem, and shared what I thought

we should do to fix the problem. Her reputation was important to her

and to us, and it was essential that we take 100% of the responsibility

for the error. We redid the report—of course, at no cost—and we sub-

mitted a signed memo taking the blame. They are now our best client,

and our client contact is the same woman, and she is fiercely loyal

to us.”

Admitting personal mistakes helps an organization be healthier in

several ways. First, admitting that you have screwed up prevents some-

one else from being blamed for your mistake. It’s common in organiza-

tional hierarchies for junior staff to take the fall for their senior

managers, and few things are more demoralizing to employees than

unfair criticism. Second, admitting mistakes creates a bond with other

employees who feel that you are more approachable by virtue of your

admission of fallibility. Finally, admitting mistakes communicates a

strong message of tolerance to the organization at large. It says, “We all

make mistakes. We know that mistakes and failures are a part of the

road to success. We want you to learn from your mistakes, and we hope

in the future you will make new mistakes and not repeat old ones.”

By admitting mistakes and failures, you can help create a more risk-

tolerant climate that leads to innovation and financial success.

Rick Clevette, now corporate vice president, Human Resources at

the Carlson Companies, tells a story from his days as an executive in a

large Fortune 500 company. One of the firm’s top business heads was a

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pillar of a leader, long on integrity but a bit short on patience. He had a

reputation for being hard on people. The training department had

brought in Ken Blanchard of “The One Minute Manager” fame to talk

to hundreds of top and mid-level managers. Ken gave his usual enter-

taining and enlightening stump speech about the importance of looking

for opportunities to give employees “one minute” of praise. Not long

after, this leader blew up at a junior manager who was making a presen-

tation. The leader soon realized his mistake. He apologized—in writing.

He sent a memo to the manager and a copy to the training people, ask-

ing them to contact Ken Blanchard about adding another principle to

the “One Minute Manager,”—suggesting the need for a “one minute

apology.” By apologizing in such a public way, this leader not only

admitted his own error, but modeled the value of admitting mistakes to

his whole organization.

Admitting mistakes makes sense, not only as a moral imperative,

but also as a practical one. Covering up mistakes takes a lot of time and

energy and often makes a situation far worse than it need be. Martha

Stewart’s conviction and prison sentence is a famous example. Stewart

was not convicted of insider trading but of obstructing justice. When the

FBI interviewed her in connection with their investigation of insider

trading, they concluded she lied about why she had sold her ImClone

stock. Had she admitted that she sold her stock when she heard that

ImClone’s CEO was dumping his, she would probably never have been

charged with a serious crime.

As important as it is to admit mistakes, it is not a “free pass.” It

does not absolve you of responsibility for the situation you created or

magically undo the harm you may have caused. Though most people

would understandably prefer to avoid mistakes that hurt others, there

are times when admitting a mistake creates opportunities that would not

have existed otherwise. Consider this example of a mistake that trans-

formed a contentious work relationship. Faith Shanley (pseudonym)

was a bright, up-and-coming executive who was frequently on the

opposite side of issues from her colleague Louis Draper (pseudonym),

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a seasoned executive who had been with their company since its incep-

tion. At a management meeting both attended, Faith decided she needed

to make a stand about a proposal she viewed as unethical. She made her

point forcefully and, in the process, became sarcastic and confronta-

tional with Louis. Faith felt great after the meeting, proud that she had

said something important and confident that her views were well

founded. Shortly after, Louis walked into Faith’s office and told her he

was upset about what she had done in the meeting. In a flash, Faith real-

ized that she had been so caught up in standing up for what she thought

was right, that she was oblivious to the impact of her confrontational

style on Louis and the rest of the group. Faith promptly apologized to

Louis. She admitted that she should have come to him privately before

the meeting to explain her point of view because she knew in advance

that there would be a conflict with his ideas. Faith was grateful that

Louis came directly to her to discuss her behavior instead of gossiping

behind her back. Louis was impressed with Faith’s willingness to admit

her mistake. Instead of avoiding each other as they had done in the past,

Faith and Louis began to meet regularly on the issues that affected

them, and over time, their once-distant relationship became closer and

more productive.

Embracing Responsibility for Serving Others We are all responsible for contributing to the well-being of others. Why

is serving others an essential moral competence? Think back to the bio-

logical origins of morality. We come into the world programmed to be

interdependent. We wouldn’t be around today if our earliest human

ancestors hadn’t huddled together to help their fellow tribes people sur-

vive. If we do not work to serve others, we fail to act as morally intelli-

gent leaders. Serving others is a great way to show integrity and to

encourage others to model it—in other words, to lead by example.

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Ken Krei, president of the Wealth Management Group of M&I

Bank, is a strong advocate of the principle of responsibility:

We all have personal accountability. At M&I we focus on

customers, shareholders, and community. We have respon-

sibility to our employees in terms of their safety and their

families. From the shareholders perspective, we have to

realize that they expect and deserve a return. And with the

community we have to give back to the community’s wel-

fare, to culture and arts, etc. That’s an awesome responsi-

bility and I personally take it seriously. Responsibility is a

pretty awesome part of running a successful business. The

customer is most important. If we don’t provide good value

and products and services we’re not doing the job that will

win their loyalty and attract new customers.

When Charlie Zelle bought out his family’s troubled transportation

business, much of his motivation was to be of service to his employees

and the community. Explaining his distress at the family’s plans to close

up shop, he added, “I just felt that some kind of moral boundary was

being violated—perhaps it is the idea that you should consider every-

one, not just yourself, in any decision.”

Suppose you don’t buy the idea that interdependence is innate. It

still makes sense to actively care about the well-being of others. Here’s

why: We all value personal happiness. We want to be happy even

though we know it is a self-centered motivation. For most of us, the

happiness we seek doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Happiness is hard to

come by without help from others. Most of us need others to help us be

happy.

Gary O’Hagan agrees that service is important, but he thinks that

serving others serves himself at least as much. “Every time I’ve done

something for others, it’s given me a better feeling about myself. When

I help family or friends or even charities, I actually have stopped and

asked myself if I’m really serving others or if I’m just being selfish.”

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Ignoring the needs of others keeps us from experiencing the gen-

uine pleasure that Gary experienced in helping others. The mentality

expressed by the 1990s bumper sticker, “Whoever dies with the most

toys wins,” describes fleeting pleasure but not true happiness. For most

people, lasting happiness comes from activities that give us a sense of

meaning and purpose—such as serving others. Recent studies on

longevity have found that serving as a volunteer with some worthwhile

organization adds years to our lives (not to mention life to our years).

Accepting responsibility for serving others is also a secret weapon

for leaders who want to promote high performance among their work-

force. To make their businesses successful, leaders need committed

employees. One of the best ways to encourage people to unleash their

creative energy in service to their company is for their leaders to serve

them. Employees don’t need to be coerced into doing their best work for

your organization. People have an inherent and insatiable appetite for

personal growth. Left to their own devices, employees will sponta-

neously contribute to your organization as their way of growing and suc-

ceeding in life. That is why leaders don’t need to impose goals from on

high. Much of the time and effort companies devote to complicated per-

formance management systems is unnecessary. The most efficient way

to elicit strong financial results is for leaders to serve their employees.

When we serve our employees, we send them this message:

I know that what you are capable of producing is far

greater than what our company needs to succeed. So my

opportunity as your leader is to serve you as you do what

you want to do, which I already know goes beyond what I

need from you. My goal is to serve your needs and help

each of you be as successful as you want to be and help you

get out of life what you want. If I can help you accomplish

what you want to do, then I know our company will do very

well. I don’t have to focus on the numbers. I have to focus

on you and all our people. Then the numbers will be fine.

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Because together our people will perform better than our

financial targets require. I know that serving you serves the

bottom line.

The retention value of servant leadership. Imagine how your employ-

ees will respond if you consistently demonstrate that your primary lead-

ership job is to help employees accomplish their own goals. They will

stay. Because most businesses yield more value from experienced

employees than new recruits, your decision to serve employees will

translate into higher levels of knowledge and performance. Because you

respect your employees’ goals, they will be highly motivated to give

their best efforts to you and your organization.

At Ameriprise Financial, managers are encouraged to spend con-

siderable time helping financial advisors to develop life goals that

include business goals and important personal goals. Managers are also

expected to find ways to support their advisors as they reach for their

goals. This approach has resulted in excellent retention and bottom-line

performance. Because the company can keep a high percentage of

financial advisors, it generates revenue it would have otherwise lost—

while at the same time lowering expenses through reduced turnover

costs.

Endnote 1. Susanne Craig, Jeffrey McCracken, Aaron Lucchette, and Kate Kelly, “The

Weekend that Wall Street Died—Ties that Long United Strongest Firms Unraveled as Lehman Sank Toward Failure,” Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2008.

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If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

—The Dalai Lama

Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of its immense benefits to the one who forgives.

—Lawana Blackwell, The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark

Compassion and Forgiveness

125

The

Compassion

Competency

• Actively caring about others

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Actively Caring About Others When you are a leader, embracing your responsibility to serve others

flows into compassion. Actively caring about others means that you do

things that actively support the personal choices of others. Sometimes,

it means you care about others’ goals as much as they do. At times, you

might find yourself taking others’ goals more seriously than they feel

able to. Mike Woodward, former SVP of Amerprise Financial and now

a senior advisor at Ducks Unlimited, is a conscientious and productive

leader but also a private person who, early in his career, was reluctant to

share his personal goals with his manager. After some nudging from his

boss, Mike confided, “I really want to spend more time with my daugh-

ters. I have done a lot of hunting and fishing with my sons, but I haven’t

spent as much time with my girls, and I’m missing that.” Then, soccer

season rolled around for one of his daughters who was a strong athlete.

Mike had arranged his schedule to attend her soccer games. Then, Mike

was called to a meeting of the top national sales managers to be held in

Minneapolis. The meeting was running late, and Mike’s boss realized

Mike would need to leave before the meeting ended if he wanted to see

his daughter’s soccer game. But Mike wasn’t moving. Mike’s boss

interrupted the meeting. “Mike, don’t you have a flight to catch?” he

asked. “Yeah,” Mike answered, “but the meeting is going long.” His

boss then demonstrated his support for Mike’s personal goals, saying,

“Leave now. Go to the airport. Go home and see your daughter’s game.”

Former president of Ameriprise Financial’s Personal Advisor group

Brian Heath, a body-builder with a bouncer’s physique, doesn’t look

like a compassionate type. Appearances to the contrary, he is deeply

compassionate. In Brian’s mind, compassion isn’t just about taking pity

on the helpless. It is about taking people’s hopes and dreams seriously

and doing what he can to help them achieve their aspirations. He sets

ambitious goals, but only after he is sure he understands what his peo-

ple hope to accomplish.

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IMG Coaches’ division president Gary O’Hagan also subscribes to

the notion that compassion means challenging people to do their best,

believing that they can accomplish their goals, and providing the tools

they need to succeed. There was a time right after Gary was cut by the

New York Jets when he coached junior varsity high-school football.

There were only 25 teens on his team, and 4 of them were handicapped.

He wasn’t sure what to do. He was afraid his handicapped players

would get hurt, but they wanted to play badly, so he decided that they

were going to play. Gary explains, “The handicapped kids were offside

all the time, but we decided to work on that. With the help of the non-

handicapped kids—who were phenomenal—we instituted a special

series of concentration drills—that by the way had nothing specifically

to do with football. We put in some penalties for not doing the drills

right. We were very nurturing, and the coaching staff and the whole

team were very compassionate, and we converted the handicapped kids’

weakness into a strength. We never went offside during a game that

whole season. Their progress was incredible. The solution was unique,

and it allowed everyone to contribute.”

Jefferson Bus Line’s CEO, Charlie Zelle, points out that compas-

sion doesn’t mean ignoring bad behavior—that sometimes the most

compassionate thing a leader can do is hold an employee accountable

for unacceptable behavior. A number of years ago, Charlie had a senior

manager who began to act like a loose cannon. It was a stressful time

because the company had to close down a division. In a misguided

attempt to show compassion for an employee he was letting go, the

manager started badmouthing the company’s decision during his termi-

nation discussion with her. Every employee he laid off got a different

explanation for the layoff. Then, the manager began an affair with

someone in the corporate office. Other people tried to ignore the man-

ager’s missteps, but Charlie knew he had to let him go. If Charlie

ignored the manager’s bad behavior, it would wreak havoc with the trust

other employees had in him and the company.

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Three years later, the manager he had fired came back and asked

for a half hour with Charlie. Turns out, he came to thank Charlie. He

had been drinking heavily during those last few months with Charlie’s

company and getting fired had been the wake-up call that prompted his

entry into a treatment program. If Charlie had kept the manager on

board out of misplaced compassion, it might have taken a lot longer for

him to get the help he needed. Charlie’s reaction? “This said to me,

you’ve got to do the right thing even if at the moment it feels like the

person will really hate you.”

ID Media’s Lynn Fantom has an unusual appreciation for compas-

sion. She considers it central to her leadership approach. “I take my

model for management from my mother. To me, the behavioral model

of a mother is perfect for management. A mother is compassionate and

encouraging and forgiving. Think about how a mother behaves when

she is helping a young child learn to walk. When I became a mother, I

became a much better manager.”

Forgiveness

128 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

The

Forgiveness

Competencies

• Letting go of one's own mistakes

• Letting go of others' mistakes

The two forgiveness competencies are frequently considered “mirror

competencies,” clearly closely related. It is hard to talk about one with-

out the other, but they are not the same skill. Some of us are much bet-

ter at forgiving ourselves than others and vice versa. Many of us are

hard on ourselves because of perfectionism. We can let go of other’s

mistakes but hold on to our own. Sometimes, we are our own worst crit-

ics. Others of us have an easier time forgiving ourselves because we

know our own underlying good intentions, whereas we may resist for-

giving others because we distrust their motives. Effective leaders know

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that letting go of mistakes—their own and others—clears the way for

better future performance.

Letting Go of Your Own Mistakes The founders of Modern Survey were riding high. They knew they had

developed a unique technology for providing survey-based business

information. Right out of the gate, they landed a big contract with a

Fortune 500 client and had several projects going on at the same time,

each with a different contact person. They worked hard on the various

projects and were sure the results had impressed their clients. They

geared up to bid on another project for this company. Then co-founder

Don MacPherson got an unwelcome call from a key contact in the com-

pany. They were taking all their business to a competitor and wouldn’t

even let Modern Survey submit a bid. The problem? Don and his part-

ners had assumed that their superior technology was the only thing they

needed to be successful. Don was responsible for managing the

account, and he hadn’t spent any time cultivating high-quality relation-

ships with his client contacts. They wanted more attentive service, and

when they didn’t get it from Modern Survey, they went elsewhere. Don

says, “My mistake was not taking good care of that relationship. We

expected the business. We felt entitled to the business rather than under-

standing we have to continually work for the business. We’ve never got-

ten the client back.”

Don’s partners were upset about the situation, but they didn’t blame

Don. Don, however, blamed himself. He dwelled on his mistake for

almost six months. Several years later, he still thinks about it occasion-

ally and gets upset. But only by letting go were Don and his partners

able to think more clearly about how to change their business practices,

and those changes have helped the company with their other clients.

“Now,” says Don, “I make sure I give all my clients the kind of service

and nurturing that I failed to give the one we lost.”

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Letting go of our mistakes doesn’t mean we have to excuse or

explain away unacceptable behavior. It is important, after all, to accept

responsibility for what you did and commit to do better going forward.

But we do have to give up the negative self-talk that can crowd our brain

when we have disappointed ourselves. Why? When we are busy talking

to ourselves about our frustration, anxiety, and guilt, there is no mental

space for learning the lessons of our mistakes. If we can’t forgive our-

selves, we stay stuck; we hold ourselves back from fresh experiences

and opportunities.

Brian Heath discovered that the hardest part of letting go of a mis-

take is first to admit that you have made one (the responsibility compe-

tency of admitting mistakes). When Brian was promoted from a

regional VP to the newly created Group VP job, he had a stellar track

record for developing high-performing sales teams. Several months into

his new role, his group’s performance had slid below the national aver-

age. For someone who had never been in that territory, the experience

was shocking and debilitating. It took him a while to figure out what

was going wrong. He was frustrated in his job and missed the direct

contact he used to have with his field sales force. Now, instead of con-

centrating on developing his field team, he was spending a lot of energy

developing a new piece of the bureaucracy—a mandated coordinating

team intended to link him to the regional market groups. Finally, Brian

had an epiphany, “I was focusing more on a method than an outcome.

The evidence was there for several months, but I couldn’t or wouldn’t

see it. It was hard to let go because I was vested in my own decision

how to go about my new job. Finally, I realized I needed to be more

courageous at helping advisors and helping clients.”

In some professions, constant self-forgiveness is the only way to

survive. When Gary O’Hagan was a young bond trader with Solomon

Brothers, he found that if he didn’t quickly let go of trading mistakes,

he would be immobilized. When he made a mistake, he had to let it go,

so he’d have the courage to trade another day. Gary reminisces, “I recall

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one day when I was managing the municipal bonds trading desk. For

some reason, the municipal market was lagging in spite of other bond

markets doing pretty well. I decided to take more risk and add to our

position. I didn’t find out until the day was over that Congress was con-

sidering removing tax exempt status from municipal bonds. I could

have and should have paused and dug in to find out why the municipals’

prices were dropping. Another bond house had done its homework, but

I didn’t, and it cost the firm a lot of money.” Asked what happened after

that, Gary responds, “Although we lost a lot of money that day because

of my mistake, I was able to let it go the next day, and we went on to

have a very good year!”

Letting Go of Others’ Mistakes There is an apocryphal story about legendary IBM CEO, Thomas

Watson. A high-potential junior manager reputedly made a mistake that

cost IBM $5 million dollars. Devastated by his error, the junior execu-

tive offered his resignation, but Watson would not accept it. The young

man was confused. “I don’t understand,” he told Watson, “I made a ter-

rible mistake. Why on earth would you want to keep me?” Watson

replied, “I just invested $5 million on your learning curve. Why would

I want to waste that kind of money?”

Forgiving others is not only the compassionate thing to do but it’s

also essential to keep valuable employees engaged and productive.

Medtronic’s Chief Talent Officer Caroline Stockdale has applied this

lesson well:

Just last week one of my teams was preparing material for

a board meeting and had made a huge mistake. We had

already sent the preliminary material to the board with the

mistake in it. The head of compensation called me and told

me about it when he discovered it. I have always fostered

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an environment where people can do that. We sent out a

correction sheet prior to the meeting. I personally called

the woman who made the mistake and told her “ I’ve got

your back.” I said, “I have made mistakes, too.” I knew she

felt panicked, but I told her “We’re going to move on.

You’ve been your own harshest critic, and you don’t need

me to pile [it] on. You will learn from this, and you will not

make this mistake again.”

ID Media’s Lynn Fantom also recognizes the business benefits of

forgiving others:

Just yesterday I was sitting with a senior employee of mine.

We were discussing a project where she had failed to super-

vise effectively. We talked about the dynamics of her rela-

tionship with people on the project. If I had accused her of

failing, I’m pretty sure she would have become defensive.

But on the spot I could see that and forgave her and was

able to help her think about the relationship she had with

others. I offered the hypothesis that she was maybe too

directive and not collaborative enough. I immediately

expressed my forgiveness for the result and asked her to

give that some thought. She knew I cared about her. She

trusted my input. We all make mistakes, and when we

admit it we don’t have to accuse and defend. We will move

on. She will move on. I already know she will handle things

differently next time.

The forgiving leader’s perspective. Imagine that I have made a mis-

take that affects you or causes you harm. Forgiving you does not mean

that I endorse what you have done. In the case of serious harm, it does

not mean giving up my claim for justice. You are still accountable for

what you did. When I forgive you, what remains is a belief in your

probable good intentions (unless you are a very bad person). But when

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I forgive you, I allow my resentment and anger to recede, along with my

negative judgments about you that would prevent me from considering

you as a potential resource. When I forgive you, I continue to recognize

that you have flaws, but I do not define you completely in terms of your

flaws. I allow for the possibility that you have strengths that I can draw

on in the future.

Without forgiveness, human life is virtually impossible. Intimate

relationships with friends, family, and co-workers cannot exist without

forgiveness. Without forgiveness, a leader’s organizational performance

is artificially capped. The effective leader forms a relationship with fol-

lowers with forgiveness at its core. The forgiving leader’s message to

followers is essentially this:

You might as well know in advance that I will make mis-

takes, and so will you. As your boss, there are times when I

won’t be doing my best work. There will be days when

you’re not in top form, either. If you can’t forgive me for

not always being your perfect boss, our relationship will be

ineffective. It will be not only emotionally hurtful, but also

neither of us will perform as well as we should. If we can

forgive each other for not being perfect, we will both be

able to use each other as a valuable resource. We will be

able to help each other be happy and perform at our best.

In the previous three chapters, we have talked about the specific moral

competencies we need to live in alignment with our principles. Taken

together, our moral competencies are the behavioral glue that binds

together all the frames of the alignment model. Though we’ve consid-

ered them one by one, it’s rare to find moral competencies in isolation.

The moral competencies overlap because the universal principles them-

selves overlap. It’s hard to imagine someone who has integrity but lacks

responsibility or someone who has compassion but lacks forgiveness.

Our moral competencies act synergistically to keep our day-to-day

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actions lined up with who we want to become and what we hope to

achieve. We each have relative strengths and weaknesses in our moral

competencies. The more competent we become across the full spectrum

of moral competencies, the more we will live in alignment. The more

aligned we are, the happier we will be, and the more productive and

successful our organizations will be.

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Usually, we know the right thing to do (using our moral compass), and

frequently, we know how to do the right thing (using our moral compe-

tencies). What then stops us from doing what we know is right? Moral

challenges usually provoke highly charged emotions. How can we man-

age our emotions in a positive way? This chapter explores how our

emotional intelligence competencies can help us reinforce our moral

intelligence. By acting together, our emotional and moral competencies

can enable us to conform more deeply to universal human principles

and gain greater moral intelligence.

Recall the potential obstacles to staying in alignment. When

destructive emotions and moral viruses threaten, our emotional skills

help us stay connected with our values. There is nothing necessarily

moral about emotional competencies. But emotional competencies are

essential tools for the morally smart leader.

Emotions

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Keith Reinhard, Chairman Emeritus of DDB Worldwide tells this

story:

I can remember being excited when my boss decided that

he wanted me to be his successor. But there was a hitch.

Charlie, the guy everyone thought would get the job, fig-

ured he had it all wrapped up. So my boss decided that he

would create a new job for Charlie and sell it to him as a

promotion, thereby getting him out of the way so I could

have [a] clear shot for my boss’s job. Then after I got my

new job, my boss would find a way to get Charlie out of the

company. I wouldn’t accept it. I told my boss that Charlie

had always been straight with me and I couldn’t do this to

him. I thought it would be better for my boss to be straight

with Charlie. I even quoted him some of his own public

statements about integrity. So he was honest with Charlie

after all, and things worked out fine.

How tempting it would have been for Keith to let his promotion play

out the way his boss originally planned. Keith could have stood by qui-

etly while his boss cleared the playing field by offering a bogus job to

the heir apparent. Keith wanted that job, and he knew he could get it

without being personally responsible for sidelining Charlie. All he had

to do was keep his mouth shut. But as much as he wanted the job, Keith

knew that his personal integrity was at stake. So he told his boss that he

wouldn’t take the job if it meant treating Charlie badly. Some executive

power players may not have taken that message kindly. But Keith was

no fool. He gave his boss a way to deal with Charlie that was aligned

with values—both his and his boss’s. Keith’s goal of advancement

could have easily overcome his values had he not tapped into his moral

and emotional skills to find a morally acceptable way to get promoted.

Keith needed the moral competencies of acting consistently with values

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and telling the truth. But he also needed the emotional skill of self-

awareness to recognize two conflicting emotions—both his strong

desire for the job and his discomfort about how Charlie might be

treated. He needed the confidence that he could handle a negative reac-

tion from his boss if he challenged him about his treatment of Charlie.

He needed the interpersonal savvy to convince his boss to deal with

Charlie in a morally competent manner.

Self-Awareness Every waking moment, we face the world from within an experiential

triangle of thoughts, emotions, and actions. No matter what is going

on, we are always thinking, feeling, and doing, and we are doing all

those things simultaneously. As leaders and decision makers, many of

us are more comfortable operating in one of those three domains. Some

of us are thinking types who tend to rely on logic and ideas; others are

feeling types who tend to make decisions based on emotion, or some

are physical types who want to do, to take action, as a way to respond to

a problem. Research on work styles shows that American business lead-

ers tend to be thinking and doing types, rather than feeling types. It’s

not that business people don’t know they have feelings. It’s just that

many feel uncomfortable expressing them. Why the discomfort?

English-speaking cultures place a high value on the products of the cog-

nitive mind. No doubt thoughts are powerful. What we think certainly

affects how we feel and what we do. But emotions are equally power-

ful. How we feel strongly affects what we think and what we do. Fear

may paralyze us into inaction; anger may prompt us to strike out; opti-

mistic beliefs may give us courage. Life’s experiential triangle is an

endless loop in which thoughts, feelings, and actions are continuously

and mutually influencing one another.

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Whether you are aware of your own experiential triangle, people

around you see the outward behavior that results. What your colleagues

notice about you and how they interpret what they see have an enormous

impact on your work relationships, for good or ill. Because those around

you can’t read your (thinking and feeling) mind, it is easy for them to

misunderstand your actions. If you want to be an effective leader, you

need your colleagues to accurately understand what you mean and why

you do what you do. Without self-awareness, you will remain a mystery

to yourself, and you’ll be in the dark about how you come across to your

colleagues. If you are unaware of your feelings, you are at their mercy.

Without self-awareness, your capacity for self-correction is extremely

limited. In Chapter 9, “Making Moral Decisions,” you learn a systematic

method for accessing self-awareness to make optimal moral choices.

Modern Survey’s Don MacPherson is seething. Earlier today, he

was presenting a software demonstration to a new client, and the demo

didn’t work. “I can be very hard on my partners. They are the ones who

create what I sell. If something goes wrong with the technology, it

upsets me. And I’m the one who has to deal with the fallout. I handle it

professionally with the client, but then I go back to my partners and get

angry with them.” Don pauses, leans back in his chair, and then contin-

ues, “I haven’t told my partners yet about the problem today, and now

that I’m talking about it I’m sure I will handle it better and not blame

them. I know they’ll get it fixed, and the fact that the demo didn’t work

won’t be a big deal. Sometimes, the software is complicated and mis-

takes happen.”

Don’s story illustrates the power of self-awareness. He recognized

that his typical pattern when angry about technical problems was to haul

off and blame his partners. But this time, he reflected on the situation.

He became aware of his frustration. He had time to put some distance

between how he felt and what he would do about it. That self-conscious

pause—between reaction and action—made a big difference. It enabled

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Don to plan how to talk constructively with his partners about the failed

demo. He was even able to change his attitude about it: Instead of think-

ing “woe is me” because he had to deal with clients when things go

wrong, Don could now see technical problems in a way that was both

realistic and optimistic. That moment of self-awareness will pay divi-

dends in reduced personal stress and a smoother relationship with his

partners.

Recognizing feelings. When a moral choice is at stake, self-

awareness is essential. Recall Keith and his promotion. Keith’s

awareness—of his excitement about a likely promotion and discomfort

about the impact on a trusted colleague—was crucial to communicating

with his mentor in a way that produced positive results. Without aware-

ness, Keith’s desire for advancement might have overridden any moral

reservations he had. Without sensitivity to the pain his colleague would

feel at being passed over in a manipulative way, Keith might have

remained silent. If emotions—Keith’s and Charlie’s—had been factored

out of the decision process, Keith’s promotion would have played out in

a way that was morally suspect and likely damaging to Keith’s credibil-

ity in his new role. All business decisions have wide audiences. Keith

and Charlie’s colleagues would have known that Charlie had been

manipulated. Charlie’s closest colleagues probably would have resented

Keith, even though he was not directly responsible for Charlie’s bad

fortune.

Inner feelings affect the outer world. Awareness of your feelings

is also vital to your ability to create a positive work climate for your

employees. Because emotions are contagious, you need to monitor your

feelings so that the mood you project is a stable one. Leaders accom-

plish far more when they don’t put their people in a position of wonder-

ing what kind of mood their leader is going to be in each day. If you can

save your colleagues the trouble of having to navigate around your

unexamined emotions, you will liberate more creative energy for per-

formance that would otherwise be sapped by your employees’ anxiety.

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Understanding Your Thoughts Tune in to your thoughts, and you can realize that you are in constant

conversation with yourself. Listen in while you head to work: You pass

a Lexus and think, “I’d love to have a car like that.” You’re stopped at

an endless red light. When the light changes, you accelerate and some-

one cuts you off. “What a jerk!,” you say to yourself. That constant

internal dialogue is often called self-talk. Whether we are alone, our

minds are full of ideas and attitudes that we express in the inner lan-

guage of self-talk. That self-talk, in turn, has a major impact on our

emotions and our physical state. Thoughts are powerful. We may shed

tears when we think of a lost parent or smile when we think about our

last vacation. We did not decide to cry or smile; our physical reaction

happened spontaneously in response to our thoughts.

Effective leaders tend to be highly conscious of their internal

thoughts. Ed Zore, Chairman Emeritus of Northwestern Mutual, is con-

stantly aware of his feelings and reactions. “I sometimes have to sort

them out from the objective facts because my feelings and the facts

about a situation can be very different.”

We need to understand our thoughts so that we can monitor and

manage their emotional and physical effects. Our thoughts don’t have to

be random, and we are not at their mercy. As you’ll discover in the next

chapter, you can choose your thoughts. And when you change your

thoughts, everything can change for the better.

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Time Out to Tune In: A Self-Awareness Break

Pick a few times during each day to perform a mental check. Ask yourself:

• What am I thinking right now? What am I saying to myself? • What am I feeling about that? Am I excited, frustrated, peace-

ful, annoyed?

• What am I doing physically at this moment? How is my breathing? Are my jaws clenched? Am I hungry or thirsty?

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Personal Effectiveness We don’t cultivate self-awareness for its own sake, but because it pro-

vides us the data we need to manage ourselves and our emotions.

Managing emotions, by the way, does not mean trying not to feel, deny-

ing hurt, or even necessarily concealing strong emotions. We are not

meant to be unemotional automatons (like Star Trek’s Mr. Spock). It is

human to feel uncomfortable emotions. Personal effectiveness helps us

channel our emotions so that we can spend more time living in align-

ment. The goal is not to increase our emotional awareness and emo-

tional skills per se; it is to increase these competencies so we can

achieve greater alignment and moral intelligence. Personal effectiveness

encompasses all the skills we use to perform well in the face of strong

emotions. These include

• Changing self-defeating beliefs that lead to upsetting emotions

• Deciding to behave well under trying circumstances

• Rolling with the punches when things don’t go our way

• Taking care of ourselves so we can better handle stressful situations

Deciding What to Think If your thoughts are self-critical, you will notice that your emotions are

negative, your body is tight, and you cannot perform at your best. If you

spend a few minutes to replace your critical thoughts with statements of

realistic confidence in yourself, your mood lifts, your body relaxes, and

your work performance improves. Negative self-talk is a program for

failure, whereas positive self-talk frees you to do your best. A caveat:

We are not advocating that you mindlessly allow only positive self-talk

or that you ignore fears or failings. There are negative thoughts that are

realistic and must be confronted seriously. But no matter how dire the

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situation at hand, realistically positive self-talk is the best way to get

your mind and body ready to perform effectively. If we think we can’t

run a marathon, we won’t even try. Now imagine replacing that belief

with a different thought—“If I train hard, I’ll bet I can finish the

marathon.” Our new thought makes it far more likely that we will ulti-

mately reach the finish line. Why? Because now we have created the

motivation we need to get ready for the race.

As you see in Chapter 9, when you are in a morally charged situa-

tion, it helps to remind yourself of your principles, values, and beliefs.

Self-talk about your beliefs allows you to counteract disruptive emo-

tions that can drive you out of alignment with your moral compass.

When Tatums’ Lori Kaiser is troubled or searching for direction, she

thinks about the three principles that she tries to live by: “First, if I don’t

speak up, nobody will—don’t assume it will be handled by someone

else. Second, Winston Churchill said, ‘Never, never, ever give up!’ That

kind of tenacity is important in business. Third is a quote from existen-

tialist philosopher, Albert Camus, ‘In the midst of the darkest day of

winter, I find within myself the eternal day of summer.’”

Lori’s practice of mentally recalling her principles is an example of

the value of deliberately interrupting negative thought processes or feel-

ings. When our minds are clear, we are ready to tackle the situation at

hand. Then we can ask ourselves, “What do I need to think about to

deliver what I need? There is a bonus that comes with changing our

self-talk: When we alter our internal thoughts from negative to positive

ones, any emotional and physical discomfort we may feel usually

lessens or goes away entirely.

Self-Control Effective leaders rely on self-control to maintain alignment with princi-

ples. Most successful leaders know from experience that losing emo-

tional control is bad for their self-esteem, their reputations, and their

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business performance. A healthcare executive we’ll call Ellen under-

stands the importance of emotional control. “I’ve blown up at someone

only twice in my career. In the heat of the moment, I felt there was such

an injustice, and I felt so ‘in the right’ that I justified my actions. But in

reality, I violated my moral code—I certainly didn’t treat them the way

I’d like to be treated. Of course, they were treating me badly too, but

that’s no excuse. In both cases, it damaged my relationships, and that

has had its costs.” Asked what she learned, Ellen says, “When I get

really angry, I now know to say, ‘I need some time to think about this;

let’s talk tomorrow.’ I’ve also learned when to consult with someone

who’s not personally involved before I decide what to do.”

An emotionally intelligent leader knows when not to trust gut reac-

tions. A marketing executive says this about self-control: “I conscien-

tiously think about exercising self-control over my emotional responses.

A few months ago, I had a job opening and knew someone in another

department would be perfect for that spot. I started to recruit him but

then got a call from his boss telling me, ‘No way.’ My first thought was,

‘Okay, fine—someday I’ll do the same for you.’ But then my self-

control kicks in. I know better than to retaliate.”

Nurturing Emotional Health Leaders need emotional reserves to deal effectively with moral chal-

lenges. It’s hard to manage stressful situations without a baseline level

of emotional well-being. You can’t expect yourself to deal with the

demands of leading morally if your emotional tank is empty. You can’t

expect to influence others to be morally competent if they don’t respect

the way you live your life. Dan Marvin (pseudonym), CEO of a large

retailing business, told us this story of a failed executive:

Recently, I had to let go our chief operating officer. He was

probably the brightest and hardest working human being

I’d ever worked with. He is the first person I’ve ever told

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that they worked too much—I’ve never been the poster

child for personal balance myself. He would come in at 9:00

a.m. and leave at 1 in the morning. When he got home, his

wife would get up and serve him dinner and talk to him for

an hour and then go back to bed. For the two years he was

here, he never got to a soccer game or baseball game of his

kid. He never did anything with his wife. He’d leave

early—at 11:00 at night—on birthdays and anniversaries.

People hated working for him. He’d call them at 10:00 at

night, and he did nothing to develop them. He lost three

VPs who worked for him. Though he worked a ton of

hours, he really didn’t do a good job, and he put his entire

family and marriage at risk.

Balance. One of the best emotional nutrients is a balanced life. Balance

means achieving equilibrium in the amount of time and energy you

spend on each of the many dimensions of your life. You establish emo-

tional equilibrium by allocating personal resources—such as time,

energy, and money—to life areas in a way that makes sense to you.

There is no rule for creating balance. Only you can determine how

much time and energy you spend on which areas of your life. Only you

know the right mix of pursuits for each stage of your life.

Human resources expert Judy Skoglund was the first professional

to work part-time at the financial services company now known as

Ameriprise Financial. Judy was a role model for women who saw that

she was highly productive because of her decision to spend more time

with her family, not in spite of it. Today Judy works with nonprofits and

coaches women on managing their careers. “I don’t call it work life bal-

ance anymore,” Judy says, “I call it work life happiness. People don’t

necessarily care about balance; they want to be happy.”

Women are not the only folks who care about the quality of their

whole lives—men do, too. Consider the case of Frank, a successful

broker who makes more than $200,000 per year. Although Frank works

hard, he also values family time, taking one week off every seven weeks

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to spend uninterrupted time with his family. His schedule was so per-

sonally rewarding that he started thinking about taking one week off

every five weeks. But after planning to reduce his work hours, he then

launched a new business partnership, a decision that would require he

keep to his current work schedule. Frank was excited about his new

business but wondered if he was copping out on his plan to spend even

more time with his family. We don’t think so. We think he made the

decision he did because he had already achieved equilibrium. His work

and family life were balanced in a way that worked both for him and his

family.

Ecolab’s Doug Baker works hard to keep his time expenditures

aligned with his values. “Family, marriage, career, and community are

all important to me. I barely have time for those four. So friends get the

short end of the stick. I may only have three golf games a year that are

just for fun with friends. Guys will call me and want to go golfing for

two days—I’d love to but can’t. I can golf or I can see my kids.”

Despite the importance of creating balance, many managers, and

executives in particular, do it poorly. Corporations may offer lip service

about work/family balance, and some companies provide flexible work

schedules or family-friendly services to enhance retention. But

American business leaders rarely recognize the positive business bene-

fits of encouraging employees to lead fulfilling and balanced lives. If

they did, balance-enhancing strategies would be mandatory rather than

tolerated.

Companies that support balanced lives among their employees soon

discover the business benefits. They attract high-performing people

who are happy and productive in multiple roles. Those content employ-

ees produce excellent business results independent of how many hours

they spend at work. Consider American Express, which enjoys an envi-

able history of strong financial performance. The company employs

approximately 80,000 people, some of whom are undoubtedly work-

aholics. But the American Express executive team doesn’t believe it’s

reasonable to base a business model on an assumption that most of its

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employees are workaholics. The company bases its business model on

the assumption that people care about other aspects of their lives

beyond the office. The American Express workforce is energized

because they know that the company they work for recognizes that they

have lives and that the company’s leaders truly want their total lives to

be successful and joyful—and by the way—they do want their employ-

ees to “work their butts off” when they are at work.

Recharging your emotional batteries. You are your most precious

asset. When you prioritize your activities, it’s important to carve out

time for yourself. Physical fitness, for instance, is a key contributor to

emotional health. Aerobic exercise triggers the release of brain chemi-

cals associated with feelings of pleasure and well-being. Evidence of

the emotional importance of exercise is that medical research has found

that regular aerobic exercise (such as brisk walking) is as effective as

medication in reducing symptoms of moderate depression. Your emo-

tional well-being will be enhanced if you choose activities that you

enjoy, rather than activities that you do only because you think they are

good for you. Daily relaxation activities also can contribute signifi-

cantly to emotional and physical well-being. Medical research under-

scores the benefits of planned relaxation—from lowered blood pressure

to faster healing and greater pain tolerance. Dr. Herbert Benson in his

perennial best-selling book The Relaxation Response, provides an easy

and efficient method for achieving a relaxed state.1 Just as people need

a unique balance in their life endeavors, each of us differs in the kind of

activities that promote relaxation. Many people find deep breathing and

meditation to be effective in calming their minds and bodies, whereas

others may find it maddening to sit down and meditate, preferring a

yoga class, a massage, or a relaxing after-dinner stroll. The important

thing is to choose some daily practice that enables you to recharge your

body, mind, and spirit.

Managing emotions for peak performance. The self-awareness

competencies and personal effectiveness competencies discussed here

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are clearly synergistic. Taking charge of your emotions means muster-

ing all your emotional resources to manage the competing demands of

work and personal life. Most of us will never get to a state in which we

perform at the absolute peak regardless of how we feel. However, the

more we practice self-awareness and personal effectiveness skills, the

more often we can outperform ourselves, and the more often we find

ourselves conforming our behavior to universal moral principles.

Rehearsing for emotional challenges is critical to effective performance.

You cannot control what will happen to you in the course of a day. But

you can imagine it. You can prepare for it. You can get ready to be suc-

cessful. As the old saying goes, “Good luck happens when preparation

meets opportunity.” Coping effectively can keep you from being

knocked off course by destructive emotions and ensure that your behav-

ior stays in alignment with your goals and beliefs.

Interpersonal Effectiveness Personal effectiveness skills such as deciding what to think and self-

control are obvious aids to moral competence. We know we need emo-

tional control to do the right thing. But why do we need people skills to

be morally competent? To serve the needs of others, we have to under-

stand them. To be compassionate or forgiving, we need to see the world

through another’s eyes. Interpersonal effectiveness is an indispensable

leadership tool. Leaders get little done by themselves—they rely almost

completely on the energy, strength, and commitment of the people who

work with them. If we want to influence others, we must understand the

complex emotional worlds of others and communicate to them in ways

that satisfy their emotional needs.

Northwestern Mutual’s Ed Zore knows this as well as anyone, “If

you’re oblivious about your impact on others you’ll hurt people. So you

have to make an appropriate response, and that means first being aware

of the wake you’re leaving.”

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Empathy Empathy is a kind of “as if” mental state in which you experience a

challenging situation through the eyes of another person. It is as though

you put on a virtual-reality headset that instantly gives you the emo-

tional mindset of another person. Empathy is critical to moral compe-

tence because it neutralizes destructive emotions that can interfere with

living in alignment. Take college President James Norwell (pseudo-

nym), for example. When James was the VP and Dean of another lib-

eral arts college, he found himself in an awkward position. The college

president at the time had been a highly popular appointment but turned

out to lack the depth needed to meet the challenges the institution faced.

Frustrated with his inadequacies, the board of trustees turned to James

as a sounding board, problem solver, and potential presidential replace-

ment. James recalls, “It would have been easy to let the board push the

current president aside and put me in his job. But I knew how much he

was struggling and wanted to do well. And because I was able to look

at the situation from his point of view, I decided to take myself out of

consideration so that I couldn’t be used by the board in their attempt to

resolve his limitations. I had to lay my own ambitions aside for him to

be treated the way I would like to be treated in that situation.”

Empathy as a conflict antidote. When we are at odds with others,

often the last thing we want to do is to consider the situation from their

point of view. Nevertheless, empathy is a powerful tool for managing

conflict in a way that produces the best outcomes for you and your

adversary. Recall the experiential triangle of emotions, thought, and

action. If you have been clashing with a work associate, you are proba-

bly caught up in a high-energy negative emotional state that is clouding

your thinking. Without empathy, you are limited by your own subjective

view of reality. If you can see only your side of the conflict, you risk

lashing out in anger. You may decide you have to win the battle at all

costs; you may try to retaliate; you may make hurtful accusations—all

actions that are inconsistent with your moral compass, actions that will

also damage your reputation as a good leader.

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After you experience a conflict from the perspective of another per-

son, it is then possible for you to stay in alignment. With the expanded

perspective that includes your feelings and the feelings of others, you

can think more clearly, and the odds that you will make an aligned

choice improve dramatically. Your ability to help your partner in con-

flict stay in alignment also improves because empathy activates both

forgiveness and compassion. If you can imagine how someone else

feels, you can understand why they acted as they did. With that under-

standing, you are more willing to let go of their mistakes and more dis-

posed to help them accomplish their goals.

Misplaced Compassion Empathy for another’s life situation often inspires us to want to help

them. It’s important to distinguish between understanding another’s

world and being controlled by another’s needs and preferences. It’s pos-

sible to go too far in translating our empathy into unproductive caretak-

ing. Pam Moret, senior vice president of Strategic Development at

Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, demonstrates how to be empathetic

without compromising your business. When two companies merged to

form Thrivent, Pam decided to consolidate her dispersed workforce into

a single location. Some employees were upset by the prospect of the

move, and though Pam empathized with their feelings, she was con-

vinced of the need to locate her group together. Though her empathy

didn’t change her business decision, it did cause her to engineer softer

landings and lengthier transitions than many companies offer.

Listening. Leaders are generally rewarded for being decisive, for

taking action, for being the experts, and for having something to say.

That action orientation can make it difficult for leaders to value what

may seem like the passive act of listening. Hearing may be passive, but

listening attentively is an active skill requiring concentration and emo-

tional intelligence. Thrivent’s Pam Moret says, “Active listening is an

unbelievably powerful personal skill. If you signal to someone that

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they’re fourth priority on your list…for example, by canceling one-on-

ones or doing email while you’re meeting with them…it can really

adversely affect them and the situation.” To counteract her natural incli-

nation to multitask when with others, Pam has established informal con-

tracts with her direct reports that commit her to giving them her

undivided attention. When she meets with them, she tries not to sit

behind her desk, look out her window at her secretary, or take a quick

glance at her computer. That, says Pam, keeps her from hurting some-

one or missing important information.

Listening attentively is essential to moral competence. Careful lis-

tening demonstrates respect for the values, beliefs, goals, and emotions

of others. Listening skillfully also makes empathy possible because it

provides the data on which compassion and forgiveness are based. Little

of the meaning of what is said comes from the words themselves. What

people really mean when they speak is found in their tone of voice and

the physical movements (“body language”) that accompany their

spoken words. That is why active listening is so much more important

than passively listening to words alone. You can get the message if you

get the whole message. Suppose you get a call at work that your

daughter is sick and needs to be picked up from school. As you rush out

the office, your boss says, “Are you leaving again to pick up your

daughter?” Stripped of your boss’s tone of voice, the words themselves

could represent a simple request for clarification. But you heard the way

she made that statement. Embedded in the words was a point of view.

Her tone suggests she thinks you are not getting your work done.

Listening carefully allows you to form a useful hypothesis that your

boss is not happy with you. But active listening goes a step further.

Instead of simply assuming that you have correctly assessed your boss’s

attitude, you check with your boss about what she meant. If your boss

was just asking for information, then you can let go of the anxiety that

your interpretation of her message caused. If she really is annoyed with

you, testing your assumption gives you and your boss an opportunity to

resolve a problem and keep you both in alignment.

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Listening to understand the contents of all three frames. Active

listening is typically used to uncover underlying emotional messages.

But listening well can provide information about all three frames. It is

important to listen in a way that allows you to discover others’ values

and goals. If you listen only for emotional messages, you might be

missing clues that can help you stay in alignment, and help you to help

others to stay in alignment. If you simply listen to another’s emotions

without understanding their values and goals, you don’t know whether

they are in alignment.

Respecting Others It’s easy to work with people we like, or whose views match our own.

But we all must work with some people we don’t enjoy or who express

opinions with which we disagree. Disrespect is a product of our inabil-

ity to understand that each of us sees only part of what is true or real.

We think we have all the facts, so when someone disagrees with us, we

assume they are wrong. Respect comes when we understand that truth

has many colors and we can’t see all of them. Our view of the world is

necessarily incomplete. None of us has perfect seats in the theater of

life. When we realize that our sight lines are limited, we can then

respect those who disagree with us—because we then appreciate that

their opinion is based on seeing what we cannot see.

Respect is the glue that enables people of different backgrounds,

perspectives, and habits to work together. Moral leaders know that they

can only inspire people they respect. Respect is a tricky skill. It goes

beyond the easy task of appreciating people whose ideas you like or the

bogus politeness of “respectfully disagreeing” with someone. Respect

comes from our deep appreciation of another’s ideal self. When we say

that we respect someone, what we are actually saying is that we connect

with the best intentions of that other person. When we respect others,

we establish a relationship with their ideal self, a positive relationship

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that is independent of our judgments about their current opinions and

actions. Our respect for their positive intentions becomes the basis for

our work together. When you respect a co-worker, you open yourself to

the possibility that your co-worker—who you might not like and who

sees the world differently—has something important to teach you that

can help both of you succeed. When you genuinely respect another—

when that other person feels respected by you—only then is that person

open to the possibility that your perspective may also have merit.

It’s not easy to stay connected to the ideal self of an obnoxious or

seemingly wrong-headed co-worker. But you can keep the channel of

respect open if you also call on your capacity for empathy and listening.

To see what is ideal in another’s mind, you have to listen. You need to

observe. When you visit a co-worker’s office, what do you see? What is

there, and what is not there? What do those family pictures, trophies, or

pieces of art tell you about what your co-worker cares about? You might

not agree with their approach to a customer’s problem, but your ability

to connect with their ideal values allows you to negotiate from a posi-

tion of respect.

Respecting differences. Imagine that you have hired a team that

thinks a lot like you do. You like their ideas, and they like yours. Staff

meetings are pleasant and convivial. Decisions are made quickly, and

you are confident in those decisions because so many people agree.

When you are right, things work out well. But because you share the

same blind spots with your colleagues, before too long you make a big

mistake that could have been prevented, or you lose a significant busi-

ness opportunity that could have been identified with more diverse

views on board.

Few leaders would deliberately hire their own clones, and most

leaders intellectually understand the value of diversity. In an emotion-

ally charged situation, however, it is tempting to over-rely on the opin-

ions you trust the most—yours. That is why you must consciously

cultivate an appreciation for others’ ideas. You do that by ruthlessly

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challenging your own views, while aggressively looking for the wisdom

in others’ ideas.

By doing this, you can discover that the existence of differences

creates great opportunities for synergy and gives people who work

together the potential to accomplish far more than individuals can

achieve on their own.

When financial planning was first coming into its own in the 1980s,

most financial planners were paid for selling financial products, such as

stocks or insurance policies. Industry critics had pointed out that com-

mission-based financial advisors could be tempted to push certain prof-

itable products, even if they were not in their clients’ best interests.

Martin Levy (pseudonym), division vice president of sales for a grow-

ing financial services company, vehemently objected to a proposal to

charge clients for developing their financial plans. Martin thought the

financial plan should be a free, relationship-building activity that would

demonstrate the salesperson’s competence and set the stage for subse-

quent sales of financial products. Only one thing disturbed Martin’s

argument. Jerry Masters (pseudonym), one of his sales managers, was

as vocal an advocate of fee-based financial planning as Marty was an

opponent. Over time, Martin decided, “If Jerry thinks it’s a good idea, I

have to find out what he sees that I don’t see.” Martin asked Jerry to

convince him, and he did. Jerry laid out his rationale about the impor-

tance of charging for objective advice because of the integrity that

brings to the equation and the increased confidence that customers have

in the financial advice they get when they pay for objective information.

Jerry also pointed out that other disciplines, including medicine, have

emerged as respected professions because they acquired a body of

knowledge and were then able to charge for what they knew. Martin

was convinced. Because he respected Jerry and had learned to listen to

divergent views, Martin let go of a strong personal bias and cleared the

way for a new product that led to significant revenues increases in years

to come.

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Getting Along with Others Because leaders need others to accomplish their goals, they have to get

along with them. Empathy, listening ability, and respect are hallmarks

of individuals who get along well with others. Leaders who get along

exceptionally well with others share four additional qualities: They

show genuine interest in other people’s lives; they are open and

approachable; they are flexible in accommodating other’s preferences

and needs; and they enjoy the differences among us. When people are

skilled at getting along with us, we like them. And because we like

them, we are more apt to view their ideas positively and more likely to

cooperate with them. So personal likeability is an asset to moral compe-

tence because when we need to enlist others to help us do the right

thing—especially when it’s a hard thing to do—people who like us will

be more motivated to join us.

Being approachable. Positive personal connections with your co-

workers fuel highly committed and creative approaches to the work at

hand. It might seem obvious that good leaders need to be approachable,

but it is striking how often leaders make themselves inaccessible. Some

maintain distance from their employees as a matter of personal style.

Others may discourage contact unintentionally because of work over-

load. As managers are promoted to higher levels, there is a tendency for

them to become invisible—they disappear to more remote offices or

spend most of their time traveling or attending meetings with other sen-

ior managers. Even when you are in a high-pressure leadership job, it is

vital to make time to deliberately cultivate warm and approachable rela-

tionships with others. We’ve all read books advocating the “open door

policy” or “management by walking around.” These are simple tools

that are effective if actually applied.

Being an approachable leader begins with your willingness to share

the contents of your moral compass—your principles, values, and

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beliefs. You add to your approachability by sharing your personal inter-

ests and human foibles. Do you play in a rock band on the weekends,

sing in a church choir, or fix up vintage cars? Sharing your interests and

asking about others’ interests sets the stage for warm work relationships.

Being approachable does not mean “telling all.” Each of us has a

private zone of personal information that should not be shared indis-

criminately. Neither does approachability require that you become a

raving life-of-the-party extrovert. But you do need to actively help peo-

ple feel comfortable around you because your approachability is an

important element of a positive, highly productive work environment.

Being flexible. People who get along with others don’t get stuck on

doing things their way. Whether you are a work peer or leader, your

success depends on your willingness to let others have a say about how

work gets done. You also need to accept mid-course changes that affect

how work gets done. What happens when your teammate who was

slated to give a big presentation gets laryngitis and asks you to fill in at

the eleventh hour? How do you handle an employee’s request to work at

home for the next few weeks? What if your boss asks you to head a

project that you think the company doesn’t care about? Rolling with the

punches may not always get you exactly what you want in the moment,

but over the long term it will cement important work relationships and

help you cultivate inventive ways to solve inevitable problems.

Enjoying differences. People who are seen as getting along with

others usually have a diverse network of people with whom they have

positive relationships. It’s easy to get along with people we like, but if

our network is limited to people who are just like us, we will be seen,

not as emotionally skilled, but as interpersonally biased.

Appreciating differences goes beyond respecting or valuing the

diverse perspectives that others bring to the table. It is the capacity to

savor those differences among us that makes us interesting. People who

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get along well with others don’t merely tolerate differences; rather, they

feel enriched by the unique personalities and perspectives that people of

different backgrounds offer.

Endnote 1. Herbert Benson, M.D. with Miriam Z. Klipper, The Relaxation Response,

HarperTorch, 1976.

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Today, Roger Arnold is executive vice president and Chief Distribution

Officer for Wealth Enhancement Group, a financial advisory firm based

in Minneapolis that serves the Midwest. Roger recalls a dilemma he

faced a few years back when he had the national responsibility for dis-

tribution for products for a large financial services company. His top-

producing regional manager, whom we’ll call Sam, was using a

questionable sales technique to boost revenues. Sam’s approach wasn’t

illegal. Roger wasn’t even certain it was unethical. But deep down,

Roger just knew that Sam’s technique wasn’t right. It wasn’t in their

clients’ best interests. So Roger told Sam to stop using his technique.

Roger thought he’d made it clear that he was serious: “If you do this

again, Sam,” Roger warned, “I’ll fire you.”

Making Moral Decisions

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So Sam did it again. Roger thought briefly about how he should

respond.

I could have kept it a secret and protected Sam, thereby

protecting my own bonus. But I confronted him and gave

him thirty days’ notice. And my bonus was indeed nega-

tively affected. It would have been easy to wink at Sam’s

behavior or turn the other way and act like I didn’t know

what he was doing. But I knew what the right thing to do

was, so I did it. And because I was willing to let Sam go

despite his impressive financial results, I sent a clear mes-

sage to all the other sales leaders across the country that

doing what’s best for our clients really does matter.

What allowed Roger to do the right thing—the hard thing—when he

knew it would cost him personally, and when he could so easily have

kept Sam’s sales technique a secret? Roger practices the “4 Rs,” a four-

step decision-making method that overrides our natural tendency to

make emotionally driven decisions that have moral implications when

in the face of strong emotions such as fear or excitement. The 4 Rs con-

sist of four steps (or skills): recognize, reflect, reframe, and respond.

Roger uses the 4Rs to keep his excitement about his group’s finan-

cial performance, and the promise of a hefty bonus from driving a deci-

sion that was not consistent with his, or his company’s, values.

In the following section, you see how Roger uses those critical

skills, and as you proceed through the chapter, you learn how you can

develop those same skills.

How Roger Used the 4 Rs RECOGNIZE all the elements of the situation you are in. Stop what-

ever you are doing to take notice of everything you’re thinking, feeling,

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and doing related to the situation you are in. Pay particular attention to

what stimulates your thoughts and emotions.

Roger paid attention to everything he was thinking, feeling, and

doing. He recognized how stimulated he was by his excitement about

the financial results that Sam was producing. He also recognized that he

was uncomfortable about the methods Sam was using to deliver those

results. Finally, Roger recognized that he was tempted to look the other

way and that he felt a conflict between his values and the potential for

recognition and financial gain he and his group could obtain if he

allowed Sam to continue doing what he was doing.

REFLECT on how you are interpreting your situation. What does the

big picture look like for you? What values are important to you, and

how should they influence your choices? What biases might influence

your understanding of the situation you’re considering?

Roger actively reflected on his situation. He thought about his val-

ues, including “Doing the right thing,” and his company’s value of

doing what was best for the customer. He reflected on his potential

short-term loss of some of his bonus if he were to let Sam go, and

weighed that against the long-term opportunities that would come from

doing the right thing for customers, and sending the right messages to

other sales leaders about the right way to do business. Roger also recog-

nized that he needed to stay clear about what “success” should mean to

him and his team. Success didn’t mean selling products at all costs, but

about being financially successful by looking out for the best financial

interests of their customers.

REFRAME your ideas about the situation by stating the most positive

yet still realistic outcome for the decision you need to make.

Though Roger knew he would personally suffer financially in the

short term if he terminated Sam, his reflection led him to reframe the

situation as “Short-term pain. Long-term gain.”

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RESPOND by making a decision consistent with your values and goals

and take the reality of your current situation into account.

Roger terminated Sam. He set an example about the kind of culture

he expected in his organization. And he inspired other sales leaders to

be responsible about their own groups’ sales practices.

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The 4 Rs of Financial Intelligence

• RECOGNIZE all the elements of your current situation and how you are interpreting (that is, framing) your situation.

• REFLECT on the big picture and what matters most (your val- ues and guiding principles).

• REFRAME (modify) what you are thinking and how you are describing the situation to yourself.

• RESPOND in a way consistent with your values, goals, and the big picture.

How the 4 Rs Work

Using the 4 Rs rewires our brains to make values-based decisions in the

face of strong emotional responses that override rational thinking. Over

time, these emotionally based responses to life situations become

habits. These habits are encoded in the brain in the form of neural path-

ways that increase the likelihood that we will respond in the same emo-

tionally driven manner time and time again. Fortunately, we’ve also

learned that we have the power to change our response patterns in ways

that allow us to make smarter decisions. The 4 Rs are designed to help

us develop that power. By practicing the 4 Rs regularly, we create new

neural pathways in the brain. By doing so, we establish new habits that,

over time, replace our reflexive emotional responses with deliberate and

reflective responses that take our values into account. The 4 Rs help

retrain our brains in a number of ways.

ptg

The 4 Rs interrupt our brain’s default responses to external

situations.1 When faced with highly stimulating events, our brain’s

emotional center typically disables our brain’s rational center, thus pro-

voking a fear or anger response that Daniel Goleman, author and emo-

tional intelligence pioneer, labeled the “amygdala highjack”2 Jeffrey

Schwartz, noted psychiatrist and researcher in the field of neuroplastic-

ity, has conducted research that explains the mechanisms underlying an

amygdala highjack. According to Schwartz, in the process of shutting

down our rational center, the amygdala leaves our habit center intact.3

Our habit center, which activates primitive physiological behavior and

habitual unthinking responses to events, is now in charge of compli-

cated decisions such as those leaders face every day.

To prevent this chain of events, think of the 4 Rs as hitting the

pause button on our brain’s programmed responses to highly charged

situations. We cannot always prevent our brains from kicking up an

emotional storm in the face of a business challenge or opportunity, but

we can, by practicing the 4 Rs, keep our emotional brain from hijacking

our rational brain and setting our habit center free to run the show. And,

because of the brain’s capability to develop new neurons and new path-

ways (neuroplasticity), when we hit the play button again, whatever we

did during the pause contributes to changing our brain’s actions going

forward.

The 4 Rs spur the development of new brain pathways that

actually change the way we process information related to moral

decisions. Extensive neuroscience research has left no doubt about the

brain’s capability to change. We can change our brains, but only if we

deliberately try. As Jeffrey Schwartz explains, “Physical changes in the

brain depend for their creation on a mental state in the mind—the state

called attention.”4 That is why the 4 Rs are effective in changing our

brains—because they force us to pay attention to what we are doing..

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When we respond to a leadership challenge or face a key decision,

we usually react emotionally to stimulation from the outside in. The 4

Rs give us the tools to respond to leadership challenges, such as the one

Roger Arnold faced from the inside out. They change the power balance

between the reflexive emotional center of our brain (which sacrifices

accuracy for speed), and the reflective, rational center of our brain

(which is more accurate, but not quite as fast). The 4 Rs give us better

access to our rational, thinking brain. But they do more than that: The

4 Rs greatly improve the quality of the data upon which we make

thoughtful decisions. The 4 Rs won’t increase your IQ, but they can

help you more effectively access the IQ you have, thereby enhancing

your decision making effectiveness. The 4 Rs also ensure that you make

decisions aligned with your most important personal values.

Practice Makes Permanent5

When practiced regularly, the 4 Rs create a strong foundation for mak-

ing smart, responsible, values-based decisions about any aspect of our

personal or professional lives. But changing habits requires commit-

ment and persistence. Think about the last time you tried to change your

behavior. Maybe you decided to lose a few pounds, or become more

physically active. In each case, the process is simple: Maybe it’s a mat-

ter of eating less, or eating more fruits and vegetables, or signing up for

a yoga class, or getting up an hour earlier each day to take a walk.

Maybe it’s a decision to quit smoking. None of the things we need to do

to make positive changes are complicated. But they can be hard to do.

For example, nothing could be simpler—or harder—than not lighting

up a cigarette. Why? Because our brains are wired to keep doing what

we’ve already been doing. Similarly, the 4 Rs are both simple and hard.

They are not complicated, but it can take some effort to make them part

of how you live and think. You need to decide that you don’t want to be

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at the mercy of your reflexive brain. You need to decide that living in

alignment is worth the initial discomfort of developing new habits. You

need to decide that you want to be someone who makes moral choices

that benefit you, your company, your loved ones, and your community.

Practicing Recognition

To manage the emotions that affect your decisions, you must first rec-

ognize them. That’s easier said than done. Most of us think we’re self-

aware. By the time we get to be adults, we think we know ourselves

well. And most of us like to think that we’re objective, even when we’re

not. But as we learned from Chapter 2, “Born to Be Moral,” when it

comes to making the best choices, we’re simply not aware of how our

physiological state may be clouding our thinking. So, the first step to

greater moral competence is to recognize exactly what you are thinking,

feeling, and doing when in the throes of a stimulating situation. And to

recognize your cognitive, emotional, and physical states when you need

to, you must train yourself in advance. You want to become so skilled at

recognition that it becomes second nature for you. By practicing the

skill of recognition, you can transform yourself from a reflexive respon-

der to a reflective recognizer.

Recognition in the Moment: The Experiential Triangle

All our life experiences fall into one of three categories (see Figure 9.1):

• Cognitive (our thoughts)

• Emotional (our feelings)

• Physical (our physiology and our actions)

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ptg FIGURE 9.1 The Experiential Triangle

Think of these three categories of experience as points on a trian-

gle. Thoughts, feelings, and actions are interconnected and usually

influence one another. For example, if I think about someone who

punched me yesterday, I am likely to feel angry; my heart rate will go

up (physiology) and I may clench my fists (action) at the thought of

what happened. My feelings and actions may even set off a new cycle

of the experiential triangle, perhaps causing me to think about exacting

revenge, which in turn stimulates new feelings, and so on.

Try this to experience the powerful connections between thoughts,

emotions, and physical responses:6

• First close your eyes and identify a memory of something that happened that made you angry.

• Focus your attention on what happened and who was involved, and think about that situation for two minutes.

164 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

Thoughts (Manage/Choose)

These are components of self-awareness.

Emotions/Feelings (Occur)

Outside Stimulus

Physiology Actions (Voluntary/Involuntary)

Goals

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• After two minutes, open your eyes and recognize what you just experienced relative to your thoughts, your emotions, and your

physical being.

What you will notice if you are self-aware is that you thought about

what made you angry. It usually was a person, and within two minutes

you might have thought about how that person angered you more than

one time, to other occurrences when that person angered you.

You may also have noticed that your emotional state changed. You

might have become angry again; or you might have felt guilt or regret.

Your focus on your initial response may change how you feel emotion-

ally within the two minutes. You probably also noticed that you were

beginning to feel physical tension in your shoulders, your heart rate

picked up, and your breathing became shallower.

Everything that happened to you was a result of what you were

thinking about. As neuroscientist Jeff Schwartz points out, “Focus is

power. What you choose to focus your attention on has power over your

emotional and physical state.”7

Now, take the exercise to another step:

• Take a few deep breaths, close your eyes, and for the next two minutes, imagine that your brain is a radio receiver and that you

have three channels permanently programmed into your auto-

matic selections. One channel is the gratitude channel. The sec-

ond channel is the love channel. The third channel is the beauty

channel. For the next two minutes, turn on one of those channels.

Depending on the channel you choose, focus completely on what

you are grateful for, or whom you love deeply, or what beautiful

aspects of life and your environment you most appreciate, for

instance, mountains, ocean, desert, and so on.

• Now open your eyes and recognize what you have experienced.

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If you’re like most people, you notice that your emotional state became

much more peaceful. You begin to feel love, relaxed, and calm. You

might think about all the things you are grateful for; or you may dis-

cover that you have a deep appreciation for certain people or natural set-

tings. What you surely notice is that your physiological state changed.

Your heart rate and breathing are slower, and your face is relaxed. You

might even notice a smile come across your face. Once again you dis-

cover the power of focus, and the surprising amount of control you have

over what you think and feel.

These exercises help us understand the importance and power of

recognizing our experiential triangle. Managing our thoughts, emotions,

and physical state is central to our ability to make smart, responsible,

values-based decisions. Therefore, cultivating the art of recognizing our

thoughts, feelings, and emotions is a crucial skill of moral intelligence.

Recognition helps us fully access our experiences so that we have infor-

mation we need to choose our responses to events rather than automat-

ically (and often unconsciously) reacting to them.

Freeze!

One of the simplest and most powerful ways to cultivate the skill of

recognition is to practice the Freeze Game.8 When you use the Freeze

Game, you declare a short time out from whatever you happen to be

doing in the moment. Imagine you’ve just hit the pause button on the

DVD of your life. Then ask yourself these three questions:

• What am I thinking right now? For example, what am I saying to myself inside my head? Am

I thinking about a problem at work? A relationship issue? The

weather?

• What am I feeling emotionally? Emotions are words, not sentences; for example, I feel sad,

excited, angry, or frustrated.

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• What am I doing and what is happening with me physically right now?

For example, am I sitting or standing? Am I smiling or frown-

ing? What’s the look on my face? Is my heart racing or calm?

Is my breathing pattern normal or accelerated? Am I tense or

relaxed?

As you probably noticed, each question is intended to help you become

aware of one aspect of your experiential triangle of thoughts, feelings,

and actions/physiological state. Why not try playing the Freeze Game

right now?

When you played the Freeze Game, what did you become aware of

that you hadn’t noticed before? Your experiential triangle might not be

too dramatic at this moment. But imagine now your experiential trian-

gle when faced with a stimulating situation that could compromise your

ability to make values-based decisions. Using the Freeze Game enables

us to catch flaws in our thinking before they can cause us, or the people

whom we lead, any harm.

Recognition is a powerful tool, but only if you use it. If you’re not

accustomed to taking time out for recognition, it probably won’t occur

to you to hit the pause button when in the throes of an emotionally

charged situation. Your ability to call on recognition when you need it

depends on your ability to make recognition second nature. That takes

practice. The more you play the Freeze Game, the more natural it will

become to check in with yourself to see what you’re thinking and feel-

ing and doing. After the Freeze Game is a habit, you are that much more

likely to use it when you most need to stay in alignment. As you regu-

larly play the Freeze Game, you’ll probably begin to notice many other

benefits in your life. You’ll develop more self-awareness, and that

deeper understanding of how you really think, feel, and act may trans-

late into more positive relationships with family and friends, and even

more productive behavior at work.

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Recognizing Thinking Patterns

Our supposedly rational thought processes may not be as objective as

we think. That’s why it’s useful to pay attention to the ways in which

patterns of thought affect our actions. Our ability to make smart,

responsible, values-based decisions is dependent on the way we typi-

cally think. One aspect of our thinking patterns is especially important

to moral decision making: mental biases. Mental biases are a form of

“self-spin” that fools us into thinking we are logical and objective when

we actually aren’t. Everyone has mental biases. And they’re not neces-

sarily bad. They are shorthand principles that the brain uses to manage

the thousands of decisions and actions we must take in any given day.

For instance, we may have a mental bias that “people are trustworthy.”

This principle enables us to deal with people in an efficient way. By

assuming that most people can be trusted, we feel fine about answering

the door, asking for directions, working on a project with a fellow

employee, eating food prepared by others, and going to sleep at night

next to our spouse. Imagine what your life would be like if, every time

you came into contact with another person, you had to figure out

whether that person could be trusted. Your daily life would probably

collapse under the strain of gauging each person’s trustworthiness from

scratch. So, for the most part, our mental bias that “people are trustwor-

thy” is highly functional—even though it’s not completely true. Some

people are not trustworthy. Some people could harm us, and everyone

has had occasional negative experiences with untrustworthy people.

Mental biases become a problem only when we forget that we have

them. For example, assuming that people are trustworthy can blind us to

the warning signs that a particular person may not have our best inter-

ests at heart. That’s why we need to recognize our mental biases, not so

that we can eliminate them (an impossible task) but so we can be aware

of how they could influence the decisions we make. Some common

mental biases include the following:

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• Overconfidence: As opposed to appropriate self-confidence.

• Excessive optimism: The bias that can cause us to overestimate how frequently we will experience favorable outcomes and

underestimate how often we will experience less than desirable

results.

• Confirmation bias: A tendency to look for or interpret informa- tion in a way that confirms what we already think. Confirmation

bias also involves ignoring information that would contradict

what we already think.

• Familiarity bias: This is a tendency to apply too much weight to information with which we have had prior contact.

When it comes to moral decisions, mental biases operate in various

ways; for example, they can cause us to ignore important data, attach

too much importance to certain data, or encourage us to make decisions

based on misguided beliefs about ourselves or the situation we’re in.

Imagine that you have a tendency to be trusting and are excessively

optimistic and prone toward confirmation bias. If you have a colleague

who behaves in an untrustworthy manner, your excessive optimism bias

may lead you to believe that your colleague is basically a good person,

and your confirmation bias may cause you to ignore data that your col-

league should not be trusted. Therefore, you might continue to work

with that person, exposing you and your organization to potential harm.

Recognizing Emotional Patterns

When you play the Freeze Game frequently and consistently, you may

begin to notice similarities in how you react to everyday situations, pos-

itive and negative, at home and work. You may begin to see a pattern in

your responses to situations as varied as being cut off by an aggressive

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driver, dealing with a difficult co-worker, tucking your kids in for the

night, or facing a huge mound of laundry. Recognition of these patterns

can further increase your self-awareness about common reactions that

can trip you up in your decision making and behavior. We know that the

emotions that cloud our judgment are those that are strongly positive or

negative. So we can increase our recognition of emotional patterns by

looking at past experiences that have prompted us to respond with

strong emotions. You may, for instance, want to ask yourself the recog-

nition questions such as During what experiences in my past have I felt

happy, excited, hopeful, angry, sad, or fearful? Answering such ques-

tions can help you recognize some of your most important emotional

patterns.

Practicing Reflection

Recognition increases your awareness of what you are experiencing in

a particular moment and of your habitual responses to highly charged

emotional events. Armed with that crucial information, you are in a

much better position to practice reflection.

The primary purpose of reflection is to change the source of stimu-

lation from the outside-in to the inside-out. Reflection begins the

process of creating an internal source of stimulation, one based on your

moral principles, personal values, and the big picture of your life.

Following are three aspects to the practice of reflection:

• Preparing to be reflective. Like any habit, reflection often requires a “cueing mechanism” to help us get into the frame of

mind required for reflective thought.

• Making reflection a daily habit. As with recognition, your ability to use reflection when you need it most requires routine practice.

This means taking time to be reflective several times a day.

• Using your reflection skill in any moment when you are being actively stimulated by a personal or leadership challenge.

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Preparing Your Mind for Reflection

Juggling the demands of family, work, and community obligations can

leave us in a chronic physiological state in which our danger system is

always operating at some level. That’s why it’s necessary to do some-

thing to help us break from our routines or detach from the emotions of

the moment. Of course, practicing recognition is key to clearing the

path to reflective thought. We stop action and observe what is going on

in us. In addition to practicing recognition, a number of practices can

calm the mind and body, paving the way for a more reflective and

rational state of mind. Dr. Herbert Benson, founding president of the

Mind/Body Medical Institute, calls these practices “triggers” because

they change our physiology in ways that in turn trigger well-being and

improved performance. Triggering activities include prayer or medita-

tion, listening to your favorite music, biking or walking in nature, soak-

ing in a hot tub, or even mundane tasks like yard work or dishes.

Making Reflection a Habit

When you’re in the grip of a challenging situation, it’s vital to reflect on

your values, your big picture, and the realities of whatever situation you

face. Developing the habit of reflection makes it much easier to be

reflective when you need it most. When those exciting opportunities or

scary crises do come along, we’ll be programmed to use our values to

make the best possible decisions. Cultivating the habit of reflection

helps us align all our varied daily actions with our values and the reali-

ties of our lives and the world in which we live.

Reflecting on Values

In Chapter 3, “Your Moral Compass,” you had an opportunity to iden-

tify your most important values. Reflecting daily on those values is a

powerful way to set the stage for acting on challenging situations when-

ever they strike. Choose a regular time each day to reflect on your

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values and your life context. The more you practice reflection, the more

easily you can call on it when you need it most.

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Exercise: Daily Values Reflection

Use this technique daily to keep your values top of mind. For each of your top five or six values, say the following to yourself:

• Name the value. For example: “ Family.” • Use verbs in front of your values to create an action orienta-

tion to each value. For example:

• Love your family (directing yourself to put value into action).

• I choose to love my family (making a choice to live out a value).

I love my family (reinforcing a desired state by visualizing it as already true).

Reflecting on the Big Picture

Understanding the big picture of your life creates a context in which

you can make better decisions. Your big picture includes five major

areas of life:

• Family • Goals (business and personal) • Finances (business and personal) • Health • Environment (business and personal)

Drawing a Picture of Your Big Picture

This activity can help you create a visual map of your big picture. After you completed your big picture, you can display it for a quick reminder of what to reflect on when you’re reacting to a challeng- ing situation.

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Armed with the reflection skill, we are ready to be reflective in

those highly charged moments or during those challenging times when

a personal or leadership situation is causing us either anxiety or

excitement.

Although all four of the Rs are important, reflection is probably the

most central to our ability to make smart, values-based decisions.

Reflection forces us to evaluate the reliability of our automatic outside-

in responses to situations. Building our reflective skill is key to ensur-

ing that the decisions we make are not impulsive but are aligned with

what we want to accomplish in our lives. And as you may have already

noticed, after you reflect on what’s most important to you, and on the

realities of the environment in which you live, it’s almost inevitable that

you will begin to think differently about the situations you face.

Reflection can naturally lead to the third R—reframing—a new way

to see yourself and interpret your reality. Reflection done well and

consistently can dramatically alter your sense of what is and can be true

for you.

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Materials: A large piece of paper (newsprint or drawing paper) and colored markers or crayons.

Lay your paper on a table or floor. Draw a large circle, and divide the circle like a pie into five sections.

Label each section with the five parts of your big picture:

• Family • Goals • Finances • Health • Environment

In each section, jot down the most important facts—positive and negative—that apply to that part of your life. Repeat this exercise every four months or so to stay updated on the realities of your big picture.

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Practicing Reframing

Our typical way to interpret reality is based on long-standing habit pat-

terns burned into our brains. But because of our brain’s plasticity, we

can change the way we view situations we face. And that’s what refram-

ing is all about: taking the results of our reflections—about values,

goals, and the big picture—and re-interpreting whatever situation we

are in.

Every decision we face happens in the context of the attitudes and

beliefs we have about our situation. That collection of attitudes consti-

tutes our “frame” for that situation. And that frame, in turn, powerfully

influences the actual decision we make. Often, our frames for leader-

ship situations consist of attitudes that get in the way of our ability to

make smart, responsible, values-based decisions. Say, for example, your

boss has asked you to withhold information from senior management

about a mistake your unit has made in manufacturing a product. What

you say to yourself about this challenging event affects everything you

do—or don’t do—about it. The economy happens to be bad, and so you

frame your situation like this: “If I don’t go along with my boss, I’ll lose

my job, and I won’t get another one.” Of course, there is a chance that

could happen, but by treating our beliefs about a situation as though

they are objective facts, we limit our options for responding in a smart,

values-based manner. And many of the frames we adopt may be unreal-

istically negative. When we reframe, we adopt a perspective about our

situation that is realistically optimistic. For instance, we may adopt the

following frame: “Our company’s code of ethics calls for us to admit

our unit’s mistakes. There’s a chance I can help my boss see that it’s in

our best interest to come clean about the manufacturing problem. Even

if I can’t convince him, he probably won’t fire me. And even if he did

fire me, I’ve got a good track record and should be able to get another

job.” Notice that this frame is optimistic but not unrealistic. We know

there’s no guarantee that our boss won’t fire us if we don’t go along

with a deception, but our new perspective increases the odds that we

will act in ways true to our values.

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The way we reframe a situation virtually dictates how we respond

to that situation. Reframing sets the stage for making a better decision

than we would have made had we responded reflexively to our emo-

tions. Dr. Rick Aberman of the Lennick Aberman Group came up with

a simple way to understand and begin to practice reframing. He quotes

Winnie the Pooh: “I was going to change my shirt but decided to change

my mind instead.” Once Winnie reframed, he no longer needed to

change his shirt. As a leader, you might say to yourself, “I was going to

scream at my assistant, but I decided to change my mind instead.”

Responding

The first three Rs—recognize, reflect, and reframe—are meant to

change a highly charged emotional state to a calm and productive emo-

tional state that supports objective, unbiased thought. That is the state of

mind that enables us to respond optimally to any challenging situation.

Therefore, after we recognize our current state—reflected on our

values, capabilities, and options—and reframed our situation, the next

step is the fourth R—to respond with the best possible decisions. But

it’s not actually a “final” step. Although each of the 4 Rs is discussed

separately, it’s hard to separate them from one another in practice. Each

R flows into the next—almost as soon as we recognize our thoughts,

feelings, and physical state, we begin reflecting on what is going on in

and around us. Almost as soon as we start reflecting on our values and

the big picture, we begin to reframe our situation differently. And

almost as soon as we reframe, we begin to think about how we want to

respond. Many of us feel a strong desire to respond, that is, to act on

those choices as soon as we’ve thought about them.

After we work through the first three Rs, it’s tempting to assume

that we are automatically ready to make an optimal decision. However,

that’s not necessarily true. When practiced regularly and thoroughly, the

4 Rs greatly increase the odds that we will be in the right cognitive and

emotional frame of mind for smart decision making. But because we

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are not perfect, it’s possible to use the 4 Rs in an imperfect way. There

are two major reasons for putting on the brakes before responding:

First, the 4 Rs do not always produce the optimal cognitive state

for making challenging decisions. The quality of our ultimate

response depends of the quality we have brought to each of the previous

three Rs: The quality of our response depends on the quality of our

reframing, which depends on the quality of our reflecting, which

depends on the quality of our recognizing. At each step of the way, it’s

possible for us to make cognitive mistakes. As you’ll recall, when we

stop to recognize, it’s important to notice how mental biases may affect

our thoughts. Unexamined biases affect the quality of our reflecting and

therefore the value of the reframing we make in response to our reflect-

ing. And if our reframing is not ideal, the options we act on when we

respond might not be in our best interest or in the best interest of our

organization.

Second, the 4 Rs do not always produce the optimal emotional

state for making challenging decisions. The 4 Rs are meant to defuse

emotions stimulated by outside events. However, each of the Rs can

itself stimulate other emotions that occasionally get in the way of think-

ing at our best. For example, our collaborating writer Dr. Kathy Jordan

lost a substantial number of clients in the economic downturn that

began in the fall of 2008. Initially, she felt panicky about the drop in

income. She had then reframed her situation as an opportunity to shift

her career direction. She felt elated about this new opportunity, and in

high spirits, responded by trying to market her new services, but with-

out a lot of success. It took Kathy a few rounds of 4 Rs to recognize that

she had become caught up in highly charged emotions that had been

stimulated, not by outside events but as a result of her own reframing.

She had unknowingly flipped her frame from excessive pessimism to

excessive optimism. In effect, Kathy had replaced one set of highly

charged emotions with another, interfering with the quality of her

response. Had Kathy taken more time to reflect and spent more time

analyzing the realities of the downturn, she would have recognized that

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it would be as difficult to find clients for her new services as it was to

find clients for her original services. Economic conditions were a big

picture reality that Kathy had to deal with no matter what kind of serv-

ices she hoped to provide.

Recycling Before Responding

As tempting as it is to respond, after you’ve recognized, reflected, and

reframed, there are times when it makes the most sense to postpone a

response—postponing a response is frequently the best response. It’s

fine to consider how we want to respond, but before carrying out a deci-

sion, it’s wise to repeat the first three Rs at least one more time.

Responding naturally flows out of these other things, but the key is to

keep cycling back among the other three Rs. As you prepare to respond,

you have to continually keep recognizing what’s going on in your mind.

Before you act on your choices, it’s essential to make sure you have

done enough problem solving while reflecting. Look for aspect of your

situation that you may have missed in your first go-around. For

instance, ask yourself: “What haven’t I noticed about my situation that

I should consider?” or “What might be some unintended consequences

of the response I am considering?”

As you reflect, it’s also important to go back to recognition to con-

firm that reflecting actually has put you in a calm and productive state

for decision making. For instance, how energized and how emotional

are you as you reflect on your values? If you are excessively energized,

you should recognize that you are still in a difficult situation to access

your full faculties. As you think about your possible responses, use

recognition once again to spot any mental biases. Are you looking for

something to confirm your judgment? Are you choosing a course of

action just because it’s easy or familiar to you?

Finally, before responding, it’s important to recheck your framing.

Are you realistically positive or unrealistically optimistic in your view

of your situation? The value of reframing is in seeing things clearly,

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with a slant toward optimism about your ability to deal with your situa-

tion. Looking at the situation through rose-colored glasses could lead

you to consider responses that would be harmful to your organization or

your personal well-being.

Now you have all the basic tools you need to be a morally intelli-

gent leader: You understand how your brain works; you’re in touch with

your values; and you’ve learned the key moral and emotional competen-

cies that make great leaders. And you have the 4 Rs to help you access

those critical moral and emotional competencies. In Part III, “Moral

Leadership,” you discover how to put all these tools into action as you

face the daily challenges of being a moral leader.

Endnotes 1. Neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz, author of The Mind and the Brain: Neuro-

plasticity and the Power of Mental Force (Harper Perennial, 2003), has con- firmed the capability of the 4 Rs to disrupt habitual patterns to highly charged emotional events.

2. Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence. Bantam Books, 2000, p. 74–75.

3. Jeffrey Schwartz, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, Harper Perennial, 2003.

4. Ongoing personal communications between Jeffrey Schwartz and Doug Lennick, 2008–2010.

5. Appreciation goes to Gilbert L. Hoffer, Ph.D., president of PsyCor and emotional intelligence expert, for the phrase “Practice Makes Permanent.”

6. Doug Lennick learned this exercise from Fred Luskin, author of Forgive for Good and Rick Aberman, Ph.D., psychologist, and partner at the Lennick Aberman Group.

7. Interview with Jeffrey Schwartz.

8. The Freeze Game was introduced to Doug Lennick by psychologist Rick Amerman, Ph.D., a founding partner of the Lennick Aberman Group.

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PART III MORAL LEADERSHIP

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Dick Harrington served as president and CEO of The Thomson

Corporation, a global electronic information company, prior to its

acquisition by Reuters in 2008. On September 11, 2001, Dick was in

London for a meeting of The Thomson Corporation Board of Directors.

He was talking on the phone with his Connecticut headquarters when he

got word of the attack on the World Trade Center. Harrington, along

with the other members of his executive team in London, was thunder-

struck. More than 2,200 Thomson employees worked in the neighbor-

hood of the World Trade Center, with offices of approximately 200

employees in the twin towers. It would be days, even weeks, before it

knew for certain that 11 of its employees had been killed, including one

who had been a passenger on the plane that struck the North Tower.

In the early hours following the terrorist attack, nothing was clear.

But Dick and his team quickly shook off their shock and prioritized:

people first, business second. They mobilized cell phones and

Blackberries to track down missing employees. They commandeered

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limos from Connecticut to pick up employees who had escaped uptown

or across the river to New Jersey. As they confirmed who was missing,

they contacted family members, they sent cash and catered meals, and

they arranged for transportation so that family members of victims

could be together.

Beyond that, Dick and his team extended generous benefits to vic-

tims’ families that they were too modest to publicize. What’s more, even

while they attended to the needs of victims’ families, they didn’t miss a

beat when it came to serving their other constituencies—employees,

shareholders, and customers across the globe. They communicated early

and often. They comforted traumatized employees. They reassured

investors and customers.

The moral leadership that Harrington exhibited was the norm for

him and his fellow executives—and it was reciprocated with the same

degree of loyalty from Thomson’s employees. One employee’s first act

after escaping from the World Trade Center was to race to the back-up

facility in New Jersey. Other employees talked their way back into con-

demned buildings near Ground Zero to rescue critical financial data. By

September 13, Thomson announced that the financial information tech-

nology so crucial to Wall Street was up and running.

Other leaders demonstrated powerful moral leadership in the

crucible of the 2001 attacks. Nine days after the World Trade Center

towers collapsed, American Express CEO Ken Chenault gathered

nearly 5,000 New York employees for a meeting at Madison Square

Garden. Eleven American Express employees had died in one of the

towers, and the company’s headquarters across the street from the

World Trade Center had been seriously damaged. Employees were

shell-shocked and suffering from the loss of relatives, colleagues, and

friends in the financial services community. Although business contin-

uation was vital, Ken’s first priority was his employees’ well-being. The

meeting wasn’t about “busting butt” to keep the company on track.

Instead, Ken expressed his grief about those who died in the attacks and

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invited his employees to share their own feelings of loss and remem-

brance. He encouraged people to reflect on all they were grateful for

and to spend time attending to the parts of their lives that mean the

most. Then he communicated his sense of hope and confidence in the

face of tragedy. He told the gathering how the company was helping

those who were affected—employees, customers, and the New York

community—in their recovery. Ken’s employees didn’t need to be told

to work hard. They needed to hear that their leaders cared about them.

That is what enabled American Express employees to move forward in

the aftermath of the attacks.

How did Ken Chenault manage to inspire and comfort his employ-

ees at a time when he was personally grieving and facing unprecedented

threats to his business? Ken made hundreds of conscious decisions—

and every one of them required not just business skills, but moral skills.

Though we all need moral skills to be effective in our lives, as leaders

we have a special responsibility to use our moral intelligence to ensure

that the people and groups we lead act consistently with the principles

of integrity, responsibility, compassion, and forgiveness. As leaders we

have influence and power that we can use to communicate the impor-

tance of moral skills to the rest of our organizations.

Not all CEOs affected by 9/11 responded like Dick Harrington or

Ken Chenault. Some had to consult professional handlers, PR firms, or

legal experts before they did anything. Some took so long that when

they finally did respond with compassion for victims’ families, it came

across as artificial and forced. Harrington and Chenault succeeded

where others dropped the ball because they both operate from a set of

principles, values, and beliefs that factor into every business decision

they make. The result? Morale and job performance has remained con-

sistently high in both companies. Thomson (now Thomson Reuters)

employees say their company is a place they’re proud to be part of. “No

matter what my job level,” said one information specialist not long after

9/11, “I know that Dick Harrington respects me enough to communicate

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about significant issues. I’m going to stay, and I’m going to recommend

Thomson as a great place to work.” With the kind of moral leadership

that engages its workforce to do its best, Thomson Reuters has contin-

ued to produce enviable returns during both economic recession and

recovery.

Leveraging the spotlight. When you are a leader, you are always

on stage. Everything you do is scrutinized, analyzed, and interpreted by

those around you. Celebrities and politicians recognize that visibility is

a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can use the spotlight to

promote worthy causes. On the other hand, it’s nearly impossible to

hide bad behavior from the public eye. Sam Bronfman, former senior

executive with Seagram Company, recalls a time when he eviscerated a

marketing manager for presenting a merchandising plan that Sam

thought was ridiculous. “Everyone was shocked. I eventually apolo-

gized for it—but people still remember the incident. I hope they remem-

ber the apology, but I think people remember the outburst more.”

Sam’s incident reminds us that a leader’s high profile requires a

particular sensitivity to those emotional states (in self and others) that

have the strongest potential to stimulate either moral alignment or moral

breakdown. Greed, jealously, envy, hate, and anger can all easily disrupt

alignment, whereas emotions such as love, compassion, happiness, and

joy have a tremendous capacity to enhance moral competence. Leaders

who consistently display negative emotions tend to get involved in neg-

ative behavior, and by example encourage negative behavior in those

around them. Leaders who act out of love, who demonstrate respect and

regard for people, tend to encourage moral competence in others—like

the CEO we know who spends $1,500 a month more on his commercial

cleaning service than he could negotiate with another vendor because

the woman who owns the cleaning business has been loyal and respon-

sible, and he knows that their family relies on that income.

There is an upside to your visibility as a leader—you can capitalize

on it by modeling moral skills for others in your organization. To com-

municate moral messages effectively, it might be necessary to stand up

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for what is right in an exaggerated way. In live theater, for instance,

actors’ makeup is plastered on thick so that their faces can be seen

throughout the audience. You as a leader may need to “lay it on thick”

to make your values clear to all of your audience. You may think that it

should be obvious to others that certain business tactics are wrong and

that you would never approve of them. But to avoid saying so is to miss

an opportunity to underscore the importance of integrity to everyone’s

success. Harvey Golub, retired chairman of the Board and CEO of

American Express agrees. “I made it a practice,” Golub says, “to always

model the behaviors I wanted others to show…I didn’t just hope

they observed well, but would point out behaviors to make sure they

understood.”

Leveraging power. Power is another leadership asset that you can

use to influence your organization to adopt moral skills. Leadership and

power are virtually synonymous, as evidenced in the characterization of

leadership as “being in power.” A common definition of power is that it

is “possession of control, authority, or influence over others.” Power,

like visibility, is a double-edged sword. Certainly, you can use power to

accomplish worthy goals through others that you could not reach on

your own. But there is something about power that makes it potentially

as dangerous as it can be helpful. Power is addictive. Using power acti-

vates brain chemicals called endorphins that create a highly enjoyable

physiological state. Power can provide pleasure much like the satisfac-

tion offered by food, sex, or vigorous physical exercise. Most people in

formal leadership positions value power. But some leaders crave it. It is

easy to get accustomed to the perks of the leadership role. It feels good

to have people with less organizational power defer to our ideas and

desires, so unlike our experience with family members who treat us like

the fallible humans we actually are.

Leadership power is not just asserted by the leader—it is given to

leaders by followers. Followers allow leaders to be powerful. Because

leaders have power, followers are careful about how they present infor-

mation to their leaders. Research has demonstrated that the higher one

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goes in an organization, the more distorted the information they receive.

Followers provide information that they believe leaders want to hear

and censor information that they fear would upset or anger leaders. The

more heavy-handed leaders are in their use of power, the more distorted

the information they are given. But even benevolent leaders who are

careful in their use of power have trouble establishing accurate commu-

nication channels because of followers’ strong tendency to defer to the

leaders’ position power, independent of the leaders’ actual behavior.

Deference to power affects not only the quality of “hard” business

data related to financial reports, product quality, and customer attitudes,

but deference to power also limits the amount and quality of “soft data”

available to the leader. When leaders make mistakes, it is difficult for

followers to tell them so. Many organizational cultures discourage inter-

personal feedback, even among peers, so imagine how reluctant most

followers would be to openly criticize the actions of someone with

greater power. This leaves most senior leaders operating in a feedback

void. Their accomplishments might be praised, but their personal flaws

are not brought to their attention. The absence of appropriate negative

feedback about our leadership behavior can leave us with the mistaken

notion that we are far better leaders than we actually are. Without accu-

rate information about the business and about our own capacities, we

are at risk to making a big mistake that can lead to a devastating busi-

ness outcome. Workaholism can reflect a subtle abuse of power. When

you insist on doing everything yourself rather than delegating work, you

deprive others of opportunities for development and their own share of

power.

So use power with caution. It’s not a drug you can quit cold turkey.

Like food, power can’t be eliminated completely from your life. For a

formal leader, power is inescapable; it comes with the territory. But

power, like food, can be used carefully to promote health and well-

being. You can leverage your power to accomplish morally positive

goals that also produce higher business performance. As a moral leader,

you can use power positively by modeling the moral skills that keep you

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in alignment. You also can use your power to encourage followers to

live in alignment with their own moral compasses.

Higher standards. When you are highly skilled in all the moral

competencies, you can use your leadership power and visibility to pro-

duce the best business results. We do know business leaders who are

quite effective despite some gaps in their moral competencies. But we

have never known a consistently successful business leader who was

not highly skilled in the integrity and responsibility competencies.

Many effective and honest senior executives are respected because they

demonstrate integrity and responsibility, even though they lack notable

compassion or forgiveness. But leaders who inspire their followers’ best

efforts are compassionate and forgiving as well. When followers see

that such leaders actively care about them and are willing to let go of

mistakes, they forge a bond with their leaders that just doesn’t happen

otherwise.

Why does emotional bonding between follower and leader matter?

When leaders show compassion and forgiveness, they create a safe

emotional environment. In this positive climate, followers feel free to be

creative because they know their leaders will tolerate the inevitable mis-

takes that come from creative risk-taking. When followers believe their

leaders care about them, they want to give their best efforts to the work

at hand. It is as though the integrity and responsibility competencies

come from the “head,” while the compassion and forgiveness compe-

tencies come from the “heart.” The most effective moral leaders are

those who have both the head and the heart fully engaged.

It is interesting that moral competencies of the “head” are neces-

sary and sufficient for a minimal level of leadership effectiveness, but

moral competencies of the “heart” are not sufficient for effective leader-

ship. Leaders could seem to actively care for others (“I feel your

pain!”), could forgive themselves or others, and be open about mistakes,

but if they do not tell the truth, don’t keep promises, and don’t act con-

sistently with the values, beliefs, and principles of the organization, then

they will not be effective leaders. Leaders who are known for their

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compassion and forgiveness, but who lack integrity and responsibility

are often considered “nice people” but by virtue of their lack of integrity

do not command the respect and trust required for high performance.

How moral leaders look at followers. So far, we have seen why

moral leaders need to operate at the top of the moral competence scale.

Because of their power and visibility, their behavior has a major impact

on the behavior of those around them. In addition to high proficiency in

moral and emotional competencies, the most effective leaders operate

from a central organizing belief that informs their transactions with fol-

lowers. Everything they do is inspired by a belief in the essential good-

ness of people. It can be summarized as follows: Even though people

are not perfect, and even though they make mistakes, most people have

good intentions. This belief is the moral leader’s key to inspiring the

best in others because your belief that people are essentially good has a

profound impact on your leadership behavior. Knowing that the person

with whom you are working has an ideal self (who he would like to be

at his best)—and that the person would rather be his ideal self than his

current flawed real self—allows you to practice compassion, forgive-

ness, and integrity. When you believe in a person’s essential goodness,

you cannot help but commit yourself to helping him become who he

most wants to be.

Belief in the goodness of people is not a “technique.” It is a potent

frame of reference that, paradoxically, enables you to be as tough as

nails in managing individual performance. Why? When followers sense

your deep belief in their ideal selves—their potential to be their best—

they are much more receptive to your feedback about their mistakes and

failures. Similarly, when good performers recognize your belief in their

ideal selves, they are inspired to give even more effort to your shared

work.

Tom Perrine is senior vice president of Enterprise Systems IT with

Cardinal Health, the largest health-care products distributor in the

United States. Tom demonstrates his belief in the goodness of people

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when he says, “Helping others create who they want to be is a way of

life for me.” Tom adds, “Number-one value to me is people matter most,

and they deserve to be treated with respect, consideration, understand-

ing, and empathy. Do you brighten their light bulbs or dim their light

bulbs? How are you managing the energy of your people? The greatest

job of leadership is not personally doing things but helping others do

things, and managing the energy of the workforce is what it’s all about.

If you do that well, you can accomplish great things as a company or in

the world.” Tom also notes the cost of temporarily losing touch with his

positive beliefs about people. When Tom was chief development officer

at Coca-Cola, he was forced to make a unilateral decision about an

important issue because the team responsible was argumentative and

uncooperative. Tom thought the resulting decision was not as good as it

could have been if the team had focused on solving the problem instead

of fighting with one another. So he convened the team and told them

what he thought of them. “No one likes to be called on the carpet,”

recalls Tom, “and I called the group on the carpet. The manner in which

I delivered the message was culturally unusual at Coca-Cola because

people there weren’t used to being reprimanded as a group. I didn’t

name names, but I was clearly angry and upset. After that, many of

them decided they couldn’t trust that wouldn’t happen again, so for

quite a while, they avoided coming to me with issues. My comments

about their poor teamwork were factually true, but I delivered the mes-

sage in the wrong spirit and mismanaged the energy of the group.”

Developing employees. The moral leader’s approach to perform-

ance management and development is guided by the leader’s belief in

the essential goodness of the people who report to him or her. It is an

approach that encourages employees to live in alignment, releases their

positive energy, and inspires their best efforts.

As a moral leader, you hold yourself responsible for helping others

stay aligned with the ideals that are important to them. How? First, you

do so by believing in employees’ potential to do wonderful things for

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themselves and your organization. Second, you can use performance

discussions to discuss the life goals that your employees care about—

not just their business goals. Third, hold them accountable for meeting

all their personal and professional goals.

When you acknowledge your employees’ whole selves—ideal and

real—they are energized by your support. Because you care about them

and believe in them, employees are inspired to give you—and your

company—their best efforts. Employees do not have to be coerced into

performing—over the long term, you can’t force people to produce. You

cannot create good employees. You can only create conditions that

spark their talents into a bonfire of innovative thought and action.

Developing employees is the central building block of moral

leadership. Why? It’s because people development is the way you cre-

ate a workforce committed to the moral principles necessary for the sus-

tained success of your organization. When moral leaders invest in

employees’ development, they goes beyond the typical focus on techni-

cal skills and behaviors that produce short-term corporate results.

Development plans that lead to lasting business performance are com-

prehensive—they include actions that help employees realize not just

business goals but also all their important personal and professional

aspirations. An effective development plan is not the sole responsibility

of your employees—it is a shared plan for the employees’ growth to

which both you and you employees are committed. You and your

employees collaborate to achieve goals that are important to the

employees and at the same time are intended to produce desirable orga-

nizational results.

Leaders who accept responsibility for helping employees achieve

their development goals spend substantial amounts of time coaching

employees. Leaders who are too busy meeting among themselves to

spend time helping employees grow miss golden opportunities for bet-

ter business results. Investing time in developing employees may seem

daunting, but the payoff is exponential. Every hour we spend coaching

employees translates into countless hours of enhanced performance.

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Each element of a performance development discussion—commu-

nicating belief in the employee, reciprocal disclosure of beliefs and

goals, contracting for mutual feedback, and mutual accountability—

should be discussed and negotiated with every employee for whom you

are responsible. If you are a leader responsible for a large organization,

it is important to ask all supervisors in your organization to use this

approach with their direct reports.

Communicating belief in the employee. Actions may speak

louder than words, but communicating a belief in the goodness of the

follower needs to be actively spoken as well. In reality, most of us are

starved for affirmation. We appreciate any genuine communication of

caring. The effective leader affirms employees most powerfully by

acknowledging their strengths. Verbal references to the employees’

accomplishments and abilities reinforce the notion that the leader

believes in the employee’s best self. Beyond acknowledgment of

strengths, the leader should look for opportunities to state directly, “I

believe in you. I know that you are capable of even more than you have

already achieved.” In our hard-nosed Western business culture, such a

message may sound saccharine. When an employee makes a serious

mistake, however, stating your belief in that employee’s ideal self helps

him or her deal more productively with the fallout of his or her real self

failure. Even when employees under-perform, the wise moral leader

concentrates primarily on how to improve performance by leveraging

their strengths. Emphasizing an employee’s weaknesses is rarely useful,

as London Business School Professor Nigel Nicholson, reminds us:

… emotions can never be fully suppressed. That is why, for

instance, even the most sensible employees cannot seem to

receive feedback in the constructive vein in which it is often

given. Because of the primacy of emotions, people hear bad

news first and loudest.

Managers should not assume they can balance positive and

negative messages. The negatives have by far the greater

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power and can wipe out in one stroke all the build up-credit

of positive messages. In fact, because of the primacy of

emotions, perhaps the most discouraging and potentially

dangerous thing you can do is to tell someone he or she

failed. Be careful, then, of who you put in charge of

appraisal systems in your organization. These managers

must be sensitive to the emotional minefields that all nega-

tive messages must navigate.1

Reciprocal disclosure of the manager’s and employee’s respective

moral compass and goals. Sharing your beliefs and goals and inviting

your employee to do the same provides the basis for both to support the

other’s actions. You may want to introduce this idea to your employee

by saying something like this:

To be a good manager, I need to know where I am and dis-

close that to you. I also need to know where you are at, and

our shared knowledge of each other will give us the founda-

tion for a trusting relationship.

Begin by sharing the principles, values, and beliefs that form your

moral compass because many employees will not have had a previous

experience with a superior who asked for this kind of information. Your

willingness to disclose personal beliefs will usually minimize any dis-

comfort on the part of your employee. But you also should make it clear

that your disclosure of beliefs and goals is not a formality. You are shar-

ing your beliefs and goals because you also want help from your

employee. You can tell your employee that you hope that together you

can be enablers of each other. After you have discussed your own

beliefs and goals, your dialogue as manager might sound something like

this:

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My job as your boss is to help you develop the necessary

habits and routines that will help you achieve your goals

while honoring your principles and beliefs. I start with a

belief in you, but if we are going to work together closely, I

need to do more than imagine greatness in you. I want to

know what you really want your life to be about—the

things that really matter to you. What roles do you play,

and how good do you want to be at each of them?

Contracting for feedback. Managers often assume that they have a

unilateral right to dispense feedback by virtue of their position.

Unsolicited feedback is neither welcome nor effective. Managers are

often frustrated to discover that negative feedback frequently results in

further performance deterioration rather than improvement. This per-

formance drop is caused by the negative emotions that uninvited feed-

back causes. Employees who receive unsolicited negative feedback feel

unappreciated, misunderstood, and powerless. These are destructive

emotions that cause further breakdown, not alignment. In contrast, crit-

ical feedback solicited in an environment in which the employee feels

empowered is likely to enhance performance. The manager should seek

permission to offer feedback and to solicit feedback from the employee

about the manager’s own performance. Seeking permission to give

feedback and asking for feedback levels the emotional playing field for

the employee. Because receiving feedback is part of a contract and

because the employee has the opportunity to provide feedback to the

manager, the employee feels empowered rather than ashamed. If the

manager has been successful in communicating deep caring and belief

in the employee, the employee can calibrate the negative aspect of the

feedback in the context of feeling positively valued by the manager.

Finally, if the manager can characterize the feedback as an opportunity

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to help the employee accomplish important personal or professional

goals, the employee will see the feedback as a performance aid rather

than an attack.

In contracting for mutual feedback, you might want to say some-

thing like this:

I know we will both make a bunch of mistakes. I want us to

agree to help correct each other. I’m going to mess up.

Would you be willing to let me know when you see me mak-

ing a mistake?

Now who would not agree to that? When you have your employee’s

agreement, you may then ask this:

If there are times when your performance is not consistent

with the goals you have shared with me, may I let you know

about that?

Now you have set the stage for discussing performance problems in the

context of goals that are important to your employee.

Mutual accountability. Contracting for feedback sets the stage for

confronting performance gaps that will inevitably arise. Because you

have invited your employees to call you on your own behavior, the way

you respond to their first attempt will affect the quality of the relation-

ships going forward. In short, you need to make it easy for your

employees to offer feedback in the future, by responding well to their

feedback. Responding well to employee feedback does not necessarily

mean that you agree and instantly change your behavior. It does require

at a minimum that you actively listen to their feedback, play it back to

ensure that your employees know they have been heard, tell them how

you plan to respond (even if you plan simply to think about it), and

thank them for the respect they showed you by offering their feedback.

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When you need to give negative feedback to your employees, it is

important to reinforce the context of your belief in them. You might say

something like this:

Based on everything you’ve shared with me, I know you

want to be great at the work you do. I’m sure that you are

aware that [your performance in this area] has not been

good, and we need to focus on these few areas to help you

reach the goals you agreed were important to you.

Performance Problems Focusing on others’ strengths and goodness does not mean that the

moral leader ignores performance deficits. On the contrary, it is exactly

that focus on others’ ideal selves and the respect created by reciprocal

disclosure of beliefs and mutual feedback that establishes an emotional

bond between the manager and employees. That bond, in turn, enables

a manager to be extremely tough in tackling performance issues.

When values collide. Caring for people and believing in their

essential goodness does not necessarily make your leadership job easy.

Perhaps the most daunting challenge moral leaders face is how to man-

age individual performance in a way that reconciles competing commit-

ments to their people and their organizations. Jim Thomsen of Thrivent

Financial for Lutherans understands the challenge well. Jim recalls how

he dealt with the performance of a direct report who was also a close

friend, “I should have decided to get him out of his job much earlier

than I did. My personal relationships with the people I work with tend

to be very strong. So it took me six months after I had made the deci-

sion to act on it. I tried to help him see that he was in the wrong job, but

he never came to that conclusion. My decision to let him go damaged

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our friendship, but letting him stay would have had negative conse-

quences for the organization. People who weren’t close to this person

thought it was about time we held an executive accountable for under-

performing. For those loyal to him, I became the ‘evil empire.’

Emotionally, it was very hard. Out of integrity and responsibility I had

to act, but I also had to be compassionate.”

Moral leadership and management techniques. Believing in the

goodness of people and managing employee performance consistent

with that belief does not imply abandoning any of the leadership tools

you may have found useful in the past. Most organizations provide

leadership training and other resources that enhance their effectiveness

in the day-to-day management of work and people. Other leadership

techniques work best when you begin with your employees’ ideal selves

in mind, focus at least as much on their strengths as their weaknesses,

and invite them to help you improve your personal performance just as

you are trying to help them improve theirs. Any leadership technique

will be that much more effective when you genuinely care about and

believe in your employees and their potential. Leadership tools applied

in the absence of caring and belief in others often backfire because

employees may experience them as mechanistic or manipulative. On the

other hand, leadership techniques infused with the spirit of caring tend

to work very well, even when not perfectly applied.

Endnote 1. Nigel Nicholson. “How Hardwired Is Human Behavior,” Harvard Business

Review, July 1998.

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The Fabric of Values It was a blazing summer day outside the conference room in Sedona,

where American Express executive Brenda Blake and her former col-

league Dave Edwards gathered their two teams of international man-

agers. Brenda stepped to the podium to roll out the company’s two new

corporate values. Amex had long espoused six values; now it had eight.

For the past two weeks, Brenda had been pondering how to make the

values memorable so that people would be more likely to practice them.

She decided to group the values into three categories—moral val-

ues, social values, and business values. Pushing aside her concerns

about how her audience would react, she reminded them that success

depends on a clear sense of what American Express stands for. She

explained how values drive both business practices and business results.

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Then, before launching into the new values, she put one more

PowerPoint slide up on the screen. It said this:

If you don’t subscribe to Amex’s moral values, you

probably shouldn’t work here.

In making that claim, Brenda was out on a limb. It certainly wasn’t a

politically correct thing to say. No one had authorized her to say it. She

hadn’t even reviewed it with her superiors.

Indeed, it was only following the meeting in Sedona that Brenda

emailed the presentation material to her boss. It would be two weeks

before she found out his reaction. Over dinner, the night before she was

to repeat her presentation to a group in London, he approvingly quoted

the new mantra back to her: “If you don’t subscribe to Amex’s moral

values, you probably shouldn’t work here.”

It turns out that Brenda, one of 25 designated “culture champions”

at American Express, needn’t have worried about her presentation.

Employees at every level say that when she talks about the three sets of

values—moral, social, and business—they immediately “get it.” No one

blinks an eye at the mention of moral values. The only question asked

by some is how to reconcile conflicts between a new business value,

“the will to win,” and the longstanding value of “integrity.” The Amex

answer comes easily: Amex will win with integrity. It is not winning at

any cost. If there is a conflict, integrity comes first. So far, though, the

conflict has not come. Any senior manager at Amex will insist they can

win in their markets without sacrificing an inch of their other values.

Brenda Blake’s presentation captured lesson one about moral

leadership of any large organization: Effective leadership depends upon

the successful integration of moral, social, and business values. You

cannot just be a moral leader, even as you cannot just be a strategic

leader. The values that drive an organization do not work in isolation.

Choices about moral values are an intrinsic part of the cultural fabric of

every organization. Ask great business leaders about their values and

you will inevitably hear them mix “integrity” in the same breath as

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“beating the competition” and “quality” along with “giving back to the

community” and with “honesty.”

Is There Such a Thing as a Morally Intelligent Organization? In the last chapter, you considered the concept that the major task of

moral leadership is to bring all of an organization’s values to life so that

employees can connect to them personally and understand how to trans-

late those values into action. With that goal in mind, every aspiring

leader will at some time ask, “Is it my job to influence individuals or

groups? Does one lead organizations, or does one lead people? Is it even

possible to talk sensibly about a morally intelligent organization?”

A morally intelligent organization is one whose culture is infused

with worthwhile values and whose members consistently act in ways

aligned with those values. A morally intelligent organization’s major

characteristic is that it is populated with morally intelligent people.

After all, if you put enough morally intelligent people in one place, the

culture will eventually catch on. But moral leaders realize that their job

goes beyond simply hiring others who act in a certain way, just as a

morally intelligent organization is more than the sum of its individual

members. Moral leaders accelerate and enhance high performance by

actively encouraging everyone in the organization to apply their moral

principles to their individual actions while also creating organization-

wide policies, practices, and reward systems based on moral values.

The Morally Intelligent Organization— An Aerial View PBS periodically airs a program on Italy that consists of nothing more

than exquisite video of the Italian countryside shot from a helicopter.

No sound track, no plot, just moving pictures of mountains, valleys, and

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water as the camera followed the curves of landscape from north to

south. Unlike the normal tourist’s eye view, the video shot from high

above the terrain gives a context for understanding the character of the

country in a way that would be impossible from the ground.

If we had an aerial view of the ultimate morally intelligent organi-

zation, what would we see? First, we would not see people being sim-

ply moral, or simply social, or simply focused on the technical aspects

of their work. We would see moral values lived out in their “natural

habitat,” interwoven with other social and business values important to

a successful large enterprise. We would see leaders who believe that

some shared human moral values apply to humankind all over the world

and therefore apply both at work and outside of work. We would notice

leaders who speak passionately about their beliefs and the values that

their company stands for. We would also notice that the leaders are as

morally competent as they are strategically gifted.

As we rise higher, so that we can see the entire organization, we

would see job candidates scrutinized to ensure that their beliefs and

values are consistent with the beliefs and values the company upholds.

We would see employees given opportunities to develop competencies

that translate values into action. We would see people solving problems

and making decisions in ways consistent with the organization’s values.

We would see managers at all levels sharing their personal values and

goals and inviting their peers and employees to hold them accountable

to those values and goals. We would watch as employees go the extra

mile for their leaders and their company because they feel respected and

trusted by their leaders. We would observe employees rewarded, not for

being workaholics, but for results. We would see employees who

deliver superior results, while reserving adequate time for their families,

community service, or other passionate interests. If we look closely, we

can even see people make mistakes. We can also see that mistakes are

usually treated as normal byproducts of innovation and growth and that

people are given a chance to correct them and move on without being

negatively branded.

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Higher yet, we would see an organization that does not abandon its

values when the economy sours, or a disruptive technology threatens, or

a natural disaster strikes. We would see a company that has a long track

record of profitable growth. We would see the organization dedicate a

certain amount of its resources to helping others in the larger communi-

ties where it is located.

If our vantage point were high enough, we would see in the global

organization the intertwined threads of moral, social, and business val-

ues reaching across countries and continents to join together people of

different languages, social customs, and traditions in pursuit of a shared

dream of individual and professional performance.

Morally Intelligent Policies McKinsey co-founder, Marvin Bower,1 observed that virtually every

successful company codifies its culture, rather than letting it grow

through an inevitable self-molding process. Many effective leaders have

discovered the wisdom of this advice. A senior management team of a

defense laboratory attended a session on managing conflict during an

especially stressful period of organizational change. Its workshop leader

suggested that one way to prevent conflict in organizations was to

develop a “social contract”—a code of behavior that everyone in the

organization would agree to. The management team thought that was a

good idea. It asked its employees to get together in small groups and

talk about what should be in the “social work contract.”

Managers admit they were somewhat apprehensive. Most of the

laboratory’s employees had worked there for decades. They had seen

management fads come and go. Would they be cynical about the idea of

a social work contract? But when the groups met, it was thoughtful and

engaged. When it came time to merge the results of the small groups

into a social work contract for the whole laboratory, the managers were

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surprised and relieved to see that the small groups’ proposals were

remarkably similar.

They didn’t call it a statement of moral values, but what they devel-

oped was clearly a shared moral guidance system. With the support of

their leaders, they did the collective work of codifying how they wanted

to be treated and how they believed they should treat one another. Many

months later, it is clear that the words still mean something to this

group. Employees display copies of the contract in their cubicles and on

corridor walls—reminders of how they want to be at their best. In a year

of massive change and unremitting workload, when people are overtired

and tempers could easily unravel, there have been no meltdowns. The

people in the laboratory have kept their act together. The social work

contract has been a powerful influence on the laboratory’s capability to

weather the organizational changes that continue to surround them.

The Principles That Matter Most Earlier, we described the universal principles we believe are key to

leadership effectiveness—integrity, responsibility, compassion, and for-

giveness. These same principles are essential to organizational effec-

tiveness. The organizations whose values reflect these principles are the

most likely to be successful over the long term. Companies that embed

these principles into their cultures succeed because they keep more than

their fair share of the world’s most talented employees. These are the

principles that resonate strongly with employees so that they want to

stay and are inspired to give their best efforts to the organization. But if

integrity, responsibility, compassion, and forgiveness are absent from

the life of an organization, there is dissonance between what the organ-

ization stands for and its employees’ hopes and beliefs. If employees’

moral compasses don’t line up with a company’s code of conduct, it is

unlikely that they will give the company their best.

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Cultivating Organizational Integrity Companies should assign four to eight values as their “core values”—

including among them the principle of integrity. Based on these core val-

ues, organizations can use three key strategies that promote and

demonstrate integrity. The first is for senior management to plot a com-

munications strategy in which it engages with its employees and the

public at large to identify and promote its organization’s values. Ideally,

the CEO leads this strategy: She should talk about the company’s

values—the core of the corporate culture—at every possible opportunity.

Second, the senior team needs to practice what it preaches and

enforce adherence to the company’s declared values. Managers in many

companies fail in this regard. They may not be guilty of fraud or terri-

ble dishonesty but of a common white lie: It is common for managers to

give annual performance reviews that fail to confront poor performance

or behavior not aligned with core values. We’ve all heard stories of

companies giving someone a bonus on Friday for “outstanding per-

formance” and then firing them on Monday, but this behavior pattern

has a high cost: Everyone in the company can see that their manage-

ment does not practice integrity or really believe in it.

The third strategy is for senior management to invite their work-

force to hold them accountable. An example of how to establish

accountability is to set up a Leadership Alignment Task Force, a group

of no more than 12 people from all layers of the organization—from Joe

in the mail room to Debbie, a marketing director, or Sam, the head of

production—to join this task force on a volunteer basis. The task force

is charged with giving the CEO and the senior team an annual “align-

ment review.” During the alignment review, the task force offers feed-

back from their workforce on their perceptions of how well the CEO’s

and senior managers’ behavior is aligned with the organization’s val-

ues. Alternatively, companies can use intranets to collect confidential

feedback from their workforce on senior management practices and

their integrity.

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Integrity produces substantial rewards for organizations who

embrace it. All stakeholders—employees, vendors, investors, and busi-

ness partners—prefer doing business with organizations that have

strong integrity. It is simply easier to engage with an organization that

is honest, that states its mission and values, and does not diverge from

them. It’s common sense: Organizations that attract employees and cus-

tomers by virtue of their integrity are likely to be highly successful in

the long run.

The Responsible Organization There are two hallmarks of the responsible organization. First, it

embraces its responsibility for being of service to others. Second, it

acknowledges mistakes and failures. With respect to serving others,

there are two levels of service. The first level of responsibility is that the

organization provides worthwhile products or services. This does not

mean that your organization is only a responsible one if it invents the

cure for the common cold. It is, however, important that your organiza-

tion has a socially worthwhile mission.

Hormel Foods is a company that takes its responsibility for being of

service seriously. Hormel Foods stockholders have had a lot to celebrate

lately, with record sales, earnings, and stock prices in 2010. And there

is no question that Hormel is one of the great American companies,

having been named to Forbes magazine’s 400 Best Big Companies List

for ten consecutive years. But one of the things CEO Jeff Ettinger is

most proud of is Hormel’s long-standing commitment to serve others.

Following the hurricane disaster in 2005, Hormel Foods donated food

and money and encouraged employees and retirees to get involved and

help with the recovery efforts. Now Hormel is focusing on combating

hunger in developing countries. As Jeff explains

We’ve been active in giving back to the community for

years, doing pro bono work and making contributions to

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relief efforts. But about two years ago we launched a project

to create a new protein item, SPAMMY, designed to over-

come malnutrition. Right now we are focused on relieving

hunger in Guatemala, where we are partnering with Food

for the Poor and Caritas. Guatemala has some of the worst

malnutrition rates for children in the world, and SPAMMY

was designed to help address this chronic problem. We will

distribute over one million cans to the needy in Guatemala

in 2011, with larger goals for the future, including expand-

ing distribution of the product to other countries.

There is an undeniable relationship between Hormel Foods’ history of

being a responsible company and its financial success. But the benefits

of being responsible for serving others go well beyond the bottom line.

A company’s commitment to serving others enables it to attract and

retain talented and engaged employees. When Jeff Ettinger initially

unveiled SPAMMY at a sales meeting, he noted

The product was only 5 minutes or so of my presentation,

but eighty percent of the questions and comments after-

ward related to that. People want to know that the com-

pany is doing the right thing. We are using our heritage of

innovation on a pro bono basis and our people are really

proud of that. It’s interesting that this program, while we

have invested some dollars in it, clearly more than pays for

itself in increased employee engagement and productivity.

This is not the reason we do these programs, but it is an

interesting side benefit.

In contrast to Hormel’s focus on making products that benefit others,

companies that make dangerous products or provide questionable serv-

ices put their long-term performance at risk. They may be profitable for

a time, but eventually will falter. Phillip Morris is an example of a com-

pany that struggles with the tension between a dangerous core product

and its desire to be socially responsible. Phillip Morris sells cigarettes.

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No one can ignore the dangers of its core product. But Phillip Morris

also sponsors antismoking advertising aimed at children and contributes

generously to charitable causes. Admittedly, Phillip Morris’s social

responsibility efforts were court-ordered as a result of litigation. You

could argue that the company has not been as aggressive as it should in

diversifying its holdings so that cigarettes are no longer its only revenue

stream. You might dismiss Phillip Morris’ efforts to be responsible as

nothing more than a public relations smokescreen. You might be right.

But it is possible that Phillip Morris genuinely wants to behave respon-

sibly, rather than creating the disaster for shareholders that an abrupt

exit from their core business would provoke.

Another example of a company dealing with adverse consequences

of some of its products is Kraft Foods, maker of Oreo cookies, Oscar

Meyer bacon, and Easy Mac macaroni and cheese. In 2003, Kraft

announced that it would stop selling high-fat foods to schools and

launched a series of initiatives to promote healthy eating. As of 2003, it

had spent more than $17 million to increase the amount of fruits and

vegetables distributed by U.S. food banks. You might conclude that

Kraft was simply trying to forestall the kind of litigation first seen by

fast-food chains by some obese customers who blame the food pur-

veyors for their health problems. Hopefully, Kraft is making a good

faith effort to ensure that its products are used in ways that do no harm.

Whatever its full range of motives, Kraft does serve its broad customer

base by encouraging people to make wise nutritional choices.

Although companies such as Phillip Morris and Kraft try to be

responsible without altering their core product, other companies

demonstrate responsibility by literally changing their product into one

that better serves their customers. Harvey Golub did just that as CEO of

IDS, a financial advisory company. He transformed IDS from a transac-

tional services company to a company that offered objective financial

planning services. To understand how profound a change that was,

recall that the 1970s and 1980s were a time when the financial services

industry had a well-deserved reputation for questionable transactions.

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Consider the comments of one person who worked for a brokerage

house:

It was a hectic noisy place with stockbrokers crowded

together talking on phones and calling out across the room

to one another. Right in front of me, I saw a man on the

phone put someone on hold, then yell out, “What do we

have for a buck with a half?” Someone yelled back, “XYZ

stock.” The man got back on the phone and proceeded to

extol the virtues of XYZ stock. As I left, I asked my friend

to tell me what a buck with a half meant. He told me that it

is a stock for which you pay a dollar for the stock with a

fifty cent load—meaning the customer paid a dollar for a

stock that was only worth fifty cents. It was obvious that

the guy who promoted XYZ stock didn’t care about goug-

ing his customer and was only interested in maximizing his

earnings.

It is no wonder people were suspicious of brokers, many of whom were

more interested in lining their own wallets than helping their customers.

It was the “me generation,” an era of excess, a time when Wall Street

was synonymous with greed. Enter Harvey Golub, a McKinsey consult-

ant called in by American Express to analyze a promising potential

acquisition in the financial advising business. Golub examined IDS, a

small company in Minneapolis that focused on creating wealth for its

clients by offering long-term investment and insurance products.

Golub’s studies showed that IDS advisors gave good financial advice.

Clients could benefit from their advice, even if they decided to purchase

financial products elsewhere. They didn’t use hard-sell tactics. Their

first priority was helping clients reach their financial objectives. Golub

thought IDS had the right idea. IDS was small, but its principles were

scalable. So, he recommended that American Express buy IDS.

American Express agreed, but on one condition—that Golub take

over as CEO. Golub grew IDS (eventually American Express Financial

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Advisors) by putting its customers front and center. He made a commit-

ment that the financial planning documents prepared for clients would

be objective. IDS’s recommendations would not be biased toward IDS

products. They would recommend IDS products that fit client objectives

but also acknowledge that clients could do well if they chose to go to

another company to purchase financial products. He also insisted that

financial planning had to be independent from the sale of products, even

though he knew the company wouldn’t be profitable if it sold only

financial planning services. But Golub said, “We are going to be a

financial planning company and help customers make financial deci-

sions prudently and carefully.” It was curious advice at a time when the

financial industry’s high flyers were just “doing deals.”

A lot of industry insiders thought IDS would fail, especially after

his predecessor lowered the sales charge customers paid for each trans-

action. There was a revolt in the ranks of the sales force. Many advisors

threatened to quit. But Golub was confident it was the right thing to do,

so IDS lowered its sales load. It lost some advisors, but, important, kept

those who understood the values that drove Golub’s strategy.

Although pundits had their doubts, Golub’s values-driven strategies

paid off spectacularly. From 1984 until 2000, IDS (later renamed

American Express Financial Advisors, which now is an independent

company, Ameriprise Financial) increased profits by at least 15% every

quarter, taking the company from 60 million to more than one billion

dollars in gross earnings. Before being spun off as Ameriprise Financial

in 2005, AEFA helped keep American Express profitable through the

worst of the post 9/11 doldrums. Providing a valuable service and being

a responsible organization is no doubt the morally right thing to do, but,

as the success of Ameriprise demonstrates, values-based business prac-

tices are also strategically smart. At Ameriprise, financial advisors feel

energized by providing a worthwhile service for their clients. Most

financial advisors would hate having to pressure their clients to buy a

product. Clients, in turn, value solid advice that helps them achieve

their financial goals. Being a responsible, service-oriented organization

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resonates powerfully with employees and customers alike. Not surpris-

ingly, Ameriprise, led by CEO Jim Cracchiolo, performed especially

well following the stock market’s slide in 2008 and 2009. By January

2011, its stock price had risen to over $60 after having fallen to nearly

$10 just two years earlier.

There is a second dimension that marks the responsible organiza-

tion: its willingness to admit mistakes and failures. If admitting mis-

takes is crucial to maintaining employee commitment, it is essential to

maintaining customer loyalty as well. Some companies seem to know

this in their bones; others go down in flames trying to hide the truth

about their mistakes. Taking responsibility for mistakes may be painful

in the short run, but admitting failure and taking steps to compensate for

errors cements customer loyalty. Customers know that they can trust an

organization that tells them the truth. Mark Sheffert, chairman and CEO

of Minneapolis-based Manchester Companies, illustrates the business

value of admitting mistakes:

One of the more meaningful experiences for me was when I

became chairman and CEO of First Trust, then part of First

Bank Systems and now US Bank. I knew we had some

problems I was going to have to help deal with, but I quickly

discovered it was more serious than I had expected. Our

statements for people with 401k plans were all wrong. If

you can believe it, we were $8 billion out of balance. When

I met with the managers and asked what we should do, the

answers were far ranging. Some thought we should finesse

the situation until we fixed it, essentially through misinfor-

mation [and] essentially lying. I took the position we were

going to our clients and we were going to tell the clients the

truth and that the data on their employee statements would

not be right for 90 days or so. I personally went to our

clients, including companies such as 3M, General Mills, and

Medtronic. I told them we had a problem, and I said

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“I need your help.” I’ve learned those four words are so

powerful and use them all the time still to this day with my

clients, employees, and virtually everyone. We asked them

to hang in there with us, and we would fix the problem. I

told them “I guarantee that not one nickel will be lost.”

These clients could have said “We’re taking our business

elsewhere.” I knew the financial implications for us were

huge, but I also really believed if we stood on solid moral

ground they would stick with us, and they did. We demon-

strated that by being honest and forthright the vast major-

ity will respond well. We lost only one small piece of

business. The regulators, clients, and employees were all

thrilled. First Trust went on to become the largest corpo-

rate trust company in the world.

One of the most dramatic instances of the importance of admitting cor-

porate mistakes came in 1982. The fate of Johnson & Johnson was in the

balance when bottles of Tylenol capsules were laced with cyanide,

killing seven people. James Burke, CEO at the time, knew exactly where

to look for direction—the company’s 40-year-old “Credo,” a single-page

document that began with these words: “We believe our first responsibil-

ity is to the doctors, nurses, and patients; to mothers and fathers; and all

others who use our products and services.” Johnson & Johnson ordered

an unprecedented recall of all 30 million bottles of Tylenol capsules in

circulation. It immediately stopped production of the capsules and

replaced them with tamper-resistant caplets. It communicated constantly

with the public and the media, and it was its openness and concern for

public safety that that helped Johnson & Johnson to overcome its initial

losses and recover its market share within a matter of months.

More recently, in 2004, drug manufacturer Merck & Company vol-

untarily withdrew its widely used arthritis pain medication Vioxx after

a three-year clinical trial showed a higher incidence of heart attacks and

strokes among users of the drug. Merck has a reputation for concern for

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those who use its products. It developed and distributed at no cost a

drug that cures river blindness in underdeveloped regions of the world.

According to Thomas Donaldson, Wharton professor of legal studies

and ethics,2 Merck “has always emphasized, in effect, that the company

puts the health care of the customer first, and if we do that, we will

make money. If we ever just put making money first, we will lose our

business.” Donaldson adds, “You can question the extent to which

Merck follows this, but it’s not something that just appears [once in a

while]. It is repeated fairly consistently.”

Contrast Merck and Johnson & Johnson’s handling of product

defects with Firestone Tire’s handling in 2000 of the recall of tires that

were implicated in fatal SUV accidents. Firestone was initially reluctant

to replace the defective tires, claiming that it was the vehicle rather than

the tire that was at fault. The media later discovered that Firestone had

prior knowledge of the problem and did nothing. It was also reported

that Firestone had earlier refused to recall another defective tire sold in

Saudi Arabia because a recall would mandate reporting the problem to

the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Instead, it

had launched a quiet replacement program that left the NHTSA in the

dark. The result? Daniel Eisenberg, reporting on Firestone’s tire deba-

cle for Time magazine, concluded, “Thanks to a generally dreadful cri-

sis management, marked primarily by silence and denials, the Firestone

brand has very little credibility left. The public is becoming increas-

ingly skittish about any of Firestone’s tires—the vast majority of which

are safe.”

To promote responsibility, CEOs should carefully consider what it

means to be a “responsible person,” communicate this to managers, and

encourage the promotion of responsible people within the organization.

A company made up of responsible people is a responsible company.

CEOs can assess managers according to the following “responsibility

checklist.”

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Responsibility Checklist

Taking responsibility for personal choices

When I make a decision that turns out to be a mistake, I admit it.

When I make a mistake, I take responsibility for correcting the

situation.

When things go wrong, I do not blame others or circumstances.

Admitting mistakes and failures

I always own up to my own mistakes and failures.

I am always willing to accept the consequences of my mistakes.

I use my mistakes as an opportunity to improve my performance.

I discuss my mistakes with coworkers to encourage tolerance for

risk.

Embracing responsibility for serving others

I believe and show through my actions that an important aspect of

my leadership approach is to find ways to serve and support

others.

I pay attention to the development needs of my co-workers.

I spend a significant amount of my time providing resources and

removing obstacles for my co-workers.

Rather than simply use this as a tool for self-examination, CEOs should

discuss this checklist with senior management and ask them to rate their

own responses on a scale from 1 (never does this) to 10 (always does

this). The CEO should then discuss his expectations with management:

which statements are the most important, which need to be adhered to

the most closely, and work with them to improve their scores if neces-

sary. The managers can then, in turn, work on responsibility within their

individual departments.

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The Compassionate Organization When it’s business as usual, acts of compassion are small or subtle in

the great organizational scheme of things. But when a major crisis

strikes, it is easy to see the difference between the truly compassionate

organization and one that gives lip service to values. Aaron Feuerstein

is the former president and CEO of Malden Mills, a company best

known for producing the revolutionary fabric Polartec. On a cold

December night in 1995, a devastating fire tore through his factory in

Lawrence, Massachusetts. In a time of corporate downsizing, many of

his peers urged him to re-open operations overseas—a decision that

would lead to the loss of 3,000 jobs at home. Shunning their advice,

Aaron pledged instead to rebuild the mill at home—and to pay his

employees during the three-month reconstruction. “I think it was a wise

business decision, but that isn’t why I did it. I did it because it was the

right thing to do,” says Feuerstein.

Malden Mills battled insurance companies and government offi-

cials not just to rebuild the plant, but also to spend the additional money

necessary to build the safest textile plant possible and to take care of his

employees while the new plant was under construction. By 1997, just

two years later, he had proved to the doubters that it was the right thing

to do. Malden Mills was recording $400 million in annual sales—more

than it ever had before the fire. Although Feuerstein’s sometimes con-

troversial decision making led to financial problems and a bankruptcy

filing, the company emerged from bankruptcy intact.

Sometimes, though, despite a company’s best intentions, layoffs

must be made for the good of the company—its customers, its share-

holders, and its remaining employees. The way an organization handles

layoffs says more about its corporate character than any other activity.

It is a test of its capability to weave moral, social, and business values

into an effective whole. Answering the call of compassion in isolation

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might tempt an organization to avoid a layoff at the cost of fiscal sur-

vival. But a moral organization that doesn’t attend to its bottom line

won’t be around long enough to keep any of its workforce gainfully

employed. So the task of a moral leader facing serious financial difficul-

ties is not necessarily whether to reduce the size of the workforce, but

how to do it in a compassionate way that provides a soft landing for

those affected and in a way that preserves key talent.

In our high-achieving business culture, self-recrimination is com-

mon. We often find that our executives are far more critical of them-

selves (and less forgiving) than their bosses. One of the best ways a

morally intelligent leader can show compassion is to challenge the

executives about their excessive self-criticism. Of course, this implies

that the leaders have enough interpersonal skills and rapport with the

subordinates to find out what their critical self-talk is all about. Yet, this

challenge can be a superb way to embrace compassion and make it cen-

tral to your organization. To the extent that employees spend their pre-

cious energy engaging in negative and self-critical inner dialogue, they

are not giving it to the company in pursuit of the strategic plan!

Finally, compassionate companies make it a priority to help others

beyond their own organizations For instance, Larson Manufacturing

sponsors extensive volunteer work in the community, including Habitat

for community and the Boys’ and Girls’ Club. Larson matches all

employee contributions to the local United Way, and in 2010 Larson

employees’ pledges amounted to more than 25 percent of its commu-

nity’s United Way campaign goal. In addition, the Larson Family

Foundation funded the building of the Children’s Museum of South

Dakota that opened in 2010. Another example of compassionate organ-

izations comes from ID Media, which has found a particularly clever

way to help fight cancer. It sponsors a company coffee bar staffed by a

professional barista with a full complement of coffee drinks and par-

faits, for which employees pay bargain rates of $1 and $2, respectively.

ID Media donates all proceeds to Gilda’s Club, a worldwide group of

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centers providing support for people with cancer, and the American

Cancer Society.

The Forgiving Organization Organizational forgiveness is an organization’s capacity to accept mis-

takes and failures among its workforce. Forgiveness is critical for two

reasons. First, employees need to know that they have room to fail. If

mistakes are invariably punished, the emotional climate of the organiza-

tion will be unattractive to your best employees, who will go elsewhere

in search of a more favorable work environment. Second, forgiveness is

fundamental to innovation and growth. Innovation entails venturing into

the unknown, where no formulas exist. Risks will be taken; mistakes

will be made. Some things will work, and some things will fail.

Organizations cannot pioneer new territory unless they accept that they

will spend some time going around in circles or down dead-end paths.

When asked whether 3M’s reputation for innovation is legitimate,

Ray Langer, a 3M project engineer, says, “Yes, it really is. We’re

encouraged to try new things in our projects, and if they don’t work out,

no one is punished. As a result, we have created many, many engineer-

ing processes that no one else in the world comes close to.”

Interestingly, the United States Marine Corps is an organization

that has institutionalized forgiveness. “Most managers like to say they

give their subordinates room to fail,” says David Freedman, author of

Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U. S. Marines,3

“but the Marines practice failure tolerance to a degree that would raise

most [managers’] hair. To a certain extent, they demand failure: A

Marine who rarely fails is a Marine who isn’t pushing the envelope

enough, goes the logic.”

A final incentive to practice forgiveness is that without a climate of

risk tolerance, employees will be too intimidated to acknowledge

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mistakes or offer feedback, thus perpetuating problems that may be

costing your company millions each year. Nancy Jones, CMO for

Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America understands the

importance of creating a mistake-tolerant culture:

I have a philosophy of “No surprises.” I don’t want my

boss, the CEO, to find out a mistake from someone else or

in the wrong way, so I admit when I or my team makes a

mistake and what we’re going to do about it. I lead my peo-

ple the same way. I tell them that admitting mistakes is not

a sign of weakness. It’s actually a sign of strength. It’s the

difference between a fear-based culture and a solutions-

based culture. An example of this is when I had a director

who came to me very upset about a costly mistake she had

discovered. She figured out the cause and the solution, and

took full accountability even though it was a vendor mis-

take. I told her she did the right thing. She felt supported

and what I got back was loyalty and support. She contin-

ued to do great work and no longer feared bringing a mis-

take to my attention.

Although the most forgiving companies are often the best innovators,

these companies also know how to set limits. If you want to increase

forgiveness at your company, establish “curbs” for innovative behav-

ior—for example, set out the percentage of work time team members

can use to engage in innovative projects that are their own or their

team’s creation or set budgetary limits, allowing employees to spend a

certain percentage of their department’s budget on innovation. But then,

if you want to establish a truly forgiving company, make sure you cele-

brate this activity—not just the positive results. Honor your team mem-

bers’ mistakes as learning episodes. Edison is quoted as saying

something like, “I didn’t make any mistakes. I just tried ten thousand

things that didn’t work;” if you want to build an organization of budding

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Edisons, celebrate the innovation process and the failures that come

with it, not just the results.

Another way to encourage your organization to increase forgive-

ness is for you to establish a learning organization (rather than a puni-

tive organization). Praise your team members for embracing the

learning process. Allow mistakes to be forgiven and analyzed and not

punished harshly.

But, as with all values, forgiveness cannot be practiced in isolation.

Peter Georgescu of Young & Rubicam recalls a time when some young

employees discovered racist jokes on the Internet and began passing

them around. In all likelihood, they did not intend to offend anyone;

they were just completely thoughtless. Georgescu struggled and worried

over this. Anyone could make a mistake, he realized, but the company

also had a policy of zero tolerance for such activity. People’s lives and

self-respect were at stake. In a move that he judged to be not only best

for his business, but also for the moral development of the two employ-

ees, he let them go. It was an action that won acclaim throughout the

business community. By understanding the implications of each possi-

ble choice, Peter demonstrated moral intelligence. By taking the action

he did, he demonstrated moral competence. As Peter showed, the

leaders who consistently puts both skills into practice creates resonance

with those whom they lead.

Recruiting for Values The basic unit of your organization is its people. Your organization’s

capability to engage in principled actions rests squarely on its people.

Hiring the right people—the ones who already share your company’s

values and have a track record of acting consistently with those

values—is the most important lever you have in creating a morally com-

petent organization.

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Jim Collins, author of Good to Great,4 found that hiring the right

people was a key differentiator of companies that had significantly out-

performed the S&P over many years. When FastCompany.com asked

him what his research suggested was the best way to respond to eco-

nomic slowdown, he said this:

If I were running a company today, I would have one prior-

ity above all others: to acquire as many of the best people

as I could. I’d put off everything else to fill my bus. Because

things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start

to turn. And the single biggest constraint on the success for

my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to

enough of the right people.5

Don’t delegate recruitment to your human resources department. Take

charge of your own hiring process as much as you can while still con-

forming to employment law. When possible, avoid anonymous news-

paper ads. Instead, network continuously so that you always have a

large pool of potential candidates or referral sources. Let your network

know what kind of people you are interested in having work for your

company. Don’t hesitate to talk about your organization’s values.

Recruiting from your personal network is likely to lead to a significant

jump in the retention rate and contribute positively to your organiza-

tion’s performance. Why? Because new jobholders who know you or

are connected to you through your network are much more likely to

share your values and to stay when things get a little rocky.

Reinforcing Values Starts at the Top In Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence,

Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee describe their

model of leadership.6 The best leaders, they say, are resonant leaders.

Resonant leaders use their emotional intelligence to create a positive

emotional work climate in which the best work happens. To that

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equation, we would add this: The best leaders create resonance through

their moral intelligence and their emotional intelligence. People natu-

rally want to follow leaders who demonstrate commitment to moral

principles and values. When people believe that their organization and

its leaders practice the values they preach, they become energized.

When people work in an organization that operates from a set of beliefs

that resonate with their own, they are naturally inclined to give their

best efforts to their work.

In the real world of organizations, we never have the luxury to work

with a fully morally competent workforce. Maintaining organizational

alignment with values is just as challenging as it is for any individual.

That is why leaders should look for any opportunity to reinforce values.

Training is key to reinforcing values and enhancing moral competen-

cies. Senior executives may act allergic to training sessions in the mis-

guided belief that they are finished products who don’t need further

education. But values start at the top, so senior level managers need to

hone their moral judgment just like the rest of the workforce.

The Power of Formal Rewards Psychologists tell us that people do what gets rewarded. It is critical that

organizational reward systems reinforce morally competent behavior

and goal attainment. Unfortunately, corporate reward systems that vio-

late the principle of integrity are not unusual. Media reports of fired

CEOs laughing all the way to the bank, CEOs who get multimillion dol-

lar bonuses despite staggering year-end losses, and pyramid compensa-

tion systems that routinely reward executives far in excess of their

relative contributions are common. Contrast that with former Best Buy

CEO Brad Anderson (now retired) who declined 200,000 stock options

in 2004. At the time he already owned company stock worth roughly

$78 million dollars and asked that the declined options be distributed

to nonexecutive employees.7 Anderson’s action was an effort to

create more equity in the distribution of corporate rewards, although no

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one—Anderson included—would argue that he felt too much of a

pinch. But his recognition that he did not need more sent a powerful

message to other companies’ executives about corporate excess—while

creating a richer source of rewards for rank and file employees who do

the right things.

Paul Clayton is insistent about sending positive messages through

meaningful rewards. Paul recalls a time when he was president of

Burger King North America and had to convince his executive team that

he was serious about rewarding employees.

At Burger King, we had a recognition program for the top

general managers. Once a year, we brought them to our

world headquarters in Miami. During the recognition cer-

emony, 600 headquarters employees would give the award

winners a standing ovation. As they entered the main

rotunda, their pictures went up on our “Wall of Fame.” As

we were giving out awards, it struck me that one GM in

particular had been the top performer for five years run-

ning. I turned to the HR person next to me and said that we

should give him a car. The HR person replied, “We can’t do

that because we don’t have budget and I don’t have author-

ization.” I reminded him that I was the president and that I

thought that I could authorize the expenditure. When I

presented the idea to the finance team, they thought it was

fine but suggested an inexpensive car that wouldn’t cost too

much. “He’ll never know the difference,” one finance per-

son said. But I had a different idea. I told them, “I’m think-

ing about a BMW. I don’t care about the budget. I want

people to know that we are sincere about the contribution

they make.” So when I took the stage to announce that I

was rewarding the top GM with a fully loaded series 3

BMW, the place went crazy. The GM’s wife ran up on stage

to hug me and her husband. Then the GM ran off the stage

to call his grandmother.

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Success Stories Given that moral values are embedded and intertwined with other val-

ues in the conduct of your business, how do you link moral values to

performance? American Express does it by storytelling. The Amex

team in Australia had just won the prestigious “Chairman’s Award.”

The country manager wasted no time assembling his team to congratu-

late them. He did it in a way that explicitly linked Amex values to their

success. He told stories about how individuals acted on Amex’s values

and how that contributed to their getting the Chairman’s Award. This

manager celebrated not only their accomplishments, but also the values

that led to their success. Leaders in morally competent organizations

never take values for granted. They promote them, they apply them, and

they make sure that their people see how values translate into business

performance.

Ideal Versus Real Even within an organization committed to values, you can always find

managers who fail to apply them. Wherever there are imperfect man-

agers, there are cynical employees who look at them and say, “He, or

she doesn’t live the values, so…why should I follow the values if my

boss ignores them?” Or “…why should I go the extra mile for a man-

agement that doesn’t respect me?” If employees complain about some-

one who works for you, it is your responsibility to deal individually

with unacceptable behavior. It is also critical that you convey the mes-

sage that Ken Chenault gives to his employees: “There is no excuse for

personal behavior inconsistent with Amex’s values. You can’t wait for

everyone to behave in alignment with values before you do. The only

way for people to start acting on values is to do it independently of

whether others do. Do not expect perfection from leaders.”

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Values and the Global Organization More and more companies not only do business internationally, but also

are actually global companies with offices throughout the world,

employing local workforces in numerous countries. Imagine how diffi-

cult it would be to communicate with a multinational workforce in the

absence of some shared beliefs. Without common values, business

would be impossible. Common values, based in the universal principles,

can knit together a diverse global workforce. In an era marked by inter-

national conflict, we believe it will be in the world of business—rather

than in the political arena—that people from different ethnic, racial, and

religious heritages will discover their common path.

Endnotes 1. Marvin Bower. The Will to Lead: Running a Business With a Network of Leaders,

Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997.

2. Quoted in “Death of a Drug: The Aftermath of Merck’s Recall,” Knowledge at Wharton, October 6, 2004.

3. David Freedman. Corps Business: The 30 Management Principles of the U. S. Marines, New York: HarperBusiness, 2001.

4. Jim Collins. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t, New York: Harper Collins, 2001.

5. Jim Collins, Web-Exclusive Interview, “Good Questions, Great Answers,” Fast Company.com, October 2001. http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/51/ goodtogreat.

6. Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee. Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

7. Reported in Patrick McGeehan, “Making a Point By Taking Less,” The New York Times, May 24, 2004. Also reported in the article was that James Parker, Southwest Airlines’ chief executive, had requested that his salary be significantly lower than suggested by its compensation consultant.

222 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/51/goodtogreat

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Starting from scratch. Imagine this: You have a great business idea,

eager investors, and a prime location for your new company. With every

resource at your disposal, you now have the chance to realize your fond-

est hopes and ambitions. You also have the power to create a high-per-

formance culture from the ground up. No legacy employees, no

unnecessary bureaucracy, no history to overcome. How would you

begin? Would you use your newfound power to build a company based

on universal principles, with socially noble goals and a morally compe-

tent workforce? Entrepreneurs rarely launch their ventures with an

explicit moral focus. They make mistakes, and the most costly missteps

are frequently moral, not strategic or operational. When entrepreneurs

lack a consistent level of moral competence, their businesses usually

falter or fail completely. Even exceptional business models can’t sur-

vive without morally competent leadership. Entrepreneurs who want to

succeed must master not only their business challenges, but must also

align their businesses with the principles of integrity, responsibility,

compassion, and forgiveness.

Moral Intelligence for the Entrepreneur

223

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Morally clueless in Minneapolis. In the 1970s, a group of entre-

preneurs started a telemarketing business named Minneapolis

Circulation, which primarily sold subscriptions to Minneapolis maga-

zine. Its arrangement with the magazine was that Minneapolis

Circulation would own the subscriptions and would pay the magazine

$1 for every $5 subscription it sold. The company was creative about

marketing subscriptions, but the partners’ greed and irresponsibility

doomed it to failure. The partners failed to recognize that the magazine

publishers would come to resent their meager share of the profits, and it

was only a matter of time before the publishers found a way to dry up

the telemarketing company’s pipeline and pave the way for a better deal

with another telemarketer. When the entrepreneurs got the squeeze, they

didn’t have the financial reserves to retool their strategy. They had

naively thought of the company as their cash cow, and any money they

made after expenses went straight into their personal bank accounts.

Because their vision of the business was so limited, Minneapolis

Circulation’s owners didn’t even think about their responsibility to their

employees or to the sustainability of the business.

Poorer, but wiser, or so one owner thought, he launched another

company, Twin Cities Telemarketing, with a new business partner. He

had learned his lesson about trying to own subscriptions, so his new

enterprise sold subscriptions for a fee. Its first client was Twin Cities

Woman, a struggling newspaper look-alike. When Minneapolis maga-

zine got a new publisher and a new name, Minneapolis St.Paul

Magazine, Twin Cities Telemarketing acquired its subscription sales

business, too. Then it went after business with Twin Cities magazine, a

publication that Minneapolis St.Paul Magazine viewed as a competitor.

Twin Cities Telemarketing knew that it could sell both magazines effec-

tively. It recognized that a lot of customers, such as hotels and profes-

sional offices, subscribed to both. Its game plan was to help both clients

succeed. But it carefully didn’t mention its relationship with either mag-

azine to the other. That was a fatal flaw. When the Minneapolis St. Paul

Magazine publisher found out that Twin Cities Telemarketing was

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working for its arch rival, he pulled the plug. The owners of Twin Cities

Telemarketing never thought of themselves as dishonest, but they were.

Integrity would have dictated that they do their best to convince both

magazines that representing the two was a win-win scenario—before

taking on the second magazine.

Both of these ventures demonstrate that business savvy relies as

much on moral intelligence as it does on a good business plan. Both

start-up companies were initially successful businesses that unraveled

because of gaps in integrity and responsibility. Like most entrepreneurs,

it took several false starts for this group to learn the importance of prin-

ciples and values. Those early business failures also point out just how

critical moral competence is to a small business. Failures of integrity or

responsibility might not be terminal in a large business that has the

resources to absorb a certain number of mistakes. But for most small

organizations, the distance between solvency and bankruptcy is

painfully short.

Driving without a steering wheel. KRW International, one of the

first executive coaching firms in the country, was founded in 1990 to

offer premium consulting services to Fortune 500 executives. KRW’s

owners were strong on integrity and responsibility where their clients

were concerned, but those principles were not always extended to their

own organization. In the first few years, the owners’ attitude was, “Let’s

have fun and make money.” When demand for their services started

growing beyond what they could handle, the partners did not think

proactively about the kind of organization and workforce they needed.

Instead, they reacted to the needs of the moment. They hired contract

consultants and discovered that they didn’t stick around long. They

hired administrative staff at fairly low wages and worked them hard.

They didn’t stay long either. It took some time for KRW’s partners to

realize that if they didn’t act responsibly toward their employees,

employees would have no reason to feel responsible to them.

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Luckily, KRW hired an administrative head, Kelly Garramone, who

became its moral champion. More than once, Kelly confronted the

owners, “There is too much work, too few people to do it, and deadlines

are impossible.” She successfully challenged the company to create

work processes that both consultants and administrators could live with.

Business grew consistently until 1994 when a major client company

abruptly canceled its contract. KRW’s owners were so shaken that they

immediately decided they had to lay off most of their employees to pre-

serve the owners’ financial resources. That decision was ill-considered,

both on business and moral grounds….

It was a beautiful fall day when KRW employees were gathered for

the company’s annual Octoberfest celebration. When the owners

walked into the room, employees expected the festivities to commence.

Instead, the owners announced a major downsizing. Soon, people were

crying and running out of the room to call their spouses and friends.

KRW’s owners were open and honest, but their approach was a lot like

surgery without anesthesia. It turned out to be unnecessary surgery.

Everyone was given a good severance package. But soon most employ-

ees were rehired as independent contractors because KRW still had

work in the pipeline. Before long, its major client reinstituted the con-

tract, and KRW rehired all but a few of its former employees. One

employee never missed a paycheck, but she got a windfall—three

months off. KRW’s owners ended up losing more money by thinking of

themselves first than they would have if they had stepped back to take

everyone’s needs into account.

The mistakes KRW made during its 1994 downturn were the result

of destructive emotions and a moral virus. KRW’s owners had started

their business with the goals to “make money and have fun.” As soon as

something happened that threatened both goals, fear took over, and they

lost their ability to be reflective and self-aware. Further, because their

goals were not aligned with a deeper purpose, there was no overriding

sense of responsibility that could overcome their impulse to take care of

themselves first.

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KRW weathered that crisis and soon regained considerable

momentum, so much so that during a 1998 company meeting, Kelly

Garramone and her administrative staff once again announced that they

were so overworked and stressed that if the company didn’t make major

changes, many would quit. KRW owners and consultants finally got the

message. It was a turning point. The strong feelings of the administra-

tive staff prompted the group as a whole to question why it was in busi-

ness. It became clear that financial rewards were only part of the

motivation for working at KRW. Some employees said that their ideal

purpose was “to make the world a better place.” Many employees res-

onated strongly with that purpose. Others worried that KRW would lose

business if hard-nosed senior executives got wind of such a pie-in-the

sky mission statement. Eventually, their collective desire to do some-

thing ambitious and wonderful won the day. In subsequent months,

Kelly led the effort to define the organizational values that sprung from

their newly articulated purpose. “If we are going to be an organization

of moral integrity,” insisted Kelly, “then we need to behave consistently

with our purpose.” Eight years after starting the company, “doing the

right thing” became an explicit part of the KRW culture. Little did

KRW’s owners realize that within a few short years, KRW’s collective

commitment to a shared purpose would mean the difference between

extinction and survival.

KRW took a steep trajectory as it gathered media recognition for its

approach to CEO coaching and senior executive development. In 2000,

it increased its revenues by 27%, expanded its consulting staff by one-

third, doubled its office space, and was actively recruiting for additional

staff to support anticipated further growth. By June of 2001, business

bookings were so strong that one overwhelmed owner instructed the

consultant group to stop marketing until further notice. Only three

months later, in the wake of September 11, KRW’s revenues crashed.

This time, the moral lessons of the past came to the fore. The owners,

despite enormous pressure, vowed to keep the company going. They cut

their own salaries, mortgaged their houses, and did everything they

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could to keep the staff together for as long as possible. Each week, they

updated their employees on the financial status of the company. For

months, the news was grim. Everyone could see the handwriting on the

wall, but when two rounds of selective layoffs finally came, laid-off

employees were grateful for the lead time they had been given to pre-

pare for their job transition. Employees who remained had almost as

tough a time as those who left. Consultant salaries were cut, and admin-

istrative employees were given reduced hours. Owners suspended their

salaries. With half of the staff gone, the offices looked—and felt—like

a ghost town. But no one left who had the choice to stay. Maybe they

stayed because the job market was dismal. But if you ask KRW employ-

ees why they stayed, they will tell you, “I believe in what KRW is try-

ing to do.” If you ask former KRW employees if they would go back if

asked, the answer is almost always, “Yes.” KRW returned to profitabil-

ity within a year. Quite a few consulting firms did not survive the eco-

nomic downturn of 2000–2002. KRW might have started by driving

without a steering wheel, but it learned the value of guiding principles

along the way, and those values steered it safely through its darkest

hours.

Moral Values in Small Organizations The moral values highlighted throughout this book are crucial to organ-

izations of all sizes and stripes, big and small, for-profit and nonprofit.

Integrity, responsibility, compassion, and forgiveness are undeniable

values, no matter what the venue. Although the four core principles are

the same, the moral challenges that dominate an organization are often

size-dependent.

Poll a cross-section of employees who work for small organiza-

tions, and you begin to see differences in the character of small versus

large organizations. Small company employees typically place a

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premium on decision-making freedom. Some value risk and adventure,

whereas others value the small-town intimacy or the potential to have a

larger impact. Another difference lies in the visibility of leadership in

small organizations. The entrepreneurs or small company CEOs live in

a fishbowl—everyone can see everything they do. The beliefs and goals

that drive leader behavior are just as clear. So, moral competence is par-

ticularly crucial to the small company leader because moral gaps cannot

be hidden—and bad choices lead to more than a slap on the wrist. They

could spell the end of the business.

Challenges of integrity. For small organizations, internal integrity

comes more easily than external integrity. Small companies by virtue of

their size promote more direct and honest communication. Your boss

might be sitting at the desk in the next cubicle, rather than sequestered

in a remote executive suite. Fortunately, good information flow is easier

to come by in a small company because without it, a small enterprise

could go belly up in a matter of weeks. Actifi’s Spenser Segal says this

about the business value of honesty: “When we started, financial viabil-

ity was not a given, and we felt everyone had to feel responsible for our

success. To do that, they had to be able to manage the risk they were

personally taking on. So we instituted a policy of sharing detailed finan-

cial information on a weekly basis. Now everyone knows how much

cash is in our account, what is coming in, and what our pipeline looks

like. Instead of managers and employees speculating and worrying,

everyone knows what’s going on and works together to help us find

solutions.”

Some hierarchical organizations, on the other hand, produce cultures

of intimidation that discourage effective communication. Employees of

large corporations often feel pressured to keep distant superiors happy,

even if it means concealing a painful truth about poor performance.

Ironically, when difficult truths are finally uncovered, the consequences

might not be so dire because large profitable companies usually have the

cash reserves to weather fallout from internal dishonesty.

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Although internal honesty might come more readily to small com-

panies, integrity can be challenged when small companies must put on

a good face to the outside world. Capitalization is a perennial issue for

many small companies. They need to borrow; they need to sell equity

shares, or both. As one start-up founder points out, “It is very tempting

to hide the truth from potential investors about the health of the com-

pany. But resisting temptation is essential. We have to be open and as

transparent as possible about what the issues are. If you’re getting peo-

ple to really commit—whether they are employees or investors, then

you have to be honest about what is working and what isn’t.”

Challenges of responsibility. Unlike large companies, which usu-

ally are focused on increasing profits, many new or small companies are

trying to reach the point of making a profit. Small companies don’t have

the luxury of irresponsibility. Taking too long to admit a mistake can

make the difference between black ink and red ink. But admitting fail-

ure can be hard, in part because individuals who work for small compa-

nies often feel more intense ownership for the decisions they make and

want to keep plugging away to make it work. Unfortunately, that can

spell doom for an emerging business. New companies are successful,

not because they don’t make mistakes, but because they know how to

make a lot of mistakes quickly. The sooner the organization acknowl-

edges a mistake, the sooner it can change course.

ActiFi’s Spenser Segal reflects on the cost of denying mistakes: “In

a small business that doesn’t have a long history of results, it is critical

that you stay firmly grounded in reality without giving up hope for the

long term. We initially developed some sales assumptions for our first

product. Our projections exceeded our results by a factor of five. It was

four months before we were ready to reexamine our assumptions. The

truth was staring us in the face, but no one said anything—maybe

because I was a big part of making the mistake. Fortunately, we were

able to recover, but we lost three months of valuable time by not admit-

ting that our assumptions were flawed and our targets were unrealistic.”

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Spenser then adds a note about the benefits of admitting mistakes:

“Because we had a very experienced management team, we were over-

confident about our business model and our projections. After we

admitted our miscalculation, we got better at admitting that we don’t

know what we don’t know and therefore could look at things more like

experiments. That took a lot of pressure off of everyone thinking that

everything had to succeed.”

Contrast ActiFi’s rocky start with giant American Express, which

had the financial resources to stay with a troubled business venture that

its executives mistakenly thought would work—eventually. American

Express finally closed the business at a loss, but the company as a whole

was never at risk of going out of business because it delayed coming to

terms with a bad business decision. Executives of large companies

might produce higher profits if they heeded the lessons of responsibil-

ity that come from small organizations.

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Small Companies Teach Some Big Lessons

About Responsibility

In large organizations, we often encourage people to take lateral assignments that broaden their experience. Companies would be even smarter to encourage their high potential managers to spend a year or two working in the small business world. What they would learn would make them far more disciplined financial managers. They would know how to pay more attention, when to maintain support, and when to pull the plug on a struggling business. They would be more responsible with the company’s resources. They would appreciate that five million dollars is a lot of money and should not be squandered.

Challenges of compassion. Compassion comes more easily in a

small organization. Within the walls of a small enterprise, you know

people better, and you are likely to know all your co-workers. In a small

organization, no one is anonymous. Small companies more closely

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resemble the interdependent tribal groups that were so important to sur-

vival of our human species. Membership in smaller working groups

seems to activate our hard-wired tendency for altruism. We take interest

in our co-workers. We feel bonded to them. We see their success and

ours as interconnected. When they need help, we want to help them.

That does not mean that smaller organizations are immune from rivalry

or deception or dislike. No human community is perfect. We may see

the dark side of connectedness when we work in a small organization,

but we rarely see indifference. If the small company headquarters is big

enough to have an elevator, it will not be a silent ride.

But compassion is a double-edged sword. Too little compassion—

as in the hard-edged and ultimately unnecessary lay-off in KRW’s early

days—and business may suffer. Too much compassion, as in KRW’s

post-9/11 protracted subsidy of employees, and business may also suf-

fer. Business judgment without compassion can be as equally damaging

as compassion without business judgment. Just as in the last chapter

when we emphasized the fabric of values, skillfully interweaving busi-

ness and moral values is even more critical for the small organization

that commonly lacks the financial cushion to absorb mistakes and

downturns.

Challenges of forgiveness. Because small organizations rely on

their capability to cycle rapidly through mistakes, it is equally important

for small organizations to forgive mistakes. Spenser Segal believes that

forgiveness is critical to the success of a new business, adding, “Every

startup makes tons of mistakes. We have built our business model

assuming mistakes and bad assumptions. By being aligned around our

mission and core values, we are able to look at various strategies as tests

and hypotheses that we are seeking to prove or disprove. By ensuring

that an environment fosters trying new things and doesn’t cause bad

feelings when tests or hypotheses fail, we are able to learn much more

quickly—and that results in much better business models going for-

ward. We need to learn to avoid four-month mistakes. It’s better to make

lots of small mistakes than any big ones.” Amazon.com credits its

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growth from small online bookseller to e-commerce giant to its encour-

agement of innovation. David Risher, former SVP of Marketing with

Amazon.com, describes what the company did to foster innovation:

Three times a year, we presented the “Just Do It” award.

We wanted to explicitly reward people who have pride in

doing something innovative. It had to have been well-

thought through—not just something silly—truly innova-

tive and focused on customer need. But it didn’t have to

work! And [one-third] of the time they didn’t. The reward?

A used Nike sneaker—the bigger the better.

When it comes to letting go of mistakes and failures, small organiza-

tions have an edge. It can be hard to forgive a stranger. Forgiveness

works best when you and I know each other and therefore are willing to

give each other the benefit of the doubt when we make mistakes.

Therefore, letting go of mistakes and moving beyond them happens

more easily in a smaller organization—luckily so. In a small organiza-

tion, you work in close quarters with all the people who might do some-

thing to hurt you. When you are angry at someone who has done you

harm, or when you have done something to hurt another, there is

nowhere to hide. Without the capacity for forgiveness, you would be

surrounded by the tension of the unresolved hurt. Not only would a

tense work environment prevent you from giving your best efforts, it

would keep you from taking advantage of the resources your colleague

would normally offer. In a small organization, it is difficult to work

around a contentious relationship. For example, when you are in con-

flict with your colleague who is the company accountant, there is usu-

ally no department full of other accountants you can go to for help. In

small companies, we are stuck with one another. That is ultimately a

good thing. Knowing and accepting the foibles and failings of our co-

workers sets the stage for “getting over it” and moving forward.

The moral impact of small organizations. Small businesses

(companies of 500 employees or less) represent more than 99% of U.S.

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employers, employ about half of the private sector workforce,and

generate a majority of the innovations that come from United States

companies.1 Although as of 2010, small business growth has slowed,

perhaps because of pessimism caused by the depth of the recent finan-

cial crisis; during prior economic recessions, such as the one between

2001–2003, job growth surpassed job losses among small companies.

During the first quarter of 2002, 36% of jobless managers and execu-

tives started their own businesses, with a majority of laid-off managers

moving to small companies.

Some workers, disenchanted with the legacy of mega-company

scandals, or simply weary of large corporate bureaucracies, look to

smaller organizations to provide a greater sense of meaning and pur-

pose. KRW’s former Chief Financial Officer Don Waletzko is a case in

point. Don left an executive finance position when he couldn’t approve

his former employer’s plan to go on an acquisition binge that would

produce substantial layoffs. Don’s moral compass wouldn’t allow him

to be the financial architect of a strategy that he feared would cause

great personal disruption to his fellow employees. His former com-

pany’s loss was KRW’s gain. Don arrived with a financial pedigree that

a small company such as KRW could ordinarily never have afforded.

Fortunately, salary was not Don’s top priority. He wanted to work for a

company whose values reflected his own, and he found that in KRW’s

commitment to leadership development as a way to improve human

lives. When the aftermath of 9/11 threatened KRW’s survival, Don’s

steadfastness and financial savvy saved the day. He was a key player in

the reorganization and recapitalization that stabilized KRW on its way

back from the brink.

Don is one of many managers who believe they can have more pos-

itive impact on people and organizations by working in a small busi-

ness. The large organization, such as a lumbering ocean liner, can be

hard to turn in the direction of increased moral competence. In contrast,

small organizations, such as a 25-foot sailboat, can turn quickly and

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efficiently when the compass and prevailing winds dictate. Small com-

panies are fertile ground for shaping a morally intelligent culture—one

that provides value simultaneously to its customers, employees, owners,

and the community it inhabits. For those of us who are concerned about

the welfare of all the world’s peoples—small ventures offer great hope

for the future. The path of economic development isn’t from the sweat-

shop to the boardroom. It is from poverty to small locally based sus-

tainable businesses. Everyone who invests in a new venture or small

company has a golden opportunity to infuse the business world with

more principled, more humane, and ultimately, more financially stable

businesses.

Five maxims of moral entrepreneurship. Start-ups are excellent

laboratories for moral leadership. Because resources are tight, mistakes

have more immediate consequences. If you falter, there is no elaborate

infrastructure to cushion you from disaster. American Express can write

off millions in bad junk bond debt without going out of business. The

owner of a new company does not have that luxury.

Entrepreneurs by definition choose paths to success that are both

risky and rewarding, both exhausting and exhilarating. Your success as

an entrepreneur, like that of any leader, depends on following the same

four principles of integrity, responsibility, compassion, and forgiveness

that underlie any sustainable enterprise. Following are five additional

pieces of advice:

1. Build a business that helps others. If your product or serv-

ice doesn’t make the world a better place, why bother?

Frankly, the world just doesn’t need any more pet rocks, reality

TV programs, or 2,500-calorie cinnamon buns. Starting a busi-

ness is hard work. Doesn’t it make sense to unleash your

passion on something that will improve the safety, security,

or comfort of fellow humanity? Knowing that you are build-

ing a socially worthwhile business can sustain you and your

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workforce through the rockiest times. Consider this model of a

profitable business that exists to help others. Mark Oja runs

ACTIVEAID, Inc., the medical devices manufacturing com-

pany founded by his father 45 years ago. ACTIVEAID is a

small company by most standards But to long-time customers

such as the Mayo clinic, and to the 37 employees in the small

town of Redwood Falls, Minnesota (population 5,459), it is a

big business. Employees know what their work means to cus-

tomers—disabled people who rely on its products for mobility,

comfort, and dignity. Quality is paramount. Everyone takes

pride in that what they do helps people in their daily lives. This

level of employee engagement is a big part of the reason why

the company has continued to grow significantly despite a his-

torical recession.

Modern Survey is another small enterprise with service at its

core. Early on, its founders discovered that its real product was

not the business information software solutions it provided, but

the service it offered its customers. According to co-founder,

Don MacPherson, “Service to others is very important. That’s

what we do as a company. It’s helped our business effectiveness

because if we put our clients’ goals first, we achieve our goals.

We have loyal clients, and we do virtually no advertising.

Even if your business fails—most entrepreneurs do fail several

times before finally developing a successful venture—you will

have the satisfaction of knowing your intentions were good.

When you ultimately succeed—by staying true to universal

principles and following the maxims of moral entrepreneur-

ship—you will reap the combined rewards of service and profit.

2. Choose your partners wisely.

If you work in a large organization, your professional relation-

ships tend to form through networks of work associates, indus-

try colleagues, mentors, bosses, and acquaintances. If you work

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in a small organization, your professional relationships often

overlap with personal networks of family and friends. Small

business entrepreneurs are more likely to enter into partnership

arrangements with family members, friends, and friends of

friends. Choosing friends as business partners carries a host of

dangers. No matter how objective you think you are, it is hard to

evaluate a friend or relative’s moral strengths and weaknesses.

The success of your partnerships depends on shared principles

and values. Looking at close personal associates through the

rose-colored glasses of your affection, you may not notice

moral gaps that could spell doom for your mutual venture.

Rowland Moriarty, noted chairman of the Board of CRA

International, Inc., said this about a previous business partner. “I

made a 25-year commitment to a friendship [and] then watched

him take actions that led to the collapse of our company.”

Choosing a friend as a business partner can make it difficult to

address the business problems created by one or the other.

What do you do when a partner-friend betrays your trust by

putting the business at risk? Though it’s hard to contemplate,

your best response would be to remind yourself of your friend’s

ideal self. By considering how your friend wants to behave ide-

ally, you can give your friend the benefit of the doubt and avoid

being overcome by destructive anger. When you believe that

your partner and friend shares your values, you can discuss and

jointly recommit to your vision and goals for your business.

You forgive, and then you move on. You try again. You trust

again. Keep in mind, however, that shared values lose meaning

when ongoing behavior is inconsistent with those values.

Forgiveness is not synonymous with stupidity. You can’t look

the other way when a partner continues to violate your mutual

commitment. It’s bad for your bottom line, and it sends the

wrong message to employees who see that you are afraid to

confront deceptive behavior. Remember that your emotional

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blinders are even stronger when your partner is a family mem-

ber. Consider the experience of Janet Smith. Twenty years ago,

her husband started a home renovation company. Business was

booming, but cash flow was tight. Janet, a bright special needs

teacher and mother of two, did not know that her husband was

keeping his employees’ social security and tax withholdings,

until the IRS summons arrived. Janet and her husband declared

bankruptcy, but that did not protect her from the legal liability

to the IRS. They avoided imprisonment but ended up with mas-

sive penalties that took many years to repay. Meanwhile, her

husband started a second small construction company, after

assuring his wife that he had learned his lesson and would faith-

fully make employee tax payments. A year and a half later,

Janet discovered that her husband had once again failed to

make the proper employer payments to the IRS. Angry but still

desperate to believe in her husband, Janet agreed to become his

partner in a new business that designed, produced, and sold

diagnostic equipment for chiropractic offices. The company

had some success, was on the way to profitability, and had

attracted the interest of a potential buyer. But the succession of

business pressures had taken its toll on their marriage, and Janet

and her husband finally divorced. Only after he signed over the

business to her, did she discover that the potential investor was

a phantom, and her husband had saddled her a third time with a

set of enormous tax liabilities. Janet was an intelligent woman

with good analytic skills. But her overwhelming desire to trust

her husband blinded her to his persistent ethical lapses. Ten

years after her divorce, she is a successful financial advisor to

small businesses, having built a second career out of the painful

lessons of her business partnership with her former husband.

Because start-ups are so fragile, it’s especially important to

choose partners who share your values. “I can’t say enough

about this,” says Spenser Segal. “Understanding that the first

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few years would be filled with adversity, it was critical that we

hired a leadership team that shared common values and

believed that working on something they believed in was the

best possible use of their time. By coming together with a team

who shared that commitment, they were assured of personally

being successful even if the business failed.”

3. Hold on tight to your core values.

Small business entrepreneurs need to be vigilant about main-

taining their alignment with core values. Most entrepreneurs we

know are highly morally intelligent. They are notably articulate

about the principles and beliefs that guide them. ACTIVEAID’s

Mark Oja, for instance, endorses the importance of remaining

true to one’s principles. His moral compass is deceptively sim-

ple. “Honesty and family are the values that mean the most to

me,” says Mark, adding “If you don’t mean it, don’t say it. If

you know or think or feel that something is improper, immoral,

or illegal, don’t do it.” But even though Mark is strongly com-

mitted to those values, business pressures can begin to lure a

company away from its moral foundation. “It can be tough

competing with companies who go offshore for their products.

When we had an opportunity to sell a low-priced cane that

came from outside the U.S., we took it. Then our distributors

complained about how bad the canes were. Our distributors and

customers count on us for high-quality products, and we had

violated their trust. When we realized what we had done, we

canceled the deal. It took some time to repair the relationships

that had been completely trusting before.”

4. Surround yourself with employees who share your values.

When it comes to human talent, do not confuse the “best” with

the “brightest.” Values fit is a stronger contributor to perform-

ance than technical skill. We all have known “values misfits”

who were expert in their fields but couldn’t advance because

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they did not operate effectively within a particular organiza-

tional culture.

Mark Oja recounts this experience: “One time, we knowingly

hired someone we didn’t trust. We needed a certain skill that

was in short supply in our area. Our only skilled candidate in

this small town was a man with a minor rap sheet and a reputa-

tion for bad relationships. But we felt desperate, so we thought

we could handle him. We were wrong. He was impossible to

work with, and we had to let him go.”

KRW International is obsessed with hiring employees who res-

onate with its purpose and values. Before job candidates are

invited for an interview, their technical credentials are carefully

scrutinized. Then the real vetting begins. Candidates run

through a gauntlet of individual and group interviews in which

the spotlight is almost exclusively on “fit” and values. The

KRW community as a whole must agree that the candidate

shares key values and will effectively represent them to cus-

tomers and stakeholders. An owner once violated the recruit-

ment protocol by hiring a consultant who had not run the full

interview gauntlet. His colleagues were angry, and the unwit-

ting new consultant wondered why some of his new associates

were less than friendly.

Although resonance with organizational values is key for suc-

cessful hiring, be sure to preserve diversity. Organization cul-

tures have strengths and weaknesses, and if you hire only

clones of your current workforce, you lose the opportunity to

energize your company with new employees who bring novel

approaches to your products and services.

5. Put your people—and your organization—first.

The United States Army has a saying, “The leader eats last.”

The New York Times offered an illustration of this maxim a few

years ago when it published a photograph of an Army general

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serving Thanksgiving dinner to his combat troops in Afghani-

stan. Army leaders know what every entrepreneur needs to

know. Followers must absolutely trust their leaders to do what

is best for the unit.

Putting people first also means investing in the development of

employees. Small businesses are notorious for neglecting to

invest in employee development. Their financial struggles usu-

ally leave little cash reserve, and it’s easy to drop the ball when

it comes to “overhead” expenses such as training. Studies indi-

cate that large company employees are more than twice as

likely as small company employees to be offered employer-

subsidized educational programs.2 Given the lower average

wages offered by small companies,3 it is even less likely that

employees of small companies will have the financial resources

to maintain and update their job skills. Bucking this trend is

ACTIVEAID’s Mark Oja, who used the productivity increases

generated by a new production system, not as an excuse to

downsize, but as an opportunity for employee development.

Several years ago, ACTIVEAID transformed its manufacturing

process from batch production to packet production—essen-

tially, it changed to a just-in-time production method. Mark

knew that packet production would be more responsive to their

customer, but it also meant there would be times when employ-

ees were not occupied making inventory during the transition.

When employees were first told not to make products, they

were worried, fearing that down time would mean layoffs. But

Mark had no intention of laying people off or reducing work

hours. Today, when orders come in, production gets busy.

When no inventory is needed, employees use the time for train-

ing. Mark is firmly convinced that the investment in training

creates not only more skilled employees but also a more moti-

vated workforce that can enhance their business performance in

the months and years to come.

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Last Words About Business Start-Ups Despite many differences in the culture and operations of small and

large enterprises, the basic requirements of moral leadership are the

same. Moral skills are intrinsic both to successful entrepreneurship and

successful management of established companies. If you are an entre-

preneur, it may seem more difficult to stay true to principles when the

stakes are high and the cash flow is low. But your new venture simply

cannot survive unless it is anchored in core principles. Moral compe-

tence is essential for the small business leader. The small organization

rarely has the excess resources to weather a major moral lapse, nor does

it typically offer the golden handcuffs that could keep employees tied to

a morally bankrupt enterprise.

So in the end, the small organization and the large have this in com-

mon: Doing what is right morally and doing what is right for the busi-

ness are inseparable. No matter the size of the territory, the morally

competent leader weaves business and moral values together—and that

makes all the difference. Just as it’s true that buildings built to last need

a strong foundation, it is also true that businesses built to last need a

strong foundation. Moral principles and moral competencies are that

foundation.

Endnotes 1. U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, September 2009.

2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employee Benefits Survey, 2008. http://www. bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2008/ownership/civilian/table26a.htm.

3. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in Private Industry in the United States, March 2006.” http://www. bls.gov/ncs/ebs/sp/ebsm0004.pdf.

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http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/sp/ebsm0004.pdf

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Undoubtedly, you want your business to succeed, and you want to do

the right thing. The good news of this book is that you are not alone. A

large number of business leaders want to do the right thing and believe

doing the right thing leads to organizational and personal success.

Like many leaders, you feel a deep responsibility for your busi-

nesses and your workforces. Your challenge now is to accept an even

larger responsibility. Whether you realize it, the future of our planet is

in your hands. Why? Because you are part of the most powerful social

force on the planet today. In the last half-century, the corporation has

assumed a central role as the iconic institution of many cultures across

the globe.

Business is rapidly assuming a role as the most influential force in

the lives of the world’s 6.9 billion people. Religions, families, ethnic

groups, and governments still matter and thankfully will continue to

matter, but unless business leaders and their workforces bring moral

values to work, none of those other institutions will matter enough. If

EPILOGUE Becoming a Global

Moral Leader

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you are not sure just how influential you are, consider the importance of

the consumer economy to the well-being of your friends, family,

employees, and the world.

As a business leader, you are a de facto moral educator. The moral

lessons you and your company teach are lessons more powerful and

more pervasive than that of churches, schools, and families. If you do

the right thing, you can teach moral behavior to your employees. If you

cook the books, fire someone unfairly, or use deceptive business prac-

tices, you teach others to do the same thing, or you mislead others into

believing that’s just how business is done.

Your workforce learns right and wrong at your workplace and

learns that “right” is sustainable and “wrong” is not. If we want current

and future generations to care about the welfare of others and the pros-

perity of the business and the survival of the planet, we who lead

today’s businesses need to show them the way. When it comes to moral

values in the workplace, a lot needs to be said, and more needs to be

done!

You may not have signed up to be a global moral leader, but you

are. And with the inescapable power of your role comes a daunting

responsibility. It is a responsibility that includes and yet goes beyond

profitability. It is a responsibility that encompasses and goes beyond

more obvious notions of corporate social responsibility.

Raising the Stakes This book argues that moral intelligence and moral skills are critical to

sustainable business performance. It proposes a set of essential moral

skills and highlights the moral mechanics of interacting with the usual

organizational stakeholders, especially customers, employees, and own-

ers. Like most leaders, you recognize that you are accountable to those

three groups, but another constituency is equally important—the com-

munities beyond your organization.

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Every organization lives within at least one community: whether it

is the neighborhood surrounding the corner grocery store or the world

community in which a major multinational corporation operates. How

well do you serve the community that hosts your business? Consider

these three different levels of responsibility you have for your external

communities:

• The responsibility to do no harm

• The responsibility to add current value

• The responsibility to add future value

Watch Your Wake Boaters entering harbors are often greeted by signs saying, “Watch Your

Wake.” Traveling too fast creates lines of turbulence—the wake of the

boat—that can capsize smaller vessels. You also need to watch your

wake. You need to understand the potential negative consequences of

your presence in the communities where you operate. Some of the most

admired corporations in the United States and in the world have been

slow to acknowledge the catastrophic side effects of their business

processes.

Businesses have knowingly and unknowingly polluted oceans and

rivers and lakes. As Erik Peterson and Jay Farrar from the Center for

Strategic and International Studies1 have pointed out in their presenta-

tion on the “Seven Revolutions” that will shape the world in the next 25

to 50 years, strategic resource management of food, water, and energy

will become an even greater challenge as the overall population of the

world balloons to 8.8 billion by mid-century, while simultaneously the

population of developed countries contracts.

Too few of the world’s biggest companies take seriously their

responsibility to do no harm.” A research report published by

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AccountAbility, a UK-based social responsibility institute found that

the world’s 100 largest companies have a poor record of accounting for

their impact on society and the environment.2 Had traditional philan-

thropy and community involvement been included in the report, big

companies would have been rated more highly. Nevertheless, their rel-

atively poor showing illustrates large companies still need to be con-

vinced to do no harm to the environment.

Although environmental protection is an obvious responsibility for

business organizations, other more subtle forms of pollution need to be

remedied, and other challenges need to be addressed. If you work in the

media industry, you may need to watch your wake in the behavioral

messages you send to children and adults. Just about every business

needs to be concerned with the potential negative consequences on fam-

ily life of a 24/7 work culture.

Give Back In addition to doing no harm, you also have a responsibility to “give

back” to your communities in exchange for the varied resources that

they provide—desirable locations, good employees, attractive living

conditions, raw materials for manufacturing, customers, and so on.

Business-sponsored social responsibility programs are one good way to

add value to your communities at large. Your personal efforts and con-

tributions of time and money are another.

You and your business have likely contributed positively to your

local communities in many ways—perhaps by supporting programs in

education, the arts, and health/well-being or by mentoring programs for

at-risk youth or fundraising for medical research. If you and your organ-

ization add value in these and other ways, good for you and good for

your company.

Giving back is more than a public-relations tool. It is vital for main-

taining thriving local, regional, and world communities and the more

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you can do, the better. As the world’s economy continues to globalize

and as communication and travel technologies continue to “shrink” the

world, each of us and the businesses we lead and work in have the

opportunity to become even better at giving back.

Create the Future Your third level of responsibility, to add future value, is the most chal-

lenging. Accepting responsibility for the future can be difficult in a

business environment that is so attuned to the short term. It is relatively

easy to contribute to the cause of the month because the need and the

benefits are usually obvious. Figuring out how to add future value is

less intuitive. Caring about the future impact of your business on the

community and the world requires a different mindset. Consider this

illustration of the kind of mindset that we would have to cultivate: At

the 1998 State of the World Forum (founded in the mid-1990s by Jim

Garrison and Mikhail Gorbachev), participants had the fascinating

experience of participating in a ceremony led by a Polynesian tribal

chief from Hawaii. After the ritual, the chief was asked, “What is your

advice for those of us in businesses who are concerned about both the

short term and the long term? There is a lot of pressure on quarterly and

annual results.” The chief answered, “You need to understand how we

think about responsibility and accountability. In our culture, we help

people realize they are accountable to the three generations that pre-

ceded them and responsible for the seven generations that follow them.

When we make decisions, we take into consideration the impact of that

decision on someone seven generations from now.”

Imagine what your company’s strategic plan would look like if

Polynesian decision-making criteria were incorporated into your analy-

ses. We have seen the harm done by managers who optimize for the

short term. What kind of good could your company do if its perform-

ance objectives were designed to contribute to results a hundred years

down the road?

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A Global Business Opportunity Ironically, the global economic crises we have been facing during the

last several years make our opportunities to “do well by doing good”

even more obvious. Caroline Stockdale, SVP and chief talent officer of

medical device maker Medtronic offers this perspective:

The globality of the [economic] crisis has made this crisis sig-

nificantly different from any previous downturn. This is still a

very difficult time, and we can see it in countries like Greece

and Ireland and even here in the US. The crisis has impacted so

many lives. Everyone knows someone who has been personally

hurt. What is interesting to me is what lead to this perfect storm

at the macro level was a lack of moral intelligence and a preoc-

cupation with self-interested behavior. At the micro level we

saw people living far beyond their means. People had so much

faith in the economic institutions in America, and that faith has

crumbled, and those institutions have lost respect. But the crisis

also brings opportunity and puts on the map some of the emerg-

ing markets, such as the emergence of China and India. Serving

the need of new markets creates new opportunity.

Like all the moral competencies discussed in this book, serving your

external communities is not only morally right, but also essential for

sustainable business success. The business case for global moral lead-

ership is strong. There are profits to be made. Here lies the opportunity:

As you provide the people of the world with good jobs and fair pay for

their work or fair prices for their products and services, you simultane-

ously expand the opportunity for yourself and your business.

Global business is less about expansive holdings and more about

expansive thinking. Consider this: Businesses that work to increase the

welfare of the global community simultaneously increase the market for

economic goods and services.

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A Business Week article chronicled how new technologies could

help alleviate chronic poverty in India. It pointed out that “many of the

educated elite responsible for the success of India’s tech and software

houses—or who have helped U.S. multinationals prosper—decided to

turn their energies to helping India’s poor.”3 They see both the opportu-

nity for compassion and the business opportunity for profit that comes

from helping the poor move up the economic ladder.

The article quotes management strategist C.K. Prahalad, who says,

“If you can conceptualize the world’s four billion poor as a market,

rather than as a burden, they must be considered the biggest source of

growth left in the world.”4 Every person on the planet is a potential cus-

tomer or partner or supplier or employee. Large companies today may

compete aggressively for a dominant share of a ten-million customer

market or for a relatively small number of highly educated and techni-

cally competent prospective employees, when the actual potential mar-

ket and the potential workforce is the entire world’s population.

Today, markets are constrained by the economic status of regional

populations, and education and development is typically available only

for those who can afford it. But people lacking education are not dumb,

and people without economic means still have material needs and the

intelligence to create economic value (through jobs) in exchange for the

ability to buy products that will satisfy those needs. Many people in

underdeveloped regions can’t afford the consumer products they are

hired to produce. (Think designer athletic shoes.) Wouldn’t it be good

for business if they could? Henry Ford asked that question about an

infant American car industry more than half a century ago. Henry Ford

may not have been a saint in many respects, but he knew how to do well

by doing good. He figured out how to create customers for his new-

fangled automobile by paying his workers well above the going rate. He

wanted people making the Model T to be able to afford one. He created

a market for his products through enlightened self-interest. Henry

Ford’s workers won, and Ford won.

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Prosperity need not be a zero sum game. Why couldn’t we increase

our markets by financing business start-ups in third-world regions? The

micro-lending movement is a good example of the economic effective-

ness of business creation in undeveloped regions. But those economic

experiments are largely the province of academics and nonprofits. Why

aren’t those of us in the for-profit sector doing more to develop com-

munities that will, in turn, sustain us and our businesses through the bal-

ance of this new century and beyond?

We need to stop thinking that we can only win if others lose.

Ultimately, none of us will do well unless all of us do well. We may be

feeling quite comfortable in our plush executive suite or on the porch of

our summer home. But our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will

not have the benefit of our well-appointed lives if we don’t help all the

world’s people do better.

Conclusion Mark Twain once said, “It is curious that physical courage should be so

common in the world and moral courage so rare.” It is time for moral

courage to take center stage in business and for business to accept the

responsibility that comes with its prominent position in the world. The

ball is in our court.

Endnotes 1. As presented at http://www.csis.org.

2. AccountAbility, The State of Responsible Competitiveness 2007, http://www. accountability.org/images/content/0/7/075/The%20State%20of%20Responsible %20Competitiveness.pdf.

3. “The Digital Village,” Business Week, June 28, 2004.

4. Ibid.

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Think of moral skill building as a learning process like any other.

Richard Boyatzis, noted leadership development expert, offers a partic-

ularly useful way of understanding how we build leadership capabili-

ties.1 Boyatzis argues that we don’t learn to be better people or better

leaders by attending training programs. We build our human and lead-

ership capabilities through actual life experiences. Though experience

is the best teacher, we don’t have to leave what we learn to chance.

Boyatzis proposes that we can put ourselves in charge of our learning

using a structured five-step process:

1. Understand your ideal self—The person you want to be.

2. Recognize your real self—Your actual strengths and weak-

nesses in the context of who you want to be.

3. Decide how to build on your strengths and reduce the gaps

between your real and ideal selves.

Strengthening Your Moral Skills

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4. Experiment with new behaviors and feelings.

5. Develop trusting relationships with people who will support

your learning process.

Developing moral skills follows the same cycle of self-directed learn-

ing. In Chapter 3, “Your Moral Compass,” you had an opportunity to

complete the first step of the process—you examined the contents of

your principles, values, beliefs, and your goals, all of which make up

the raw material of your ideal self. So you’re now ready for the next

step to understand your real self—by assessing your moral strengths

and weaknesses. With a full picture of your ideal self and real self, you

can then be in position to craft a moral learning plan. Your moral learn-

ing plan can be your road map for gaining the moral skills that are most

important to you and that promote the highest levels of business

performance.

A Look in the Mirror Most of us have some idea of our moral strengths and weaknesses. Our

conscience might give us a pang if we exaggerate a business accom-

plishment. A friend could take us to task for being thoughtless. Or we

may feel secure in our unswerving fairness to our employees. But our

data about our own moral performance is usually anecdotal and incom-

plete. To help you identify your moral strengths and weaknesses, we

have developed the Moral Competency Inventory (MCI). See Appendix

B, “Moral Competency Inventory (MCI).”

Using the MCI The MCI is a 40-item survey that you will find here and in Appendix B.

It is a self-report survey; that is, you are the person who rates yourself

on each item, and you are the person who decides the meaning of the

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results. Take the MCI when you have an hour to spend. It will take

about 20 minutes to complete the survey, about 10 minutes to score, and

another 30 minutes to reflect on your results.

The MCI is a self-development tool, not a test, so it does not have

the scientific precision of, say, the SATs or an IQ test. But leaders who

have used the MCI tell us that it helps them capitalize on their moral

strengths and strengthen moral skills that are difficult for them.

It is important for the user of the MCI to understand that this instru-

ment does not have validity as a selection tool nor as a personality test.

Thus, it should be used for personal reasons only and not for any pro-

fessional use by human resource professionals.

The Right Frame of Mind for Completing the MCI The MCI items are all worded in a positive way, so there is no attempt

to hide what the survey would consider to be positive behavior. Because

you are rating yourself, the value of the MCI will be enhanced if you are

as honest with yourself as possible. That means trying to avoid two

kinds of self-rating errors:

• The tendency to give yourself a high rating on most items because they sound like positive things to do

• The tendency to give yourself low ratings on many items because you are typically hard on yourself (self-critical)

Scoring and Interpreting Your MCI You will find scoring instructions in Appendix C, “Scoring the MCI,”

and interpretation guidelines in Appendix D, “Interpreting Your MCI

Scores.”

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There are several different ways to look at your MCI scores. You

will have an opportunity to consider your overall moral competency

profile, and you also can examine specific areas where you have

strength or need development. No single interpretation is correct, and

no “test” is the last word on your capabilities. If any part of your MCI

scores don’t ring true to you, keep in mind that you know yourself best.

But if you are dissatisfied with your scores, we ask only that before dis-

missing them, you use your results as a springboard for honest reflec-

tion about your strengths and weaknesses.

Prioritizing Your Moral Development Efforts There are two paths to improving your performance in any arena of life.

You can concentrate on removing weaknesses, or you can focus on

using your strengths. When you focus on your weaknesses, you try to

improve your performance by undoing old behavior and practicing new

skills or competencies. When you focus on your strengths, you try to

improve performance by finding new ways to use the skills and compe-

tencies you already have.

Which path do you think is more effective? We believe you can

reach higher levels of performance by capitalizing on your strengths

than by trying to remove your weaknesses.

Which path do you think most organizations follow? Most organi-

zations try to improve the performance of their workforce by concen-

trating on deficiencies. Our experience has been that most of the

performance feedback many employees receive is negative, that is,

information about perceived gaps. Organizations assume that negative

feedback will create awareness of gaps that employees will then seek to

improve. Ironically, negative feedback often produces the opposite

effect. Studies have shown that performance often gets worse following

negative feedback. It can take weeks for performance to recover to

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previous levels and months, if ever, to see positive gains in perform-

ance. Even though managers regularly observe that negative feedback

can be counterproductive, most organizations continue to provide an

excess of feedback about performance gaps. Focusing on gaps is a

well-worn path, but one that rarely leads to the highest organizational

performance.

The Road Less Traveled Most organizations treat positive feedback, that is, recognition of

strengths, like a scarce resource. Employees are expected to perform

well, and when they use their strengths to accomplish positive results, it

often passes without comment. Organizations who fail to acknowledge

strengths miss out on a tremendous performance multiplier. That is

unfortunate because most employees perform best by spending most of

their time leveraging their strengths. It is in our strengths that we most

resemble our ideal selves, and the more time we spend using our

strengths, the more closely we approach our ideal self. Focusing on

strengths may be “the road less traveled,” but it is the path that makes

the most difference to creating high performance.

The 80/20 Rule Management consultant Roy Geer, offers this advice: Spend 80 percent

or more of your time developing and leveraging your strengths and 20

percent or less of your time “pumping air into your priority flat spots

(weaknesses).”

Look for ways to leverage the moral strengths you already have.

Actively use those aspects of yourself that are closest to your ideal self.

For example, Marietta Johns is a senior executive who knew she was

weak in the financial management aspects of her job. But she didn’t

spend a lot of time trying to learn what she didn’t know. She got help

APPENDIX A • STRENGTHENING YOUR MORAL SKILLS 255

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from a corporate financial guru and concentrated on doing what she did

best—connecting with her people and inspiring them to produce envi-

able financial results.

Moral development is largely a process of developing and leverag-

ing your strongest moral competencies. You can get the most perform-

ance equity from using your strengths, but you can also benefit from

spending up to 20% of your development time dealing with your gaps.

By concentrating primarily on your strengths, you can also avoid the

discouragement of trying to remove gaps that are part of your basic per-

sonality and difficult to change. So don’t ignore your gaps. Allocate

your time wisely on the path to your ideal self.

Your Moral Development Plan A moral development plan helps you boost your performance by

increasing the odds that you will actually do the things that increase

your moral competence. A moral development plan records your moral

development goals and outlines specific actions you will take to become

increasingly morally competent. This need not be a separate plan from

a professional development plan. If you work in an organization or for

a boss open to discussing principles, values, and beliefs, you may find

it useful to include moral development as part of your overall develop-

ment plan. The important thing is to write down the moral and emo-

tional competencies on which you want to focus and detail the steps you

will take to use those competencies. Goals for moral development, like

any goals, are more likely to be achieved when you commit to them in

writing.

Step 1: Describe Your Ideal Self

Moral development planning makes sense only in the context of

who you want to be. Recall the principles, values, and beliefs

that form your moral compass. Given that set of beliefs, what

kind of person would you be if you were at your absolute best?

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Step 2: Document Your Goals

Again, moral development is only important if it helps you

accomplish your most important goals. Recall your goals

frame. What are the most significant things you want to accom-

plish in all of the important areas of your life?

Step 3: Identify the Moral Competencies You Need

the Most

Reflect on the moral and emotional competencies that you need

the most to reach your goals. If you used the alignment work-

sheet presented earlier, you have already completed this step.

Step 4: Leveraging Your Strongest Moral Competencies

Now recall your strongest moral and emotional competencies:

• In the course of the next six months, how can you use those competencies to get closer to your goals?

• Can you use your strengths in a new situation?

• How might you become even stronger in your use of some of those strengths?

• If it were possible to use your strengths and use them well enough, how many gaps would you actually have?

Step 5: Reducing Moral Gaps

• In the next six months, what could you do to strengthen those moral competencies in situations that are important

to you?

• If you strengthened one competency, what impact would that have on your ability to accomplish your goals?

Finally, consider any other moral or emotional competencies

that are highly important to accomplishing your goals:

APPENDIX A • STRENGTHENING YOUR MORAL SKILLS 257

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• In the next six months, what could you do to strengthen those moral competencies in situations that are important

to you?

Step 6: Your Moral Development Short List

Putting this all together, what are the three to five most impor-

tant actions you can take to boost performance by developing

your moral competence? Put this on a note card, enter it into

your planner, or record it anywhere that you can keep it handy

as a reminder of what you plan to accomplish.

Putting Your Moral Development Plan into Practice Now that you have your short list, moving forward should be easy. But

actually doing what you think is important requires that you clear the

road ahead. We need to keep our behavior on course with our beliefs

and goals. If you recall the alignment model, unproductive behavior is

usually the result of disconnectors—those moral viruses or destructive

emotions that get in the way of positive and aligned actions. So chang-

ing behavior begins with recognizing your personal disconnectors and

then reprogramming yourself to stay in alignment even when moral

viruses or destructive emotions threaten you.

Breaking Bad Habits Although moral viruses and destructive emotions are major causes of

misalignment, another common cause of misalignment between goals

and behaviors is simply a matter of bad habits. Changing our behavior

so that we do what we need to do to accomplish our goals usually

258 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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means overcoming the inertia of doing things the usual way. Anyone

who has tried to quit smoking or lose ten pounds knows that repro-

gramming behavior is not easy. Developing moral competence usually

means that you have to change habits that get in the way of being moral.

Realize that doing something different will not feel natural. Don’t

wait until something feels right. Do the right thing until it feels right.

Expect a new behavior to feel strange or uncomfortable. Be willing to

do it no matter what for x days. Build in reinforcement to tide you over

until the behavior becomes second nature.

Reward Yourself for Positive Change The best way to reinforce a new behavior is to reward yourself for doing

something new. This doesn’t mean that you need to sign up for a golf or

spa vacation to reward yourself for doing the right thing. It’s more along

the lines of waiting for dessert until you have eaten your peas. Take the

pleasures that are already part of your life and make them contingent on

succeeding in the behavior changes that are part of your moral develop-

ment planning. Celebrate your new behavior by going to that Friday

night movie. If you have ignored your development plan for the week,

stay home and pay your bills. When setting up your reward system, be

sure that you use an optional activity, not a necessary activity such as

exercise. You don’t want to compromise your health or well-being if

you suffer a setback in your change efforts.

Surround Yourself with Positive People Because we are wired for interdependence, we need help from others to

do our best. Within Boyatzis’ theory of self-directed learning is the

discovery that “you need others to identify your ideal self or find your

real self, to discover your strengths and gaps, to develop an agenda for

APPENDIX A • STRENGTHENING YOUR MORAL SKILLS 259

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the future, and to experiment and practice.” Everyone needs the support

of trustworthy friends and colleagues to help them stay true to their

goals. Make sure you establish at least a few relationships with people

who will tell you the truth about yourself, even when you might not

want to hear it. Find trusted people who know your values and goals

and will let you know when you are not living up to them. When you

are attempting new behavior, let them know what changes you are try-

ing to make and ask them to tell you if they see you falter.

Do I Really Need to Change? Like any worthwhile activity, living in alignment takes some effort. You

might wonder if you really need to change. You are, after all, a decent

human being with a good track record of career accomplishment. If you

are an experienced manager, you may even believe that you already

know all you need to know and don’t need to learn anything new. If you

are a senior manager, it has probably been a long time since you have

gotten any critical feedback about your leadership skills. So why go to

the trouble of trying to enhance your moral competence? Developing

moral competence is every person’s job because when it comes to

human behavior, there is no standing still. If you don’t continuously

work on your moral development, you will lose moral competence.

Think about any activity you used to enjoy that you have dropped over

the years. It is not quite true that there are some things you never forget

how to do, such as riding a bicycle. Get on a bike after 20 years, and

you will probably gain your balance, but you certainly won’t be able to

go as fast, or as far, or turn as smoothly as you did when you were

young. You might still be able to pedal, but your performance won’t be

what it could if you had kept on biking all those years. Maintaining and

developing moral competence happens only when we keep pedaling.

We need to use our strengths consistently, day after day, in pursuit of

our ideal self. As our real self comes to look more and more like our

260 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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ideal self, we will see the results in our personal lives and in our leader-

ship of others.

Resist the urge to think of yourself as a finished product. Don’t let

anything stand in the way of becoming your ideal self. Invest time in

activities that build on your strengths and enhance your moral compe-

tence. You are in charge of your moral development, but don’t think you

have to go it alone. Take advantage of personal development resources

that you might not have considered in the past.

Books, Audio, and Video Media There are many worthwhile books on the topic of principled leadership

and personal growth. Reading such books is one good way to reflect on

what is most important to you. For the busy manager with a long

commute, books on tape are a useful way to de-stress and maintain

alignment.

Workshops Look for seminars on leadership, emotional intelligence, and values.

Many senior managers think they don’t need “training.” Recognize your

human fallibility and invest the time in active learning where you

can benefit from the expertise of the presenters and the support of your

fellow participants.

Personal Counseling Some of us find that our moral viruses are so severe that they are seri-

ously limiting our personal and professional effectiveness. The worst

moral viruses usually arose out of traumatic childhood events. If some

APPENDIX A • STRENGTHENING YOUR MORAL SKILLS 261

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aspect of your life is not working for you, despite your best efforts,

find a counselor or psychotherapist who can help you understand the

source of your difficulties and work with you to develop more effective

behavior.

Executive Coaching Executive coaches are a particularly helpful resource for high-potential

managers who want to accelerate their leadership development and for

seasoned managers with moral or emotional blind spots. An executive

coach understands the demands of your leadership role and the politics

and culture of your organization. A coach can help you get the kind of

honest feedback you need to build a development plan, keep you

focused on your goals, and advise you on how to increase your leader-

ship effectiveness. Many of the best-known Fortune 500 CEOs have

benefited from their use of executive coaching services.

Endnote 1. Dan Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, Annie McKee. Primal Leadership: Realizing

the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

262 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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• Please choose one rating in response to each statement by cir- cling the number that corresponds to your rating.

• You will get the most value from this assessment if you respond honestly. It may be tempting to give yourself a high rating

because the statement sounds positive, but please do your best to

rate yourself accurately in terms of how you really behave.

1. I can clearly state the principles, 1 = Never

values, and beliefs that guide 2 = Infrequently

my actions. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

Moral Competency Inventory (MCI)

263

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2. I tell the truth unless there is an 1 = Never

overriding moral reason to withhold it. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

3. I will generally confront someone 1 = Never

if I see them doing something that 2 = Infrequently

isn’t right. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

4. When I agree to do something, 1 = Never

I always follow through. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

5. When I make a decision that turns out 1 = Never

to be a mistake, I admit it. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

6. I own up to my own mistakes 1 = Never

and failures. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

7. My colleagues would say that I go 1 = Never

out of my way to help them. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

264 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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8. My first response when I meet new 1 = Never

people is to be genuinely interested 2 = Infrequently

in them. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

9. I appreciate the positive aspects of 1 = Never

my past mistakes, realizing that they 2 = Infrequently

were valuable lessons on my way to 3 = Sometimes

success. 4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

10. I am able to “forgive and forget,” even 1 = Never

when someone has made a serious 2 = Infrequently

mistake. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

11. When faced with an important decision, 1 = Never

I consciously assess whether the decision 2 = Infrequently

I want to make is aligned with my most 3 = Sometimes

deeply held principles, values, and 4 = In most situations

beliefs. 5 = In all situations

12. My friends know they can depend on 1 = Never

me to be truthful to them. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

13. If I believe that my boss is doing 1 = Never

something that isn’t right, I will 2 = Infrequently

challenge him or her. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

APPENDIX B • MORAL COMPETENCY INVENTORY (MCI) 265

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14. My friends and co-workers know they 1 = Never

can depend on me to keep my word. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

15. When I make a mistake, I take respons- 1 = Never

ibility for correcting the situation. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

16. I am willing to accept the 1 = Never

consequences of my mistakes. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

17. My leadership approach is to lead 1 = Never

by serving others. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

18. I truly care about the people I work with 1 = Never

as people—not just as the “human 2 = Infrequently

capital” needed to produce results. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

19. I resist the urge to dwell on my mistakes. 1 = Never

2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

266 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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20. When I forgive someone, I find that it 1 = Never

benefits me as much as it does them. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

21. My friends would say that my behavior 1 = Never

is consistent with my beliefs and 2 = Infrequently

values. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

22. My co-workers think of me as an 1 = Never

honest person. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

23. If I knew my company was engaging 1 = Never

in unethical or illegal behavior, I would 2 = Infrequently

report it, even if it could have an adverse 3 = Sometimes

effect on my career. 4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

24. When a situation may prevent me from 1 = Never

keeping a promise, I consult with those 2 = Infrequently

involved to renegotiate the agreement. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

25. My co-workers would say that I take 1 = Never

ownership of my decisions. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

APPENDIX B • MORAL COMPETENCY INVENTORY (MCI) 267

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26. I use my mistakes as an opportunity to 1 = Never

improve my performance. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

27. I pay attention to the development 1 = Never

needs of my co-workers. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

28. My co-workers would say that I am a 1 = Never

compassionate person. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

29. My co-workers would say that I have a 1 = Never

realistic attitude about my mistakes 2 = Infrequently

and failures. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

30. I accept that other people will 1 = Never

make mistakes. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

31. My co-workers would say that my 1 = Never

behavior is consistent with my 2 = Infrequently

beliefs and values. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

268 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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32. I can deliver negative feedback 1 = Never

in a respectful way. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

33. My co-workers would say that I am the 1 = Never

kind of person who stands up for my 2 = Infrequently

convictions. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

34. When someone asks me to keep a 1 = Never

confidence, I do so. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

35. When things go wrong, I do not blame 1 = Never

others or circumstances. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

36. I discuss my mistakes with co-workers 1 = Never

to encourage tolerance for risk. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

37. I spend a significant amount of my time 1 = Never

providing resources and removing 2 = Infrequently

obstacles for my co-workers. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

APPENDIX B • MORAL COMPETENCY INVENTORY (MCI) 269

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38. Because I care about my co-workers, 1 = Never

I actively support their efforts to 2 = Infrequently

accomplish important personal goals. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

39. Even when I have made a serious 1 = Never

mistake in my life, I can forgive 2 = Infrequently

myself and move ahead. 3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

40. Even when people make mistakes, 1 = Never

I continue to trust them. 2 = Infrequently

3 = Sometimes

4 = In most situations

5 = In all situations

270 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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If you are using the paper version of the MCI that appears in this book,

you now need to use the following scoring sheet to produce your survey

results:

1. Transfer your ratings for each item to the scoring sheet. Your

item 1 rating should be placed next to the number “1” in col-

umn A. Your rating for item 2 should be placed next to “2” in

column B, and so on. Continue until you have transferred your

ratings for all 40 items.

2. Add each column and place the total in the box indicated.

3. Add columns A through J and place the total in the box indi-

cated. Columns A through J are subscores for each of the 10

moral competencies discussed in Chapters 5–7.

Scoring the MCI

271

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4. Divide the total from columns A–J (step 3a) by 2 and place in

the box indicated. This is your total MC (Moral Competency)

score. The maximum MCI score is 100.

5. Using the Moral Competencies Worksheet below the scoring

sheet, transfer your scores for each column—A through J—to

the corresponding list of competencies listed after each corre-

sponding letter.

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A PPE

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M C

I 273

MCI Scoring Sheet

Item A Item B Item C Item D Item E Item F Item G Item H Item I Item J 3a. Add

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Add Add Add Add Add Add Add Add Add Add

Col Col Col Col Col Col Col Col Col Col

A B C D E F G H I J

4a. Divide by 2

MCI Score

columns (A–J)

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Moral Competencies Worksheet A. Acting consistently with principles, values, and beliefs

B. Telling the truth

C. Standing up for what is right

D. Keeping promises

E. Taking responsibility for personal choices

F. Admitting mistakes and failures

G. Embracing responsibility for serving others

H. Actively caring about others

I. Ability to let go of one’s own mistakes

J. Ability to let go of others’ mistakes

Highest Moral Competencies Lowest Moral Competencies

1. 1.

2. 2.

3. 3.

What Your Total MCI Score Means Your total score is a measure of alignment. If your score is high, it is

highly likely that you typically act in ways consistent with your beliefs

and goals. If your score is low, it is likely that your typical behavior is

out of synch with what you believe and what you want for yourself.

Table C.1 shows the distribution of MCI scores from very low to very

high.

274 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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Table C.1 Total MCI Score (Alignment Score)

Score Ranking

90–100 Very High

80–89 High

60–79 Moderate

40–59 Low

20–39 Very Low

APPENDIX C • SCORING THE MCI 275

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There are quite a few different ways to look at your MCI scores. No

single interpretation is correct, and no “test” is the last word on your

capabilities. We recommend that you reflect on each of these aspects of

your MCI scores to see whether they trigger the self-awareness that is

so crucial to ongoing moral development. We think you will find your

results to be interesting and illuminating. If aspects of the MCI inter-

pretation are confusing or don’t make sense to you, we trust that in the

final analysis, you know yourself better than any paper-and-pencil

assessment. That said—here are some ways to interpret your scores.

Interpreting Your MCI Scores

277

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Total MCI Score (Alignment Score)

Score Ranking

90–100 Very High

80–89 High

60–79 Moderate

40–59 Low

20–39 Very Low

• The maximum possible score is 100. A score of 100 would mean that you answered every item on the MCI with a “5” and would

indicate that you believe you are completely competent in all 10

moral competencies assessed by the inventory. Because no

human being is perfect, a perfect score on the MCI might mean

that you have some difficulty acknowledging areas of weakness.

• The minimum score is 20. Most people have some degree of moral competency; therefore, low and very low scores may

reflect excess self-criticism rather than genuine moral incompe-

tence. In our experience, scores below 60 are extremely rare,

most likely because corporate leaders do not succeed without

some degree of moral competency.

• MCI scores fall most frequently in the moderate range (between 60 and 79).

• Your total MCI score is simply a snapshot of your overall moral competence. If you take the MCI every year or so, your total

score can help you see whether your overall level of moral com-

petence is increasing.

278 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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Highest and Lowest Competency Scores

• Most people who complete the MCI have one or two moral com- petency scores that stand out as higher or lower than the bulk of

the scores. When you completed the MCI worksheet, you identi-

fied your highest and lowest scores in each competency area.

Take a look at them now.

• Do your highest scores fit your understanding of your own strengths? If so, these are the competencies that you know how

to use to maintain alignment and promote high performance. Are

there any high scores that surprised you? If so, they may repre-

sent areas of strength that you had not been aware of and are

competencies that can further help you to achieve your goals.

• Do your lowest scores fit your understanding of where your weaknesses lie? If so, you have an opportunity to develop your

competencies if you decide that improvement in those compe-

tencies is important to you. Are there any low scores that sur-

prised you? If so, they may represent blind spots that are keeping

you from reaching your goals.

Individual Item Scores

• Go back to the scoring sheet and look for very high and very low scores. If you have a few scores of “5,” those items may be areas

of particular strength that you should recognize, appreciate, and

use. If you have a majority of “5”s, you may be extremely

morally competent across the board, but you also may have over-

represented your strengths. People with very high scores across

the board may need to solicit feedback from others to confirm

the accuracy of their scores.

APPENDIX D • INTERPRETING YOUR MCI SCORES 279

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• If you have some scores that are “2” or “1,” what weaknesses do those items represent? Given that most people who take the MCI

have very few item scores below “3,” low item scores usually

represent wonderful opportunities for removing obstacles to high

performance.

• Take a look at the item scores for your highest and lowest com- petencies. Was your lowest competency score a result of

midrange scores for each of the four related items, or was your

competency score low because of one very low item score? If so,

you might find that paying attention to that single aspect of the

competency could greatly boost your competence in that area.

Reality Testing How much do you trust your self-assessment of your moral competen-

cies? Most of us have some degree of difficulty seeing ourselves as

other see us. As a reality test, we recommend that you share your MCI

scores with one or two trusted friends or colleagues. Here are some

questions you can ask them:

• How well do my strengths as reported on the MCI reflect your perception of my strengths?

• How well do my weaknesses as reported on the MCI reflect your perception of my strengths?

• Are there other moral competencies that you see as my strengths?

• Are there other moral competencies that you see as weaknesses?

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate me on integrity?

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate me on responsibility?

280 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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• On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate me on how well I show compassion?

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate me on my capacity for forgiveness?

Do Your Scores Matter?

• All the competencies included in the MCI are important, and all act synergistically. But realistically, we are all human and need

to concentrate on developing the competencies that will have the

most impact on us and our organizations.

• You already have decided whether your scores accurately reflect your areas of moral strength and weakness. At a deeper level,

how well do your scores represent competency areas that are

important to you? After all, you can be good or bad at things that

you don’t care about. So, we encourage you to think about the

extent to which the competencies identified are consistent with

your moral compass and your goals that you explored in Chapter

3, “Your Moral Compass.” Completing the Alignment Worksheet

helps you to decide how much effort to put into developing spe-

cific emotional and moral competencies. In the first column, you

see the list of competencies.

• In the second column, record your relative scores. (For example, was it your highest, lowest, or midrange score for each scale.)

• In the third column, rate each competency in terms of its importance to your personal guidance system. For example, is

“admitting mistakes and failures” high, medium, or low in its

importance to your principles, values, and beliefs?

APPENDIX D • INTERPRETING YOUR MCI SCORES 281

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• In the fourth column, rate each competency in terms of its impor- tance to accomplishing your goals. For example, is “actively car-

ing about others” high, medium, or low in its importance to your

ability to accomplish your goals?

Now What? By completing the alignment worksheet, you have prioritized compe-

tencies in terms of their importance to you. You have identified

• Areas of strength and weakness that are important for alignment.

• Areas of strength and weakness that are less important for alignment.

• Competency areas that are neither strengths nor weaknesses that are important for alignment. Your scores for a competency may

be mid-range, but because it is a highly important competency

for maintaining alignment with your guidance system or to

accomplish your goals, it is worth your effort to enhance that

competency to the fullest.

As an aside, if your rating of a competency’s importance to your guid-

ance system is different from your rating of its importance to goal

accomplishment, you might have a disconnect between your moral

compass and your goals that needs to be considered.

Armed with this understanding of your moral competency levels

and their importance to your moral compass and goals, you can map

out a straightforward approach to enhance your moral and emotional

competence.

282 MORAL INTELLIGENCE 2.0

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Alignment Worksheet

Moral Competencies MCI Score Importance to My Importance to (High, Midrange, Low) Principles, Values, Accomplishing My Goals

and Beliefs (High, Medium, Low) (High, Medium, Low)

A. Acting consistently with principles, values, and beliefs

B. Telling the truth

C. Standing up for what is right

D. Keeping promises

E. Taking responsibility for personal choices

F. Admitting mistakes and failures

G. Embracing responsibility or serving others

H. Actively caring about others

I. Ability to let go of one’s own mistakes

J. Ability to let go of others’ mistakes

A PPE

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ptgA ABACUS 2007-AC1, 12 Aberman, Rick, xxxi, 175 ACA (ACA Management LLC), 12 ActiFi, 59, 73, 229-230 actions, 79 active listening, 149-151 ACTIVEAID, Inc., 236, 239-241 Adelphia Communications, 6 admitting mistakes/failures,

117-121, 209 adrenal gland, 51 adrenaline, 51 AdvisorNet Financial, 14 AEFA (American Express Financial

Advisors). See Ameriprise Financial Services

Alcatel, 6 Alignment Worksheet, 281-283 alignment. See living in alignment Allianz Life Insurance Company of

North America, 27, 216 Amazon.com, 108, 232 American Atheists, Inc., 36

American Express, xxvi-xxvii, 145, 182-185, 197-198, 221, 231, 235

American Express Financial Advisors (AEFA). See Ameriprise Financial Services

American Honda Motor Co., Inc., 18, 108

American Humanist Association, 37 American Partners Bank, 106 American Portfolio, 107 Ameriprise Financial Services, xxv, 25,

124-126, 144, 208 amygdala, 49-51, 161 Anderson, Brad, 219 approachability, 154-155 Arnold, Roger, xxix, 157-158

B bad habits, 258-259 Baker, Douglas, xxviii, 18, 145 balance, 144-146 Bank of America, 11 Bar-On, Reuven, xxxi

Index

285

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basal ganglia, 49 Bastian, Rich, 60 Bear Stearns, 10 behavior, 75

actions, 79 emotions, 77-79 thoughts, 76-77

beliefs acting consistently with, 98-99 explained, 68 identifying your top ten beliefs,

68-69 sharing, 192-193

Bell, David, 85 Benson, Herbert, 146, 171 Best Buy, 219 Best Corporate Citizen companies, 26 big picture, reflecting on, 172-173 Blackwell, Lawana, 125 Blake, Brenda, xxx, 197-198 Blanchard, Ken, 120 Bower, Marvin, 201 Boyatsis, Richard, xxxi, 23, 218,

251-252, 262 Bradley, Walt, xxx, 98 brain, moral anatomy of, 41-46

danger system, 51 emotional center, 49 fMRI (functional magnetic

resonance imaging), 45 habit center, 49 lessons from brain-injured

individuals, 42-45 neuroscience of moral

decision-making, 48-52 plasticity of brain, 52-53 rational center, 49 reward system, 52 simplified model of brain, 48

breaking bad habits, 258-259 Brettler, Dan, xxviii Bronfman, Sam, xxx, 184 Brown, Donald E., 36 Brushaber, George, xxx Burger King North America, 103, 220 business success, impact of moral

intelligence on, 25-27

C Campbell, David, 72 Camus, Albert, 142 Cannon, Kate, xxxi Caplan, Robert, xxxi Cardinal Health, 188 Carlson, Cindy, xxx Carlson Companies, 119 Cayne, James, 10 cerebral cortex, 49 change

recognizing need for, 260-261 rewarding yourself for, 259

Chapman, Peter, 10 Chenault, Kenneth, xxvi-xxviii,

182-183, 221 Cherniss, Cary, xxxii childhood, moral development in

empathy, 39-40 importance of early childhood

experiences, 41 neonate responsive crying, 38 responsibility, 40

choices, taking responsibility for, 115-117

Churchill, Winston, 142 Clayton, Paul, xxviii, 103, 220 Clevette, Rick, 119 coaching, 190, 262 Coca-Cola, 189 cognitive behavior, 76-77 cognitive intelligence (IQ), 19 Collins, Jim, 218 collision of values, 195 communities

giving back to, 246-247 responsibility to, 244-245

compassion, 126-128 defined, 22 misplaced compassion, 149-151 in morally intelligent organizations,

213-215 in small organizations, 231-232

competing drives, 47-48 competitiveness, 47 confidences, honoring, 110-111 confirmation bias, 169 conflicts (values), 67-68 Connolly, Michael, xxx

286 INDEX

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INDEX 287

consistency, 98-99 consumers, influence of moral

intelligence on, 29-30 core values for small businesses, 239 corporate accounting scandals, 5-7 Corps Business: The 30 Management

Principles of the U. S. Marines (Freedman), 215

cortisol, 51 Coughlan, Jay, 16 counseling, 261 Countrywide, 8-10 Covey, Stephen, xxxii, 37 Cracchiolo, Jim, 209 Cuomo, Andrew, 11

D Dalai Lama, 125 danger system (brain), 51 Dardis, Stan, xxviii Darwin, Charles, 46 Dautheribes, Therese M., 36 DDB Worldwide, 136 decision-making

4 Rs explained, 159-162 practicing, 162-163 recognition, 163-170 reflection, 170-173 reframing, 174-175 responding, 175-178

neuroscience of, 48-52 and values, 65-66

destructive emotions, 89-91 diagnosing moral viruses, 86, 88 The Diary of Anne Frank, 104 differences, appreciating, 152-156 differentiating competencies, 19 disconnectors, 258 Distribution for Wealth Enhancement

Group, 157 documenting goals, 257 Dodd, Christopher, 10 Dolber, Lon, xxviii, 107 Donaldson, Thomas, 211 dopamine, 52, 78 Druskat, Vanessa, xxxii Ducks Unlimited, 126 Dylan, Bob, 113

E Ecolab, Inc., 18, 145 Edison, Thomas, 216 Edwards, Dave, xxx, 197 80/20 rule, 255-256 Eisenberg, Daniel, 211 Emmerling, Robert, xxxii emotional center of brain, 49 emotional competencies, 77-79

compared to moral intelligence, 23-24

destructive emotions, 89-91 empathy, 148-149 emotional health, nurturing, 143-147 explained, 19-21, 83-85, 135-137 getting along with others, 154-156 influence on life success, 22 interpersonal effectiveness, 147 misplaced compassion, 149-151 nurturing emotional health, 143-147 personal effectiveness, 141 positive self-talk, 141-142 recognizing emotions, 139, 169-170 respecting others, 151-153 self-awareness, 137-139 self-control, 142-143 understanding your thoughts, 140

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (Goleman), 20

empathy, 38-40, 148-149 employees

coaching, 190 communicating belief in

employees, 191-194 development, 189-191 mutual accountability, 194-195 providing feedback to, 193-194 recruiting, 217-219, 239 retention, 27-29 reward systems, 219-221 value differences with, 195-196

Enron, 5, 114 entrepreneurs, 223

compassion, 231-232 five maxims of moral

entrepreneurship, 235-241 forgiveness, 232-233 integrity, 229-230 KRW International, 225-228

ptg

moral impact of, 233-235 moral leadership, 242 responsibility, 230-231 Twin Cities Telemarketing,224-225 values, 228

environmental protection, 245-246 epinephrine, 51 Ettinger, Jeff, xxviii, 204 executive coaching, 262 exercise, 146 experiential triangle, 91-93, 137-139,

163-167

F failures, admitting, 117-121, 209 familiarity bias, 169 Fantom, Lynn, xxviii, 17, 85,

128, 132 Farrar, Jay, 245 Fastow, Andrew, 6, 114 feedback, 193-194 feelings. See emotions Feurstein, Aaron, 213 financial costs of ignoring moral

principles, xxiii-xxv financial services industry. See also

specific companies absence of moral competence in,

7-15 lack of publish trust in, 29

Firestone Tire, 211 flexibility, 155 fMRI (functional magnetic

resonance imaging), 45 followers, inspiring, 187-188 Ford, Henry, 249 forgiveness, 128-129

defined, 22 forgiving others’ mistakes,

131-134 forgiving your own mistakes,

129-131 in morally intelligent

organizations, 215-217 in small organizations, 232-233

4 Rs explained, 159-162 practicing, 162-163

recognition of emotional patterns,

169-170 experiential triangle, 163-167 Freeze Game, 166-167 practicing, 163 of thinking patterns, 168-169

reflection on big picture, 172-173 making reflection a habit, 171 practicing, 170 preparing for, 171 on values, 171-172

reframing, 174-175 responding, 175-178

Frank, Anne, 104 Fredrickson, Barbara, 20 Freedman, David, 215 Freeze Game, 166-167 Fribourg, Paul, xxviii Froude, Don, 62 Fuld, Dick, 11 functional magnetic resonance imaging

(fMRI), 45 fundamental beliefs, 36-37 future-based goals, 74 future value, creating, 247

G Gage, Phineas, 42 Garramone, Kelly, 226-227 Garrison, Jim, xxxii, 247 Geer, Roy, xxxii, 71, 255-256 Georgescu, Peter, xxviii, 217 Gilda’s Club, 214 global business opportunities,

222, 248-250 global moral leadership, 243-244

adding future value, 247 giving back to community,

246-247 global business opportunities,

248-250 responsibility for potential

negative consequences, 245-246

responsibility to communities, 244-245

GMAC, 106

288 INDEX

ptg

INDEX 289

Gnazzo, Patrick, 28 goals

documenting, 257 explained, 70 goal alignment test, 75 identifying life’s purpose, 70-71 identifying most important life goals,

74 importance of, 73 purpose-driven goals, 71-73 sharing, 192-193

Goldman Sachs, 11-14 Goleman, Daniel, xxxii, 19-20,

22-23, 161, 218 Golub, Harvey, xxviii, 185, 206-208 Good to Great (Collins), 218 goodness of people, belief in,

188-189 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 247 Gowing, Marilyn, xxxii Grace, Patrick, xxx Grigg, Darryl, xxxii

H habit center (brain), 49 Hall, Brian, xxviii Hall, Don Jr., xxix, 109 Hallmark Cards, 109 Harrington, Dick, xxix,

181-184 HealthSouth, 6 Heath, Brian, xxix, 126, 130 highest competency scores

(MCI), 279 hippocampus, 51 Hoefer, M’Lynn, xxx honesty

exceptions to rule of honesty, 104-105

good intentions, 105 influence on performance, 106 leading with honesty, 100-103 in performance reviews, 103 tact, 105

honoring confidences, 110-111 Hormel Foods, 204-205 How to Get What You Want and Remain

True to Yourself (Geer and Lennick), 72

Hubers, David, xxix

Hughes, Mike, xxix-xxx Hugstad-Vaa, Jennifer, xxxii Hunt, Harriot K., 97 Hutcheson, Dorothy, xxxii hypothalamus, 51

I IBM, 131 ID Media, 17, 85, 128, 132, 214 ideal self, 188, 256 IDS, 206-208 If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going,

You’ll Probably End Up Somewhere Else (Campbell), 72

ImClone, 120 IMG, 127 inconsistency, 98 individual item scores (MCI),

279-280 inspiring followers, 187-188 Institutional Risk Analytics, 14 insula, 51 integrity

consistency, 98-99 defined, 21 honesty, 100-105 honoring confidences, 110-111 in small organizations, 229-230 keeping promises, 109-111 organizational integrity, 203-204 standing up for what is right,

106-109 International Management

Group, 16 interpersonal effectiveness, 147 interpersonal relationships, 154-156 interpreting MCI scores. See MCI

(Moral Competency Inventory) Interpublic, 17, 85 IQ (cognitive intelligence), 19 irresponsibility, 114-115

J Jacobs, Ruth, xxxii Jamba Juice, 103 Jefferson Bus Line, 105, 127 Jewell, Sally, 101-102 Johnson & Johnson, 210

ptg

Jones, Nancy, 27, 216 Jordan, Kathy, 176 JPMorganChase, 10

K Kaess, Ken, xxix Kaiser, Lori, xxx, 84, 142 Kant, Immanuel, 104 Kantor, Stuart, xxxiii Keers, Carol, xxxiii Kelner, Stephen Jr., xxxiii Kennedy, Robert F., 68 Kenny, David, xxix Kernes, Jerry L., 36 Kessler, Gary, xxx, 18, 108 Khuzami, Robert, 12 Kidd, David, xxxiii Kinnier, Richard T., 36 Kleiner, Art, xxxiii Kopper, Michael, 6 Kozlak, Diane, xxx Kraft Foods, 206 Kram, Kathy, xxxiii Krei, Ken, xxix, 8, 122 KRW International, 225-228, 234, 240

L Lane, Karen, xxx Langer, Ray, 215 LaRocco, Mike, xxix Larson, Dale, xxix, 8, 102 Larson Family Foundation, 214 Larson Manufacturing Company, 8,

102, 214 Lawrence, Paul, 47 Lawson Software, 16 Lay, Ken, 6, 114 leadership. See moral leadership Lehman Brothers, 10 Leider, Richard, xxxiii, 70 Lench, Kenneth, 12 Lennick, Doug, xxvi, 71 Lennick Aberman Group, 64, 175 Leohr, Jim, xxxiii Leuning, Harvey, xxx Levinson, Ann, xxx Lewis, Ken, 11

life’s purpose identifying, 70-71 setting purpose-driven goals, 71-73

limbic system, 49, 51 listening, 149, 151 living in alignment

behavior, 75 actions, 79 emotions, 77-79 thoughts, 76-77

beliefs acting consistently with, 98-99 explained, 68 identifying your top ten beliefs,

68-69 sharing, 192-193

destructive emotions, managing, 89-91

emotional competence, 83-85 experiential triangle, 91-93 explained, 57-61, 81-85 goals

explained, 70 goal alignment test, 75 identifying your life’s

purpose, 70-71 identifying your most

important life goals, 74 importance of, 73 setting purpose-driven goals,

71-73 moral compass, 61-62 moral competence, 82-83 moral misalignment, 85 moral viruses

common moral viruses, 88 dealing with, 88 diagnosing, 86-88 disabling, 88-89

preventative maintenance, 93 staying aligned, 85 values

compared to principles, 63 and decision-making, 65-66 explained, 63 identifying top five values, 64 morality of values, 65 uncovering values conflicts,

67-68 loss avoidance system (brain), 51

290 INDEX

ptg

INDEX 291

lowest competency scores (MCI), 279

Lucent Technologies, 6 Luskin, Fred, xxxiii

M M&I Bank, 8, 122 MacPherson, Don, xxix, 28, 119, 129,

138, 236 Madoff, Bernie, xxv Malden Mills, 213 management techniques, 196 Manchester Companies, xxiv, 209 Mangino, Matthew, xxxiii May, Dan, xxix, 14 Mayer, John, 19 McAfee, 7 MCI (Moral Competency Inventory),

263-270 interpreting scores, 277

Alignment Worksheet, 281-283 highest and lowest competency

scores, 279 individual item scores, 279-280 reality testing, 280-281 total MCI score (alignment

score), 278 moral strengths and

weaknesses, 252 scoring, 253-254, 274-275

Moral Competencies 274 scoring sheet, 271-272 total MCI score (alignment

score), 274 as self-development tool, 252-253 self-rating errors, 253

McKee, Annie, 23, 218, 262 McMahon, Ed, 10 Medtronic, 118, 131, 248 Menttium Corporation, 62, 78 Merck & Company, 210 Merrill Lynch, 11 Microsoft, 108 The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity

and the Power of Mental Force (Schwartz), 53

Minneapolis Circulation, 224 Minneapolis magazine, 224 Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine, 224

Minow, Newton, 113 misalignment, 85 misplaced compassion, 149-151 mistakes

admitting, 117-121, 209 forgiving

others’ mistakes, 131-134 your own mistakes, 129-131

Mitchell, Jim, xxxiii Modern Survey, 28, 119, 129, 138, 236 moral anatomy, 41-46

danger system, 51 emotional center, 49 fMRI (functional magnetic

resonance imaging), 45 habit center, 49 lessons from brain-injured

individuals, 42-45 neuroscience of moral

decision-making, 48-52 plasticity of brain, 52-53 rational center, 49 reward system, 52 simplified model of brain, 48

moral compass, 61-62 disclosing to employees, 192-193 staying true to. See living in

alignment Moral Competencies

Worksheet, 274 moral competency. See also

emotional competencies compared to moral

intelligence, 43 compassion, 126-128 explained, 83 4 Rs

explained, 159-162 practicing, 162-163 recognition, 163-170 reflection, 170-173 reframing, 174-175 responding, 175-178

forgiveness, 128-129 forgiving others’ mistakes,

131-134 forgiving your own mistakes,

129-131 identifying competencies you need

most, 257

ptg

integrity consistency, 98-99 honesty, 100-106 honoring confidences, 110-111 keeping promises, 109-111 in performance reviews, 103 standing up for what is right,

106-109 moral development. See

moral development responsibility

admitting mistakes and failures, 117-121

explained, 114-115 serving others, 121-124 taking responsibility for

personal choices, 115-117

Moral Competency Inventory. See MCI

moral development in childhood, 39-41 choosing between competing drives,

47-48 moral anatomy, 41-46

danger system, 51 emotional center, 49 fMRI (functional magnetic

resonance imaging), 45 habit center, 49 lessons from brain-injured

individuals, 42-45 neuroscience of moral

decision-making, 48-52 plasticity of brain, 52-53 rational center, 49 reward system, 52 simplified model of brain, 48

moral gaps, reducing, 257 natural selection, 46-47 nature versus nurture, 38-39 neonatal empathy, 38 plan, 256-258 prioritizing efforts, 254-255 requirements for, 53-54 resources

books and media, 261 counseling, 261 executive coaching, 262 workshops, 261

responsibility, learning, 40

strengthening moral skills, 251-252 book and media resources, 261 breaking bad habits, 258-259 counseling, 261 80/20 rule, 255-256 executive coaching, 262 MCI. See MCI (Moral

Competency Inventory) moral development plan, 256-258 positive feedback, 255 prioritizing development efforts,

254-255 recognizing need for change,

260-261 rewards for positive change, 259 surrounding yourself with

positive people, 259-260 workshops, 261

universal principles, 36-37 moral impact of small organizations,

233-235 moral leadership, 181-184

belief in the goodness of people, 188-189

communicating belief in employees, 191-194

disclosure of moral compass, 192-193

employee development, 189-191 examples of moral leadership,

15-18, 257 inspiring followers, 187-188 leading with honesty, 100-103 management techniques, 196 mutual accountability, 194-195 power, 185-187 providing feedback, 193-194 for small businesses, 242 value differences with employees,

195-196 visibility, 184-185

moral misalignment, 85 “moral positioning system,” 25 moral viruses

common moral viruses, 88 dealing with, 88 diagnosing, 86-88 disabling, 88-89

morally intelligent organizations compassion, 213-215 defined, 199

292 INDEX

ptg

INDEX 293

employee recruitment, 217-219 explained, 199-201 forgiveness, 215-217 global organizations, 222 integrity, 203-204 policies, 201-202 principles, 202 responsibility, 204-212 reward systems, 219-221 small organizations

compassion, 231-232 five maxims of moral

entrepreneurship, 235-241 forgiveness, 232-233 integrity, 229-230 moral impact of, 233-235 responsibility, 230-231 values, 228

values, 197-199 Moret, Pam, xxx, 149 Moriarty, Rowland, xxix, 237 Mozilo, Angelo, 8-10 Mungavan, Tom, xxxiii mutual accountability, 194-195 mutual feedback, 193-194

N NASA, 109 natural selection and moral

development, 46-47 nature versus nurture, 38-39 need for change, recognizing, 260-261 negative consequences, responsibility

for, 245-246 neonatal empathy, 38 neonate responsive crying, 38 brain, moral anatomy of, 41-46

danger system, 51 emotional center, 49 fMRI (functional magnetic

resonance imaging), 45 habit center, 49 lessons from brain-injured

individuals, 42-45 neuroscience of moral

decision-making, 48-52 plasticity of brain, 52-53 rational center, 49 reward system, 52 simplified model of brain, 48

Nicholson, Nigel, 191 Nicolay, John, xxxiii Nohria, Nitin, 47 Northwestern Mutual, 18, 140, 147 nurturing emotional health, 143-147

O O’Hagan, Gary, xxx, 16, 122, 127, 130 Oja, Mark, xxix, 236, 239-241 organizational integrity, 203-204 organizations. See morally

intelligent organizations Ovations, 59 overconfidence, 169

P Parker, James, 222 partners, choosing, 236-239 Paulson, Carla, xxx Paulson & Co., 12 Pavilla, Steve, 64 performance, influence of honesty

on, 106 performance reviews, 103 Perrine, Tom, xxx, 188 The Personal Advisor Group

(TPAG), 62 personal choices, taking responsibility

for, 115-117 personal counseling, 261 personal effectiveness, 141 Peterson, Erik, 245 Peterson, Richard, 52 Phillip Morris, 205 Phillips, Mark, xxx, 59 Phillips, Michael, xxix physical fitness, 146 Pinnt, Larry, xxix plasticity of brain, 52-53 policies, 201-202 Pomerance, Hy, xxxiii positive change, rewarding yourself

for, 259 positive feedback, 255 positive people, surrounding

yourself with, 259-260 positive self-talk, 141-142 Positivity (Fredrickson), 21

ptg

postponing responses, 177-178 power, leveraging, 185-187 Prahalad, C. K., 249 prefrontal cortex, 52 preventative maintenance, 93 Price, Richard, xxxiii Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power

of Emotional Intelligence (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee), 23, 218, 262

primary beliefs, 36-37 principles

acting consistently with, 98-99 compared to values, 63 for morally intelligent

organizations, 202 principled stands, 106-109 universal principles, 36-37

prioritizing moral development efforts, 254-255

professional rewards resulting from moral intelligence, 24

promises, keeping, 109-111 purpose-driven goals, 71-73

Q-R rational center of brain, 49 real self, 188 reality testing (MCI), 280-281 recharging emotional batteries, 146 recognition

of emotional patterns, 139, 169-170 experiential triangle, 163-167 of need for change, 260-261 of thinking patterns, 168-169 practicing, 163

recruiting employees, 217-219 reducing moral gaps, 257 reflection

on big picture, 172-173 making reflection a habit, 171 practicing, 170 preparing for, 171 on values, 171-172

reframing, 174-175 REI, 101-102 Reiess, Helen, xxxiii Reinhard, Keith, xxix, 136

relaxation activities, 146 The Relaxation Response (Benson), 146 Repacking Your Bags: Lighten Your

Load for the Rest of Your Life (Leider), 70

reprogramming, 258 resources for moral development

books and media, 261 counseling, 261 executive coaching, 262 workshops, 261

respecting others, 151-153 responding, 175-178 responsibility

admitting mistakes and failures, 117-121

to communities, 244-245 explained, 21, 114-115 for future, 247 learning in childhood, 40 in morally intelligent organizations,

204-212 for potential negative consequences,

245-246 serving others, 121-124 in small organizations, 230-231 taking responsibility for personal

choices, 115-117 Responsibility Checklist, 212 retaining employees, 27-29 reward systems, 219-221, 259 Rigas, John, 6 Rigas, Timothy, 6 Risher, David, xxx, 108, 233 Roraback, Pat, xxx Ruddy, Jim, xxx

S Sala, Fabio, xxxiii Salovey, Peter, 19 Samenuk, George, 7 Schinke, Tom, xxx Schlidt, Joe, xxx Schlifske, John, xxix Schwab Bank, 59 Schwartz, Jeffrey, xxxiv, 39, 53, 161 Schwartz, Tony, xxxiv

294 INDEX

ptg

INDEX 295

scoring MCI (Moral Competency Inventory), 253-254, 274-275

Alignment Worksheet, 281-283 highest and lowest competency

scores, 279 individual item scores, 279-280 Moral Competencies Worksheet, 274 reality testing, 280-281 scoring sheet, 295-296 total MCI score (alignment score),

274-278 Scrushy, Richard, 6 Seagram Company, 184 SEC Structured and New Products

Unit, 12 Segal, Spenser, xxix, 59, 73,

229-232, 238 self-awareness, 137-139 self-control, 142-143 self-forgiveness, 129-131 self-talk, 140-142 selfishness, 47 Seligman, Martin, 37 serving others, 121-124 The Seven Habits of Highly Effective

People (Covey), 37 Sharan, Kim, xxv, xxxi sharing beliefs and goals, 192-193 Shattuck, Mayo, xxix Sheffert, Mark, xxiv, xxix, 209 Shefrin, Hersh, xxxiv Skilling, Jeffrey, 6 Skoglund, Judy, xxxiv, 144 Sleiter, Jay, xxix small organizations

compassion, 231-232 five maxims of moral

entrepreneurship, 235-241 forgiveness, 232-233 integrity, 229-230 moral impact of, 233, 235 moral leadership, 242 responsibility, 230-231 values, 228

Smith, Ben, xxxi, 106 Smith, Janet, 238 Solomon Brothers, 130 Sontag, Lynn, xxix, 62, 78 Southwest Airlines, 222

SPAMMY, 205 Spencer, Lyle, xxxiv Sperling, Dale, xxix spotlight, leveraging, 184-185 standing up for what is right, 106-109 startup businesses, 223

compassion, 231-232 five maxims of moral

entrepreneurship, 235-241 forgiveness, 232-233 integrity, 229-230 KRW International, 225-228 moral impact of, 233-235 moral leadership, 242 responsibility, 230-231 Twin Cities Telemarketing, 224-225 values, 228

state of being goals, 74 staying aligned, 85 Steifler, Jeff, xxxiv Stewart, Martha, 120 Stewart, Therèse Jacobs, xxxiv Stockdale, Caroline, xxxi, 118, 131, 248 strengths

80/20 rule, 255-256 leveraging, 257

Structured and New Products Unit (SEC), 12

success impact of emotional intelligence

on, 22 impact of moral intelligence

on, 22-27 surrounding yourself with positive

people, 259-260 survival of the fittest, 46

T tact, 105 Tatum LLC, 84, 142 technical intelligence, 19 thinking patterns, 168-169 Thomsen, Jim, xxxi, 3-5, 15, 117, 195 Thomson Corporation, 181-184 Thomson Reuters, 183 thoughts, 76-77, 140 3M, 215 threshold competencies, 19

ptg

Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, 3-5, 117, 149, 195

total MCI score (alignment score), 274-278

Tourre, Fabrice, 13 TPAG (The Personal Advisor

Group), 62 Truman, Harry, 114 Twain, Mark, 250 Twin Cities magazine, 224 Twin Cities Telemarketing, 224-225 Twin Cities Woman, 224 Tylenol recall of 1982, 210

U United Nations Declaration of

Rights, 37 United States Army, 240 United States Marine Corps, 215 United Technologies Corp., 29 universal principles, 36-37

V values

acting consistently with, 98-99 compared to principles, 63 core values for small

businesses, 239 decision-making and, 65-66 explained, 63 in global organizations, 222 identifying top five values, 64 morality of values, 65 for morally intelligent

organizations, 197-199 recruiting employees for,

217-219, 239 reflecting on, 171-172 uncovering values conflicts,

67-68 value differences with employees,

195-196 Vappie, Kim, xxix Vioxx recall, 210 viruses. See moral viruses visibility of leaders, 184-185

W Waletzko, Don, 234 Watson, Thomas, 131 WDYWFY process, 72 weaknesses, 80/20 rule, 255-256 Weiss, Kevin, 7 Wells Fargo, 106 Westar Energy, Inc., 7 Whalen, Christopher, 14 Williams, Redford, xxxiv Wilson, Larry, xxxiv Wilson, Michael, xxxi Winfrey, Oprah, 70 Wittig, David C., 7 Woodward, Mike, xxxi, 126 Woolford, Lauris, xxxiv workaholism, 186 Working with Emotional Intelligence

(Goleman), 22 workshops, 261

X-Y-Z XATA, 16

Young & Rubicam, 217

Zelle, Charlie, xxix, 82-83, 105, 122, 127

Zore, Ed, 18, 140, 147

296 INDEX

Contents
Foreword
Foreword to Previous Edition
Introduction

Leaders Interviewed
Thought Partners

PART ONE: MORAL INTELLIGENCE

1 Good Business

Moral Stupidity Act 1
What Does Moral Leadership Look Like?
Endnotes

2 Born to Be Moral

What the Best Leaders Believe
A Visit to the Nursery
Nature Versus Nurture
Growing Up Moral
Learning to Be Responsible
When Things Go Wrong
Inside Your (Moral) Brain
It’s All in Your Head
The Moral Map of Your Brain
Why We’re Good and Why We’re Bad
So What Goes Wrong?
The Neuroscience of Moral Decision Making
Can We Actually Change Our Brain?
Moral Software
Endnotes

3 Your Moral Compass

The Morality of Values
Put It in Writing
Frame 3: Behavior
Endnotes

4 Staying True to YourMoral Compass

Endnote

PART TWO: DEVELOPING MORAL SKILLS

5 Integrity

Acting Consistently with Principles, Values, and Beliefs
Telling the Truth
Standing Up for What Is Right
Keeping Promises

6 Responsibility

Taking Responsibility for Personal Choices
Admitting Mistakes and Failures
Embracing Responsibility for Serving Others
Endnotes

7 Compassion and Forgiveness

Actively Caring About Others
Letting Go of Your Own Mistakes
Letting Go of Others’ Mistakes

8 Emotions

Self-Awareness
Understanding Your Thoughts
Personal Effectiveness
Deciding What to Think
Self-Control
Nurturing Emotional Health
Interpersonal Effectiveness
Empathy
Misplaced Compassion
Respecting Others
Getting Along with Others
Endnote

9 Making Moral Decisions

How Roger Used the 4 Rs
Endnotes

PART THREE: MORAL LEADERSHIP

10 The Moral Leader

Performance Problems
Endnote

11 Leading Large Organizations

The Fabric of Values
Is There Such a Thing as a Morally Intelligent Organization?
The Morally Intelligent Organization—An Aerial View
Morally Intelligent Policies
The Principles That Matter Most
Cultivating Organizational Integrity
The Responsible Organization
The Compassionate Organization
The Forgiving Organization
Recruiting for Values
Reinforcing Values Starts at the Top
The Power of Formal Rewards
Success Stories
Ideal Versus Real
Values and the Global Organization
Endnotes

12 Moral Intelligence for the Entrepreneur

Moral Values in Small Organizations
Last Words About Business Start-Ups
Endnotes

Epilogue: Becoming a Global Moral Leader

Raising the Stakes
Watch Your Wake
Give Back
Create the Future
A Global Business Opportunity
Conclusion
Endnotes

A: Strengthening Your Moral Skills

A Look in the Mirror
Using the MCI
The Right Frame of Mind for Completing the MCI
Scoring and Interpreting Your MCI
Prioritizing Your Moral Development Efforts
The Road Less Traveled
The 80/20 Rule
Your Moral Development Plan
Putting Your Moral Development Plan into Practice
Breaking Bad Habits
Reward Yourself for Positive Change
Surround Yourself with Positive People
Do I Really Need to Change?
Books, Audio, and Video Media
Workshops
Personal Counseling
Executive Coaching
Endnote

B: Moral Competency Inventory (MCI)
C: Scoring the MCI

Moral Competencies Worksheet
What Your Total MCI Score Means

D: Interpreting Your MCI Scores

Total MCI Score (Alignment Score)
Highest and Lowest Competency Scores
Individual Item Scores
Reality Testing
Do Your Scores Matter?
Now What?

Index

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q-R
S
T
U
V
W
X-Y-Z