Editor’s note: This is the first article in Mary Gentile’s new bimonthly column, Voicing Values in the Workplace.
In the wake of the financial meltdown and subsequent aftershocks around the world, are CEOs becoming more – or less – moral?
That was the question posed recently by the moderator of a public radio call-in show in which I participated. And there seemed to be three perspectives represented during the show.
First, the other guest speaker on the call, Bill George – author of True North, former CEO of Medtronic and faculty member at Harvard Business School – argued that increasingly corporate leaders are recognizing the need to define their purpose more capaciously than simply turning a profit and to share the upsides as well as the downsides of their company fortunes with the wider employee base. Bill’s own experience and his extensive network uniquely position him to not only recognize such trends but to contribute to them through his writing, his advising and importantly his powerful example with his students.
The second perspective voiced during this radio program was that of the callers themselves. There appeared to be more skepticism, if not cynicism, about this idea of “CEO morality” among these individuals who took the time to express their views on the air.
Part of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Photo via David Shankbone under Creative Commons.
They talked about how demoralizing it is as employees to work for a firm that does not recognize and reward their contributions. And they talked about the economy’s current “wicked mess” and how so much of it appears to have been driven by the short-term thinking and narrow self-interest of global corporate leaders. This cynicism fuels the frustration and anger we see represented in the current Occupy Movement.
One of the callers who self-identified as a CEO, expressed his concerns about how far he should/needed to go in sharing his company’s current good fortunes, particularly given the deep personal hits he had taken a few years ago when things had not been going so well. That is, he wondered what is truly fair in such circumstances – for himself as an entrepreneur and for his employees – let alone what is going to be the most effective and sustainable way to lead and manage a business.
Finally, I had a third perspective on this question of CEO morality. I believe that the greedy and narrowly self-interested will always be with us, but so too will those leaders and employees who truly want to do the “right thing,” build sustainable and genuinely useful enterprises, provide quality service and products to their customers, and provide employment with dignity to their community of workers.
I think we are asking the wrong question when we ask things like “are CEOs more or less moral?” or “are people self-interested or altruistic?” or “do most of us truly want to do the ‘right thing’ or are we really just willing to do whatever it takes to maximize our material self-interest?” These questions too often leave us spinning our wheels, espousing theories about human motivation that draw as much from our individual optimistic or pessimistic outlooks as they do from empiricism. They may be of theoretical interest but are they really helpful?
Instead of asking these questions about the fundamental condition of human nature – questions that can and have been convincingly answered in multiple ways – it is more practical, more useful to ask “HOW can we empower ourselves as leaders – even as CEOs – to act on our highest moral values? How can we create enabling conditions for our employees to do the same? And how can we build our skills and competence and confidence and the likelihood that we all will voice and enact our values?”
This question – NOT “what is right?” but RATHER “how can we get the right thing done?” – will be the focus of this column. I hope to share examples and insights from the people I encounter in my work with the “Giving Voice To Values” approach to values-driven leadership, an approach based on pragmatism and innovation.
Because in the end, if each of us feels we actually have the skills and the strategies to voice and enact our values, we will be much more likely to do so. Although the immoral may always be with us, the goal here is to learn and practice the approaches that work for the values-driven leaders who also will always be with us.
I look forward to sharing ideas and to hearing from you as well.
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About the Author
Mary C. Gentile, Ph.D., is director of Giving Voice to Values (GVV), a business curriculum launched by Aspen Institute and Yale SOM, now based and funded at Babson College. GVV is a pioneering approach to values-driven leadership that has been featured in Financial Times, Harvard Business, Stanford Social Innovation Review, among many others, and is being piloted in over 100 business schools and organizations globally. The book – Giving Voice To Values: How To Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right – is out from Yale University Press (www.MaryGentile.com, 2010).
Gentile is also senior research scholar at Babson College, senior advisor at the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program and an independent consultant based in Arlington, Mass. Previously Gentile was a faculty member and manager of case research at the Harvard Business School.
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