Benefiting at work from Brain Based Insights

Since I teach ethics at the graduate level in Executive MBA business programs, I am often amazed at discussions about ethics. At first the problems seem to be more focused on Enron, than on any personal dilemmas business leaders in our discussion circles face. How could they? What jerks! Outrageous! Person after person names some horror out there.

Then I read the news and see the same tendency to nail the Enrons and blame the bad guys, and let’s face it … there seem to me more and more unethical big boys out there lately to fault.  

Nevertheless, what if we were to look at what we do as business leaders on a daily basis? What if we shifted the focus from Enron … and instead, ask at work:

1. How do we define respect and value for people’s differences and how does that definition show itself in salaries and top leadership posts we assign?

2. When our business vision or focus changes, how do we share that new direction in ways that benefit rather than harm workers? Do we give adequate time to adjust to changes – especially if these could cause financial hardships? Do we invite workers' voices into the center of the change decisions that affect their pay or conditions?

3. Does a clear feedback channel exist – without recrimination possibilities - where people can ask ethical questions, report unethical problems without being isolated as whistleblowers, or where they simply find out why things happen as they do at work?

4. Is there a culture and climate built at your workplace which prevents workers from feeling degraded, undermined, repressed, and which is considered by most to be a liberating experience for workers as well as for the organization?

5. Do people where you work speak and feel heard? Do you engage ethical discussions to find the best options, that could improve what you do today, especially how you draw from diverse voices to benefit the work community?

Ethics become less about the big boys' bad behavior when we ask questions that get to the ethics behind our own daily choices. What do you think?