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Reclaiming an Ethical World with Christopher Gilbert PhD
154 Plays3 years ago
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Transcript
Introduction to Christopher Gilbert and His Work
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome back, welcome back.
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Speaker
Bigger Talks, Bigger Talks podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
We have another episode, and this one, guys, is so amazing.
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It's so good because it's intellectually sound.
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It's going to make you think, question your ethics, and your leadership, and your social interactions, and the workplace, life.
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And we have today, we're bringing on Christopher Gilbert.
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you know, a leader, ethics expert.
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We're going to get into what that really means.
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And he's all about ethics and doing what's right and being fair.
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He did discuss that he is a Libra.
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You know, you guys know I'm into astrology.
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I love Libras.
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They're very balanced.
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But he also has a new book out, The Noble Age.
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I like these colors, too.
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That's actually kind of the color of the book I have out.
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Reclaiming an Ethical World, One Choice at a Time.
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Christopher, welcome.
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Thank you for joining me today on the talks.
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How are you, my friend?
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I'm wonderful, and thank you, Eric.
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It's a real privilege to be here, so to be part of your venue.
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Yes, so let's get into
Christopher's Journey from Geology to Business Ethics
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it.
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So you did discuss that you're up in not too far from Seattle, right?
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Correct, yeah, just about 25 miles south in a little town.
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Well, it's not so little anymore, called Gate Harbor.
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Yeah, so how did your journey in life start?
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Like, where are you from?
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What did you go to school for?
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And just give the people just a synopsis of who you are in general.
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Oh, sure, absolutely.
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And I won't go so far back as the original hospital did.
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I'll kind of start where the academic and the professional start.
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So I actually got my bachelor's degree in geology.
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And after that, spent about three years in engineering geology, mostly working on the North Slope in Alaska, not looking for oil, but looking for construction materials up there.
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And I got tired of freezing various appendages off in minus 120 degree wind chill and said, there's got to be a better way.
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So I went back to school and got my MBA.
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And that led me to a professor position at Evergreen State College.
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And then after a few years of that, I actually got involved in an entrepreneurial organization called Cravings.
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And we raised raised about a million and a half in venture capital, which was a lot of money back then.
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It's a lot of money now, but it was more back then.
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And we put together this organization, worked for about five years at it, was very successful.
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Then a large company whose oatmeal you eat in the mornings came and spent about a month with us thinking that they would do a buyout and get us in fact out of Washington state and across the country and expansion.
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They spent that month with us and then left and they were quiet for about six weeks and then sent us a letter that said, you know, we're not going to do this.
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We're going to stick with the frozen meats and frozen foods and do what we do best.
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And then we discovered about four months later that they had opened an identical operation to ours.
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And that's what led our venture capital group to say, well, we don't have the resources the big company does, so let's shut things down.
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And I had to lay off 35 really wonderful employees, and that was probably one of the hardest days
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of my life, but I think that planted the seed to think about how we make choices and how we could make better choices, not just in business, but personally.
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And so then I realized I needed to get a better understanding of that and went into my PhD work, did a bunch of research on how we talk about this subject and what's effective and what's not, and then began to do my own consulting work.
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So this is about 25 years ago now.
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And I started to do my own work in it based on the moral development that I had studied about with my PhD.
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So the PhD is in organization and management with an emphasis in leadership ethics.
Global Leadership Ethics and Trust-Building
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And so that's really what started my journey down that path and doing consulting now on four different continents, working for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and finally winding up with the new book and sitting here very privileged to talk with you today.
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Yeah, good.
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That's great.
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So leadership ethics, what is that?
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What is the definition of that?
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Yeah, so you can take a look at the ethics in any particular worlds of medical ethics or business ethics or leadership ethics.
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In this case, it's really about the idea, you know, that especially in an organization, the largest shadow is cast from the top.
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And we can say the same thing about sunrises.
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But in this case, if people are making poor choices or the C-suite, the executives, the leadership in an organization isn't taking on the mantle of building an ethical organization, and maybe there are elements of social responsibility in that, then the organization is going to pass.
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In fact, statistics, organizations
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Profitable organizations, and by the way, the ones with the happiest employees, are the ones that take on ethics and creating better trust between themselves and the organization and their clients and customers.
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They take that on as a part of their mission.
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So in this case, leadership ethics is coming to understand what that impact of leadership is in terms of the trust and trust building you do as a company.
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Yeah, you know, as you were speaking, you know, it popped in my head, trust, right?
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That's been a big challenge of mine growing up, you know, as a young man in today as an adult.
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So for you, where did ethics start in your life?
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And how does one build trust as an individual?
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Yeah, it's a really good question.
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I think that understanding of trust happens, and I'm not an infant psychologist, but I think that happens from the very beginning as infants, after they're born, begin to reach out and get an understanding that by doing certain things,
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certain actions, certain smiles, certain ways of being, they actually get something back in return, right?
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And maybe that happens when they're doing something wrong, but they certainly feel or see the positive side of it.
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Just look at the way a baby smiles, you know, what, after just a few months, perhaps, they're beginning to interact with the world.
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And my book spent some time talking about this more from an adult perspective than a child's perspective.
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But the idea that we can climb up this ladder and we wind up doing it all through our lives
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going from the most selfish thing on the planet, which would be an infant, which is it's all about me, feed me, clothe me, wake me up, put me down, right?
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The world is about me.
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That's really the first step in an understanding of trust or trust building with the world, ethics with the world.
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So you've got the it's about me step.
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And then the next step up is, well, it's about some of us.
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my family, the people I'm loyal to, my business, my neighborhood, even all the way up to my nation, because that doesn't include the rest of the world.
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I can think about making choices based on whether some of us are going to gain in those choices, where at the first level, it was just about me gaining.
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And then the third level, so we've got it's about me, it's about some of us.
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The third level is it's about all of us.
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That's the highest moral level to make choices, right?
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So anybody who's impacted by the choice I make, and that's really what ethics is, a decision that is impactful on somebody else now or in the future.
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Anybody who's impacted comes into that consideration as I'm making the choice.
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That's that highest step.
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It's about all of us.
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And I think all of that's about trust building.
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I think all ethical choices are really about trust building or at least trying not to erode trust.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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When you say me, me, me as a baby, right?
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Because feed me, hold me, look at me, smile at me.
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You think of trusting oneself.
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So does one have to trust
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themselves to trust someone else.
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Does that trust get built and still from an early age?
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And then once you start learning to trust how you respond to someone and they give you an accurate response that you're looking for, does that build more trust within yourself?
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to have others?
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Yeah, it's a really interesting point.
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I'm not sure I've thought about it that way.
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And again, I'm no child psychologist, but I think that you could trust yourself to be unethical, right?
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So I'm not sure that trusting yourself is really all it takes.
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In fact, I talk in the book about how ethics is a public process.
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You cannot alone yourself decide what is unethical because the moral guidelines you're using are those that are put together by you and the society around you.
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I think
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going from infant to child to teenager and up, you're actually learning to trust others, where maybe from the beginning you trusted yourself.
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You're really beginning to learn to trust others, and hopefully that's growing.
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And the book really, when it says, you know, creating an ethical world, one choice at a time, that's really about the impact that we have
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on the others around us and the fact that that comes full circle back to us.
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If we're making our community better, then it turns out as the community gets better, so do we.
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So we're actually helping ourselves as we think about helping the community as well.
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And I think in all of that is that idea of building the trust with others we need to figure out our interdependencies and cooperation with each other.
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Yeah, because I'm a big picture person.
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I'm always about the big picture.
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But in my lifetime, I grew up in Baltimore City, very challenging, different type of environment, violence, crime.
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So you grow up with a different type of trust.
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Yeah, there you go.
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And awareness, right?
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So then fast forward, I go to college, I graduate, and I go move to LA.
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Been in LA 11 years.
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I had some opportunity to go on TV shows and be around some famous people and do some incredible things.
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So my surroundings and environment changes, right?
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So my trust in myself and others have to change.
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But what I ran into, what I run into is that how does one as all, I always say one for all, all for many, build that ethical capacity within each other if we have totally different perspectives based on our upbringing.
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So how does, if I come from this background and my ethics is, well, I have to do this to do that.
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And then you come from this background where what I do is wrong, but to me it's right.
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How do you make that make sense for someone to say, okay, that's valid.
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And I was reading a book called Psycho-Cybernetics and they were saying that it's not about who's right, it's about what's right.
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So can you elaborate on how does one from a different part of life or world or environment experience understand the other person who's different, but also try to build the same ethics where it's not hurting?
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I don't know if that's possible, but it's something I thought about when I was reading over your notes.
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I'm like, because I do have different people from all walks of life and people really here, you know, social and financial.
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And it is different and it is a different experience.
Universal Ethics and Global Challenges
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No, absolutely right.
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And it's a great question.
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The perspective that you're talking about in ethics is called relativism, which means that ethics are relative to your background, what you know, who you know, and that there isn't a universal set of things that we can talk about or rely on when it comes to making ethical decisions.
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And the book is quite pointed about saying that's actually not going to work as we see it doesn't work.
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It isn't that we can't have our own perspectives.
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It is like you were saying, we need to concentrate on what's right for everyone.
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That third step, if I'm making a decision, it can't just be about me and what I gain or lose.
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It can't just be about a few of us around that I'm going to be loyal to, because we face that world all the time right now being treated ethically as sort of the luck of the draw.
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And that doesn't really work very well.
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Now, if we could rely on everyone,
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to be making a set of universal choices, then that creates a completely different world where we're all able to excel and go farther and we're not just waiting for that ethical person to come by.
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Is it impossible to do?
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No.
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In fact, we can witness this at all three steps if we wanted to.
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It's something as simple as a four-way stop sign.
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So if you think about what's happening at a four-way stop sign, it's trust.
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Okay, there may be laws that say that you're illegal and you'll get a ticket if you don't stop there.
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So I can make the choice to stop there simply based on me.
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I'm going to get rewarded by not getting a ticket if I stop here or I'll be rewarded by not getting hurt because this is dangerous with all of us.
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going in different directions.
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So I'm going to think about me and make that stop.
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And so there you go.
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I've made a right choice, but it's not always consistently right if I'm only thinking about me.
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And if I'm demonstrating trust, I can do this at the next level.
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Well, it's about some of us, those of us that are entering this four-way stop or those of us are going just a certain direction at that stop and we'll work together to go through it the way that we are because there's safety in numbers, whatever that might be.
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But really what's working at a four-way stop is that universal set of it's about all of us.
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And in fact, an understanding that I have to demonstrate trust and I need to trust you in stopping there as well.
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And if we do that, we're both going to achieve something far better than me, let's say, not believing in a four-way stomp, stomping on the accelerator and going through it with my eyes closed, hoping that there's no one coming the other way.
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In fact...
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In a world where there were people that didn't believe in a four-way stop, there'd still be a number of people in that group that stopped simply because they were worried about self-preservation and they were affected.
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And of course, if we are coming to a four-way stop and we're not trusting anybody, we're going to have to sit there.
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until whatever cars are coming from other directions are far enough away that we can stomp through and go through it because we don't know whether they're believers or not in that four-way stop.
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So even the world of non-believers, right, those that don't believe in four-way stops is affected by the other possibility there are non-believers and we now go to a world that isn't working as well as it could.
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There's great advantage in understanding the trust that's there.
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So maybe more to your question, the idea of relativity, my ethics are relative to who I know and what I know.
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There's still a universal set of virtues.
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I could say that trust is the same here or in Russia or in Cambodia or in Australia.
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Same thing with love.
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Love is the same here or in Cambodia or Australia or Russia.
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It may take on different forms.
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There may be other things around it.
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So demonstrating that love may be a different thing, but the virtue itself is the same and it's universal.
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And that's where you get a universal set of principles that help us all to make the most ethical choices.
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Yeah.
00:14:46
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You know, because I believe the intangibles of life is what make us all the same love, feelings, emotions,
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And thinking of it from that perspective, because, you know, in the world we live today of the pandemic, masks, vaccine, all these things, you have a bunch of people who believe one thing versus another.
00:15:07
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And so I like to come, you know, the lever in me, you know, you're a lever, we don't want to balance the scale.
00:15:12
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Okay, what makes sense for this person might not make sense to that person.
00:15:16
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Or what makes sense for me might not make sense for you.
00:15:19
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But what is the, Gary Zukav, he wrote the book, Seat of the Soul, he talks about being a universal human, right?
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So if I just say, this is my community and this is what I believe,
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But as a universal human, what do you want to believe for the whole?
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And so I feel like, you know, in the world, maybe it starts with education, we're not programmed or conditioned to know how to control our response or ethical thoughts when someone goes against what we believe.
00:15:48
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So what happens is, like you were saying, people make decisions, right?
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When
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they feel that person is wrong or they're offended.
00:15:56
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And so now it's more of pushing each other down and there's no love, there's hate.
00:16:01
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And so is there, is it possible?
00:16:03
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I mean, of course it is, but what is a, maybe you don't know this answer, but for us as a whole to kind of,
00:16:10
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just accept each other as we are, despite what we believe, think and feel, even if it's different, you know, because I can't make you believe what I believe because these are my experiences and you don't believe them, but I can accept what you believe and try to get to understand your perspective to maybe change my opinion about it.
00:16:31
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But I think we're in the world of the media, everyone's attacking each other, right?
00:16:36
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And there's no balance.
00:16:38
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There's no, in some sense,
00:16:40
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So how do we get on that ethical pattern of coming to the table and say, listen, you want to be heard, speak your point.
00:16:48
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How can I listen without reacting with a negative or emotional response that's going to hinder or hurt you, but have compassion for what you believe, even if I don't agree, but understand, like, I respect that because that makes sense based on your experience.
00:17:04
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It's a great question.
00:17:05
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I'm so glad you asked, because really that's the point of the book is to create a conversation and provide a set of tools that are for exactly what you're speaking about.
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How in the world can we bring these diverse opinions, the diverse education, the diverse spiritualities,
00:17:22
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of the world together and recognize a better truth than we have now where everybody gets to do things separately and that leads not to greater unity but to greater divisions.
00:17:33
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You know, in my faith, which is the Baha'i faith, there's a saying, we're all leaves on the same tree.
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So the idea that we can somehow cut off a branch or take these leaves off the tree or do something with the roots and it doesn't hurt us as well is ridiculous.
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And so, in fact, the best growth of that tree occurs because we're all looking at the problems that we face together.
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And by the way, we see these problems getting larger and larger.
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There are needing to be more global cooperation to take care of them.
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You think of something like climate change or even COVID as a great example.
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They don't need a passport and a visa to cross borders.
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They just simply, you know, the climate changes and the disease happens, it crosses borders with complete transparency because to it there are no borders.
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The borders, in a sense, are in our heads.
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And so the real immigration problem that we have is something like climate change or COVID crossing those borders without being able to do anything about it.
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And the solution to the problem is also by its very nature universal.
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We can't take care of climate change in the United States.
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We're one percentage of the world or pollution in the seas or pollution in the air or denuding of natural resources.
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We have to look at this as a global problem because that's exactly what it is.
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And while we seem pretty pessimistic about taking care of that problem now, in the end, the only way it'll get taken care of is by us coming together interdependently to do it.
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that issue of global global climate change or the issue of COVID really is in some way providing us platforms or supports on which to begin to think about more of a global village perspective.
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It's about all of us, not just about some of us here in the United States or me and what I have or don't have.
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It's about all of us coming together to solve that problem.
00:19:24
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I'm sorry we had to have a problem to think about coming together, but the only way it'll get solved
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is if we all come together to do it.
00:19:31
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And nationalism or national sovereignty falls by the wayside.
00:19:35
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Economically, it certainly fell by the wayside long ago.
00:19:38
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We are a global economy.
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We see that happening.
00:19:41
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China has a problem with one of their companies that's worth billions or trillions or billions, rather.
00:19:47
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And all of a sudden, our stock market falls 400 or 600 or 800 points.
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We are a global economy where we can begin to think about what unity
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not only problems, but advancing us into arenas that we may not have had a chance to do before, the better off we're gonna be.
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And part of the solution is education.
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Part of the solution is healing our families.
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Once our families are more healed, then that actually begins to build the trust, not only in the families, but in the community that begins to seep out.
00:20:19
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So we have to really look at this, like you said, in a systems thinking sort of way.
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That came out of biology.
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It basically says, I can't, if I contribute negatively, negative, excuse me, negatively to the system that I'm in, I'll eventually kill myself off.
00:20:35
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Like cancer in a sense, right?
00:20:36
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Cancer doesn't come in and do things positive to the body.
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So it survives.
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Cancer actually comes into the body and kills off the very system it needs in order to survive.
00:20:46
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Right?
00:20:47
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So it's this really silly closed loop.
00:20:49
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Dieting within yourself.
00:20:52
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Exactly.
00:20:53
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And that's why the book talks about this twofold moral purpose, where we're helping others, we're actually helping ourselves, where we're building community, we're actually building a better world for ourselves.
00:21:04
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And that twofold moral purpose is really one of the main objectives to think about reclaiming an ethical world by the choices that we make.
00:21:12
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Yeah, and it's vital because I always say the more we give, the better we live.
00:21:18
Speaker
But coming from my background and what I believe, like I always said, the big picture, but how does a one who has the ethics of being a giver, like myself, you know, how do I, as an individual, better understand ethically being a receiver?
Ethical Leadership and the 4V Model
00:21:35
Speaker
Because I know as a giver, if I give, I'm not only helping myself, I'm helping someone else.
00:21:39
Speaker
But I think a disconnect sometimes based on my upbringing, I don't know how to receive the way I give.
00:21:45
Speaker
So what type of ethics do I need to establish or have to kind of make it all make sense, right?
00:21:52
Speaker
Because I can't just be giving and not receiving.
00:21:54
Speaker
It's like I'm stopping the circulation, the law of circulating, right?
00:21:58
Speaker
Because when it comes to me, I'm like, oh, but when I want to give it, it's like, how do I make that balance
00:22:05
Speaker
in a natural way or subconsciously where I'm okay with receiving and it's not because growing up it was like negative in my mind to receive because I didn't want someone to feel like they had one up over me or you know just sabotaging myself before my limits and beliefs on it that it's not really real it's just something I created based on experience.
00:22:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's another really great question, this idea of the give and take of it.
00:22:29
Speaker
Let me go someplace first and we'll come back to this.
00:22:33
Speaker
A lot of people talk about values and using their values to make choices.
00:22:37
Speaker
There's a very interesting model.
00:22:39
Speaker
It's called the 4V model.
00:22:41
Speaker
So there are 4V words in this model that have to do with going beyond that understanding.
00:22:46
Speaker
So if you'll let me, the 4Vs are vision models.
00:22:50
Speaker
voice, values, and virtues.
00:22:53
Speaker
And this is done by Dr. Bill Grace in his work at the Seattle Center for Ethical Leadership.
00:23:00
Speaker
And so a vision is understanding something different in the future than exists now
00:23:06
Speaker
For a business, it's having an idea and trying to figure out how to market and become successful with it.
00:23:12
Speaker
For any of us, it's the idea that there, in this case, might be a better world out there.
00:23:16
Speaker
And I can see that better world.
00:23:18
Speaker
There's a vision of it.
00:23:18
Speaker
Let me drive a stake in the ground and work towards that.
00:23:21
Speaker
And I could probably get others...
00:23:23
Speaker
To think about that vision as well.
00:23:25
Speaker
We know there are powerful speakers and leaders that actually are trying to help us go toward a better vision of the world now.
00:23:31
Speaker
The next V is voice.
00:23:33
Speaker
So do I have enough of a voice as a leader or enough of a voice as an individual that others are going to follow me?
00:23:39
Speaker
to go to that certain place that's in the future.
00:23:43
Speaker
The third V is values.
00:23:45
Speaker
What values do I have to get us there?
00:23:48
Speaker
And what are we going to agree together as a set of cooperative persons that are working on this to get to that stake that's been driven in the ground?
00:23:58
Speaker
Those three Vs are very powerful.
00:24:00
Speaker
And quite often when I do my work in the business world, we do talk about what the company's values are and what kind of a voice the leader has.
00:24:08
Speaker
But I'm going to use a really hard example here.
00:24:11
Speaker
Hitler had all three of those.
00:24:13
Speaker
He certainly had a vision about what the world was going to look like.
00:24:16
Speaker
He certainly had a voice either through negative reactions or positive rewards.
00:24:22
Speaker
He had a voice to lead others toward that vision.
00:24:24
Speaker
And obviously, he had a set of values.
00:24:27
Speaker
This is what the world is supposed to look like.
00:24:30
Speaker
And I want you all to believe that this is how we agree we're going to work together on getting that world.
00:24:35
Speaker
What's missing in that set of three Vs is the fourth V, which, by the way, is the most important because it undergirds or supports the other three Vs. It's virtues.
00:24:47
Speaker
What virtues did Hitler's have?
00:24:49
Speaker
Well, it certainly wasn't working for the common purpose or common rights, right?
00:24:53
Speaker
That's not a part of the virtue that's there is understanding equity or equality, right?
00:24:58
Speaker
So that virtue is missing in the first three Vs. So it's really important that we begin to articulate that fourth V. What virtues are we using in order to be able to build this world that I've got an influence in trying to create and spending time on things like trust,
00:25:14
Speaker
And trustworthiness, which is, again, I think the goal of all ethical choices, is one of the virtues and probably one of the more important virtues we use in order to be able to get there.
00:25:25
Speaker
If you'll let me diatribe one second longer here, well, maybe a minute longer, is, you know, I regularly ask at some of my presentations or seminars, what do you think is the most important human virtues?
00:25:38
Speaker
And most often the word I get is love, right?
00:25:41
Speaker
That's the word you get.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's so much for you to say, love.
00:25:43
Speaker
That's exactly right.
00:25:45
Speaker
Yeah, because it is.
00:25:46
Speaker
And it's something that separates us.
00:25:47
Speaker
And we're told to expand that love, whether it's love for yourself or love for others or love for God.
00:25:54
Speaker
We're told that that's part of the purpose of life is expanding that.
00:25:57
Speaker
But if you really think about it, what undergirds or supports love, true love, is trust.
00:26:05
Speaker
Trustworthiness.
00:26:06
Speaker
How can you possibly love someone you don't trust or who doesn't trust you?
00:26:13
Speaker
Right?
00:26:14
Speaker
Who doesn't trust you.
00:26:15
Speaker
So in fact, trustworthiness is the foundation of all human virtues.
00:26:20
Speaker
And so again, we're thinking about building that trust or at least not eroding it with others, whether we're a business or an individual or a church or whatever, political leader.
00:26:29
Speaker
If we concentrate on that idea that every choice we make should be building trust and not eroding it, we'll make different choices and the world comes out way better for it.
00:26:38
Speaker
And we as individuals come out way better for it because the world's getting better.
Tools and Challenges in Ethical Decision-Making
00:26:42
Speaker
And that just answers so many questions because the trust is the root of all of it.
00:26:47
Speaker
Because how can you love someone
00:26:48
Speaker
you don't trust or they don't, it's like, and that's where the ethics comes into play, right?
00:26:53
Speaker
Your trust, and that just answered my question in a million ways.
00:26:56
Speaker
I'm glad you took the time to really, you know, break it down and, ah.
00:27:02
Speaker
So I was taking a EQ test, emotional intelligence.
00:27:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:27:07
Speaker
On psychology today, last week, and there was a question.
00:27:12
Speaker
And then basically the question was based, what would you do in this situation?
00:27:16
Speaker
So the situation was me and my boss, right?
00:27:20
Speaker
Who hired me for the job.
00:27:22
Speaker
We're doing a fundraiser for charity events for kids.
00:27:26
Speaker
We raised $10,200.
00:27:28
Speaker
We go back.
00:27:30
Speaker
We want to deposit the money.
00:27:32
Speaker
I noticed the person who hired me, my boss takes $200.
00:27:35
Speaker
So one answer was, do you tell him, put it back or you're going to tell and didn't never say anything.
00:27:44
Speaker
Another answer was, did you just not care and just, you know, cover your eyes, act like it didn't happen?
00:27:51
Speaker
Or do you really report this person who hired you and make a decision?
00:27:55
Speaker
And I was like, how do you determine what's ethical in that position?
00:27:59
Speaker
Like, that's a weird place to be in.
00:28:01
Speaker
This is the person who hired you.
00:28:03
Speaker
Why would you take $200 from the kids?
00:28:06
Speaker
So how does one base that decision and what's right and what's wrong about that?
00:28:12
Speaker
Well, I think, of course, that you probably already have the answer to what's right and what's wrong.
00:28:18
Speaker
It becomes a question of what moral courage you have and what risk you want to take as an individual to actually implement whatever that right choice is.
00:28:26
Speaker
Now, I don't know if that's reporting somebody on an 800 number where you're anonymous or going to the individual and saying, hey, you've done this and you need to change and you need to give that money back.
00:28:35
Speaker
In the end,
00:28:36
Speaker
It may be if someone is really corrupted enough to take that money in that way and think they can get away with it.
00:28:42
Speaker
The problem's a lot larger than just that $200 and that individual and maybe the organization needs to be a little aware of it.
00:28:49
Speaker
It's one of the answers as well, like it's not a big thing.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah, as well.
00:28:53
Speaker
Let me, if I can, provide an example that sort of, I try and personalize these examples in the book so that you can really think about this on your own level because ethics are best understood when they are personalized.
00:29:08
Speaker
So I'll take your...
00:29:09
Speaker
Same example, but let me personalize it to you just a little.
00:29:12
Speaker
So let's say you're a student in my class and you're taking one of your last tests and you really need to get a good grade on it because a lot of us have faced this, I'm sure, in our lives.
00:29:21
Speaker
And by the way, it's an international example because other people, same thing in other countries, right?
00:29:27
Speaker
And so you get the test back and you discover that you didn't get the A or the good grade that you were hoping for because I made a math error in adding up your points.
00:29:38
Speaker
And so you see, oh, my math error actually says you've got less points when in fact you earn more on the test.
00:29:44
Speaker
And I'll ask people, so what do you do about that?
00:29:46
Speaker
Well, most people, and maybe I should ask you, when you see that test and I've added the points wrong and you should be getting an A and not a B, what do you do with that?
00:29:55
Speaker
What do you do with that information?
00:29:59
Speaker
It's like, oh man, this is so good because it's simple to me.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:03
Speaker
It's simple to others.
00:30:05
Speaker
That goes back to my moral compass, what I believe.
00:30:08
Speaker
So two things came up.
00:30:10
Speaker
The first thing is, hold on, I worked hard for this test to get that A. Darn right.
00:30:15
Speaker
Right?
00:30:16
Speaker
Or you showed me $100 on what you owe me, or better yet, I had an experience maybe 10 years ago at a gas station.
00:30:27
Speaker
I gave, I think I gave the guy $10, I believe.
00:30:31
Speaker
He thought I gave him $100.
00:30:31
Speaker
He gave me back a $20 bill or something like that.
00:30:35
Speaker
And I didn't notice until I got home
00:30:38
Speaker
Right?
00:30:39
Speaker
And the gas station is only five minutes from where I live.
00:30:43
Speaker
But my spirit, right?
00:30:45
Speaker
Talking about ethics, you know, the spiritual sense is like, I think you should go back and take it.
00:30:50
Speaker
And some people are like, no, that's what I know.
00:30:52
Speaker
They made a mistake.
00:30:53
Speaker
That's the universe.
00:30:54
Speaker
Right?
00:30:56
Speaker
Take the money.
00:30:57
Speaker
But, and I guess this thing's trying to transition to like the spiritual side of ethics.
00:31:02
Speaker
I took the money back because it felt just internally like,
00:31:07
Speaker
I trusted myself, my gut, my spirit, my intuition.
00:31:11
Speaker
I know I didn't give him a hundred dollar bill.
00:31:13
Speaker
I'm giving him $20 back.
00:31:15
Speaker
So in that case, yeah, I would say, teach, stop.
00:31:18
Speaker
Like, hold on.
00:31:19
Speaker
Like, I got an A, what's going on?
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah, you would take that.
00:31:23
Speaker
Understanding of what happened.
00:31:26
Speaker
Like, is it not what I thought it was?
00:31:28
Speaker
I would kind of get more information to understand why I did not, did you miss something?
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:33
Speaker
And if I added the points wrong, you sure, why wouldn't you take that test back and go, hey, you added these points and you came up with 80 instead of 90.
00:31:41
Speaker
So I've actually got an A, right?
00:31:42
Speaker
So it's fairly simple because it's the truth.
00:31:45
Speaker
And if the teacher is ethical, they're not going to punish you for coming in and saying that they made a mistake.
00:31:49
Speaker
You'll get the grade that you deserve.
00:31:52
Speaker
But let me turn this around a little bit, because I think this is where it does begin to personalize things.
00:31:56
Speaker
And you've stated in your example, you took the money back.
00:31:59
Speaker
So good for you.
00:31:59
Speaker
That was the right thing to do.
00:32:00
Speaker
And I think you knew that inside, right?
00:32:02
Speaker
It was the right thing to do.
00:32:03
Speaker
Although I can come with all kinds of rationale that keeping the money is karma.
00:32:08
Speaker
Hey, what goes around comes around.
00:32:10
Speaker
Hey, I need it right now to pay the rent.
00:32:12
Speaker
And so God has provided.
00:32:13
Speaker
You can rationalize it any number of ways.
00:32:16
Speaker
But let me go back to the test.
00:32:17
Speaker
So let's say you get that test back from me.
00:32:20
Speaker
And you actually got the 90 points or the A that you were hoping for.
00:32:24
Speaker
But as you look at the test, you realize that you have the A or 90 points because I added the points wrong and gave you 10 more points than you actually deserve.
00:32:34
Speaker
So you really actually got an 80, but because I added the points wrong and you got a 90 and I recorded that grade, now you've got the score you wanted an A, but you got it because I missed the points on it, just like the earlier example.
00:32:48
Speaker
And I'm not gonna ask you directly, okay, now what are you gonna do?
00:32:52
Speaker
I am gonna say that at least most of us are gonna go through some kind of a,
00:32:56
Speaker
a check or a rationale about keeping those extra points.
00:32:59
Speaker
Who's gonna know?
00:33:00
Speaker
This isn't gonna hurt anybody.
00:33:01
Speaker
I'm sure the teacher doesn't know.
00:33:03
Speaker
I need an A to get into that other school I wanted to get into.
00:33:06
Speaker
I'm trying to get a scholarship.
00:33:07
Speaker
You can rationalize keeping those points.
00:33:10
Speaker
The real bottom line here is when we can play around with the truth, in the case of the points being on my side, I wanna get my points and I'm gonna show you, you made a mistake and that's why I got a lower grade.
00:33:21
Speaker
That's on my side.
00:33:22
Speaker
I'm gonna go show the teacher immediately.
00:33:24
Speaker
There's no debate about that.
00:33:26
Speaker
But then as the points are added and I get something that's me or good for me, I begin to think, well, I don't need to tell the teacher.
00:33:34
Speaker
They don't need to see the points.
00:33:35
Speaker
When we start playing with the truth,
00:33:37
Speaker
like that we're at that level one it's about me what's going to work out here for me or maybe the teacher knows i've got these extra points so i'll go in and show them the extra points or i'll go in and show them that i really got an 80 or a b instead of an a um but i'm but i'm doing it because i think i'm going to get punished if i don't that's still it's about me right not the whole idea of trust and trust for this or
00:34:00
Speaker
or truth.
00:34:00
Speaker
So you can make good choices or ethical choices at the lower levels, like it's about me.
00:34:06
Speaker
I'm not sure where you were, and you'd have to examine it yourself and thinking about, well, it's not just about me or some of us.
00:34:11
Speaker
It's about all of us.
00:34:12
Speaker
And this is the way I'd want to be treated if I let a friend borrow $100 and they only gave me $80 back.
00:34:19
Speaker
I would go after them and say, wait a minute, this isn't right.
00:34:23
Speaker
We need to talk about getting even again here on the scheme of things.
00:34:27
Speaker
If we can personalize these choices and think about them at a higher level, we'll actually wind up making better choices more consistently.
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:34
Speaker
And I think, you know, to piggy bank off of that, it is about, it comes down to me because as grand as clear, we all at some point in our life bend the rules, right?
00:34:45
Speaker
So then the question becomes, because if that was me in that situation and you gave me 10 extra points, I would be full of gratitude.
00:34:51
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:34:52
Speaker
Thankful, like, thank you.
00:34:53
Speaker
But also there's times where I know someone gave me more than they should and I let them know and acknowledge it.
00:35:00
Speaker
But there's also times where I'm like, I don't want to say anything.
00:35:03
Speaker
Say, Vincent, you want to get in a nightclub and you know you can skip the line or someone can get you in.
00:35:10
Speaker
you're not gonna worry about like, was that ethical to get in the line?
00:35:12
Speaker
So I think the question for me next is like, what determines if something is ethical or not?
00:35:18
Speaker
Like, where does that, who determines that?
00:35:21
Speaker
Is it your intuition?
00:35:23
Speaker
Does it come down to the me, ego?
00:35:27
Speaker
Does it come to the big picture or is it just analysis based on survival or what makes sense for you in a moment?
00:35:35
Speaker
Like how do you base, that's like if you're my friend and I have an event
00:35:40
Speaker
I'm not gonna let you stand in the line.
00:35:42
Speaker
I don't care who they know you as.
00:35:45
Speaker
Christopher, let's go.
00:35:47
Speaker
Is that ethical?
00:35:49
Speaker
Well, we can spin that a bunch of ways and say, ah, but he, but that's my friend.
00:35:53
Speaker
This is my event.
00:35:55
Speaker
You know, so that's why I would say, how do we determine what's ethical as an individual?
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah, again, this idea of personalizing it sometimes helps, not all the time.
00:36:04
Speaker
So in answer to what you were saying, so how would you feel if you're the next person in line?
00:36:09
Speaker
Or worse yet, you're at the end of the line and there's only a certain number of people
Empathy and Everyday Ethics
00:36:13
Speaker
that are going to be let in.
00:36:13
Speaker
And here comes Chris and meeting his friend Eric and they were up in front and they get in and off they go and I'm the last one out.
00:36:20
Speaker
I think the idea is that you could really think about standing in the other person's shoes, right?
00:36:24
Speaker
This is that goal and rule idea.
00:36:26
Speaker
So how would you feel?
00:36:28
Speaker
If you saw Chris and Eric getting in line in front of you when Chris hadn't showed up until the last minute and they were truly cutting in line and all of a sudden you're somehow left out or disadvantaged.
00:36:40
Speaker
My guess is you don't have a good feeling about that because you stood in the shoes of the other person.
00:36:45
Speaker
And I think this is really one of the keys is that idea of empathy.
00:36:49
Speaker
really truly understanding what it means to the other person, because that gets us out of it's about me and begins to get us into the next level or levels about thinking like the other person in terms of the impact your action is going to have.
00:37:03
Speaker
And it's hard to do.
00:37:06
Speaker
Look, if you want to be in good shape and run a marathon, you're going to have to practice and it's going to take work.
00:37:11
Speaker
And it's not always, hopefully, it's not always going to be easy.
00:37:14
Speaker
You actually have to work at it.
00:37:15
Speaker
So I think it's the same thing with ethics, especially in the world of
00:37:19
Speaker
uh we live now where there are a lot of people cheating in the marathon coming into the race later on if you yourself want to run a marathon you're going to have to practice and put in the work and the sweat to be able to do it it's the same thing with making the right kind of choices especially in a world where
00:37:34
Speaker
people are often rewarded in the short term for making wrong choices.
00:37:38
Speaker
And we even look up to them, right?
00:37:40
Speaker
The sports stars that have gotten to where they are, not necessarily making all the right choices.
00:37:45
Speaker
The folks in Hollywood, actors or producers or executives that get far along and have all kinds of notoriety, even though they're not necessarily making all the choices.
00:37:54
Speaker
The examples out there, especially the ones that we sometimes hold up on pedestals, aren't particularly good for us to practice
00:38:01
Speaker
a marathon.
00:38:01
Speaker
It's like watching someone eat at McDonald's all the time and then get into a marathon and cheat in the marathon and they're the ones that get all the press while we are the ones that had to do all the hard work.
00:38:10
Speaker
I think it comes to an understanding that in the end, the whole world gets better because of the choices, the better choices that we make as individuals and that's going to make our world better.
00:38:21
Speaker
And it's an awful hard thing to see sometimes.
00:38:23
Speaker
But if you begin to practice it, or you know this idea, the stair steps, and you can at least evaluate your choices afterwards, like, well, why wasn't I standing at the third step?
00:38:32
Speaker
It's about all of us when I made that decision to do X, Y, or Z, at least begins to get us out of the philosophical and iffy and gray world that ethics seem to be in now to a place that is more universal and is based on virtues, right?
00:38:46
Speaker
Not virtues ethics, but it's based on
00:38:49
Speaker
virtues and making sure that we're building trust and not eroding trust with the choices that we make.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:54
Speaker
And it's, you know, it's interesting because I've lived that my entire life.
00:38:59
Speaker
And that's why I posed the question earlier on the receiving aspect, because I'm always thinking about the next person or everybody else.
00:39:07
Speaker
I think I struggle with at times, but what about you?
00:39:11
Speaker
And people say, well, you always giving and helping everyone else.
00:39:14
Speaker
But what about you?
00:39:16
Speaker
And I'm so good at thinking for everybody else and maybe they're okay and put my foot in their shoes.
00:39:22
Speaker
And so how would they feel that I forget about me?
00:39:25
Speaker
And sometimes the, you, the individual, the group needs you to be you so you can help them more.
00:39:32
Speaker
If that makes sense.
00:39:33
Speaker
But when I'm always thinking for the group to help the group and I'm not thinking about me, I can lack why they succeed, but they're fine regardless, but I'm the one lacking.
00:39:45
Speaker
So it's like the economy and it's just interesting because it's like for me, it's the opposite where a lot of people know how to receive and be okay with it.
00:39:56
Speaker
Where me sometimes it's a block or like, what are you afraid of?
00:40:00
Speaker
Or what are you not trusting?
00:40:03
Speaker
But like I said, I guess it's situational and you kind of got to, I guess there's balance.
00:40:08
Speaker
I feel like in life that has to be balanced.
00:40:11
Speaker
There can't be, I feel like anybody that's at the top, they didn't do everything.
00:40:15
Speaker
ethically, right?
00:40:16
Speaker
At some point they bend the rules, they made a mistake, doesn't make it wrong, don't make it right, they just make that was their journey.
00:40:22
Speaker
And maybe them making the wrong, making an unethical decision made them understand the benefits of being ethical, right?
00:40:29
Speaker
Because when people break the rules for so long and then they get caught, they learn lessons and then they're able to help people
00:40:37
Speaker
who want a different perspective.
00:40:39
Speaker
Like for myself, I'm always giving, but you know how to receive.
00:40:43
Speaker
You can give me information.
00:40:45
Speaker
I don't have to understand the ethics that you're trying to give, right?
00:40:50
Speaker
And I guess that's just, you know, the analytical, the curiosity.
00:40:54
Speaker
I want to be for the group.
00:40:55
Speaker
I want to be for people and not thinking about myself as an individual.
00:40:59
Speaker
Like what are my ethics?
00:41:00
Speaker
What do I believe?
00:41:01
Speaker
What do I want?
00:41:02
Speaker
So you have a question here that I wanna, you know, or a statement.
00:41:07
Speaker
It says, 92% of people agree with the phrase, I am more ethical than most people I know.
00:41:14
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's a really good question.
00:41:19
Speaker
And it's interesting because I'll quite often ask at presentations or whatever groups I'm meeting with.
00:41:27
Speaker
So you knew this was going to be a talk about ethics.
00:41:29
Speaker
How many are here today because you're unethical?
00:41:32
Speaker
Raise your hands.
00:41:34
Speaker
Well, of course, no one's raising their hand at that point, right?
00:41:38
Speaker
And so I said, yeah, that's right, because we all live by the highest standards.
00:41:41
Speaker
I said, how many people here are glad that the person on the right, on their left, in front of them or behind them is in the seats today?
00:41:48
Speaker
And of course, that's when the hands go up, right?
00:41:51
Speaker
And I say, yeah, of course, because we're much more worried about everybody else than we are about ourselves.
00:41:57
Speaker
It's really a different set of lenses that we use to judge ourselves versus judging others.
00:42:03
Speaker
In my classrooms and even in the corporate training rooms that I do, I've come to call this the ethics out of body experience, where somehow or other we read about or we see those awful and terrible heinous decisions made by high profile people in the news or on social media.
00:42:21
Speaker
And we say to ourselves, well, of course, I would never, ever make a choice that way myself.
00:42:27
Speaker
because I have those ethics, all while we're fudging on our taxes, cutting people off on the freeway, secondhand smoking, downloading illegal software, right?
00:42:39
Speaker
And I realized that this was happening in my classrooms first, and that's not against people because I'm sure I was there as well.
00:42:46
Speaker
I realized that we needed to have that different conversation so that we could somehow clean off the lenses that we were using
00:42:54
Speaker
to judge others and use the same ones to judge ourselves so that we weren't thinking, oh, well, bad decisions are all about the big people that make terrible choices.
00:43:03
Speaker
No, really.
00:43:04
Speaker
I think America's moral compass is off because that's the way we think.
00:43:08
Speaker
America's moral compass is off because we're not thinking about the small choices that we make every day, all of us, and step up and down that moral ladder.
00:43:17
Speaker
I'm not saying everybody makes
00:43:18
Speaker
bad ethical choices all the time.
00:43:20
Speaker
I'm just saying that every day we face situations where we'll do a little bit of a compromise and come down, pull into a parking lot.
00:43:26
Speaker
The only Christmas time, the only place is a handicap parking stall.
00:43:30
Speaker
So I'm going to go ahead and park there.
00:43:31
Speaker
It'll just be a few minutes.
00:43:32
Speaker
Right.
00:43:33
Speaker
Without thinking about the other person.
00:43:34
Speaker
Right.
00:43:34
Speaker
We make these kinds of choices.
00:43:36
Speaker
Maybe not that specific one, you know, all the time.
00:43:40
Speaker
And we're not thinking about others as we make them.
00:43:42
Speaker
And that's what puts them on that ethical radar screen where cutting someone off in a freeway, we don't think about that as an ethical choice, but it is, right?
00:43:50
Speaker
Because it actually has perhaps a negative impact on someone else.
00:43:55
Speaker
And we've got our own reasons for doing it.
00:43:57
Speaker
We'll rationalize it just fine.
00:43:58
Speaker
Well, that's what happens when the high profile people make
00:44:02
Speaker
Ethical choices, let's talk about in the business world.
00:44:05
Speaker
No one walks into a corporate boardroom and says to the members of the board, okay, everybody who's up for screwing the consumer and making lots of money and getting away with it, please raise your hand.
00:44:17
Speaker
It doesn't happen that way.
00:44:18
Speaker
It happens the same way that we make a choice.
00:44:20
Speaker
We don't even really think about the ethics of it, but we rationalize that the outcome is going to be good either for us, some of us here in the company or the nation because we're a powerful engine of the economy.
00:44:31
Speaker
without thinking about what well yeah but what it's the real impact and what if this were being done to me how would I feel about that so the book is really about trying to get people grounded in that idea and providing examples and tools I think that are fairly easy to use at least that's what all the reviews are saying to think about our choices in a different way and make better ones but it does take practice
00:44:54
Speaker
Yeah, it takes practice.
00:44:55
Speaker
It takes time.
00:44:56
Speaker
Also, it takes awareness because I've done all that, you know, cut someone off.
00:45:00
Speaker
You didn't mean to.
00:45:01
Speaker
You're like, I get over my exit is here or pull into a handicap.
00:45:05
Speaker
I've done it.
00:45:05
Speaker
I've been there.
00:45:06
Speaker
And I think for me, I'm growing up.
00:45:09
Speaker
And as I got older, I wanted to be this perfectionist.
00:45:11
Speaker
Right.
00:45:11
Speaker
So I want to do everything.
00:45:12
Speaker
I want to be the honest person.
00:45:14
Speaker
I'm going to tell the truth.
00:45:15
Speaker
I'm going to, you know, and I realize it's it's great.
00:45:19
Speaker
Right.
00:45:19
Speaker
But it also can be a downfall because sometimes people don't want the truth.
00:45:24
Speaker
Right?
00:45:24
Speaker
Or they're not, they don't know how to handle it.
00:45:26
Speaker
They don't know how to deal with it.
00:45:27
Speaker
Or sometimes you got to take a chance to see if you advance and make a decision that goes against with the collective things because if you don't really feel that, like go back to the spirit,
00:45:42
Speaker
should a person jeopardize what their gut says for the big picture, for the whole, if they don't feel it?
00:45:50
Speaker
How does one make a decision when they know deep down they don't feel it, even if it's logically, it makes sense, it's practical, why not?
00:46:00
Speaker
And, you know, and you feel like, well, I just don't feel like, is it wrong that I feel this way and I'm not making that decision?
00:46:07
Speaker
Or how do you label that, you know, thing or person?
00:46:12
Speaker
Are they wrong?
00:46:12
Speaker
Are they ethical?
00:46:14
Speaker
Or is it all subjective?
00:46:16
Speaker
You know, far be it from me to judge on some moral high ground.
00:46:20
Speaker
I always tell people that just because I've got a doctorate in ethics doesn't necessarily make me any more or less moral than anybody else out in the world.
00:46:28
Speaker
I think I just have a framework now to think about my choices.
00:46:31
Speaker
And as long as other people are saying I want to be more tomorrow than I am today, then I think I'm in the same category, right?
00:46:38
Speaker
Because that's really the way that I think about it.
00:46:41
Speaker
And again, I think part of the thing here is I call them the ethical acid test, the EATS, E-A-T, the ethical acid test, the questions that you can ask yourself when you're making a choice that might help you make a better ethical choice if it's really foggy for you.
00:46:57
Speaker
And some of them are, OK, what if this were being done to me?
00:47:01
Speaker
how would I feel?
00:47:02
Speaker
Is this the right thing?
00:47:03
Speaker
I'm okay with it.
00:47:05
Speaker
Might be, okay, if this appeared on tomorrow's front page of the New York Times or in social media on CNN tonight, is that a good thing?
00:47:12
Speaker
Do I want people to know about this or do I want to keep this hidden?
00:47:16
Speaker
If I want to keep it hidden, then there's probably an ethical question mark to what it is that you're doing or what it is you think about doing.
00:47:24
Speaker
So they're very simple tools that we can use if we remember
00:47:29
Speaker
that there are tools there to use.
00:47:30
Speaker
And again, I think this gets out of
00:47:32
Speaker
You know, a lot of people that believe that ethics are iffy, that are gray, somehow I think we've gotten into this pattern of thinking that understanding ethics, that's really for the people who have great education or the great thinkers or the religious leaders, they understand.
00:47:47
Speaker
And the book is going to say, no, absolutely not.
00:47:50
Speaker
We all have the power to think about this in the right sort of way.
00:47:55
Speaker
And thinking that ethics are gray or iffy is like using the statement sort of pregnant.
00:48:01
Speaker
or I sort of voted or I'm sort of human, you know, we all know you did or you did not, you are or you are not, because ethics are really there to tell us what's right and what's wrong, you know, and if we can get out of this thinking that it's meant to be for the great philosophers and each of us has the power, and again, using some pretty simple tools to make
00:48:25
Speaker
the right kinds of choices, then that's actually going to help us make better decisions because really ethics are there to tell us right from wrong.
00:48:32
Speaker
Now, don't get me wrong.
00:48:34
Speaker
There are situations which makes it very difficult to make an ethical choice.
00:48:39
Speaker
Sometimes the cost is so high, it's impossible to make the right ethical choice because the cost is really going to be much higher than the outcomes if I go another way.
00:48:50
Speaker
But that doesn't excuse us
00:48:52
Speaker
From helping change the system so that our children or our grandchildren or the other people around us don't face the same terrible choice that must be made that isn't completely ethical,
Systemic Barriers and Business Ethics
00:49:03
Speaker
right?
00:49:03
Speaker
So there's a certain amount of responsibility we have, especially as we make less than ethical choices because the system, the cost of the system is too high to do it.
00:49:12
Speaker
And by system, I mean the culture or the situation that we're in.
00:49:17
Speaker
And we've got the power then to help think about changing that system so that no one else, especially our kids, don't face the same circumstance where they can't make the right choice.
00:49:28
Speaker
Yeah, and it's very important because, you know, I like what you say.
00:49:32
Speaker
It's not that you're perfect because you have a PhD and you're an expert.
00:49:36
Speaker
It's just what you're willing and your intentions is to make a better tomorrow and be better today than you were yesterday.
00:49:42
Speaker
And it gets me to know my following and my people that
00:49:46
Speaker
I'm not perfect.
00:49:47
Speaker
I'm not always happy.
00:49:49
Speaker
I'm not always jubilant and high energy, right?
00:49:53
Speaker
It comes to a point of being vulnerable with my listeners, being vulnerable with my audience to let them know like, look, I don't feel, I want to appear to be ethical.
00:50:02
Speaker
That's what you think.
00:50:03
Speaker
You might think I'm squeaky clean, but I'm not.
00:50:06
Speaker
I'm a human being.
00:50:07
Speaker
I make mistakes and
00:50:09
Speaker
I don't always have to figure it out and it might feel like I know what's going on or I have the answers, but I don't have other answers.
00:50:15
Speaker
None of us do.
00:50:16
Speaker
So there was an incident that happened, I think it was earlier this year with The Bachelor world, with Chris Harrison and Rich Blindy.
00:50:25
Speaker
And I know them both personally.
00:50:29
Speaker
And my takeaway on it was different than a lot of people because
00:50:33
Speaker
A lot of people was upset, of course.
00:50:34
Speaker
It's, yeah, you could be upset.
00:50:37
Speaker
But for me, was I upset?
00:50:40
Speaker
I was upset how he responded, but I know who he is as an individual.
00:50:45
Speaker
That didn't make me hate him.
00:50:47
Speaker
He apologized.
00:50:48
Speaker
Whether people thought it was genuine or not, it's something, like you said, a problem that brought certain people together and kind of distanced some folks.
00:50:58
Speaker
So for me, it was more of,
00:51:00
Speaker
Okay, I get it.
00:51:02
Speaker
I understand the wound.
00:51:03
Speaker
I understand how big of a thing that was.
00:51:06
Speaker
But at the end of the day, if that was you, it goes back to being personalized, right?
00:51:10
Speaker
It's easy to say what you would have done or what you would do if that was you in a position, but you're not in the position to understand the situational ethics or the moment to make that decision valid or invalid.
00:51:25
Speaker
Right?
00:51:26
Speaker
And so I think, you know, that is so important because I've judged people.
00:51:32
Speaker
And then when I got in that situation, I'm like, oh, oh, emotionally and mentally, I understand their decisions.
00:51:40
Speaker
To move on, you know, we'll wrap it up soon.
00:51:43
Speaker
The whistleblower from Facebook came up two days ago, right?
00:51:48
Speaker
So you have a question here.
00:51:49
Speaker
Can business leaders today be 100%
00:51:56
Speaker
And from that, from what I saw, I'm like, maybe not.
00:52:00
Speaker
Who knows?
00:52:01
Speaker
There's some problems of being ethical when you're making a profit, when you got to eat or you got to make money.
00:52:07
Speaker
You know, what is your, what did that question, you know, stem from and what is the answer to that?
00:52:13
Speaker
I mean, maybe, I don't know.
00:52:16
Speaker
I think you can for sure.
00:52:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's very interesting.
00:52:19
Speaker
We started this work, like I said, 25 plus years ago.
00:52:24
Speaker
We didn't have a lot of statistics about the tangible outcomes of, in this case, a business being more ethical rather than less ethical.
00:52:33
Speaker
But we do now, in fact, there's a poll that's done by Ethisphere and Gallup.
00:52:39
Speaker
I don't know if it's done every year.
00:52:40
Speaker
It might be every couple of years that talk about the differences inside the work of companies that rank in the top 100.
00:52:48
Speaker
most ethical companies versus the companies that rank in the bottom 100.
00:52:52
Speaker
And the statistics are quite astounding.
00:52:55
Speaker
For instance, productivity, which of course is a measure of profitability, there's a 21% increase
00:53:03
Speaker
in employees productivity in the companies that are in the top 100 versus the bottom 100.
00:53:08
Speaker
There's a 27% increase in profitability in the companies that rank in the top 100 versus the bottom 100.
00:53:15
Speaker
There's a 37% decrease in employee absenteeism
00:53:22
Speaker
between the companies that rank in the top 100 and the companies that rank in the bottom 100, there's all kinds of evidence that demonstrates for companies that take on being ethical, building trust, maybe issues of social responsibility or working on climate change or resource issues.
00:53:38
Speaker
There's a great deal of profitability, right?
00:53:41
Speaker
I mean, we're talking 27% more profitability in companies that choose the high road over companies that choose the low road.
00:53:48
Speaker
So the stats tell us that not only is it useful in doing it and it creates a much better atmosphere, but in fact, you wind up being more profitable than
00:53:57
Speaker
as a company that takes that mantle on of building trust, whether it's inside the organization or out towards community clients and customers.
00:54:06
Speaker
So it's pretty clear for those companies.
00:54:09
Speaker
And I think as we see more and more companies doing this and doing social responsibility issues or taking on climate change and resources, very interesting, for instance, in an industry,
00:54:18
Speaker
The American car manufacturing industry is changing its plants over to electric cars right now.
00:54:23
Speaker
And that's not because laws necessarily change.
00:54:26
Speaker
It's much more about demand changing and us saying, this is what we want and them seeing profitability in it.
00:54:32
Speaker
But bottom line is there's a shift in the way that they're looking at the environment and the vehicles that producing that would have been deadly to them as organizations 20 years ago.
00:54:43
Speaker
So we know these advances are happening.
00:54:45
Speaker
And that's one of the reasons, by the way, why I'm very optimistic, not pessimistic, despite all the things that I see in my world, but I'm very optimistic about the things that are happening because there are more people of greater diverse backgrounds now asking the right questions
Personal Ethics vs. Collective Responsibility
00:55:01
Speaker
and saying they're concerned and acting on those concerns than
00:55:05
Speaker
um in a deeper way than we did before so even though that's come out of some pretty perilous stuff especially over the last few years um it's it's going the right direction yeah and i think that kind of uh activity that kind of reaction that kind of proactivity very very important to getting us towards that world where it's about building trust yeah trust has been big in this episode in this conversation um before we finish um
00:55:32
Speaker
just want to feed off of that answer.
00:55:33
Speaker
It's really great how you answered it.
00:55:36
Speaker
So does that, what's the terminology I want to use?
00:55:41
Speaker
Is that way of thinking or being, does that apply for the individual?
00:55:45
Speaker
Because
00:55:46
Speaker
For a person like myself who is socially aware, emotionally aware, right?
00:55:50
Speaker
Have a lot of information and awareness.
00:55:53
Speaker
I find myself at times always taking the high road, right?
00:55:57
Speaker
Because I'm aware or I can see things that others can't see.
00:56:00
Speaker
What makes me more responsible doesn't matter the age or class or whatever, you know.
00:56:08
Speaker
Does it get to a point where like that's how you get
00:56:12
Speaker
That's how you evolve more in life because there are moments where I'm like, all right, man.
00:56:18
Speaker
You know, like, I can't keep taking the high road, man.
00:56:21
Speaker
Like, you gotta know that you're messing up.
00:56:24
Speaker
You know, like, there has to be some balance.
00:56:26
Speaker
So I'm just curious from your analysis or research, is there something that says like, yeah, the more high road you take, the better things will be, even if it feels like it's not.
00:56:37
Speaker
But it is hard when you know someone is doing something they shouldn't be doing.
00:56:43
Speaker
But you know they can't see what they're doing, but you take the high road because you're like, ah, you don't really know, but it still has an impact on you mentally, emotionally.
00:56:53
Speaker
What does a person do?
00:56:54
Speaker
Do you always take the high road?
00:56:55
Speaker
What would you do or what would you say?
00:56:58
Speaker
Yeah, you've talked throughout this interview about having some real capacities and you mentioned they come from family, you mentioned they just come from your life or who you are as an individual.
00:57:08
Speaker
Some real capacities to make that choice.
00:57:11
Speaker
So in a sense, I shouldn't say it's easier to
00:57:14
Speaker
But utilizing those capacities, taking the high road isn't as difficult for you as it might be, and I shouldn't speak for you, but in my research, not as difficult as for those people that don't have or want to recognize those capacities for themselves.
00:57:28
Speaker
They aren't thinking about being more tomorrow than they are today.
00:57:32
Speaker
In fact, they sort of look at the greater yesteryears where we need to go and
00:57:36
Speaker
Jonathan Haidt, Nationalism is a great example of this oh yeah we need to make ourselves greater again well.
00:57:41
Speaker
Jonathan Haidt, Unfortunately it doesn't work and we've had you know 400 years of working on that premise that if America is great the world's great it's too late we're all transparent the borders are transparent to things.
00:57:51
Speaker
it's about making the world great by doing the things that make us great, not just the things that make us great.
00:57:57
Speaker
So in some regard, the answer to your question is we're always supposed to take the high road, but this is not a perfect world and we're not meant to be perfect individuals here.
00:58:09
Speaker
The earth doesn't work like that.
00:58:10
Speaker
I think we're here, as my faith talks about and many other faiths talk about, to grow the religious, I mean, the spiritual eyes and arms and limbs that we need
00:58:19
Speaker
for the next world that is perfect.
00:58:22
Speaker
And so part of that is the growth that you face.
00:58:24
Speaker
And I would say by your example, by this very podcast, you're actually creating an opportunity for people to think about their better angels, whether it's just simply about this book and this interview, but more importantly, it's about, hey, maybe I'm going to hesitate to do that cutting off today that I always do every day because I'm recognizing an impact that's different.
00:58:45
Speaker
If we can just think about
00:58:47
Speaker
our ethical choices and it's about me, it's about some of us and at the highest level, it's about all of us, we actually start making better choices.
00:58:55
Speaker
That's what my research really demonstrated in the PhD that I was doing.
00:58:59
Speaker
You've been intentional about the choices you're making and how it's affecting someone else.
Continual Ethical Growth and Adaptability
00:59:04
Speaker
Last question.
00:59:06
Speaker
On a scale from one to 10, it's no judgment, let's be honest, how ethical do you think you are?
00:59:13
Speaker
Is 10 high or low?
00:59:20
Speaker
Yeah, you know what, I said at the beginning of this that ethics are meant to be a public process and that I can't alone myself decide what's ethical and what's not.
00:59:29
Speaker
I think my guess is that once I pass away, I'll have a chance to really see or know.
00:59:35
Speaker
How ethical I was, like I said, I'd like to believe that I've got a few tools that I've recognized or research that are very effective for me to think about, not only making a better choice, but maybe more importantly, if I don't make the best choice, thinking about what stopped me.
00:59:52
Speaker
Why didn't I make a better choice in that regard?
00:59:55
Speaker
What was there?
00:59:56
Speaker
What were the excuses of the rationales I use?
00:59:58
Speaker
And I think in that regard, it isn't that I'm more or less ethical than anybody else out there.
01:00:02
Speaker
It really is this idea of having something really simple rather than philosophical and iffy and deep, something very simple to think about making choices where I am standing and others are.
01:00:13
Speaker
shoes and it's a very effective way to think about making better choices so i'm hopeful i'm making better choices today than i was yesterday and using that tool and others and that's a great answer because there's no there's no right answer to that question right but there's only the answer you believe and the way you put it it's like i'm using that as a tool in my life to live a better life
01:00:37
Speaker
And hopefully that will carry on with my legacy, my family and whoever I'm connected to that know that I am as an individual, try my best to be ethical, but also think about other people before myself.
01:00:49
Speaker
And there might be some bumps in the road, but I did my best.
01:00:52
Speaker
And I think that's what it's about being a universal human being, authentic human being, just saying, you know what?
01:00:58
Speaker
I did what I thought I should have done in that moment.
01:01:01
Speaker
That was my ethics at the moment because your ethics, I feel like change as you age because you get new information and new experiences.
01:01:07
Speaker
But I just think this is a great topic and conversation that people are really going to take in.
01:01:14
Speaker
Christopher, I just want to say thank you for being here once again.
01:01:17
Speaker
People, the noble edge.
01:01:18
Speaker
Get the book, it's out.
01:01:20
Speaker
Come on.
01:01:21
Speaker
Leadership expert.
01:01:23
Speaker
Christopher Gilbert, PhD, let's go.
Exercising Virtues and Book Information
01:01:26
Speaker
Is there anything you want to say or leave with the people before we get off of here?
01:01:31
Speaker
Any motivation, inspiration?
01:01:33
Speaker
How can we find you?
01:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:01:36
Speaker
The book is available on all the online sites, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, indigo.com, books a million.
01:01:42
Speaker
It's also available in your local brick and mortar bookstores.
01:01:46
Speaker
And I'm a great fan of supporting those local businesses as well.
01:01:49
Speaker
If they don't have it, they can order it and get it in for you.
01:01:51
Speaker
But you can go on Amazon.
01:01:52
Speaker
You can also read a number of reviews.
01:01:54
Speaker
The book's gotten five awards so far, not only nationally, but internationally.
01:01:59
Speaker
So I'm really happy or grateful to see that.
01:02:01
Speaker
And if I were to say one thing, at least in the current era,
01:02:05
Speaker
Maybe it's for folks to think about ethics from this perspective.
01:02:08
Speaker
You know, ethics is not an exercise of our rights.
01:02:12
Speaker
It's an exercise of our virtues.
01:02:14
Speaker
So it's great to stand on this idea that we've got rights and principles and I'm not going to do this or I'm going to do this based on that.
01:02:21
Speaker
Maybe we can begin to think more about what virtues are we exercising, not just for ourselves or a few of us that believe in the same thing, but for all of us, what virtues are we exercising when we make the choices that we do?
01:02:33
Speaker
It's about building trust and not eroding it.
01:02:36
Speaker
We're probably in pretty good ethical stead.
01:02:38
Speaker
Trust, trust it is.
01:02:39
Speaker
Well, I trust you today and thank you for the information and thank you for
01:02:44
Speaker
the time and the energy and this was an ethical conversation.
01:02:49
Speaker
Well, thank you so much.
01:02:50
Speaker
I really appreciate it.
01:02:51
Speaker
It's a real privilege.
01:02:52
Speaker
And again, I'll say that this podcast, I think is an example of you wanting to get others exposed to information that's really important to living a better life with each other.
01:03:02
Speaker
So thank you.
01:03:02
Speaker
No way.
01:03:03
Speaker
You got to be noble and ethical, you know?
01:03:05
Speaker
There you go.
01:03:07
Speaker
There you go.
01:03:07
Speaker
So thanks again.
01:03:09
Speaker
Thank you.
01:03:09
Speaker
And we're done here.
01:03:12
Speaker
Very welcome.
01:03:12
Speaker
Thank you.