Teaching Character Education as a Business Ethics Course

2011 April 26 By

This post is actually from a comment I made to Debbe Kennedy’s Putting Our Differences to Work blog back in 2009. It seems worthwhile to repost it here.

I’ve always believed that many of the things we do as adults can and should be learned from children and the process by which we educate them. When we talk about honoring each other’s differences and watching our words and actions, I think that children are our best teachers. For instance, I contend that character education (teaching children how to be better, more honorable world citizens by treating one another with respect) is also a great way to teach adults and business leaders.

Imagine teaching character education as a business ethics course!

Here are six qualities/pillars of character that can be taught:

Trustworthiness
Be honest • Don’t deceive, cheat or steal • Be reliable — do what you say you’ll do • Have the courage to do the right thing • Build a good reputation • Be loyal — stand by your family, friends and country

Respect
Treat others with respect; follow the Golden Rule • Be tolerant of differences • Use good manners, not bad language • Be considerate of the feelings of others • Don’t threaten, hit or hurt anyone • Deal peacefully with anger, insults and disagreements

Responsibility
Do what you are supposed to do • Persevere: keep on trying! • Always do your best • Use self-control • Be self-disciplined • Think before you act — consider the consequences • Be accountable for your choices

Fairness
Play by the rules • Take turns and share • Be open-minded; listen to others • Don’t take advantage of others • Don’t blame others carelessly

Caring
Be kind • Be compassionate and show you care • Express gratitude • Forgive others • Help people in need

Citizenship
Do your share to make your school and community better • Cooperate • Get involved in community affairs • Stay informed; vote • Be a good neighbor • Obey laws and rules • Respect authority • Protect the environment

Taking any one of these, we can easily apply its lesson to our lives as adults and to our workplaces. For example, under “Respect”, we have “Be tolerant of differences • Use good manners, not bad language • Be considerate of the feelings of others” and under “Responsibility”, we learn to “Always do your best • Use self-control • Be self-disciplined • Think before you act — consider the consequences.”

Somewhere along the way towards adulthood, we have forgotten these valuable lessons about character taught to us (hopefully) as children. I think it’s important that we each reach deep within to learn again (or for the first time) these principles of humanity (compassion, decency, honor, respect, and citizenship).

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Filed Under: Attitudes & Emotions, Coaching, Incivility, Leadership, Meaningful Work, Occupational Health Psychology, Organizational Psychology, Stress, Teams, Training & Development Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Meeting and More Meetings

2011 April 18 By


I have always been fascinated by why organizations and supervisors insist on continuing the maddening idea of having so many meetings. I have seen places where they seem to have a meeting just to talk about planning for the next meeting. I call it a “meeting about another meeting.” I have seen this “meeting-about-another-meeting” phenomenon in schools, churches, and private and non-profit businesses.

I came across a study by Luong and Rogelberg (2005) that supported what, I believe, many of us already know about too many meetings. The authors said work meetings are similar to interruptions and daily hassles. For one week, participants were to keep a daily diary account of their daily meetings and self-reports about the employee’s well-being. Not surprisingly, the authors found that more meetings were associated with increased feelings of fatigue and workload, confirming their initial hypothesis that meeting load has a negative effect on well-being, similar to the effects of interruptions and daily hassles.

To counteract the countless, and dare I say useless, meetings, I want to share what Charan (2006) suggests about holding effective meetings.

He says decisive meetings have four characteristics:

  1. Open—their outcomes are not predetermined. Questions such as “What are we missing?” communicate an honest search for and a willingness to hear alternative perspectives.
  2. Candid—encourage people to air the conflicts that undermine apparent consensus, a willingness to speak the unspeakable. Candor “prevents the kind of unnecessary rework and revisiting of decisions that saps productivity.”
  3. Informal—informal meetings encourage people to be honest, open, and less defensive. Meetings should not feel like they were scripted. When people are comfortable and able to react in an honest way, “spontaneity is energizing.”
  4. Marked by Closure—while informality helps loosen up the meeting, closure establishes discipline. “Closure means that at the end of the meeting, people know exactly what they are expected to do.” In my opinion, this is key because, as Charan explains, it assigns accountability and deadlines to people.

Take-Away Message

  • Holding too many meetings can lead to increased feelings of fatigue and workload.
  • Effective meetings have four characteristics: open, candid, informal, and marked by closure.
  • At the end of the meeting, people should know exactly what they are expected to do.

References

Charan, R. (2006). Conquering a Culture of Indecision. Harvard Business Review, 84(1), 108-117.

Luong, A., & Rogelberg, S. G. (2005). Meetings and more meetings: The relationship between meeting load and the daily well-being of employees. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 9(1), 58-67. doi:10.1037/1089-2699.9.1.58

Filed Under: Coaching, Coaching Psychology, Happy & Unhappy, Leadership, Meaningful Work, Occupational Health Psychology, Organizational Psychology, Stress, Teams, Training & Development Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

When Clowns Run The Circus

2011 April 11 By

We all know the “bossholes,” Robert Sutton’s description of a boss who’s domineering or overbearing, an a$$hole. But it takes more than simply avoiding the land mines of the world of “bossholes” to qualify one to be a good boss. Effective bosses understand that having authority means being able to use power appropriately and timely. In “Good Boss, Bad Boss,” Sutton says one mindset that is characteristic of a good boss is the ability to find a balance between over-managing (or micromanaging) and under-managing. He says good bosses know when to exert more control and when to back off. They know when to coach and when to discipline.

If you ever watch the circus, you have probably seen clowns running around. They’re really entertaining and often add to the overall experience of going to the circus. However, you might also notice that clowns never take charge. They don’t take charge over the circus because that’s not their role. Instead, clowns always take their cues from the ringmaster — the boss of the circus.

In a similar fashion, bosses are not that different in their roles at work from circus ringmasters. When the boss is “too nice,” the jerks, bullies, and bigmouths who report to them will actually be the ones running the show. Sadly, these poor bosses are viewed as powerless pushovers, leaders by title but not by respect. In these situations, the clowns in the office are running the circus (aka, the workplace).

In one workplace, a manager often relinquishes authority over to an administrative assistant who has been with the organization for almost two decades. When ask why she does this, the boss explains she doesn’t want to upset the assistant. It is actually fascinating to watch because there exists a very clear power struggle between the manager and secretary. While the manager doesn’t like it, she would always reluctantly, but surely, give in to the demands of the office assistant. Part of her fear of not doing so is the rationalization that this secretary is simply too valuable to let go. Thus, each day brings with it a different drama, depending on the fickle mood swings of this secretary.

In a post that parallels some of what I’ve just shared, Jill Geisler has a nice piece titled, “What Great Bosses Know About the 7 Deadly Sins of the Too-Nice Boss.” In it, she outlines seven things that can go wrong when a boss is too nice.

The Seven Deadly Sins of the Too-Nice Boss (verbatim from her post):

  1. Your ideas get overshadowed by others in the organization who are more assertive about making their cases.
  2. Workplace problems fester as you postpone dealing with them.
  3. Mediocrity flourishes as you hold back from challenging underperformers.
  4. Needed change is delayed as you hesitate to nudge people out of their comfort zones.
  5. You do other peoples’ work when they complain about schedules, shifts or duties.
  6. Bullies and bigmouths win.
  7. You can lose respect — from your bosses, other managers, your staff — or all of them.

Take-Away Message

  • Good bosses know when to exert control and when to back off. They know when to coach and when to discipline.
  • Bosses who are “too nice” or who are viewed as pushovers will be dominated by office clowns (the jerks, bullies, and bigmouths subordinates who report to them).
  • When the office clowns run the show, drama and problems will arise, and the workplace will start to look like a circus.
  • “Too-nice” bosses will not gain the respect of their employees.

References

Geisler, J. (2011). What Great Bosses Know About the 7 Deadly Sins of the Too-Nice Boss. Retrieved from http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/leadership-management/what-great-bosses-know/125251/what-great-bosses-know-about-the-7-deadly-sins-of-the-too-nice-boss/

Sutton, R.I. (2010). Good boss, bad boss: How to be the best…and learn from the worst. New York: Business Plus.

Filed Under: Attitudes & Emotions, Coaching, Coaching Psychology, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Organizational Psychology, Stress, Teams, Training & Development Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Multitasking Doesn’t Work

2011 April 4 By


[NOTE: This post was updated November 2012 to include new statistics]

Multitasking is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. But it’s important to understand what it is and why it doesn’t work. Multitasking is when we juggle multiple things (thoughts and actions) at the same time. For example, people multitask when they drive and talk on their cell phones (Donatelle, 2009). It may surprise you to hear, however, that people who multitask are actually less productive than those who just concentrate on one project a time.

A recent Harvard Business Review post says that multitasking leads to as much as a 40% drop in productivity, increased stress, and a 10% drop in IQ (Bergman, 2010).

Need more proof? Perhaps no other example better illustrates why multitasking doesn’t work than distracted driving. Studies have found that driving while distracted (being on the phone or texting) is actually more dangerous than driving drunk.

Here are some eye-opening statistics:

  • 20 percent of injury crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving (NHTSA).
  • 18% of injury crashes in 2010 were reported as distraction-affected crashes (Distraction.Gov).
  • Using a cell phone while driving, whether it’s hand-held or hands-free, delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent (University of Utah).
  • Sending or receiving a text takes a driver’s eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds, the equivalent-at 55 mph-of driving the length of an entire football field, blind (Distraction.Gov).

The September 2010 Harvard Mental Health Letter (a Harvard Health Publication) cited a study to explain why talking on the phone while driving is more distracting than talking to a fellow passenger in the same car. Researchers found those who talked on the cell phone were more likely to drift into the other lane and more likely to miss an exit. Further analyzing conversations, researchers discovered that drivers and passengers in the car tended to adjust their conversations in response to traffic cues. For instance, they both stopped talking if there was a traffic problem or the passenger would give advice to help the driver navigate. On the flip side, conversations on cell phones didn’t vary based on traffic conditions because, obviously, only the driver can see the road.

Finally, for those who still argue that they’re great at multitasking, research indicates that even though we think we’re “multitasking” it’s actually our brain rapidly switching from one task to another, rather than processing them simultaneously. People who seem to be good at multitasking are simply good at being faster at switching back and forth between two things (Scientific American, 2009).

Take-Away Message

  • People who multitask are less productive/efficient than those who simply concentrate on one project a time.
  • We don’t actually “multitask” because your brain switches rapidly between handling one task and then another.
  • Simplify your life and your tasks. Do fewer things — better.

References

Bergman, P. (2010, May 20). How (and why) to stop multitasking. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://hbr.org

Distraction.Gov – What is Distracted Driving
http://www.distraction.gov/content/get-the-facts/facts-and-statistics.html

Donatelle, R. (2009). Health: The basics (8th ed.). San Francisco: Pearson Benjamin Cummings.

Harvard Mental Health Letter. (September 2010). In Brief: The Quirky Brain: Why cell phone conversations distract drivers. Retrieved from http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Mental_Health_Letter/2010/September/why-cell-phone-conversations-distract-drivers

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – Traffic Safety Facts Research Note
Distracted Driving 2009
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811379.pdf

Scientific American. (2009, July). The Myth of Multitasking. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=the-myth-of-multitasking-09-07-15

University of Utah – Cell Phone Users Drive “Blind”
http://unews.utah.edu/old/p/031506-7.html

University of Utah – Drivers on Cell Phones Are As Bad As Drunks
http://unews.utah.edu/old/p/062206-1.html

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