The near and far enemies of organisational culture
While an organisation might be judged by its profitability or reputation, it is ultimately defined by its culture.
Culture influences everything: individual and team performance, change management, and how the organisation navigates complexity and uncertainty. And when companies face ethical scandals or breaches, the root cause is often be traced back to cultural issues.
Culture isn’t just about employee engagement; it’s about how an organisation functions at its core. Yet culture is notoriously difficult to define and measure. Turning to traditional methods like employee surveys, pulse checks, or 360-degree reviews can be insightful, but they rarely provide a complete picture. A more profound understanding lies beneath the surface by identifying and understanding the role an organisation’s “shadow values” play in shaping their culture. These are the implicit, unspoken attitudes and beliefs that profoundly influence behaviour, often in ways that are not immediately apparent, but which are often key drivers that explain the ethical challenges an organisation experiences.
Shadow values: The invisible force shaping culture
By recognising and understanding shadow values, organisations can make meaningful improvements, aligning both individual and collective behaviours with the company’s goals.
Corporate values, such as collaboration, integrity, or innovation, are stated, documented, and promoted. However, even companies with admirable stated values can experience significant ethical failures due to the existence of implicit, shadow values that run counter to their formal values.
At their worst, shadow values and principles run in opposition to official values. At their best, shadow values provide a nuanced expression of what an organisation actually values. Either way, they are an essential element of identifying and measuring an organisation’s actual operating culture.
The positive side of shadow values and principles can be demonstrated by a financial services company The Ethics Centre worked with where “putting members first” was identified a shadow principle. This principle was so deeply embedded that when employees faced ambiguous situations where decisions and actions weren’t guided by clear policies or procedures, they defaulted to acting in the best interests of their members, even though this value was not formally part of the organisation’s stated principles.
On the other hand, shadow values and principles can also have a negative impact on an organisation’s culture. Another company we worked with had the common shadow principle of ‘shareholders matter most.’ As a publicly listed company providing essential services, providing value and managing and responding to multiple stakeholders was part and parcel of day-to-day business. However, this shadow principle become a default when trade-offs invariably had to be made between various stakeholder interests. This engendered a high level of cynicism and disaffection with staff who heard a lot about the importance of customer service and the value of staff but other actions – workload, resourcing, remuneration, and informal communication from managers – led them to infer that they existed only insofar as they met shareholder’s interests.
Near and far enemies: A Buddhist lens
To better understand and identify the impact of shadow values and principles on an organisation’s culture we can borrow the concepts of near and far enemies from Buddhism.
In Buddhism, the Four Brahmavihārā (compassion, loving-kindness, empathetic joy, and equanimity) represent the highest virtues humans should cultivate. Each of these virtues has a “far enemy,” which is an obvious opposite, and a “near enemy,” which closely resembles the virtue but is actually a distortion.
For example, the far enemy of compassion is cruelty – easily identifiable and universally understood as negative. And because it is easily identifiable and its manifestations and impact are readily recognised, it can be directly addressed.
The near enemy, however, is pity. Pity masquerades as compassion, superficially appearing to embody the traits of compassion. However, this is only a superficial resemblance as pity creates a sense of distance or condescension, because it stems from feeling sorry for someone rather than genuinely empathising with their experience. Pity lacks the connection and motivation to act that true compassion entails.
The near enemies in organisational culture
This concept of near and far enemies is incredibly helpful when diagnosing the shadow values that can function as root causes of organisational culture failings.
Just as it is in the case of the Brahmavihārā, while the far enemies of a company’s values are easy to spot and address, the near enemies are more insidious, because they masquerade as positive behaviours, and as such they exercise a disproportionate impact on people’s decision making and actions.
In an organisation The Ethics Centre worked with, “collaboration” was codified as a core company value. The far enemy of collaboration is competition, which is relatively easy to identify. If employees begin hoarding information or undermining one another, it’s clear that competition has taken root, supplanting the value collaboration and steps can be taken to address it.
However, competition wasn’t the root challenge for this company; it was harmony, a near enemy of collaboration. While harmony seems positive, it can manifest as a reluctance to engage in constructive conflict or make difficult decisions.
In the case of this company, a large incumbent experiencing organic year on year growth, their strategic challenge was shifting the culture to be one that was more responsive, innovative and adaptable to change. However, harmony as a shadow value was so deeply embedded as a shadow value that employees avoided conflict at all costs. Decisions were often delayed, and consensus-driven processes became bureaucratic, impeding the company’s ability to be agile and responsive to the changing environment and future competitive pressures, with innovative ideas often deferred.
Another example comes from a large financial services firm that codified “excellence” as a core value.
While the far enemy of excellence is easily and readily identifiable as mediocrity, it played little role in explaining some of the foundational ethical challenges the company was facing. Instead, it was ‘success,’ the near enemy of excellence, which was a core driver of cultural misalignment. ‘Success’ can give the appearance of excellence, however while excellence is about high standards of consistent performance and achieving great results through effort and learning, success had a singular focus on achieving results for their own sake, regardless of the means by which those results were achieved.
This near enemy generated a range of systemic organisational challenges including:
- An increasingly competitive internal environment – described by many staff as ‘dog-eat-dog’ resulting in people avoiding senior appointments.
- A proliferation and reliance on individual sales targets/performance payments, which promoted a highly competitive work environment which undermined teamwork and mutual accountability.
- Competing KPI’s that weren’t aligned across the business, undermining integrity in an attempt to get sales or outdo other teams to achieve different KPIs.
- Withholding information for internal competitive advantage – business units across the company did not disclose information or actively withheld it out of self-interest.
Combatting the near enemies
A company’s culture is complex, influenced by both visible and invisible forces. While explicit values like collaboration or excellence are important, it’s the shadow values operating beneath the surface that often have the greatest impact on behaviour. By understanding the near and far enemies of their values, companies can better align their culture with their strategic goals, fostering an environment that supports both individual and organisational success. The challenge lies in identifying these shadow values and addressing them before they become barriers to progress.
The Ethics Centre’s new program, Teamview can help organisations and teams of any size or ambition explore how their culture operates in practice, identify their strengths and chart a roadmap to closer alignment with their purpose and values. For more information contact consulting@ethics.org.au
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BY John Neil
John leads the Centre’s major consulting projects, leadership and culture programs and product development. Drawing on 20 years of experience, John has worked with Australia’s largest organisations in developing and delivering solutions to bring ethics to the centre of business design, culture development, and organisational decision making. Before joining us, John worked in the business school at the University of Technology Sydney. During his time there, he inspired students and colleagues alike through his research and teaching, and chaired the Ethics Working Group to develop an approach to embed ethics in the Bachelor of Business curriculum.
Self-presentation with the collapse of the back and front stage
The digital revolution has ushered us into a theatre where the stage extends into our living rooms, and the audience is always watching. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the context of work.
In the pandemic-driven shift from office to home (and back again), the curtains between personal and professional lives have not just been pulled back but torn down. This has changed not only where we work, but how we work, and crucially, how we are seen by our colleagues. It also has radical implications for what it means to be ‘authentic’ in the workplace.
Where the pre-2020 professional may have meticulously managed their work persona, the pandemic era has introduced authenticity by default, for better or worse. This collision of worlds invites us to question: In the blur between ‘onstage’ and ‘offstage’, which parts of ourselves do we bring to the virtual office table?
Presenting our authentic selves
David Hume, a prominent Scottish philosopher of the 18th century, radically destabilised our notions of a consistent, singular self. In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume argued that our perceptions are the only real things about us and that these perceptions are constantly changing.
He famously stated, “When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.”
In essence, Hume’s view of the self as a ‘bundle’ of perceptions challenges the idea of a singular, unchanging and enduring entity. Instead, our sense of self is more like a series of fluid, dynamic experiences that are related but distinct, with no unifying core or essence. This perspective has had a significant influence on later philosophical thought, particularly in discussions about personal identity and the nature of the self.
Given that for Hume, the self is a collection of changing perceptions, it might follow that our self-presentation is inherently fluid and adaptable. This adaptability might imply a level of control, as different situations or contexts bring different perceptions to the forefront, thus altering our self-presentation.
Rather than managing a stable, singular identity, self-presentation for Hume may be more about managing perceptions, both internal (how we perceive ourselves) and external (how others perceive us).
Hume also acknowledges the influence of external factors like social context and relationships on our perceptions. This indicates that while individuals might have some control over their self-presentation, it is also shaped by external circumstances beyond their complete control.
Self-presentation on the new office ‘stage’
In 1959, the influential sociologist Erving Goffman explained self-presentation as how we try to control how others see us. Drawing on theatrical metaphor, Goffman, noted the different roles we play in front of different audiences. He also highlighted the importance of ‘backstage’ spaces – private areas in which we are free to drop any act without spoiling the performance.
Current workplace paradigms, however, often involve catching glimpses of life behind the scenes. We increasingly perform our work roles immersed in the geography of our non-work selves while trying to create some separation between the two. Self-presentation in these new liminal spaces is therefore less straightforward than it might first appear and, again, poses questions about authenticity.
Pre-2020, jokes about pairing waist-up office wear with below-desk pyjamas were largely targeted at newsreaders. However, the pandemic-driven move from office to home sent many of us hurtling into colleagues’ worlds like never before.
The abrupt pivot to online meetings flung open virtual doors into our colleagues’ sanctuaries – spaces that were once off-limits to our professional personas. The sanctity and intimacy of the home, traditionally a retreat from the public gaze, became a shared space, albeit digitally, and often reluctantly.
The unexpected cameo of a pet, the soft murmur of children playing in the background, or the occasional appearance of a spouse served as reminders of the complex lives beyond the professional facades we maintain. These moments, while humanising, also signalled a tectonic shift in our understanding of authenticity.
As we continue to navigate this uncharted territory, it’s clear that our pre-pandemic understanding of privacy needs re-evaluating. The distinctions between work and private life must be redefined to protect the sanctity of both.
Employers and employees alike must collaboratively develop new norms and etiquettes that respect personal boundaries while accommodating the realities of our interconnected digital lives.
Examining authenticity
Identity curation is a core part of self-presentation, and we do it constantly. It is this curation that radically undermines claims of self-authenticity. In many workplaces, the move online merely highlighted ambiguities or inconsistencies in thinking about authenticity that were always there.
The language of authenticity is pervasive in the workplace; it features in mission statements, company values and even competency frameworks yet is rarely defined by organisations in any meaningful way.
The idea of an authentic self underpins the relatively recent introduction of the notion of ‘bringing your whole self to work.’ We have witnessed a radical shift from earlier 20th-century conceptions of workplace conformity and strict adherence to a professional persona that often required suppressing personal identities and emotions, to a workplace culture that rhetorically valorises the uniqueness of individual’s ‘lived experience’ and the expression of people’s unique perspectives and backgrounds in the workplace.
However, it still begs the question as to what precisely constitutes an individual’s authentic self? And which modes of authenticity are valued over others?
Expecting employees to somehow just be authentic – a complex and debated concept in an era of multiple states of self-presentation – is therefore an unreasonable ask, whether offline, online or moving between the two.
Recent discussions on authenticity in the workplace highlight a complex landscape where the concept is both lauded for its potential to enhance individual well-being and critiqued for its unintended consequences. Hamilton and Almeida at the LSE Business Review point out that an authentic work environment can be beneficial to psychological health and performance outcomes, yet the narrow social norms of professionalism often limit who can genuinely express themselves without repercussions, leading to assimilation and code-switching.
Furthermore, Hamilton and Almeida also found that authenticity can become a source of cognitive strain and alienation when individuals feel compelled to align with dominant group norms, which may conflict with their innate values and personal identities. This is particularly challenging for minority groups within organisations, as the pressure to conform can lead to psychological distress and inhibit genuine self-expression.
Critiques also focus on the potential for a culture of authenticity to inadvertently perpetuate social inequalities, as those who cannot or choose not to conform to the dominant narrative of authenticity might self-segregate or face negative work-related consequences. Additionally, the pursuit of authenticity can stifle dissent and innovation, as uniformity of thought undermines the benefits of a diverse workforce.
The call for authentic self-expression in the workplace must be balanced with a conscious effort to foster an inclusive environment where diverse voices are not just heard but valued. This requires leadership that understands and actively manages the dynamics of group identity, as well as a collective effort among employees to embrace and respect differences.
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BY Beth Anderson
Beth has spent over 15 years in leadership and ethical consultancy roles across the UK non-profit and public sectors. Much of her career has involved identifying ‘what works’ in a way that synthesises knowledge from research, policy and practice.
BY John Neil
John leads the Centre’s major consulting projects, leadership and culture programs and product development. Drawing on 20 years of experience, John has worked with Australia’s largest organisations in developing and delivering solutions to bring ethics to the centre of business design, culture development, and organisational decision making. Before joining us, John worked in the business school at the University of Technology Sydney. During his time there, he inspired students and colleagues alike through his research and teaching, and chaired the Ethics Working Group to develop an approach to embed ethics in the Bachelor of Business curriculum.
How to give your new year’s resolutions more meaning
It’s that time of year again. For many of us the New Year is a time to make our annual resolutions.
For others it’s a time to briefly toy with the idea of making a resolution or two but never commit. And for others, depending on how badly the previous evening’s events transpired, the New Year’s Day hangover inspires at least one resolution – to never ever drink again.
Unfortunately, the majority of people don’t stick to their resolutions. Only 4-10% of people report following through on the resolutions they set at the beginning of the year (I wonder whether this figure includes those people that sarcastically claim that they have only one New Year resolution – to not make any New Year’s resolutions?).
The majority of resolutions fail because, well, we’re human beings. There are at least three factors behind this:
1. We overestimate the power of ‘will power.’ Often linked to adjacent concepts like resilience and impulse inhibition, the long-standing belief in psychology is that will power is a finite resource and people have varying reservoirs of it to draw on. The belief was that by bolstering our will power we’re better able to attain our goals and, by implication, those that don’t achieve their goals lack willpower. Unfortunately, it’s more complicated than that. Our ability to maintain choices and attain goals is as much about situational context, genetics, and socio-economic standing as it is about individual psychological traits.
2. As a result, any significant behaviour change requires long standing practice, environmental changes and thoughtfully designed behavioural cues in order to create pathways of reinforcement in order to form new habits. In short, even the simplest resolutions require habitual practice.
3. Most resolutions are goal focussed – stop smoking, lose weight – and for that reason they take on an instrumental importance, meaning they focus exclusively on achieving an end state or outcome. With the high level of difficulty in achieving these outcomes resolutions can become self-defeating – the end becomes the goal rather than a focus on the motivating reason that inspired the goal.
That’s not to say that New Year’s resolutions are a bad thing. We are hard-wired to demarcate life into phases. Birthdays, seasons, events, and the change of year are all relatively arbitrary events but are full of symbolic significance. They are moments that matter because we invest these occasions with meaning.
New Year’s resolutions at their best can provide a much-needed pause in the busyness of life to reflect and reassess what’s important to us.
So, as you pause and reflect on the year ahead, consider taking a different path when thinking about setting resolutions. Rather than listing goals, think instead about the qualities you’d like to cultivate in the year ahead. What qualities for you express the best aspects of a life well lived? Which of those would you choose to have more of in your life?
Known as virtues – those behaviours, skills or mindsets that are worthy to be regarded as features of living a good life. Wisdom, justice, and courage were on Aristotle’s shortlist.
Rather than setting goals like read more books or spend less time on my phone – think instead of the quality you are calling more of into your world – like being curious.
There are no limits or targets to being curious, there’s simply a conscious reflection which may lead to some different choices or new experiences.
Curiosity might lead you to pick up a book rather than slump on the couch in front of Netflix or it may prompt you to choose an interesting documentary about a topic you always wanted to know more on.
Being curious this year might also benefit your relationships. Being curious involves behaviours like asking more questions, seeking out different points of views and perspectives and being more open to opinions and beliefs that are different to the ones you hold. Practicing this virtue may lead to new and unexpected connections, making new friendships or forging even stronger relationships. It may even reduce conflict by helping you to be less triggered when confronted with views that are contrary to our own.
Being curious may also help with your lifestyle and eating habits. Rather than resolving to lose weight, be curious about trying different foods which may inspire some different meal choices from those that you might already know. By being curious you may be intrigued to occasionally switch out some of your habitual choices by actively seeking out different or healthier alternatives.
However, there’s no guarantee that being curious might not also lead you to consume a wider variety of chocolate or spend even more time on your phone as you may seek out even more information and distractions. That’s the challenge with cultivating qualities or virtues; you’ll need practical wisdom, as Aristotle calls it. It’s about finding the best balance between the virtue and its corresponding vices.
Rather than focus on resolutions as goals and outcomes – often with arbitrary measures of success like read more, rest more, learn another language – focus instead on the ‘why’ behind the quality you are wanting to cultivate. Research shows that being purposive and intentional helps people maintain their motivation and achieve the goals they set.
As you reflect on the year ahead take some time to think about those qualities you could do with a little more of. In fact, why wait for the New Year? I’m going to start today by practicing more gratitude. There’s no time like the present.
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BY John Neil
John leads the Centre’s major consulting projects, leadership and culture programs and product development. Drawing on 20 years of experience, John has worked with Australia’s largest organisations in developing and delivering solutions to bring ethics to the centre of business design, culture development, and organisational decision making. Before joining us, John worked in the business school at the University of Technology Sydney. During his time there, he inspired students and colleagues alike through his research and teaching, and chaired the Ethics Working Group to develop an approach to embed ethics in the Bachelor of Business curriculum.
Game, set and match: 5 principles for leading and living the game of life
Ash Barty’s shock retirement from tennis while seemingly at the peak of her powers left the sporting world reeling.
But from all accounts it was no surprise to those close to her. From what we’ve learnt about her throughout her career, and especially through her retirement announcement, the lack of surprise from those close to her is a testament to Barty’s principles of leadership.
In times of uncertainty and unpredictability we often look to our folk heroes to provide guidance and inspiration. However, all too often we default to sportspeople as the exemplars for lessons in how to live, cherry picking attributes of heroism and resilience on the field of play only to find our heroes’ winning lustre tarnished when the invariable accounts of various misdeeds or behaviours kept private between teammates invariably surface.
Exemplary people play a key role in the branch of ethics known as virtue ethics. Its head coach, Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, gave exemplars a starting guernsey in his philosophical line up because they are people who can practically demonstrate to others how to live a life well. For Aristotle, ethics is not simply a matter of internalising a rule; but is about doing the right thing at the right time, in the right way and for the right reason. Moral exemplars help show us the way.
Both on and off the court, Ash Barty is a moral exemplar in the full sense of Aristotle’s term. In her humility, good will and clear-eyed purpose that she demonstrated in her retirement announcement, we can see five fundamental principles for how to lead in our work, and how to live a life inspired by someone worth emulating.
1. Relationships are an ends, not merely a means
Throughout her career Barty was consistently clear how highly she valued relationships; not because they helped her achieve sporting success, but because they were important in and for themselves. They were a foundation for her to live a flourishing life, on and off the court.
Her opening exchange in her interview announcing her retirement with good friend Casey Dellacqua, spoke volumes for the power of relationships and friendships in particular. The refreshingly genuine and heartfelt connection that began the exchange with her good friend, who thanked Barty for ‘trusting me again’ to break the news was as refreshing as it was surprising. Less surprising when we remember that Barty, in a sport notorious for its individualism, referred continuously throughout her career and especially in winning, to the central role of her team, family, friends and community played in it – just as she did in her retirement announcement.
As all great leaders do, Barty skilfully and genuinely removed herself from the centre wherever possible – no mean feat in an individualistic sport like tennis. Relationships for Barty, as they are for the best leaders, are of intrinsic value in themselves. They are not a means to achieve an outcome, they are an end in themselves.
And no doubt just as they helped Barty get the best out of herself, she, in turn, enabled the best in the team around her.
2. Leave it all out there – but don’t lose yourself in the process
On the surface Barty lived the cliched sporting principle ‘leave it all out on the field.’ From her epic Wimbledon title win after coming back early from a serious hip injury to reach the final and then holding off Karolina Pliskovain in a four-set thriller through to her epic Australian Open win – which is now all the more astonishing now we know she was running on empty – she demonstrated the drive to give it her all.
However, the adage to ‘leave it all out there’ alone lacks a second balancing criterion, which any leader who has faced the invariable burnout that comes from shouldering the often self-imposed burden of trying to meet a heroic leadership ideal knows too well from harsh experience: ‘Don’t lose yourself in the process.’
Good leaders will extend as much compassion and care to themselves as they bestow upon others. Our legacy model of leadership is the heroic individual figure (typically male) who sacrifices all for the cause, including themselves. As we’ve now discovered, Barty had learnt the importance of the other side of the equation earlier in her career than most leaders. Despite having “given absolutely everything” to tennis, Barty had the emotional intelligence, belying her young age, to recognise the impact and effect on her physical and emotional well-being of what she strove so hard to achieve.
That this is not the first time she has walked away from the sport is testament to the fact that she has been acutely aware of the balance required in managing the physical and emotional limits of achieving success in the broader context of what she values in life and what and how to prioritise them.
3. Don’t mistake achievement for purpose
Barty’s many achievements on the court did not define her purpose. That she was ambitious and aimed high to achieve her goals is not in doubt; winning Wimbledon, her ‘one true dream,’ added along the way to her three-time grand slam championships. But individual successes were never achievements for their own sake. From her own account this was a realisation that occurred in her ‘perspective shift’ in this the ‘second phase of her career.’ Tennis and her achievements in the sport did not define her, just as professions, roles and achievements do no not define the best leaders. Barty was always a person first, player second. Almost to a person, those who had played against her referred to her qualities as friend as much as a player.
4. Make a virtue of a necessity
All too frequently we read of the latest controversy embroiling our sporting heroes. With most sport super charged by money and fuelled by the relentless chase for the fame and status that success brings, the rules of the game, let alone the spirit of the game, are often left behind in the clay (or grass) as players scramble to be the first to reach the top of the pile.
Exemplary individuals are exemplary by definition. While small in stature, Barty stood head and shoulders out from many of her tennis compatriots, male and female alike, through the virtues she displayed on and off the court.
For Aristotle, virtues provide the foundation for good actions. A virtue is a disposition or character trait to act, think and feel in certain ways. Bad actions display the opposite and are informed by vices. We are shaped by our actions just as much as we are shaped by the situations, we are in. Unfortunately those in professional sport, like those in other hyper-competitive industries, are often too easily shaped by the industry they are.
Barty, was exemplary in this world. While she had the virtues of courage and resilience – in overcoming injury and career set backs – they are the least interesting of her attributes. They are prerequisites for success in any endeavour.
Instead, she was exemplary because she chose to develop exceptional virtues that themselves required courage because they flew in the face of all known measures of success in the sport she excelled at. She chose humility over hubris, she chose self-effacement over self aggrandisement, and in a brutally competitive environment she chose wherever possible to play more as friend than foe. And ultimately, in announcing her ‘early’ retirement from the sport which gave her ‘all my dreams plus more,’ she chose those virtues more aligned to her purpose as, in her words, ‘Ash Barty the person, not as Ash Barty the athlete.’
5. How you live in the present will be your legacy for the future
The thousands of young kids, particularly girls, who looked on with admiration at those virtues on display and are now inspired to try and emulate her on and off the court may in the end be a more lasting legacy than any of her Grand Slam victories.
In living ethically one of the biggest challenges is to understand what motivates people to act in the best way. The narratives and stories we tell ourselves and each other, as Linda Zagzebski scholar of moral exemplarism argues, are powerful ways to inspire moral education and improvement because they engage human motives better than abstract ideas, rules or reasons.
Children, and adults alike, are motivated by emulation. Exemplars, like Barty, provoke admiration in us all and inspire us to strive to embody those same attributes. All leaders, whether on the tennis court, sporting field, shop floor or boardroom, have the capacity to inspire others to emulate the best aspects of themselves in demonstrating how to navigate the complexities we all face in life through the wisdom in their actions. In every, single moment.
Barty, like all great leaders, is exemplary in demonstrating practically, on and off the court, how to live a life that expresses purpose, that embodies the best values and virtues to realise that purpose, and the courage to hold true to them, especially when they fly in the face of other’s expectations and conventional wisdom.
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BY John Neil
John leads the Centre’s major consulting projects, leadership and culture programs and product development. Drawing on 20 years of experience, John has worked with Australia’s largest organisations in developing and delivering solutions to bring ethics to the centre of business design, culture development, and organisational decision making. Before joining us, John worked in the business school at the University of Technology Sydney. During his time there, he inspired students and colleagues alike through his research and teaching, and chaired the Ethics Working Group to develop an approach to embed ethics in the Bachelor of Business curriculum.
How avoiding shadow values can help change your organisational culture
Governing culture is a board’s most challenging task. John Neil and Michelle Bloom of The Ethics Centre outline the dangers of “shadow values”. Here’s how to walk the talk.
This article was first published in the March 2021 edition of Company Director magazine for the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
While an organisation might be measured by its share price, profitability or reputation, it is defined by its culture. Culture matters because it influences everything an organisation does. It defines not only individual and team performance, it also influences how organisations manage, change and navigate complexity and uncertainty. While it is critical to an organisation’s performance and reputation, culture is notoriously difficult to identify, measure and evaluate. As a result, understanding and governing culture is a perennial challenge for boards. This is because it is comprised of implicit and explicit dimensions. It includes the shared values, principles and beliefs of people, how they work together and with each other. Many of these dimensions are visible, but many are not.
On the face of it, corporate values of excellence, respect, integrity and communication are admirable and worthy. Most organisations would be happy to identify with them. But Enron espoused these values only 12 months before declaring bankruptcy in 2001 — the largest in US history. The company had received plaudits for its 64-page code of ethics and Fortune magazine named it “America’s Most Innovative Company”. It had received numerous awards for its corporate citizenship and environmental policies.
Enron’s failings have been well documented as the prototypical case study of what can happen when an organisation decouples values from its behaviours. Less well-documented is how the implicit and unstated dimensions of an organisation’s culture shape and influence for better or worse. These aspects of culture determine what and how things get done in organisations and are driven by the implicit values/principles people hold.
“The biggest challenge for boards in governing culture is that while unspoken dimensions are difficult, but not impossible, to identify and measure, they are more powerful than the official ones because they operate below the surface.” – John Neil, The Ethics Centre
The dark side
The biggest challenge for boards in governing culture is that while unspoken dimensions are difficult, but not impossible, to identify and measure, they are more powerful than official ones because they operate below the surface. They are key to changing an organisation’s culture because they more closely reflect its actual operating culture — its “shadow” values and principles. In psychology, the alter ego is the dark side of human nature. Jung identified it as the “shadow” to describe the subterranean aspects of the psyche; those unpleasant traits we prefer to hide. As in the psyche, the shadow gains its power in an organisation by being repressed and unacknowledged, which manifests in unintended, often detrimental behaviours.
Shadow values are typically cultivated in environments where organisations are stressed by the complexity of changes occurring or a lack of focus on supporting cultural alignment with existing values and principles.
In our work with a financial services company, our evaluation revealed each of its official organisational values had powerful corollaries (shadow values) that served to shift the organisation off course significantly. One of these official values was excellence. While officially expressed in a tagline, it was experienced and evaluated in ways such as “having pride in our work”, “being willing to challenge”, and “continuous improvement”. We also found it manifested itself through a powerful shadow side driven by the unstated value of success — in behaviours such as “individualistic”, “maintain status”, and “hit targets at all cost”.
The key driver of this shadow value was an unwavering focus on “the numbers”. While the measurement of inputs, and outcomes was regarded as a management responsibility, in this individualistically success-oriented culture, hard metrics such as hitting the numbers came to serve as the sole measure of success. Individual behaviours became distorted in pursuit of that goal alone, obscuring non-financial costs and risks, which, when not easily calculable are not seen, let alone prioritised. Unintended consequences of not being aware of or managing shadow values were highlighted in the Banking Royal Commission.
Alternate shadows
The connotations of “shadow” overstate the negative effect of these values. While an organisation’s shadow values at their worst are less constructive mutations of the official ones and will always benefit from being exposed and dealt with, there are two other types, both potentially of great value for an organisation to identify and unlock.
The first is neutral in relation to the existing values/principles but offers significant potential for tipping into positive or negative manifestations. In our work with the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC), its value of excellence — with associated behaviours and traits of exemplary performance and achievement by elite Olympic athletes — was undermined by a powerful shadow cast by the implicit value of pragmatism.
The second type of alternate shadow values reinforce, amplify or supplement official values and principles. These were also present at the AOC (see breakout, right).
In our work with a large superannuation fund, a primary shadow value was that of harmony, operating below the stated value of excellence. The value of excellence was commonly expressed in behaviours such as “keeping costs low”, “continuous improvement” and “leading the industry”. The shadow value of harmony in its most positive expression meant people were respected and included. At its worst, it manifested in the avoidance of conflict, resulting in over-consultation, delaying and avoiding difficult decisions. As a result, excellence was hamstrung by a lack of agility and responsiveness to the changing environment and competitive pressures, with innovative ideas often deferred until unreasonably high standards of mitigation were in place.
Getting below the surface
Particularly for boards wanting a “true read” of a culture, a challenge is getting below the surface-level reporting facade. Because of its intangible nature, culture is not easily distilled into standard metrics. Complaints, grievance resolution time, staff turnover and engagement surveys provide a limited view of the dynamics underpinning the culture — but often, they are the board’s only sources of information. While they may identify a range of proxies for an explicit culture, they are of little use in identifying implicit beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that actually drive the operating culture.
A significant limitation is a reliance on self-reporting. One organisation we worked with displayed a widespread cultural practice in staff surveys and performance reviews. “Click five to stay alive” referred to the five-point Likert scales used to evaluate a leader’s performance — and to an expectation for subordinates to rate leaders as a “five” across all evaluation criteria to avoid recriminations. Not only did these reports give an inaccurate evaluation of performance, they also underlined a range of potential shadow values linked to inappropriate use of positional power, fear of reprisals and lack of trust.
Unless board members are particularly proactive through direct engagement with staff, having visibility of the actual operating culture beyond what management reports provide is difficult. While there is no substitute for direct engagement — in particular with how the executive team works — using tools that better uncover shadow values can help boards better see the risks and opportunities below the surface — and thereby govern more effectively.
John Neil is Director of Innovation and Michelle Bloom Director of Consulting and Leadership at The Ethics Centre. They offer Shadow Value Assessments, working directly with organisations to identify and remedy the alignment gap between the official values and the lived culture and behaviours. Find out more.
Ready or not – the future is coming
We are living in an exceptional era of human history. In a blink of the historical time scale, our species now have the skills to explore the universe, map and modify human genes and develop forms of intelligence that may far surpass their creators.
In fact, given the speed, unpredictability and sheer scale of what was previously unthinkable change, it’s actually better to talk of the future in the plural rather than the singular: the ‘futures’ are coming.
With the convergence of genetic engineering, AI and neurotechnology, entirely unique challenges arise that could test our assumptions about human identity and what connects us together as a species. What does the human experience mean in an era of augmentation, implantation, enhancement and editing of the very building blocks of our being in the future? What happens when we not only hack the human body, but the human mind?
The possible futures that are coming will arrive with such speed that those not ready for them will find themselves struggling to know how to navigate and respond to a world unlike the one we currently know. Those that invest in exploring what the future holds will be well placed to proactively shape their current and future state so they can traverse the complexity, weather the challenges, and maximise the opportunities the future presents.
The Ethics Centre’s Future State Framework is a tailored, future-focused platform for change management, cultural alignment and staff engagement. It draws on futuring methodologies, including trend mapping and future scenario casting, alongside a number of design thinking and innovation methodologies. What sets Future State apart is that it incorporates ethics as the bedrock for strategic and organisational assessment and design. Ethics underpins every aspect of an organisation. An organisation’s purpose, values and principles set the foundation for its culture, gives guidance to leadership, and sets the compass needed to execute strategy.
The future world we inhabit will be built on the choices we make in the present. Yet due to the sheer complexity of the multitudes of decisions we make every day, it’s a future that is both unpredictable and emergent. The laws, processes, methods and current ways of thinking in the present may not serve us well in the future, nor contribute best to the future that we want to create. By envisioning the challenges of the future through an ethics-centred design process, the Future State Framework ensures that organisations and their culture are future-proof.
The Future State Framework has supported numerous organisations in reimagining their purpose and their unique economic and social role in a world where profit is rapidly and radically being redefined. Shareholder demand is moving beyond financial return, and social expectations toward the role of corporations are shifting dramatically into the future.
The methodology helps organisations chart a course through this transformation by mapping and targeting their desired future state and developing pathways for realising it. It been designed to support and guide both organisations facing an imminent burning platform and those wanting to be future forward and leading – giving them the insight to act with purpose – fit for the many possibilities the future might hold.
If you are interested in discussing any of the topics raised in this article in more depth with The Ethics Centre’s consulting team, please make an enquiry via our website.
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BY John Neil
John leads the Centre’s major consulting projects, leadership and culture programs and product development. Drawing on 20 years of experience, John has worked with Australia’s largest organisations in developing and delivering solutions to bring ethics to the centre of business design, culture development, and organisational decision making. Before joining us, John worked in the business school at the University of Technology Sydney. During his time there, he inspired students and colleagues alike through his research and teaching, and chaired the Ethics Working Group to develop an approach to embed ethics in the Bachelor of Business curriculum.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
The virtues of Christmas
Christmas is upon us. It’s a time of giving. A time for celebrating with family and love ones. And a time to navigate a number of sticky ethical challenges.
It starts early in the morning; the gifts are distributed, and you unwrap Grandma’s exquisitely wrapped parcel only to reveal a hideous pair of underwear that may have once been in fashion during the great depression. You immediately call on your best poker face, but it may have already betrayed your disappointment. Should you lie and say, ‘thanks Nan, I really love them?’
Next comes the Christmas lunch tirade; you’re seated next to an opinionated uncle you only see once a year at Christmas who, predictably, after too many of his favourite Christmas beverages begins an annual festive diatribe that escalates rapidly from the opinionated to the offensive. Do you speak your mind?
Finally, the inevitable clash with your mother in law; she cannot help being critical about everything surrounding the festivities. The inevitable flare-up will happen after clearing away lunch, which you like to refer to it as the annual arm wrestle, a well-worn conflict over everything from how to stack the dishwasher to how the kids can and cannot play. This year will no doubt be worse as you are hosting the event. Do you stand your ground?
Most of us ask “What should I do?” when we think about ethics. However, we can approach it another way by asking, “What kind of person should I be?” Philosophical thinkers in this tradition turn to virtue ethics for the answers.
While it’s one thing to ask what kind of person should I be, it’s another thing to know how to live as that person. For Aristotle the answer to both of these questions is to act virtuously. Acting as though we already possess the best virtues is how we develop a virtuous character.
And if ever there was a time to test out the virtues of our character, it’s Christmas.
Virtue ethics, unlike other approaches, does not provide specific rules for addressing ethical questions. Instead, good actions are those that a person of good character would display. Aristotle, one of the most influential philosophers in this tradition, developed a comprehensive system of virtue ethics.
Let’s take a look at how it can help us navigate the minefield of Christmas’ annual dilemmas.
The underwear from Grandma? If asking what should you do, you might take a lead from consequentialism. You could simply smile and say ‘I love it Grandma’. After all, she meant well, a white lie makes her happy, keeps the economy ticking and doesn’t rock the family emotional boat. It produces the best overall outcome.
Other philosophers might suggest a different approach. Those in the deontological tradition, such as Immanuel Kant would argue that lying of any kind is unethical, even those white lies that are intended to spare someone’s feelings.
Unlike other approaches to ethics, virtue ethics does not rely on rules to guide action. While ‘do not lie,’ is a rule, ‘being honest’ is a virtue.
However, a virtue, on its own, doesn’t tell us too much that is helpful because virtues are interrelated, you can’t have one virtue without having others. To have a virtue is to be a particular type of person with a particular mindset and outlook on life. They are what’s called a ‘multi-track disposition’ – they go all the way down.
Honesty is not the only virtue at stake here. Acting virtuously requires us to calibrate between virtues. Because Grandma has the best intentions, she will no doubt take your honesty to heart. Honestly speaking your mind could be selfish at one extreme, and while a white lie at the other end might be considered selfless. What sits between these extremes Aristotle called the Golden Mean.
What would a fair person do? They might tell Grandma that they appreciate the thought but would like to do justice to her intentions by exchanging the gift for something that they will like, wear and remember Grandma every time they put it on.
So, let’s see what virtue ethics can teach us about managing that outspoken uncle. Imagine that dessert is now served and your uncle has flipped the switch to obnoxious. You try and avoid engaging with his tirades every year, but this year he is particularly offensive. His views are not only a dampener on the festive feels, but several members of the family are visibly hurt and upset by some of his more extreme views.
All families have their patterns that play out when people come together and the pre-determined roles we all play are difficult to shift.
What would we do if we were already a virtuous person? By imagining what a virtuous character would do in this situation we can start to practically explore how to become the best version of ourselves.
In the virtue ethics approach imagination is important in helping to shift unthinking and prescribed patterns of behaviours. What would we do if we were already a virtuous person? By imagining what a virtuous character would do in this situation we can start to practically explore how to become the best version of ourselves.
A virtuous person might ask themselves ‘how would I like to be treated if I were them?’ This particular uncle may not have many opportunities in their daily life to be heard. In many of the virtue ethics traditions compassion is a cardinal virtue. Exercising the virtue of compassion allows us to not only avoid rushing to judgement, but also gives us space to disarm the triggers that usually fire off in response to his toxic views.
The virtue of temperance – self-control and restraint – also helps here. While his views may trigger you strongly, appealing to logic with counterarguments will most likely not be effective.
It is almost impossible to change a person’s strongly held views with counter-logic. Paraphrasing back the points and emotions they are expressing not only lets them know their experience matters but also provides a circuit breaker by reflecting back their views. Research suggests that engaging in this way can make someone feel more understood and, as a result, less defensive or difficult.
When unsure about what the best virtue looks like in practice, virtue ethics suggests looking to someone of good character for direction by imagining how they would act in the same situation. Moral exemplars are an important feature of virtue ethics. Ethics is messy and no decision procedure provides a precise algorithm which will tell us definitively what to do when faced with difficult choices. Moral exemplars are people in our world who possess the best form of the virtues. Knowing what to do is not simply a matter of internalising a rule; for Aristotle virtue ethics it is about doing the right thing at the right time, in the right way and for the right reason. Moral exemplars help show us the way.
So, when it comes to the inevitable clash with your mother in law, imagine what someone you admire most would do. A moral exemplar might act intentionally with the virtues of humility, grace and generosity, showing her that what is important in hosting Christmas is not the power struggle to control the day but respecting differences and others’ boundaries. They might find ways to include some of her traditions in the day.
The development of character is at the heart of virtue ethics. We develop that character throughout our life through the virtues and in doing so we make wise choices.
This Christmas people may be looking at you to be that person.
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BY John Neil
John leads the Centre’s major consulting projects, leadership and culture programs and product development. Drawing on 20 years of experience, John has worked with Australia’s largest organisations in developing and delivering solutions to bring ethics to the centre of business design, culture development, and organisational decision making. Before joining us, John worked in the business school at the University of Technology Sydney. During his time there, he inspired students and colleagues alike through his research and teaching, and chaired the Ethics Working Group to develop an approach to embed ethics in the Bachelor of Business curriculum.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
How to spot an ototoxic leader
We all know about toxic leaders. There are plenty of them around. Some are especially skilled with the ability to use their words to grind down anyone they perceive as a threat.
I call these leaders ototoxic – named after the medical description of drugs that cause adverse reactions to the ears’ cochlea or auditory nerves.
Ototoxicity is a distinctive quality of a poor leader, who can leave a trail of damage.
Ototoxic leaders betray themselves by a number of logical fallacies – hallmarks of their communication style. US President Donald Trump has given us plenty of examples during his presidency.
They play the person not the argument
The ototoxic leader will go after a person’s character or pick on a personal trait. They take aim at anything personal, but will avoid addressing the logical merits of the argument. This is known as an ad hominem fallacy.
Donald Trump critiqued fellow Republicans – “Lyin’ Ted” (Cruz), “Lil’ Marco” (Rubio), “Low Energy Jeb” (Bush). There were also repeated references to “Crooked Hillary”. He repeatedly accused opponents of being “too aggressive”, (usually a woman) or “not forceful enough” (usually a man), or in the case of “Lil’ Bob” Corker, of not being “tall” enough to be taken seriously.
They use straw-man arguments
An ototoxic leader will also exaggerate, or blatantly fabricate, an opposing point of view. This allows them to position their perspective as more reasonable and practical. In the third presidential debate before his election, Trump accused Hillary Clinton of advocating an open border policy, misquoting comments she made in relation to free trade. In a climate of widespread national hostility towards immigration, the border wall seemed to many as the more reasonable option.
In the workplace, an ototoxic leader will use overblown rhetoric to belittle someone else’s initiative, exaggerating potential cost overruns or overstating other risks in order to then position their proposal as the more reasonable one.
They appeal to hypocrisy
This defensive strategy turns an initial criticism back on the accuser. Trump used this rhetorical flourish during his presidency after refusing to face criticisms that he didn’t take a position on the violence following the Charlottesville rally. Rebutting the criticisms of neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, Trump maintained that ‘many others’ had also done bad things, implying they were equally culpable.
In the workplace, an ototoxic leader can often be heard defending their actions using the appeal to hypocrisy. “You think I’m aggressive? What about that meeting last week when you didn’t agree with me? You were just as bad, if not worse!”
They use the firefighter arsonist tactic
Named after the rare syndrome where firefighters light fires intentionally only to later arrive as a hero to put it out, the ototoxic leader will overly dramatise a potential problem, at the same time pointing the finger of blame at others for causing it. Once the situation reaches a critical mass, the ototoxic leader will then step in with a last-minute solution, ‘saving the day’.
Trump is well versed in this tactic. Stoking anti-Muslim sentiment as early as March 2011 with his calls for then President Obama to show his birth certificate and trading on unfounded ‘birther’ claims, Trump proceeded to inflame fears throughout the election campaign. He threatened the mass deportation of Syrian asylum seekers while promising to create a database of all Muslims in the US, along with making false claims of seeing ‘thousands and thousands’ of people in New Jersey celebrating the collapse of the World Trade Centre Towers in 2001. Trump stepped in to solve the ‘problem’ by signing his two travel bans within the first 100 days of his tenure.
More recently, Trump repeatedly covered himself in glory after meeting Kim Jong-un at their historic first summit in June 2018. Mere months after painting Kim as “Little Rocket Man” who, according to Trump posed the greatest threat to Western civilisation and was enabled by his predecessors who “should have been handled a long time ago”, following the summit Trump celebrated the “success” of the meeting. He waxed lyrical about the leaders “tremendous” relationship, including the beautiful “love letters” he received from the North Korean dictator in the lead up to the summit, while going on to extol the virtues of Kim, including his “great personality”, his sense of humour, intelligence and his negotiation abilities. Following the script of the hero who rides in to save the day, Trump tweeted that “everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office…there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”
In the workplace, the ototoxic leader will spark a flame of disquiet around a project or strategy then proceed to escalate concerns – often through back channel politics – before presenting a grand ‘solution’ that saves the day.
Passive and aggressive
Ototoxic leaders can be aggressive or passive. The actively toxic communicator, who uses aggressive and intimidating language to subordinate others, can be bombastic, opinionated and openly dismissive of those who have different views. Their default mode of questioning almost exclusively involves closed questions (yes or no). Their inability to be open and listen to other’s views is usually a symptom of their lack of empathy.
The passive ototoxic leader is no less poisonous. In one-on-one settings, they are an impatient listener and will quickly interrupt their interlocutor in order to express their own view, often cutting the other person off in mid-sentence.
This ototoxic leader will tend to become frustrated in meetings if the consensus view is running contrary to theirs, to the point they will actively disengage from what’s going on in the room. They will resist all attempts to re-engage them by looking to shut down the conversation wherever possible.
Energy suckers
The net effect of the ototoxic leader’s tactics and communication style is to de-energise those they come into contact with.
Research shows that these de-energising ties have a disproportionate impact on an organisation’s culture. They are a ‘toxicity multiplier’, reducing the levels of individual performance, employee engagement and general well-being.
A disproportionate level of conflict between teams is generated and trust decreases. Rather than investing the energy to achieve their goals, those who work under an ototoxic leader spend a disproportionate amount of time analysing the relationship and devising strategies to palliate the person.
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BY John Neil
John leads the Centre’s major consulting projects, leadership and culture programs and product development. Drawing on 20 years of experience, John has worked with Australia’s largest organisations in developing and delivering solutions to bring ethics to the centre of business design, culture development, and organisational decision making. Before joining us, John worked in the business school at the University of Technology Sydney. During his time there, he inspired students and colleagues alike through his research and teaching, and chaired the Ethics Working Group to develop an approach to embed ethics in the Bachelor of Business curriculum.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Shadow values: What really lies beneath?
Respect, integrity, communication, and excellence. They’re admirable and worthy corporate values – ones you’d proudly make official and put on the wall.
Unfortunately, those same values belonged to Enron. Only 12 months before declaring bankruptcy in 2001, the largest in US history at the time, Enron received plaudits for its 64 page Code of Ethics. It was named “America’s Most Innovative Company” by Fortune magazine and received numerous awards for corporate citizenship and environmental policies.
Enron’s failings have been well documented as the prototypical case study of what can happen when an organisation decouples its official values, principles and purpose – what we call an Ethics Framework – from its everyday behaviours.
It’s a perennial challenge for all organisations. Ensuring behaviour, policies, systems and processes are aligned with that ethical framework is no easy feat. If the managers of an organisation say one thing but consistently do something else entirely, it breeds cynicism and disconnection that permeates the entire workforce. Customers and other stakeholders eventually figure it out as well.
Hidden from view
Many organisations have a second set of values lurking beneath the surface. These unofficial values – no less powerful than the official ones – are called ‘shadow values’.
Uncovering shadow values can reveal deeper facets of an organisation’s actual operating culture. By proactively identifying and monitoring its shadow values, an organisation is better placed to see any early drift in the alignment of its culture from its values and principles.
Consider the fraudulent behaviour of Volkswagen engineers who deliberately programmed 500,000 diesel-powered vehicles to provide false readings during emissions testing. Despite the company’s explicit corporate values of excellence, professionalism and a commitment to integrity, it became clear through the accounts of investigators and employees, that a number of unofficial shadow values were dominating the organisation’s culture.
Volkswagen’s official and shadow values
In psychology, the dark side of human nature is often described as the alter ego. While Freud referred to the Id, Jung identified it as the shadow, referring to the sum total of all those unpleasant qualities we prefer to hide. The shadow gains its power through being habitually repressed. And it manifests in a multitude of symptoms and psychological disturbances.
Similarly, an organisation’s shadow values gain their power from being kept below the surface. At their worst, they are destructive mutations of the official values which pose an existential threat to the integrity of an organisation’s ethical culture.
Despite the official values of ‘teamwork’ and ‘respect for individuals’, Volkswagen’s implicit leadership model was widely recognised as one that valued ‘autocracy’ and delivering ‘success’ at any cost.
A focus on fear
A culture of ‘fear’ was common, with intimidation used as a primary motivator for achieving sales targets. Fear provided a bulwark against any dissenting voice being raised to challenge decisions. These voices were kept silent by a culture that fostered ‘internal competition’ and ‘secrecy’.
Shadow values can also throw into relief sanctioned organisational values, revealing subtle nuances in the way they are understood and practiced day to day. For Volkswagen, its stated value of ‘excellence’ was subsequently revealed to be a very specific type of value – ‘technical excellence’.
The value of technical excellence has been evident throughout the company’s history. Volkswagon turned to it in that 2015 scandal, just as it did in the 1970s when it was found guilty of similar manipulative practices to avoid emissions regulations.
These shadow values had their genesis in the shift in VW’s purpose. Following the appointment of Martin Winterkorn as CEO in 2007, Volkswagen set itself a goal: “To become the world’s largest automaker by 2018”. Winterkorn’s strategy was premised on developing a competitive advantage in ‘clean’ diesel rather than hybrids and other alternatives.
A shift in purpose
With tighter regulatory controls in the US, intense pressure was focussed on engineers to develop a technical solution, which they duly delivered, under the authority of the shadow values. In secretly modifying existing software capabilities that overrode pollution controls, Volkswagen went on to sell over 12 million illegal vehicles and met the target of becoming the “world’s largest automaker”, three years ahead of schedule.
This shift in purpose was not recognised formally in the company’s ethical framework. Allowing shadow values to proliferate unmoored the company from its purpose, values and principles. Indeed many of those shadow values were officially discouraged by VW’s ethical framework.
After his appointment in June 2017, new CEO Matthias Müller noted, “Our management culture needs to improve… openness, the courage to make innovations and speak one’s mind, as well as true willingness to cooperate are all essential elements… We need a solid system of values as a compass for our daily work.”
One hopes this “solid system of values” will be more attuned to the ones that might be still operating in the shadows.
At their worst, shadow values are in complete opposition to official values. At their best, they provide a nuanced expression of what an organisation really cares about. Either way, they are very revealing of an organisation’s true, operating culture.
The Ethics Centre is a world leader in assessing cultural health and building the leadership capability to make good ethical decisions in complexity. To arrange a confidential conversation contact the team at consulting@ethics.org.au. Visit our consulting page to learn more.
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BY John Neil
John leads the Centre’s major consulting projects, leadership and culture programs and product development. Drawing on 20 years of experience, John has worked with Australia’s largest organisations in developing and delivering solutions to bring ethics to the centre of business design, culture development, and organisational decision making. Before joining us, John worked in the business school at the University of Technology Sydney. During his time there, he inspired students and colleagues alike through his research and teaching, and chaired the Ethics Working Group to develop an approach to embed ethics in the Bachelor of Business curriculum.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
4 questions for an ethicist
Though not as common as GPs, therapists, or personal trainers, ethicists still have a lot to say about how to live a good life. Here are four of the common questions they get asked.
1. There are so many conflicting versions of ethics out there – legal, social, religious. Which should I listen to?
With all these voices vying for our attention it can be difficult to know who to listen to. An important starting point with ethics is to untangle the nature of these conflicting voices to better be able to hear our own.
Our beliefs and values are influenced by our upbringing, community, professions, and for many people, their faith. It’s useful to think of these voices – social customs, the law and religion – as ‘morality’ rather than ethics.
Morality is a set of deeply held and widely shared norms and rules within a community. Like ethics, morality provides us with opinions, rules, laws, and principles to guide our choices and actions. But unlike ethics, morality can be followed unthinkingly and without asking questions.
Ethics is about reflecting on who we are, what we value, and how we want to live in a world where many others may not share the same values and principles as us.
What makes ethics both timely and timeless is it arises in any moment when we find ourselves faced with the question of what is right. This question is both a philosophical and practical one. Philosophically, it involves exploring the nature of concepts like truth, wisdom, and belief and providing a justification for right and good actions.
On a practical level, it is a question we find ourselves asking every day. Whether it’s the big ethical issues – abortion, capital punishment, immigration – or everyday ethical questions – whether to tell the truth to a friend when it may hurt their feelings, or being asked to provide a reference for a close colleague who isn’t qualified for the job – ethical questions are inescapable parts of being human.
Ethics does not rely on history, tradition, religion, or the law to solely to define for us what is good or right. Ethics is about reflecting on who we are, what we care about, and how we want to live in a world where many others may not share the same values and principles as us.
2. Isn’t ethics just a matter of opinion? If there’s no way to tell who is right and who is wrong, isn’t my opinion as good as anyone’s?
In the 1990s Mike Godwin famously argued when it comes to online arguments, the longer and more heated a debate gets, the more likely somebody will bring up the Nazis in an attempt to close it down.
When it comes to discussions of ethics there is an inverse law which anyone who has taught an ethics class will have experienced. The shorter the conversation about ethics, the greater the likelihood somebody will claim, “Ethics is just personal opinion”.
When the stakes are high, it becomes abundantly clear that we want to hold others to a similar standard of what we think matters.
This view implies ethics is subjective. What follows from this is there are no better or worse opinions on ethics.
However, it would be hard to find someone say in response to being robbed, “The thief had their own values and I have mine, they are entitled to their view, so I won’t pursue this further”. When the stakes are high, it becomes abundantly clear we want to hold others to a similar standard of what we think matters.
We will inevitably reach a point in any discussion of ethics where people will strongly express a fundamental moral belief – for example, it’s wrong to steal, to lie or to harm others. These opinions are the beginning of a common, rational basis for discussions about what we should or shouldn’t do.
And when those discussions become heated, let’s try and leave Hitler out of it.
3. I’m a good person, why do I need ethics?
Ethics helps good people become better people.
Being a good person doesn’t necessarily mean you will always know what’s right. Good people disagree with each other about what is right all the time. And good people often don’t know what to do in difficult situations, especially when these situations involve ethical dilemmas.
We all have the tendency to act unethically given the ‘right’ conditions. Fear, guilt, stress, and anxiety have been shown to be significant factors that prevent us from acting ethically.
Good people make bad choices. Despite the widespread view that bad things happen due to a small percentage of so called ‘evil people’ intentionally doing the wrong thing, the reality is that all of us can make poor decisions.
We all have the tendency to act unethically given the ‘right’ conditions. Fear, guilt, stress and anxiety have been shown to be significant factors that prevent us acting ethically.
Food has been shown to directly influence the quality of decisions made by judges. Other studies have shown that even innocuous influences can have a disproportionate effect on our decisions. For example, smells affect the likelihood a person will help other people.
Ethics is not only about being aware of our values and principles. It is also about being alive to our limited view of the world and striving to expand our horizons by trying to better see the world as it really is.
4. People only do ethics when it makes them look good. Why would anyone put ethics above self-interest?
One argument often heard in philosophy and psychology is that everything we do, from the compassionate to the heroic, is ultimately done for our own benefit. When we boil it down, we only save lives, donate to charity or care for a friend because these things make us feel good or benefit us.
However, despite being a widely held view it is only half the story – and not even the most interesting part of the story. While human beings are undoubtedly self-interested there is a wealth of evidence that shows human beings are hard wired to care for others, including total strangers.
Research has shown the existence of ‘mirror neurons’ in our brains that naturally respond to other people’s feelings.
Ethics is rooted in this fundamental human capacity to be connected to others. It provides a rational foundation for this connection. This is the foundation of empathy. It’s an intrinsic part of what makes us human.
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BY John Neil
John leads the Centre’s major consulting projects, leadership and culture programs and product development. Drawing on 20 years of experience, John has worked with Australia’s largest organisations in developing and delivering solutions to bring ethics to the centre of business design, culture development, and organisational decision making. Before joining us, John worked in the business school at the University of Technology Sydney. During his time there, he inspired students and colleagues alike through his research and teaching, and chaired the Ethics Working Group to develop an approach to embed ethics in the Bachelor of Business curriculum.