What is Ethical Business Behavior?
Most individuals honestly believe that they operate with high integrity and demonstrate ethical behavior with others in the workplace. The problem is that people often don’t have the same definition of what constitutes ethical behavior. That’s why some business and professional organizations create codes of ethical conduct.
In 10 years of service on the ethics committee of an international professional organization I learned that ethical errors were usually made by people who decided, without consulting others, that there were good reasons to violate the ethical principles they had agreed to abide by.
Several years ago while serving on a committee of the Colorado Ethics In Business Alliance, I helped develop these seven signs of an ethical business.
If you don’t have an explicit professional ethics code that you use for guidance, I invite you to measure your business behavior by these standards. If ethical behavior matters to you – and I hope it does — see how you measure up.
- Teach employees how to behave ethically by demonstrating, recognizing and rewarding ethical behavior.
- Tell the truth. Fully reveal relevant information to stakeholders and authorities.
- Consider the interests of everyone who will be affected by their business decisions.
- Treat all individuals and groups with dignity and respect.
- Maintain honest and complete communication with employees, customers and the community.
- Avoid conflicts of interest.
- Demonstrate, encourage and support active involvement in their communities.
(For more information about the Colorado Ethics in Business Alliance visit http://www.cobusethics.org )
Be cautious when you want to make choices that differ from any ethical standards you have agreed to accept. Check your thinking by imagining how you would feel if your choices were reported in a national newspaper. Better yet, consult an advisor you respect before taking action.
If you enjoyed this blog post The Integrity Course will provide much more information I believe will be useful to you. Included in this course are stories of how over 25 people confronted issues about integrity in the workplace. Learn more here.
written by Laurie Weiss
\\ tags: Business Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Integrity, Leadership, Telling the Truth
Integrity is about wholeness.
Integrity is about values — it is about thoughtfully choosing your values and holding on to them despite the pressure you feel to compromise them.
Integrity is about using your values to guide your actions.
Integrity is about being willing to reexamine your values in the face of new information and to make a conscious decision about whether change is warranted.
Integrity is about respect. It is about self-respect and respecting others.
Integrity is about understanding differences.
Integrity is about believing in the basic, sound, underlying pattern of goodness, of wholeness in the world and in other people.
Integrity is about seeking that wholeness. It is about conversations that get through the surface junk and get to what is really important when we are together.
Integrity is about facing each other and listening to each other and really hearing each other and taking the actions we know are necessary.
Integrity is the bedrock on which trust is built.
Integrity is the hidden key to your success!
If you enjoyed this blog post, The Integrity Course will provide much more information I believe will be useful to you. Included in this course are stories of how over 25 people confronted issues about integrity in the workplace. Learn more here.
written by admin
\\ tags: Business Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Integrity, Leadership, Telling the Truth
Let’s make the second decade of the 21st century the decade of communicating with integrity.
The first decade of the century saw far too little integrity in communication. Many people have described the problem in many ways but I believe Frank Rich of the New York Times said it most effectively in his article, “Tiger Woods, Person Of The Year”. http://cli.gs/u8ehT5
My contribution to this process is to re-release The Integrity Course to help you face a serious communication challenges that exist in today’s business world.
I’ve searched my blog for relevant posts and I’m rewriting many of them to illuminate the many facets of this complicated issue. I hope you enjoy them.
written by admin
\\ tags: Business Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Integrity, Leadership, Telling the Truth
Are you struggling to contain costs in this recessionary economy? If you’re having a hard time withdrawing perks from hard-working employees, because you’re afraid of the effect on morale, this executives strategy may work for you.
James could see that the generosity his 200-member accounting firm had shown their partners and managers when times were good simply had to change.
The firm could no longer support the expensive valet parking the partners blithely added to their expense reports or the extra charges for breakfast that showed up on their hotel bills. Especially when James knew personally that the hotel in question included a fine breakfast buffet with the cost of the room.
James, a founding partner of the firm and a habitually conservative spender, always allowed time to park in the same airport shuttle lot, whether he was taking his family on vacation or going on a necessary business trip. He fumed to himself as he reviewed expense reports from the firm’s tax meeting. The nine-dollar charges for breakfast were especially irritating, because he had noticed that those managers were not in the dining room while he was there himself enjoying the complementary buffet.
In good times, while struggling to retain employees who are constantly being lured away by other opportunities, it seemed picky to disallow those expenses. Now, with the decreased workload, the firm was overstaffed and he was struggling to avoid layoffs. Yet he suspected that his people would grumble at the now necessary restrictions.
Knowing how he had once struggled to overcome a reputation for insensitivity, he decided on a creative solution. He sent out a memo to all managers and partners explaining the need to cut expenses and asked them to each submit at least one idea that would save the company money.
In came suggestions to eliminate valet parking, to eat their meals provided by the hotel, to limit extra baggage charges (for golf clubs) when meeting at resort locations, to limit charges for laundry at hotels, etc. He compiled the suggestions and recirculated them with thanks. There was no resistance when those suggestions were instituted as the new company policy.
When I asked James how he was viewed in the firm, he said he thinks he is seen as a practical pragmatist and appropriate person. He did add wryly that a few people in the firm probably wished there was not a practical, pragmatic, appropriate person around to rain on their parade.
Free Mini-Course: Integrity Use It or Lose It!
Free Mini-Course: Secrets for Turning Difficult Conversations into Amazing Opportunities for Cooperation and Success]
written by Laurie Weiss
\\ tags: Business Communication, Difficult Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Management, Managing Conflict
Assume that differences are opportunities for exploration. When you take the position that you are right and others are wrong, nobody wins.
Richness is created from diversity. Sometimes survival depends on it. A series of exercises were once devised to simulate being lost on the moon, lost in the Arctic, lost at sea (in a lifeboat) or in some other life-threatening situation.
Teams were given a list of resources and told to choose those that would be most important for their survival. They needed to reach consensus about which few items they could keep. Continue reading »
written by Laurie Weiss
They never seem to get any work done on time, but they complain that they’re being underutilized. Jacob, a chiropractor, was talking about his office staff. I have to do so many things myself that they could do for me, but they don’t. They just don’t seem care about what I want. I just don’t understand. I pay them well and they need their jobs.
As Jacobs frustration increased, he explored the idea that Continue reading »
written by Laurie Weiss
In a survey of 40,000 Americans, 93% of them admitted to lying regularly at work.
When members of an organization hide the truth from each other it sets the stage for distrust, lowered productivity, poor decisions and frustration. On the other hand, to quote a police investigator, If you tell the truth too bluntly, you get your ass in trouble! Continue reading »
written by Laurie Weiss
Ethical businesses
- Teach employees how to behave ethically by demonstrating, recognizing and rewarding ethical behavior.
- Tell the truth. Fully reveal relevant information to stakeholders and authorities.
- Consider the interests of everyone who will be affected by their business decisions.
- Treat all individuals and groups with dignity and respect.
- Maintain honest and complete communication with employees, customers and the community.
- Avoid conflicts of interest.
- Demonstrate, encourage and support active involvement in their communities.
For more information about the Colorado Ethics in Business Alliance visit http://www.cobusethics.org
[tags]Integrity, Leadership, Telling the Truth[/tags]
written by Laurie Weiss
These guidelines were created by Dr. Angeles Arrien, and can be used as a spiritual way of describing dialogue.
1. Show Up and Choose to be Present
Show up means nobody is allowed to come as an empty chair. Be present.
2. Pay Attention to What Has Heart and Meaning
That means pay attention to the things that sing to you. We have so many things demanding our attention in our lives. There is advertising coming at us thousands of times every day. Everything we encounter, everything we look at, shouts come here, look here, give me your eyeballs. We are also constantly exposed to our own inner conversations and judgments. It is often very difficult to focus on what is really important to us.
3. Tell the Truth without Blame or Judgment
This is not just telling somebody else the truth, it’s telling myself to my own truth.
Example: I say to myself, “She is so wrong she is (expletive deleted) because…” It helps to ask myself the question, what in me is like her? How come I got so upset by that? I need to tell the truth to myself about me before telling my truth to others.
4. Be Open to Outcome, not Attached to Outcome
Be interested in what’s happening, but don’t be attached to it. Be open to whatever happens, knowing it doesn’t have to happen in a particular way. When you start an important conversation it doesn’t have to end up in any particular place. Once concerns and feelings are talked about, the original concern may no longer be important.
Learn more about communicating with integrity in The Integrity Course, an online, multimedia home-study course to help you say what you think without getting fired or losing your friends.
[tags]Business Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Integrity, Leadership, Making Decisions, Self-Management, Telling the Truth[/tags]
written by Laurie Weiss
Barbara Wells, Managing Partner at Minor and Brown, has found a solution to a problem that plagues many managers in professional firms.
Work delegated to busy junior professionals (attorneys, in Barbaras case; accountants, architects, designers you name it in other situations), gets put into a pending pile. Little if any progress is made on completing the work until shortly before it is due. Continue reading »
written by Laurie Weiss
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