"Influencer:" an ethical workplace, avoiding (self)-justification and dehumanization

Another concept in the book “Influencer: the power to change anything”, the authors discuss the importance of leaders and managers making and reinforcing ethical decisions.  As many management texts seem to do, they start their discussion with the decision making that led to the crash of NASA space shuttle Challenger.  Prior to the Challenger launch, engineers had expressed significant concerns about potential O-ring failure at low temperatures.  NASA management demanded evidence that engineering concerns were worth scuttling the shuttle mission.  In this depiction of events, Robert Lund the vice president of the engineering firm advising NASA, is told to “take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat.”  The authors of Influencer cite this as the moment that Lund stopped thinking about protecting lives and started thinking about ‘the bottom line, with disastrous results.  There are two quotes from this section that I would like to focus on:

“So here is the challenge influencers must master.  They must help individuals see their choices as moral quests or as personally defining moments, and they must keep this perspective despite distractions and emotional stress.”

“…strategies that transform us into amoral agents include moral justification, dehumanization, minimizing and displacing responsibility.”  The authors are citing work by Albert Bandura in the section of this quote, which makes me curious about what other processes are theorized to separate us from our moral compasses…but for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll focus on these.

Looking at these two quotes, then, the challenge of leadership is to sustain moral decision making in challenging circumstances, and to specifically avoid the pitfalls of (self) justification, dehumanization, minimizing, and displacing responsibility.  I believe that my Christian faith and the worldview it reinforces is ideally suited to support me in these activities, but only if I am intentional in connecting the two.  Too often, secular leadership decision making is essentially situational ethics, which I would argue is a form of “justification.”  When a cost-benefit analysis that works out to support a particular course of action, that action is selected because it is cost effective.  Similarly, when a cost-benefit analysis using something other than dollars reveals that a behavior or course of action would lead to a desired outcome, that course of action is labeled as appropriate or even “right” not because it is objectively ethical but because it supports the desired outcome.  It is easy to judge with hindsight the actions of Dennis Gioia who did a cost-benefit analysis on the problem of Ford Pinto’s exploding after being rear-ended even in low-speed collisions; his analysis led to the immoral decision of not issuing a recall.  This is the story relayed in Influencer as an example of justification of an immoral decision—essentially justifying manslaughter.  But I see news stories rife with examples such as this.  Political candidates or their election teams who sabotage the efforts of competitors do so because of an “ends justify the means” morality—they have done a cost-benefit analysis of behaviors and decided that a behavior is acceptable because it supports the desired outcome.  Similarly the tobacco industry has shamelessly developed marketing campaigns that exploit human weaknesses to sell dangerous products because the desired end result—the bottom line—justified the means.  In all of these examples, we can see not just justification, but dehumanization (not just people but “the other party”; not people but purchasers who support quarterly income statistics), minimizing and displacing responsibility (“everyone does it”; “it’s just how things are done”).

For me as a leader and manager working a purely secular environment, my challenge personally is to stay true to my own moral compass as a Christian while motivating and holding accountable the people I lead toward a common good.  I am charged with “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.  It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” (Colossians 3: 23, 24)  In my own mind and heart, there can be no justification, no situational ethics, no ends justifying the means.  My ends—serving the Lord Christ—can only be met by worthy means, by behaviors and courses of action which are worthy of the Lord’s work.  There is no dehumanizing others, no matter how frustrated I may be; other people are made in the image of God, people for whom Christ died and any dehumanization of them dishonors my service to God.  There is no minimizing or displacing responsibility; I am in a leadership position and called to exercise appropriate wisdom and authority, all of my decisions and actions no matter how small should be consistent with my call as a Christian.

But how do I work to influence those I lead in such a way that their behaviors—again, in a secular work environment—remain consistently ethical?  Per Patterson et al, from the quote above, how do I help people see “choices as moral quests or personally defining moments”?  I have several thoughts on this, the first being that my expectations must be clear and I must be personally consistent in how I handle things.  I cannot be “blown and tossed by the wind” (James 1: 6).  Clear expectations about work quality and the work environment can be clearly tied back to a unified work culture—we are respectful to one another; we are timely in meeting suspenses; we are courteous to our customers; we produce good products of high quality.  The opposite—late, shoddy, rude—is not what most people want to be identified with, but which could be the result if expectations are not clear.  If I set a clear tone about who we are as a workplace, and those expectations are high and are based upon characteristics which both have value to external customers and to personnel, I believe that is a first step to helping people connect work with what they value, to create a workplace where behaviors are personally defining moments.

A second component of abandoning moral behavior described in Influencers is “dehumanization.”  The opposite of the “dehumanization” is respect—respect for each individual, for their existence as a human being as well as their existence as a unique entity with strengths, weaknesses and contributions.  Dehumanizing behaviors certainly include bullying, intimidation or interpersonal violence; these are more of an outcome of a climate of disrespect. Respect starts with something as similar as tone and use of names—not just “he” or “she”, “the housekeeper” or “the Union steward” but names.  Certainly in patient care, “the patient in room 303” is a dehumanization of “Mr John Smith” or “a diabetic patient” versus “a person with diabetes.”  A step further toward dehumanization is cultivating a sense of contempt or an adversarial relationship:  “those morons up on the wards”, “the idiots on night shift”.  As a leader, it is my responsibility to set a respectful tone that acknowledges the essential humanity and the contributions of others.  This is the foundation of respect, the counter to the dehumanization which can erode workplace interactions and ultimately the success of any interpersonal endeavor.

1)      Have you found yourself justifying a certain behavior or course of action based upon expediency or the desired outcome, even though you knew it was “shady” or morally questionable?  What was your thought process?  Will recognizing this justification as part of the slippery slope into unethical behavior help you “stay the course” when challenging ethical dilemmas present themselves?

2)      Do you create a work environment where standards of behavior are clear, both in terms of work quality and interpersonal relationships?  Consider a time where you allowed shoddy work or disrespectful behaviors to go unchecked.  How could you approach that situation differently in the future?  Read Colossians 3: 12 – 23, paying particular attention to verses 12-13 and 23.  How can these verses inform your work behavior?

3)      In your interpersonal interactions, what you model to others, are you seeking the good of others?  Are you treating them as people for whom Christ died?  Or are people simply means to an end?  How can your Christian worldview—that God created the world, including each person; and that He sent Christ to redeem the world, each person—impact both your interpersonal interactions and the tone you set as a leader?

4)  Justification means "being declared righteous" or "being declared guiltless."   As Christians, we are declared righteous--guiltless--by God because of Jesus Christ.  When someone justifies a course of action, they are placing themselves in God's position--they are declaring their action or position righteous.  Contemplate your position as a redeemed child of God, declared holy by God.  Consider how this reality should frame your thinking, decision making and actions.