Motivating Ethical Decisions

SHRM has come out with their 4th-quarter research paper, on business ethics. Of course there are many excellent solutions to be gleaned, but one paragraph sparked an interesting discussion here this morning.

On page three of the report, it is stated,

“Two broad incentive categories encourage ethical behavior: reward and recognition systems, and performance evaluation systems.”

It is then elaborated that "reward and recognition" is to be publicly done, and evaluations simply refers to the H.R. vehicles familiar to all of us. What about private, conversational, and mundane recognition of ethical decisions?

In his book, Drive, David Pink argues strongly that extrinsic motivators such as public rewards or bonuses are overemphasized in modern business, and can easily become counterproductive and demotivate creativity. Instead of extrinsic motivation, he suggests intrinsic motivation, which is admittedly harder to build.

But intrinsic motivation is built by daily interactions rather than scheduled rewards. I realize that Character First's own recognition program can fall prey to this extrinsic overemphasis. We need to keep emphasizing that the whole underpinning of CF as a vocabulary tool should encourage managers to build intrinsic motivation through daily conversations more than through periodic scheduled events.

Functional Character Emphasis

The list of character traits as a tool for character emphasis is going the way of the Dodo.

This has been the mainstream method to date, and there are many examples, including our own:

http://www.characterfirst.com/aboutus/qualities/
http://www.values.com/teaching-values
http://charactercounts.org/sixpillars.html
http://www.search-institute.org/developmental-assets/lists
http://www.virtuesproject.com/virtues.html
http://www.viacharacter.org/Classification/tabid/56/Default.aspx

I am not saying that these lists should go away: and I applaud the efforts of organizations that are attempting to change their approach to this issue. But not many are even trying.

It's good to talk in the abstract about "making ethical decisions." It's even better to present, in that discussion, practical examples of how ethical decision making plays out.

But that's still not how people experience ethical decision making every day. People don't ask the question, "How can I make an ethical decision?" They ask, "How can I tell the truth about my tardiness and still keep my job?" They ask, "How can I admit to my employees that it's my fault, and still keep their respect?" They ask, "I try so hard to be a good example–why doesn't my team follow my example?" They ask, "How can I tell my co-worker about something that's bugging me, without getting into a fight?"

Life is messy, and when we need to make a decision, we don't stop and think, "OK, what is the ethical decision here?" It's always much more situation-specific. We don't live in the abstract.

And simply throwing in some practical examples is not the solution. I argue that we cave in to the desire to "abstractify" ethical decisions even when we organize our practical examples underneath a hierarchy of "Pillars of Character" or "Character Qualities."

We lose when we frame the issue as one of "building character." We need to get specific and functional right from the start, or all we'll be doing is hanging posters in people's minds that they will learn to walk right past.

The solution? Functional character emphasis, which will always appear under another name. Leadership development. Employee development. Conflict resolution. Task management. Relationship skills. Team building.

More on this soon.

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Luke Kallberg manages website content for the Character Training Institute.