How can leaders apply the concept of bounded ethicality to help them truly live their values and shape their company\u2019s culture for the better?<\/p>\n
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By\u00a0Elizabeth Doty<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Most people assume that values are an either\/or issue: Good people have them and bad people don\u2019t.<\/p>\n Given this view, translating company values into action (a shift in emphasis that I suggested in my last Strategy-Business\u00a0column<\/a>) should be as simple as hiring the right people and getting rid of the wrong ones. Yet recent brain research shows that all people probably have blind spots they aren\u2019t aware of, which means there are many unexplored opportunities for constructive action \u2014 and unrealized ways for leaders to shape their company culture.<\/p>\n Are there leaders in your organization who see themselves as highly values-driven \u2014 who talk about integrity, but whose actions contradict their words? Perhaps they promise to communicate but routinely fail to inform others about important changes. Or they demand accountability but throw their staff under the bus when something goes wrong. These leaders must know they aren\u2019t walking their walk and talking their talk, right?<\/p>\n Actually, they might not. And we might not know about the incongruencies in our own actions, either. Science may help us to avoid this looming credibility gap. I\u2019ve been fascinated by the new research on human nature and the brain that\u2019s been published in the past 10 years. Researchers have shown how\u00a0bias can influence people\u2019s actions in ways they don\u2019t realize<\/a>. In addition, behavioral ethicists have found that people will act more or less ethically depending on\u00a0whether they\u2019re under time pressure<\/a>,\u00a0whether they currently feel good about themselves and the values that drive them<\/a>, or even\u00a0whether they\u2019re thinking about a luxury product<\/a>\u00a0at the time of a decision.<\/p>\n One of the most powerful ideas in this area of research is \u201cbounded ethicality,\u201d which refers to the way in which decisions about how to act can be limited by behavioral shortcuts and external conditions. I recently spoke with Dolly Chugh, a professor at the New York University Stern School of Business, who helped develop the concept and last year published a book on bounded ethicality and bias:\u00a0The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias<\/a><\/em>. As she explains, \u201cBounded ethicality is based on the idea of \u2018bounded rationality,\u2019 which says that our brains have limited processing power, so a huge percentage of human reasoning happens on an unconscious level. Why would we assume we can operate in a fully conscious mode when making decisions with ethical significance? We\u2019re using the same brain!\u201d<\/p>\n Research on bounded ethicality shows that otherwise good people routinely contradict their own values\u00a0in ways they may not realize at the time. Through small, unconscious, often rushed decisions, people may do or say something that doesn\u2019t fit who they mean to be \u2014 and then move on so quickly they aren\u2019t even aware of it. Employees might bad-mouth a colleague, go along with a racist joke, or inflate the hours on an invoice. In one ongoing study involving thousands of people around the world, the psychology and economics professor Dan Ariely and his colleagues found that\u00a064 percent of participants cheated, but just by a little<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even with her commitment to inclusion, Chugh frequently catches herself in contradictions. \u201cThe other day, my kids told me about a surgeon who visited their school,\u201d she recounted. \u201cI immediately asked, \u2018What did he say?\u2019 without stopping to consider that the surgeon could have been a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n Bounded ethicality affects leaders at a company level as well. Leaders often compartmentalize decisions on different topics, so they don\u2019t recognize contradictions. For example, they may launch a reorganization without stopping to think how their company\u2019s stated value of caring might apply to communicating difficult changes. Or they might commit to ambitious corporate social responsibility goals, but not consider all the functions that need to be aligned. Unfortunately, others can interpret these contradictions as signs of bad faith, which can\u00a0severely damage trust and credibility for individual leaders and the entire company<\/a>\u00a0(pdf).<\/p>\n How can leaders apply the concept of bounded ethicality to help them truly live their values and shape their company\u2019s culture for the better? I would start with three priorities.<\/p>\n 1. Adopt a growth mind-set to living your personal and corporate values.<\/strong>\u00a0According to Chugh, if we define a good person as someone who always acts on their values, then finding out about mistakes\u00a0puts their whole identity at risk<\/a>. We shut down, tuning out the feedback we need to hear. Who wants to tell a leader who sees himself or herself as one of the \u201cgood guys\u201d that he or she is discounting certain voices?<\/p>\n But if we define a good person as someone who continuously grows and improves, then their identities are not threatened by minor lapses. We devote more attention to learning, and we persist longer in our efforts. As a result, we\u2019re more accountable and actually raise ourselves to a higher standard.<\/p>\n 2. Shift how you respond to contradictions in others.<\/strong>\u00a0From the perspective of a fixed mind-set, it\u2019s easy to assume that when people\u2019s actions don\u2019t align with their words,\u00a0their character is fundamentally flawed<\/a>. It\u2019s tempting to write them off. But if we know that even well-intended people often contradict their values without realizing it, then we can view that incongruence as a chance to engage.<\/p>\n In these situations, try to find out whether the other person is interested in receiving feedback and learning. If so, you might say, \u201cI know you care about\u00a0x<\/em>,\u00a0and I personally know that it\u2019s a challenge for me to live up to who I mean to be. So when I saw\u00a0y<\/em>,\u00a0it concerned me, because it just doesn\u2019t seem to fit with what I know you care about. I wonder if you were aware that it came across that way?\u201d<\/p>\n 3. Shape your company\u2019s systems and shared habits to activate the best in people.<\/strong>\u00a0Many leaders act on company values in interpersonal workplace interactions but fail to apply them in designing systems, work processes, and shared habits. In these contexts, small \u201cnudges\u201d\u00a0can have a powerful multiplier effect in bringing out the best in people, at scale<\/a>. For example, if your firm believes in demonstrating respect for employees, do your systems also support managers in having consistent goal-setting conversations, providing feedback, and noticing wins? That sort of action is what employees look to first. Do you create forums to connect the dots between groups\u00a0so that you\u00a0speak and act consistently, as one company<\/a>? These are all areas where companies can put structures in place that lead to a better alignment between values and day-to-day behavior.<\/p>\n Once we realize that we all have blind spots, then living our values \u2014 individually or as a company \u2014 becomes a life\u2019s work. Integrity is not a static state. It\u2019s a dynamic commitment to learning, and it requires that leaders understand how their actions, and those of their company, are affecting employees, customers, investors, and the world. In other words, it requires that leaders continually look with fresh eyes for where there is more work to be done.<\/p>\n How can leaders apply the concept of bounded ethicality to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":21855,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,53],"tags":[99,1385,2230,230,2231,216,2093],"class_list":["post-21854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management-leadership","category-opinion","tag-ceo","tag-ceo-northam","tag-change-management","tag-culture","tag-integrity","tag-leadership","tag-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21854"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23654,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21854\/revisions\/23654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/servidor-mxigen1.com\/ceona-antiguo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}*Elizabeth Doty is a former lab fellow of Harvard University\u2019s\u00a0Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics<\/a>\u00a0and founder of\u00a0Leadership Momentum<\/a>, a consultancy that focuses on the practical challenges of keeping organizational commitments.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"