7 Ethical Lenses: Through the Kaleidoscope

2:06 good afternoon everyone my name is max latona i'm the executive director for the center for ethics and society at st anselm college it's my pleasure to welcome you today to our program seven ethical lenses through the kaleidoscope in a moment i will introduce our special guest and speaker but before i do that i'd like to just take a moment to say a few words about the center for ethics in society which is hosting this event and the eig

2:36 forum the special program of which this is a part the center for ethics in society at st edson college is a center that's devoted to addressing ethical issues in organizations and communities throughout the state and the region and we do so using research education dialogue and collaboration every organization and community depends upon good leadership leadership that can help the organization to navigate the

3:06 difficult questions that they face and to help them thrive as an organization or community but good leadership is difficult as we all know it involves navigating difficult ethical issues and dealing with questions that involve people real people in real time finances and resources it's not always easy to know what the right decision is and yet it's so important for communities and organizations to thrive so it is my pleasure then to to welcome

3:37 our special guest today to speak about that this this program is a part of the ethics and governance forum the ethics and governance forum features programs and topics related to governance leadership social responsibility and the common good all of which are part of representative of the mission of the center funding for this program comes from a 2 million endowment created by the new hampshire secretary of state's office and the center for public responsibility and corporate citizenship

4:07 awarded to saint anselm college in 2013. that endowment was created as a part of a settlement reached by new hampshire with tycho international and is administered by the university of new hampshire foundation so i do want to mention just before i introduce our speaker that that this is a webinar it will be recorded but we do encourage all of you to offer questions using the q a function at the bottom of your your zoom screen you may offer any

4:40 questions or comments at any point during the talk today sometimes it's better to to send them in while they're on your mind rather than waiting till the end when you might forget them so feel free to do that and i'll be serving as a moderator and i hope to have all of your questions answered but if i don't because we run out of time i apologize in advance at any rate it is now my pleasure to

5:05 to introduce linda fisher thornton our featured speaker for today linda is an innovative leadership development consultant with a passion for ethical leadership her book seven lenses in its third printing introduces a practical seven lens model and 14 guided principles for learning ethical leadership and seeing the nuances of ethical complexity a former bank senior vice president and now ceo of leading and context llc

5:36 linda has been in the leadership development field for over 25 years and is redefining leadership at a higher level with the ethical values built in she is on inc magazine's top 100 leadership speakers list and enjoys working with leaders across industries including global fortune 500 non-profit government health care and education she also teaches global leadership and applied ethics as an adjunct associate professor for the university of richmond spcs linda holds an undergraduate degree in linguistics and communications from the

6:06 university of virginia and masters in adult education and human development from george washington university her website if you'd like to learn more is leading in context dot com and with that let it's my pleasure now to turn it over to you linda and thank you for joining us thank you so much for inviting me to be here and thank you to all of you who are joining us feel free to tell us in the chat where you're joining us from

6:35 so we can see how far and wide this group reaches i had been in the leadership development field for a while when i realized and i'm going to share my screen now so we have people from canada and all kinds of wonderful places all right so i had been in the leadership development field for about 20 years and teaching leadership for about nine years when i realized that something was really wrong with the

7:06 way we were talking about leadership we were talking about leadership training over here and ethics training over here they were separate that it made no sense to me how could we prepare leaders for leadership without teaching them the ethics at the same time and i realized that we weren't integrating them for the the leaders and in terms of leadership development they weren't ready for what they were going to be handling the way we were

7:37 preparing them and i had an aha when i was attending a symposium at the university of richmond where i teach and it was an ethical leadership symposium they had speakers on data privacy ethical leadership and sustainability ethical leadership and politics and history and i really realized when i left there that i needed a way to pull all of that together into a bigger picture to make sense out of it i wanted to see

8:07 how the parts fit together so i went back and looked for that model and didn't find it and long story short i spent several years researching and writing a global model of ethical leadership its leadership with the values built in and it's based on the wisdom of plato and thoreau and aristotle and confucius and the greats but also what global emerging global

8:38 groups were saying should be part of responsible business and responsible leadership so i was really looking forward to through our leadership how do we create a better world and a better future and it's resonating with people right now probably because the issues that we're dealing with in the world are at such a high level of complexity and this model addresses that complexity and helps people work through it

9:11 so there is a delay with these slides hang on so we are finding ourselves in the hot seat dealing with the coven 19 pandemic and climate change and lots of big difficult issues and this question is has been a difficult one what does it mean to do the right thing in a global society when we're learning just how connected we are and unfortunately while we're wrestling

9:42 with that question the ethics training people are getting is usually either over complicated with the really thick binder that no one has time to read or oversimplified just use the highest integrity just do the right thing as if people would automatically know what that meant and be able to do it so our leadership and our carefully tended cultures depend not on having values on our website or in our

10:13 marketing brochures but in the day-to-day actions that we take so that people see us living them out on a regular basis so i want to take a moment to hear from you now because while we're we realized how much our values shape their experience sometimes it seems like our values are unraveling given everything that's going on so without naming anyone or blaming anyone or any

10:44 group put in the chat what settings are you seeing disagreements about the right thing to do it could be the dinner table it could be at work where are you seeing these disagreements it could even be in the media so take just a moment if you would and share in the chat what are you seeing in terms of disagreements pharmaceutical industry council social media

11:17 definitely about mask wearing i have my chat popped out over here by the way right so many so many different issues you're naming between employees and employers when somebody might want someone to do something they don't think is the right thing so so you're seeing this too it's happening in a lot of different settings and with the burden of responsibility

11:48 and so much riding on our decisions we need a way to put all our multiple stakeholders into perspective and sometimes we forget that you don't see the whole picture just looking through one lens you just you get a very limited perspective that way and in order to move beyond our disagreements and put our competing perspectives together in a meaningful way we need

12:19 that bigger picture so when we we need a clear line of sight that takes into consideration the complexity of the real issues that we're having to deal with so as i mentioned after several years of research i wrote the book seven lenses that and the what i'll be talking with you about is covered in more detail in the book and it's a multi-dimensional model of ethical leadership and

12:50 so i'm going to walk you through all of that it gives you a high level perspective of the nuances of ethical responsibility and the tricky parts of how to make ethical decisions so i'm going to give you a quick run through of all seven and then i'm going to dig into each lens in more detail to get you comfortable with them then i'm going to share some examples and a case to show you how you can use this

13:20 to make better decisions in the day to day so giving you a quick overview lens one is profit how much money will this make lens two is law how can we follow all laws regulations and ethics codes lens three is character how can we show moral awareness integrity and concern for others lens force people how can we show respect and care for people and bring out their best lens five is communities

13:52 how can we make life better in the communities we serve lens six is the planet how can we demonstrate respect for life nature and ecosystems and lens seven is the highest level and the longest term and that's the greater good how can we make life better for future generations so let's dig into this lens one is profit and of course this is all about the money income and budget

14:24 and profit and we know how important these things are to businesses in fact even non-profits have to keep the lights on have to raise money have to decide who to take donations from have to make tough choices about building names there's so many things that have to be done and the profit lens is also anything we get out of a situation anything we value and sometimes that can include power control or attention or perks

14:56 favors anything that we feel we we get something from now you're probably thinking why is profit in an ethical leadership model and there's some reasons why it's here one of them is that it reflects one of the perspectives in my research on ethical leadership that the sole role of business or leadership is to make money for the shareholders so that needed to be reflected

15:26 in this model but also i wanted people to see if they stopped after just thinking about profit how many ethical variables they would have been leaving out i wanted people to see it all together and the other thing is that it's it's easier to be ethical if you don't have to worry about the money but when you put profit into the equation that's when it gets really tricky when you're trying to balance ethics and profit and so

15:56 that's why profit absolutely had to be here but profit has no moral grounding on its own so let's go on to lens two which is law and i think about laws as the minimum standard of acceptable behavior in society the minimum standard so it's really the floor and we know that it's the minimum standard because if we break the law we are fined or sanctioned or we go to jail or we lose our license you know

16:27 something we're punished so it's really really the punishment threshold and not the ideal level of behavior now this lens is letting us look at laws regulations but also ethics codes rules procedures and the ever-changing covid19 guidance that we've been dealing with and there are different ways you can think about the law you can think about laws very literally and look for

16:58 loopholes and try to make more money basically dropping back to the profit lens or you can aim higher and look for the values that are behind the laws so every law will have some values behind it why we have that law but they're not written into the names of the laws or the wording in the laws so you have to figure out what they are so in virginia we have to wear a seat belt when we're

17:27 driving and you can probably think about well what are the values that's protecting it's protecting human life in human safety right and the laws that prevent us from hitting or harassing each other in the workplace those laws are protecting human rights human dignity people's well-being and safety so we really need to look at laws in terms of the values behind them

17:58 so if we're manufacturing a product we need to manufacture it to the level of the value so if if we're looking at a safety law that says that you know we manufacture something it has to be to these specifications what we really want to do is aim for making it a safe product to protect the people who are using it because that's why we have safety laws they're intended to protect those values so since laws are the

18:29 minimum standard of acceptable behavior let's go on to lens three character now this is my individual ethics some people talk about this as a moral compass and it's it's your integrity the alignment of what you think and say and do and your moral awareness it's about thinking about how what you do impacts a wide variety of of

19:00 others other constituents and here we really get into transparency and fairness and when you add character to profit and law it's really a game changer because now you're considering your impact on others not just making money and following the minimum standard so this is my personal ethics but i'm in the world with other people so let's look at the people landslides for

19:32 here we could show respect and care for individuals but also at the more collective level we need to show respect for differences and create an environment with full inclusion and prevent harm from coming to people this is really about creating the kind of environment where everyone can thrive everyone can do their very best work and use their talents and skills people are part of communities now

20:04 when you volunteer in the community it supports the community you might improve food availability or schools or parks there's so many different things you could do in the community and it doesn't just benefit the community so let's say that i am helping feed the homeless the the homeless are helped but also my moral awareness increases because i see that others don't live the same way that i do and i have an opportunity

20:37 and even a responsibility to to try to help them now through the planet lens we're starting to get this kaleidoscopic picture that you see when you look through all the lenses at one time now at the level of the planet lens you have to be a systems thinker so you want to demonstrate respect for life nature and ecosystems and those that's all very very connected and ever changing if you think about the

21:07 seasons and and our weather patterns and animal migration you can't just look at a piece of land and say okay this is the way that land is always going to be it could be flooded tomorrow or you know animals are migrating over that land so if you want to put up for example a fence or a border you have to take into consideration all of these cyclical changes before you can really see the impact of what you're going to be doing

21:39 on the planet one way to think about this is if you have an acre of trees timber is really valuable you can sell it and you can make a lot of money through the profit lens but through the planet lens we realize that when you clear-cut trees on land then it causes increased respiratory ailments in the communities around that land because we really need that that oxygen

22:12 from the the trees to be healthy so through the planet lens we're thinking about how we rely on the planet for our survival and we want to protect the planet for future generations and this seventh lens is the greater good the highest level and the longest term of all the lenses and this is making life better for future generations and it's long after we're gone and it's it's interesting because

22:44 this might be local or regional could be national global it could be a big thing or a small thing but just in some way making life better for future generations now the picture you get when you look through all of these lenses is is very helpful in understanding a situation so i'm going to share a case with you but first i'm going to talk with you about some things we've seen happen

23:15 during the extended pandemic that will help bring this into perspective so through the profit lens you probably remember at the beginning of the pandemic people were buying up all the hand sanitizer and hoarding that and then price gouging and charging over a hundred dollars for one hand sanitizer on the internet and so people have tried to profit from other people's misfortune

23:47 during the pandemic in terms of the law the laws and regulations have been constantly changing and businesses have had to adapt continually to the changes in in their particular way of doing business through the character lens some people have demonstrated concern for others in mask wearing getting vaccinated and others have used fraudulent vaccination records to travel

24:19 to places that required vaccination through the people lens people have helped each other people have shown concern for others and help them in the community through the communities lens grocery stores have kind of done a special thing for seniors and made it easier to shop by doing the pickup groceries that we've all enjoyed where

24:50 you didn't even have to go in the store and someone would shop for you so and through the planet lens when everything ground to a halt at the beginning of the pandemic people stopped traveling we weren't flying we weren't we weren't traveling at all and so the pollution levels went way down globally and it was startling and really helps inform our understanding of our impact on the

25:21 planet and the canals in venice actually ran clear which they had not seen happen and through the greater good lens some businesses offered paid services for free to help people adapt if you think about zoom allowing a longer length of time for their free meetings when everyone had to go virtual quickly and didn't have a lot of time to adapt and publishers have

25:52 lifted restrictions on ebooks in some cases so that we'd have something to read while we were in isolation working from home so a lot of people were working toward the greater good so i'm going to talk with you about a case now this is real during the pandemic the there's been a problem about conducting trials in person because

26:25 of the risk of con you know passing coven 19 from person to person so one thing that has been tried is to conduct trials in person but with only vaccinated jurors so basically this means you would just dismiss all jurors who were unvaccinated the sources that i've used to research this case are at the bottom the american bar association the national center for state courts u.s courts rand and reuters

26:57 so let's put this through all seven lenses through the profit lens this approach costs money so it does not check off the profit lens doesn't make us money it costs money so it gets an x here because we have to get plexiglass shields and we have additional safety measures and interestingly because lawyers have to like to lean in and whisper to their clients they can't do that when they're six feet apart so they have to have special headsets

27:28 due to the distance and so we get an x there in the profit lens through the law lens this approach raises some privacy concerns we know how private medical information is but now all of a sudden we know all those jurors are vaccinated so that does not check off potentially privacy following privacy rules and also there are concerns that this could increase appeals because it doesn't it's not there's not enough jury

28:00 diversity and that many cases could be appealed through the character lens we can check this off to say that it's morally aware to want to keep people safe by requiring that the jurors be vaccinated so we give it a check there but also it's not morally aware to restrict the jury diversity so we also have a problem there through the people lens

28:31 you're protecting people partially in the courtroom through requiring vaccination and potentially also masking but you've all you've directly reduced the diversity of the jury of the peers which isn't fair to the people who are on trial through the communities lens i would argue that requiring that all jurors be vaccinated restricts the jury pool and doesn't fully meet the definition of a jury of

29:01 your peers through the planet lens this still requires travel which can have a negative impact on the planet but it does check off protect trying to protect life trying to protect our lives by only having vaccinated jurors through the greater good lens i would say this is not a fair way to select a jury of your peers you could still transmit covet 19 and this could unintentionally encourage people

29:32 not to get vaccinated in order to avoid jury duty so let's contrast that with another approach that's being used which is conducting virtual trials so here through the profit lens this checks off the profit lens because it's cheaper and it also allows judges to fill in from anywhere when they're not busy so you get much in terms of benefit for profit through the law lens this moves cases through the system faster checks that

30:04 off but there are concerns about witness believability when you're virtual and also the change in the dynamics where you don't have the the prosecutor standing over the witness you know questioning them so there's some dynamic courtroom dynamic concerns through the character lens this one gets two check marks it's morally aware to keep people safe and to maintain your diversity through the people lens protects people

30:36 right because there's no contact it's all virtual and yet it creates access issues for some people who may not have access to the technology that they need to participate virtually so they would that would need to be mitigated with loner technology or setting up satellite locations where people could go to participate in the jury trials so through the community's lens you've maintained jury juror diversity for fair trials

31:09 that's checked off through the planet lens you've reduced or eliminated travel and you've protected life completely because people are not coming in contact with one another and through the greater good lens you've maintained jury pool fairness and eliminated the risk of exposure so we check that off as well so when you compare these side by side it really starts to come into focus and i want to call your

31:39 attention to the fact that we're seeing the nuances here that you just don't see when you say well is that ethical or not this is much more of a level of detail so within a lens you can have a check mark that yes it honors it and an x mark but not over here so now we're beginning to see the real real situation the real complexity of of our ethical issues so these nuances are

32:09 extremely helpful in understanding what's going on in an ethical situation so the names of these lenses are familiar i picked words that people would know and be able to remember there are only seven of them which is the number of digits in a local telephone number so people report that they can remember them and kind of go through them in their heads when they're facing a situation without any materials

32:40 with them and it gives us a very very different picture of leadership and and ethics because we are looking beyond ourselves to others and to society and to the future and this is a more engaging kind of leadership and and it really creates a very deep level of meaning it's a more it's the kind of leader you

33:10 want to work for that would be honoring all of these lenses and it also shows collaboration and a shared purpose we have multiple stakeholders and we need to meet all of their needs and not just a few of them and one of the things about this perspective is that it includes the interpersonal and the personal ethics as well as environmental and societal

33:40 it includes short-term considerations and long-term considerations so it's really giving us the full full kaleidoscopic view of the impact of our choices so i want to give you an interesting example if you have a toxic leader who is a pillar in the community is that leader ethical so the answer to that question is yes and

34:13 no because yes the leader could be considered ethical through the community's lens if they are a pillar of the community they're volunteering or donating money to help but in terms of their being them being toxic interpersonally they would not be honoring the people lens and they would not be demonstrating character because that wouldn't be very morally aware and they probably would bump into trouble with the law

34:44 in terms of bullying and harassment regulations so you can't just say is that person ethical or not or is this situation ethical or not it is not a yes or no question we need to see the nuances and we need to think about it in this important multi-dimensional way not just one perspective at a time so the best decisions will honor as many

35:14 of these lenses as as we can possibly incorporate so all of that is very interesting and helpful but there's there's even more here that's hiding in plain sight and there's additional complexity that only becomes visible when you look at ethics in a multi-dimensional way and seeing it through multiple lenses

35:45 so there are many combinations of these lenses i am not a mathematician but i know that there are a lot of combinations here because you could have any one of these lenses that you're making a decision based on or any two any three any four any five any six or all seven that's a lot of possible combinations and it really helps us understand why the field

36:15 has not agreed on one definition of ethical leadership because all of the scholars that were studying it were describing it from different combinations of these lenses and saying well that that's definitely ethical leadership and someone else saying no this is definitely ethical leadership and they're all describing parts of a bigger situation and and not realizing that one thing that's interesting to think

36:46 about is who champions these lenses in the organization so if you think about who champions the profit lens generally finance legal department will will be looking out for laws and hr will look out for people there may be a community area or a sustainability department but then you start thinking who's looking out for character

37:18 and who's looking out for the greater good and this is when you begin to see okay there's not a department for that you you really have to have the leader at the very top of the organization honoring all of these lenses and particularly watching out for character and the greater good and carrying that through the whole organization and to modeling it for all the leaders who then model it for all the employees and it carries throughout

37:49 the entire organization so it's a definite ethical responsibility of of all leaders so that that adds another layer of complexity but i'll i'll build on that and give you a little bit more my background is in adult education and human development and going through all of this i discovered there weren't just seven different

38:20 lenses there's actually a developmental continuum here and if you look at this graphic that looks like a megaphone if i'm holding that megaphone close to me the profit lens is the smallest part right and that's what's in it for me that's my personal gain but then if i start incorporating concern for other people now i'm showing concern for self and others and then if i show

38:51 concern for communities and the planet the greater good i'm showing concern for self others and society and this parallels the human development models of coburg and ericsson and others so this is a developmental moral development piece where we need to incorporate more of the lenses as we go along and moral development only happens when you continue learning

39:23 so we have to continue learning in order to progress and we need to start from wherever we are if we're only considering the first four lenses for example then we start focusing on communities and building that into our decision making and we keep adding them until we can consider all of them when we're making decisions and this this really helps put into perspective what's going on in

39:54 the world it sort of gives you a little inside view of of what is what could be happening with a lot of the disagreements and so we in order for this to work for us to develop on this continuum we have to have the humility to admit that we don't have all the answers and that we need to learn from people who disagree with us disagreeing is is not the end of the

40:25 world it's actually a healthy sign of of good dialogue and you don't want to to lose that so we're going to need to be open to hearing perspectives that we might not agree with to enrich our understanding of issues if we're going to make the best ethical decisions so there is a graphic here that shows you some ways you could use your new ethical lenses and this

40:57 kaleidoscopic perspective and we'll talk you through these a little bit and then i'll ask you to talk about your takeaways from the discussion and how you can use your your new lenses so values have to be at the center of a meaningful workplace and so the seven lenses is here in the center and one of the most helpful things that this offers is a common language for

41:29 talking about values so that you can be sure you're including all the right dimensions of concern when you're making a decision and it helps with building community it gives you a common frame of reference for thinking about your impact on constituents and for planning and that sort of thing it helps you see the different perspectives the interests of the different stakeholders and how those can be upheld

42:01 it helps you make principal decisions you saw in the case that i walked you through that it's very helpful not just for looking at one situation but comparing and contrasting and seeing which one would check off more of the lenses and be the more ethical choice and it's also useful for making principal decisions together with a group and some groups even like to have individuals champion the you know certain lenses so that they make sure

42:32 that all of the lenses are heard in in the dialogue and it helps you develop solutions for the common good because you are seeing this societal impact at a very high level and you can imagine ways to engage the stakeholders and come up with responsible solutions that support the common good so this graphic might get you thinking about some takeaways

43:03 i'm going to ask you two questions and the next slide has the questions on on it but the first one is going to be what are your insights what what are your biggest takeaways what resonated with you and then the other one is what what do you want to do about it how can you put this into practice so please take a moment to share in the chat what resonated with you and how will you turn your insights

43:32 into action in other words what are you going to do about what you've learned here today so while we're waiting for the comments to come in in the chat i want to point out that the seven lenses model aligns with what we know about brain science in terms of needing a meaningful schema and sticky easy to remember parts that people can call up and use easily

44:03 i also want to point out there's a very big difference between critical thinking where you narrow down your thinking from somewhere to a a finite point that may or may not include ethics if you're rushed can rush to judgment without even thinking about them ethical thinking in contrast with that is where you're broadening your thinking and taking it to a much higher level to incorporate

44:35 ethical values to make choices for everyone's benefit and well-being so i'm going to take a minute and see if we have things coming in on the chat feel free to answer one or both of these questions yeah when you have to choose between paths there's a this is a well-structured way to think through it

45:05 good it gives us you a framework to to guide you i mean we with the complexity of the situations we're dealing with right now going in and just trusting our gut or just you know trusting ourselves to make an ethical decision isn't good enough at the level of complexity that we're facing there's a better chance of inculcating ethical leadership or encouraging a leader to actually have ethics sometimes

45:36 that's the biggest hurdle yes i mean if you if someone is thinking about ethics in a very limited or self-interested way this model sort of brings into perspective the things that they are are overlooking it's not just right or wrong but you can make a decision taking into account all seven lenses right it's not it's not the oversimplified way we've been talking about it

46:07 is that ethical or not that question does not really help us at the level of complexity we're facing wow wonderful character in the greater good we don't have organizational structures to safeguard those and too often not the planet either that is absolutely true that's an important concern it's not yes or no answers allows for different perspectives yeah very nice thank you all so much

46:39 for sharing we can be quick to judge oh gosh we are all guilty of that this helps keep us from leaping to judgment that's a really great one tools to evaluate corporations and organizations in our everyday lives that you look at different businesses in a different way now and we're at a point where consumers are tending to want to vote based on spending their money on ethical companies

47:09 people want to work for workplaces where leaders are honoring all of these lenses that's what they're hoping for and expecting and asking questions about in the interviews so this really can help organizations be ready and develop the kinds of cultures that will resonate with people and attract the best possible workers so there are many many tools available at

47:41 leadingandcontext.com if you haven't already figured it out i'm very passionate about this topic and there are over 600 articles and videos and tools there for you so feel free to learn more about what we've talked about there and it has been a pleasure getting to be in conversation with you and i look forward to finding out what your questions are

48:15 thank you thank you linda i think i just want to reiterate to everybody that if you have a question or comment please share it on the q a function at the bottom of your screen and we're going to go through some of those questions in a moment i think i'll take this opportunity while people are maybe thinking of questions to mention a few things of my own so first of all linda really impressed with your presentation

48:45 so i teach ethics and the danger with teaching ethics in the classroom is that it has tendencies sometimes become very abstract and academic what i really like about your presentation is this is very practical this is something that people in any organization or community can apply in a meaningful way it's balanced it's practical it's realistic oftentimes you know when we teach ethics

49:15 as i mentioned in the chat you know it's about ignoring things like profit ignoring things like what the law might say it's all about principle you know and doing the right thing and there's a place for that i mean i think there's a place for civil disobedience there's a place for ignoring money and profits but practically speaking most leaders in most organizations have to face those questions they can't simply turn a blind eye to what what the their cfo is

49:41 telling them about the new policy or what the law might say they have to they have to be considerate of these things so really really really a very interesting presentation now i have a i have a question so it seems to me the devil is in the details of this so i'm sure if if we talked about your book we'd have an opportunity to see what you have to say about this but it seems to me each one of these elements

50:07 has its own complexity you know i'm sure a finance person could tell us about the complexity of of finances and profits but for example when we're talking about character what could you share with us that might help us understand how we evaluate that lens for example are there any particular values or principles that we should keep in mind when we're when we're reading a question or situation through the lens of character so if you could talk a little

50:37 bit more about that that would be great that's a great great question and i have blogged about this quite a bit because it's a common question and now these days it has to include respect and care for people it has to include respect for differences and an understanding of

51:07 the leader's role in the organization in the world you know the responsibility to have a positive impact on people it's there are so many pieces to it that my answer is well you might want to search on that on the blog because i have blogged about the dimensions of moral awareness how to tell if someone is morally aware you know before you're

51:40 going to hire them or before you're going to vote for them you know how do you make that assessment and part of it is how they talk about people and you know not dividing them into us and them groups but but taking a fully inclusive perspective and and it's the way they think about their risk their long-term responsibilities versus their short-term responsibilities some of the other things that i have already talked about

52:11 and it it really is are they leading based on values can they articulate what those values are do they know have they ever thought about it you know so there's so many so many different pieces and i've also blogged about ethical competence and the variables of that and they're you know legally being aware morally aware from the legal perspective and then from the people perspective and then from the planetary perspective so it's

52:41 it's a very big it's a very big question but there's a lot of guidance there and i and i'm as i'm listening to i can't help but think that virtue ethics might be able to speak that because you're speaking a lot i think about the so-called virtues that an aristotle might speak about generosity compassion self-discipline courage justice and fairness loyalty those things might you know maybe so what you're saying is not a single litmus test i guess for determining what

53:12 what counts as good character but but maybe those are the kinds of values or virtues i haven't having said that we've got a lot of questions i need to get so let me let me start with one what happens from an anonymous person what happens when there is a serious conflict between two or more lenses does one of them necessarily trump the other like for example people over profit that is a great question it's not a

53:40 math formula so you saw when we went through on the case that you'll have some checks and some x's in different places but what if you do have you're honoring the people lens but not honoring profit or or honoring the planet lens but not people it helps to start know by knowing what your values are if your organization if you you individually or your organization will

54:10 know the values that they want to uphold then those values seem to be ones that you might pay particular attention to and add weight to but you can also you can also weight these based on your priorities what you can't do is throw any of them out you can't say i'm just not going to think about that you know that that wouldn't be responsible but when you have the complexity we're talking about here you you may have to

54:42 wait them and and you know play play them against each other for example the whole the whole naming of buildings thing has been such a big issue and that affects the profit lens it impacts the communities it impacts how people feel about being in those buildings and so it touches on so many different lenses and you you will have to balance it out and in in that case a case like that yeah you might have to give up

55:11 a large endowment if you don't want to name a building after someone who hasn't been ethically upstanding so you have to make those trade-offs the other thing i'll say is that sometimes if you let profit be your trade-off let's say you do something that costs you money right now and it's not going to check off the profit lens it might check off the profit lens longer term though so if you make a really ethical decision as an organization

55:42 it might be costly but it will it could attract people to your business to who say i really like what they did and it can cause such a groundswell of of support the an example is university of tennessee the little boy was wearing a homemade volunteers shirt and his his classmates teased him and bullied him because he had this homemade shirt and when they got wind of it the

56:14 university sent him a box of stuff that he could have from the university but they also printed up the homemade t-shirt that he that he drew on a piece of paper they printed it up and started selling it and they i mean it was just they sold thousands of them because everyone said this was the right thing to do to support him and to show concern for him and to say hey bullying is not okay so it became a symbol

56:44 for anti-bullying so yeah that cost them money but then they made money on those t-shirts and the good will that that created is huge so hopefully that shows you how sometimes there are trade-offs but sometimes it can come back in positive ways longer term if the trade-off at the moment was that profit lens great we have a number of other questions so david asks or mentions it can sometimes be difficult

57:14 to interact with people who could be helped by our leadership but don't necessarily have the same perspective as we do most often from a willful or unconscious lack of understanding or respect for the same values how would you suggest approaching this or these kinds of people in a positive way to have a kind of positive impact with them that's a really tough question i would have expected to get at least one really tough question yeah if

57:43 if someone doesn't seem to be operating from a value center but maybe they just don't realize how important it is to do that maybe they haven't taken your class max they haven't taken my class they don't know this whole perspective so the first thing you have to do is show moral awareness which i think in is already written into the question you realize that they might not be doing it intentionally that just might not be aware you have to give people credit for

58:14 the fact that maybe their parents didn't teach them you know they didn't they didn't get the right education to to understand the importance of those values and so one of the most important things we can do is listen and you know really find out where they're coming from first and then take the opportunity to we could say you know i live i like to live out these values these are my highest priority values these are the ones that i think are the

58:43 most important and you know if you share that with them and they did okay well they don't they they become more aware right you're increasing their moral awareness but you're not being too pushy about it because one thing people don't like is to be told what to do they don't like to be told how to think either so the gentle approach that your question implies would be the best approach here great and bill de la fano asks about small

59:14 companies he mentions as most small companies don't have the depth of feedback to support these lenses where could they reach out to get that kind of feedback and i think the idea is that each one of these lenses that are important for this kind of ethical perspective requires feedback from other people in some important way how would you recommend leaders or smaller organizations who don't necessarily have that kind of collaborative

59:45 support to manage this kind of thing that's a really good question bill the getting feedback can be done there there's a thing happening in in large organizations now called the empathy interview it doesn't cost anything but you you find a selection of your audience your target audience of that particular constituent and you ask them to tell you what's on their mind what's important to them how you know what they

60:15 need from you and how you're doing in whatever it is you're assessing and you get their input into the design of your products for example or services the way that you might evaluate yourself on how well you're doing ethically speaking and i don't know if i'm actually addressing your question so please let me know if i didn't quite hit on that but i think asking is is the easiest way to get a sampling of the population

60:47 and and reach out to people of course social media makes this super easy because if you put a question out there you usually get a pretty quick response but it is more public so this could also be done in a more private way and when you have plans of what you're going to do then getting that feedback on how does this sound to you would be really important and you see this a lot and when there's a community

61:16 that's building a new building or something they have the the open forums where they hear from people to find out what concerns they have about zoning changes or that type of thing so basically it has to be a dialogue because this it's relational ethics is really it has to include the relational piece so that they're really i i you've called attention to a really interesting point there needs to be a data collection piece

61:46 to make sense out of all this as well as just the quick research you can do on your own to to understand the target audience so we're almost out of time maybe maybe one or two quick more questions here so anonymous asks have you seen many corporations changing their policies based on consumer demand for them to act as an ethical global citizen and i'm going to add to that and say okay if it's consumer demand that's driving

62:16 their concern about people community the planet the greater good isn't that really profit that's driving the ethical lens there what do you think about that yeah so if they if they change because of consumer pressure then are they more ethical or are they just opportunistic the answers both both okay so one of the things i write about in the book is positive intent and impact you you've got to have both if you have

62:47 positive intent you're going to do it right up front anyway you're just going to do it the first time right but if you don't have positive intent but then you're forced into doing something you can still have a positive impact by doing it so you can still be ethical in some part of this by being forced to make a change and consumers are are causing so much more positive change to happen now because they get on social media and they say

63:17 hey i just watched you stomp on my suitcase i don't like that you know and you know whatever's going on it's gonna hit social media and people are going to put pressure on the companies to change their ways in how they treat people or how they take advantage of people and so yeah i did i i hope i answered that question fully yeah that's good one last question i might have to modify a little bit but lois asks how would you design a

63:45 course for high school students that teaches ethics using the new hampshire constitution now i'm going to assume you're not familiar with the new hampshire constitution but maybe just generally speaking if you were to teach a course for young people in high school using this approach how would you put such a course together i'm curious i have spoken in high schools some forward-thinking teachers realize hey college is way too late for people to get this and i will tell you

64:14 that the the high school groups that i have met with they they are shocked by what they hear with what when i share some of what i have shared with you today their their jaws drop it's just it's it's startling to them and it shouldn't be i think we need to start earlier so if you have if you taking the the constitution you can actually assess it through all seven lenses what what is

64:44 you can break it down into those sections and then talk about it in that context which would give them a bigger picture of why it has different components so that would be my suggestion is just to break it down through the seven lenses and tell them about it that way and then they get they have a sort of a bigger picture perspective basically you're saying you could look at any issue or question including say the new hampshire constitution from

65:12 these seven lenses how it affects impacts the greater good community people the law profits and so on and so forth it's very interesting well linda we're out of time i want to thank you on behalf of our audience in the center for your wonderful insights and spending time with us today i want to thank our audience for joining us today and offering such wonderful insights and questions and i just want to encourage everybody to keep track of us center through our

65:39 center through our website at www.anselm.edu forward slash ethics you can join our emailing list and we'll send you further notes about programs coming up and hopefully linda we can have you back again for another program in the future that'd be great thank you thank you very much with that we conclude the program and thank you again everybody

66:27 you