Giving Voice To Values: The Key is to Practice, Practice, Practice.

Have you ever faced an ethical dilemma at work? A time when you knew what was right, but your boss, customers, or shareholders pressured you to do something different? Perhaps you've been asked to “find a different set of metrics” to de-emphasize poor performance results or cover for a colleague who let the team down? If you are determined to lead with values, what does that really mean when faced with challenges like these

According to Dr. Mary Gentile, veteran Professor of Harvard Business School and UVA Darden School of Business, most people generally know what the right thing is to do – but doing it is hard. She suggests changing the question – rather than asking “what is the right thing to do”, instead ask “how can I get it done?” The solution, according to Gentile, is to practice, to rehearse the behaviors you want to exhibit. 

In a recent workshop with Higher Ambition Leadership Alliance members, Gentile described how early in her career, she realized that most conversations about ethics in business focus on determining what the “right” answer is. But the hard part is often figuring out what to do and how to do it. She further observed that most leaders with a “moral conviction” – the ability to act on what they know to be right – had the experience of a mentor, teacher, or even a parent demonstrating and discussing how to act in such situations. In other words, they had the opportunity to rehearse - at both the cognitive and behavioral level - how they might act when faced with an ethical dilemma. And it was this opportunity to rehearse – to create “muscle memory” – that led to their later success in navigating these situations. 

So how do you handle challenges where your course of action is not black & white? Tactics include talking to colleagues, collecting data, or reframing the question, to name a few. Consider your strengths – are you more comfortable communicating in writing or in person, or are you skilled at mobilizing a set of allies? People take very different approaches – and the levers available to any one person vary with their role (and seniority) in their organization. 

This approach has been codified as Giving Voice To Values (GVV), a program that has now had over 1,365 pilots in educational and business settings on all seven continents. Initially designed for use in the graduate business curriculum, the approach has moved well beyond that and has been used in hundreds of corporations, organizations, and business schools. One organization using GVV extensively is KPMG, a professional services firm providing audit, tax, and advisory services. According to Victoria (Vicki) Sweeney, KPMG Principal, Ethics & Compliance, using the Giving Voice To Values approach “has been life-changing for some of our people. They navigate challenges – both personal and professional – very differently.”

Dr. Gentile concluded our workshop by reminding participants, “these are not exceptional situations. These kinds of things happen every day. Try to keep the stress level down.”