The Good Ones

Ten Crucial Qualities of High-Character Employees

Bruce Weinstein

• Publisher: New World Library
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781608682744
• eBook ISBN: 9781608682751
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

Employers look for two things when hiring or promoting people: knowledge and skill. They rarely, if ever, consider character. Yet character is the key to extraordinary business success. The Good Ones presents ten crucial qualities of high-character employees, qualities that enhance employee satisfaction, client relationships, and the bottom line.You'll read stories from managers and employees across the U.S. and beyond who reveal how honesty, courage, loyalty, and patience have helped their organizations maintain an edge over the competition. Each chapter is devoted to a single quality of character and ends with questions employers can use to hire and promote the Good Ones — people who are consistently honest, accountable, fair, and grateful.Whether you're looking to bring new people into your organization or seeking a job or promotion yourself, The Good Ones will help you appreciate in practical terms why character is the missing link to excellence.

TEN CRUCIAL QUALITIES OF HIGH-CHARACTER EMPLOYEES

CHAPTER 1

So shines a good deed in a weary world.

—Willy Wonka to Charlie, after the boy makes a difficult but honest choice, in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (originally from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice)

After the closure of the furniture factory where she had been working for twenty years, Brenda Harry found a minimum-wage job at the Goodwill Store and Donation Center in Pearisburg, Virginia (population 2,786). Her job was to process clothes and other items that people deposited in collection boxes around town. She made sure that they were in good condition and that the donors hadn’t left anything in the clothing. Most of the time the pockets were empty, but one day in January 2014, she discovered four envelopes inside a suit jacket.

Those envelopes contained $3,100 in cash. This was more than she made in two months of full-time work at Goodwill. If she had pocketed it, no one would have known. But Brenda Harry immediately turned the money over to her supervisor.

When Deb Saunders, chief compliance officer for Goodwill of the Valleys, told me this story, I wanted to know why Brenda didn’t keep the money for herself. So I called Brenda and asked her. “I was raised to be honest,” she told me. It was that simple. “It doesn’t matter if you need the money. It’s not yours. So you turn it in. My parents told me that if you’re honest, you will get your reward at the end of time. If you’re not honest, you will pay for it on Judgment Day.”

It’s hard to know how many people would do what Brenda did, because the sort of people who would keep the money might not report doing so. It doesn’t even matter, really. What does matter is that smart employers hire people like Brenda Harry, because they can trust her.

All of the ten qualities we’ll examine in this book are hallmarks of high-character employees, but honesty is the most important one. No matter how knowledgeable or skilled a person may be, if he or she is fundamentally dishonest or doesn’t value honesty, that person is detrimental and possibly even dangerous.

What isn’t immediately obvious is how honest employees benefit the organization. In some cases, a business can quantify a benefit; the Goodwill store in Pearisburg had $3,100 added to its monthly revenue when no one claimed the money that Brenda turned in. But there are other ways that honest employees are a boon to a business, as we’ll see.

What Is Honesty?

Honesty is above all a feeling, a disposition, an orientation toward the truth. Honest employees cannot tolerate lying, fudging data, misrepresenting themselves or their companies, or other conduct that displays contempt for the truth. Falsehood in all its forms is a poison to an honest person.

Refusing to Fudge Data

Well before she became senior vice president for strategy and business development at Xerox, Cari Dorman worked as an electrical engineer for a company that had been awarded a contract with the U.S. Navy. Her role was to develop a software program that would measure the likelihood that a transmitted electronic message had reached its intended target. Cari’s boss — I’ll call him Saul — asked her to change some data in her research because the results were not what Saul wanted or hoped they would be. Cari did not want to because of the potential implications and did not make the changes.

“I knew that standing up to Saul might get me fired,” Cari told me. “But I asked myself, ‘What if my son were in the navy during a war, and he was relying on my software program for knowing whether a message he sent got through or not?’” With lives on the line, Cari was willing to risk her job for the sake of doing honest research. Her passion for the telling truth and her courage to be true to herself makes her one of the Good Ones.

For reasons Cari doesn’t know, Saul eventually was asked to take a cut in pay, and he left the company.

Standing Up to a Dishonest Vendor

Honest employees are truthful employees. Ken Meyer, vice president of human resources at Community Health Services in New York City, told me how an employee’s passion for the truth potentially saved lives, certainly vanquished a cheater, and changed the way Ken runs employee orientation sessions.

Marvin was the new director of the fire safety department at a large company where Ken used to work. When he was going through the contracts from various vendors, Marvin noticed that the one who supplied the company’s many fire extinguishers had never inspected them. Marvin called the vendor, Bill, to find out what was going on.

“You’re supposed to inspect them,” Bill said.

“Um, no I’m not. That’s your job,” Marvin replied.

Bill then explained how previous fire safety directors had handled the issue. “All you have to do, Marvin, is go through the building, take a look at the extinguishers, and make a note on where you checked the extinguisher,” Bill said. “Then count how many you inspected, let me know how many there are, and I’ll send you a check.”

“Wait a minute,” Marvin said. “You’re telling me that after I inspect our fire extinguishers, you’ll send a check to me, not to my company?”

“That’s right,” Bill stated, presumably expecting Marvin to exclaim, “Sign me up!” But that’s not how Marvin responded.

Instead he said, “All right, I can’t attest to what happened before me, but immediately two things have to happen. Number one, you have to send people to inspect these fire extinguishers. Number two, if you ever suggest anything dishonest like that to me again, I am going to drop you like a bad habit and you’ll never get work here again.”

Imagine an employee lighting a small candle on a birthday cupcake intended for a coworker. The employee blows out the match and tosses it into a wastepaper basket that’s half full. As he leaves his desk to deliver the treat to his coworker, that match, which is still smoldering, rapidly ignites the contents of the trash can.

This is the kind of problem that fire extinguishers are meant to solve, but if Marvin hadn’t stood up to the corrupt vendor, and the nearest fire extinguisher wasn’t functional, what might have happened? How many lives would have been permanently altered by a building fire, and how much damage would the business have sustained? What would the company’s legal liability have been when the reason for the faulty extinguisher was discovered? How would its reputation have been tarnished, and what would it take to win it back? All of these questions would arise simply because a fire extinguisher wasn’t properly maintained.

Marvin told Ken why he did what he did. “Ken, you want to live your life never having to worry about the knock on the door. As in the knock from someone about to say, ‘Something came to my attention that I need to discuss with you. Can you please step into my office and explain something to me?’ For what would be a relatively small amount of money, you find yourself fired, not collecting unemployment because it’s misconduct, and trying to find a job after something like that.”

“To this day, in employee training I repeat what Marvin said all the time,” Ken told me. “Conducting yourself ethically frees up your mind. Not having to worry about the knock on the door gives you peace of mind while you’re at work.”

The events in this story took place decades ago. Marvin is no longer a fire safety officer. He is an ordained Roman Catholic priest and is the pastor of the parish where he lives.

Being Prudent about Telling the Truth

Doris, a senior manager at an automotive parts company, told me a problem she had had recently with her boss, Melanie. “I’ve known Melanie for years,” Doris told me, “and we have a good relationship. Melanie has always encouraged me to speak my mind to her, and I decided it was time to tell her about something that had been bothering me about her for a while.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“Well, Melanie has a tendency to tell stories that go on forever. Or at least they seem to. It’s more annoying than anything else. And I’m not the only one who feels that way.”

“Uh oh,” I said. It wasn’t hard to see what was coming.

“Yes, I told her. And I added that other people feel the same way, but nobody had the nerve to tell Melanie.”

“What happened?”

“It was as if I’d slapped her on the face. She just stared at me for what seemed like an eternity. Then she told me to leave her office. I felt terrible and couldn’t sleep that night. The next day I apologized. I didn’t even try to justify what I said. I know it was wrong for me to tell her it wasn’t just me who thought she has a tendency to ramble. That wasn’t my place. And I honestly thought I was doing her a favor. I mean, I’d want people to tell me if they thought I talk too much.”

Melanie accepted Doris’s apology. Their friendship cooled a bit after that, but it has since recovered.

“I suppose I could have found a better way to tell her the truth,” Doris said. I told Doris about the praise-sandwich technique of giving criticism, in which you begin with something sincere but flattering, after which you mention the behavior that bothers you, and you end with something positive.

“Maybe that would work,” Doris told me, “but that could also backfire. Just because Melanie says she wants me to speak my mind with her doesn’t mean she wants to hear criticism about herself. I do think she needs to be mindful of our time, but her storytelling style is something I guess we’ll just have to put up with.”

In the introduction, I mentioned that my concept of character is derived from the work of Aristotle. One of the critical components of character for Aristotle is phronesis, a Greek word that is usually translated as “practical wisdom” or “prudence.” It’s what Kenny Rogers sings about in Don Schlitz’s song “The Gambler”: knowing when to hold ’em, knowing when to fold ’em, knowing when to walk away, and when to run.

Doris learned the hard way that just because people say they want you to be honest with them doesn’t mean they want to hear about their shortcomings. Doris is now more careful with how truthful she is with her boss about Melanie’s bothersome traits.

“Besides,” Doris added, “I’ll bet there are things I do that annoy Melanie that she doesn’t tell me about.”

Most of the time, honesty is a sign of high character. But, as we’ll see throughout this book, high-character employees know when to exhibit a particular quality and when to keep it to themselves.

The Consequences of Dishonesty

Ripping Off Restaurants: Considering a Single Dishonest Act

Jerry Seinfeld once said, “A date is a job interview that lasts all night.” I wish I’d kept that observation in mind during a date I had early in a relationship with a woman I’ll call Penny.

It was my birthday, and Penny took me out to dinner at an upscale restaurant. We began the evening at the bar, but our table was ready before we’d finished our drinks. The hostess told us she would take our drinks to the table and have the bar tab transferred to the check. We finished our meal, the check arrived, and lo and behold, the drinks weren’t listed.

“I guess they’re a gift!” Penny said in all seriousness. I told her that didn’t seem likely, but because it was early in our relationship, and I didn’t want to start an argument, I let it slide. I wasn’t comfortable with that decision, because we were stiffing both the restaurant and the bartender, who wouldn’t be getting a tip.

Penny’s decision to get two drinks for the price of none was a red flag that turned out to be indicative of her character. Quick to anger, she criticized me frequently and often used personal attacks to make her point. She had no tolerance for criticism when she was on the receiving end. She rarely came to my defense when others treated me poorly.

Of course, she had positive qualities too, and I’m far from perfect. My flaws, however, don’t include stealing, which is what Penny’s choice in the restaurant amounted to. Since Jerry Seinfeld is right in likening a date to a job interview, employers who ignore red flags such as evidence of dishonesty do so at their peril.

The Convict and the Firing Range: Enduring Repercussions of Dishonest Acts

“Dad, will you go to the firing range with me?” Chuck Gallagher’s son asked him one day. “Why not?” he responded. Chuck’s son had recently bought a pistol and was looking forward to spending some time with his dad at target practice. But when father and son got to the gun range, they were shocked by what they encountered.

“Not only can you not touch a gun here,” said the clerk to Chuck after asking a few routine questions, “but you also can’t pay for your son to be here. In fact, you’ll have to leave.”

Chuck wasn’t expecting such a hostile encounter, but he admits he shouldn’t have been surprised. That’s because Chuck is a convicted felon, and losing the privilege to enter a firing range is one of the consequences of his conviction.

In 1986, when he was in his mid-twenties, Chuck had a successful career as a CPA, and his thorough knowledge of what was then ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Character, the Missing Link to Excellence
• A Note about the Stories
• Ten Crucial Qualities of High-Character Employees
• Conclusion
• Call to Action
• Acknowledgments
• Endnotes
• Index
• About the Author