PART 1
Understanding the Five Principles
of Ethical Intelligence
CHAPTER 1
Introducing the Principles
How ethically intelligent are you? Take the quiz below, then read on. In this chapter and the two that follow, you will learn the five principles of ethical intelligence and discover your ethics IQ.
ETHICS QUIZ
1. You notice that your friend Heather has posted a new picture of herself on Facebook in which she is smoking a bong with one hand and holding a bottle of vodka in the other. What would you do?
A. Tell her you donāt think this photo is a good idea.
B. Donāt say anything about it to her.
C. āLikeā the photo.
D. Copy the photo to your hard drive and use it against her if she ever double-crosses you.
2. Youāre having lunch at a restaurant and overhear two colleagues, Bob and Ray, talking about a client with whom your business is having difficulty. They mention the client by name as well as specific information about the problem. What would you do?
A. Approach them and mention your concerns about confidentiality.
B. Ignore it.
C. Tell your supervisor what you witnessed.
D. Record your colleagues with your cell phoneās video camera and post the clip on YouTube.
3. You take your twelve-year-old son to the movies. At the box office, you see a sign that says, āChildren up to eleven: $6.00. Adults: $12.00.ā The movie theaterās management thus considers your son to be an adult. What would you do?
A. Ask for one adult and one child ticket.
B. Ask for two adult tickets.
C. Give your son the money and have him ask for a ticket.
D. Ask your son what he thinks you should do, and then do whatever he suggests.
4. An employee you supervise comes to work late, spends a lot of time shopping online, takes long lunches and coffee breaks, and leaves early. A few months ago, you fired someone for doing the same thing. This person, however, is the daughter of a close personal friend. Youāve talked with her several times about her conduct, but the problems continue. What would you do?
A. Fire her.
B. Ignore it.
C. Talk with her again and tell her this is her last chance to straighten up.
D. Ask your friend (her parent) to talk with her.
5. You wake up on a workday with the flu. What would you do?
A. Stay at home and rest.
B. Stay at home and work.
C. Go to work but avoid socializing with people.
D. Go to work but socialize only with the people you donāt like.
DIFFERENT CHOICES, DIFFERENT REASONS
Now that youāve made your selections, on what basis did you make them? Which of the following guided your selections?
ā¢ How you imagined feeling in each scenario
ā¢ The way youāve acted in similar situations in the past and what happened as a result
ā¢ What you were taught was right and wrong
ā¢ What you understand is expected of you as a member of your religious tradition
ā¢ How you might stand to benefit from each possible option
ā¢ What others would think of you if they knew youād made one choice over another
If you present the quiz to a group of your friends and coworkers, youāll probably find a range of responses to each scenario. Also, the reasons people give for making their choices may be different from yours, even if you made the same choices. For example, both you and a coworker might choose to stay home and rest when you wake up with the flu, but your reason might be, āI donāt want to make other people sick,ā whereas your coworkerās justification could be, āAny day I donāt have to go in to the office is fine with me.ā
Whatever choices youāve made, you probably believe that yours were the best ones. (Otherwise, why would you have made them?) But how do you reconcile this with the fact that other people you like and trust might make different choices in the same scenarios or have different reasons for making the same choices? Theyāre good people, but each one believes that his or her choices (and reasons) are the best ones, even though they may be different from yours. How can we tell what the best solutions actually are, no matter who is looking at the problem?
The answer lies in five simple principles:
1. Do No Harm
2. Make Things Better
3. Respect Others
4. Be Fair
5. Be Loving
There are several things worth noting about these principles:
ā¢ You know these principles already.
ā¢ Theyāre the basis of both religious traditions and secular societies.
ā¢ Theyāre tremendously difficult to live by.
When you were young, you learned these principles from your parents and teachers. If you went to Sunday school, the principles were taught in every class you took. If you were a member of a civic organization such as the Boy or Girl Scouts, or the 4-H, Optimist, Rotary, or Kiwanis clubs, these principles guided just about everything you did there.
But the five principles above arenāt just for kids. As Jeffrey Moses illustrates in his book Oneness: Great Principles Shared by All Religions,1 the principles are the bedrock of Eastern and Western religious traditions alike. Indeed, itās hard to imagine how any society or culture could fail to honor these principles; youād be afraid to leave your house, for example, if Do No Harm did not guide the behavior of your fellow citizens. All five principles are the glue that binds us together as a nation, as persons of faith, and in every relationship we have or are likely to have.
In spite of their central role in everyday life, itās easy to forget how important they are and to act instead on impulses that beckon us but that may, in the long run, be more hurtful than helpful.
Suppose, for example, that youāre driving down the highway one afternoon and the driver behind you starts flashing his lights and honking his horn in an effort to get you to speed up. But youāre already traveling at the speed limit, and youāre not even in the fast lane. There is no good reason to go faster than you already are, so you ignore him.
All of a sudden, he moves over, rushes by you, makes an obscene gesture, and appears to mutter something nasty. Itās tempting to return the gesture, flash your lights at him, and even roll your window down and curse back at him. But what would the consequences of this decision be? Most likely, you would:
ā¢ Feel worse, not better
ā¢ Make the other driver feel worse, not better
ā¢ Increase the risk of injury or death to you and those around you
ā¢ Risk getting pulled over by a police officer
ā¢ Set a poor example of how to respond to difficult situations, if anyone (especially your child) is in the car with you
Itās understandable that youād want to return one rude gesture with another, and I know Iām not the only one who has given in to this impulse on occasion. But itās one thing to understand the impulse and quite another to justify acting on it. Giving him āa taste of his own medicineā in the above situation may harm all concerned ā including you and fellow drivers who have no stake in the matter and deserve to be able to travel safely.
Thus, if you look at the situation objectively, it would be wrong to do something that would make things worse. You might not be able to get the hostile driver to calm down, but you can surely avoid causing harm to him, yourself, your passengers, and other drivers. The first principle, Do No Harm, shows you the best way to respond in this situation.
In fact, all five principles mentioned above provide excellent guidelines for making the best possible decisions in every area of your life. These principles have legal, financial, and psychological implications; but they are first and foremost principles of ethics, and they form the core of what I call āethical intelligence.ā In this book, I will show you how to enhance your ethical intelligence by mastering these principles, so that youāll be equipped to make the right decisions at work and in your personal life.
First, letās see how ethical intelligence differs from its close cousin, emotional intelligence.
ETHICAL INTELLIGENCE
VERSUS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
In 1995, a psychologist and science journalist named Daniel Goleman shook up the world with his book Emotional Intelligence.2 Goleman described an indispensable element of professional and personal success: the ability to discern how others are feeling, which can be quite different from the ways they present themselves to the world.
Suppose, for example, that you and I know each other well and we meet for coffee one day. You ask me how Iām doing, and I say, āIām fine.ā But several signs suggest Iām anything but fine: I avoid eye contact, which is unusual for me; my voice is quieter than it normally is; Iām not smiling, which isnāt like me; and I seem unusually distracted. It is your emotional intelligence that enables you to notice these signs and to correctly conclude that Iām not fine at all. Someone who doesnāt possess your level of emotional intelligence (or any at all) wouldnāt notice that something is amiss when we meet.
But now comes a tough question: What should you do? The answer isnāt obvious. Is it better to mention the fact that I donāt seem all right to you, or should you just ignore it? If our chat over coffee doesnāt give you any useful information about whatās really going on, would it be right to follow up with a phone call or email, or simply say to yourself, āHeās an adult, and if he wants to tell me whatās going on, he willā? Emotional intelligence alone wonāt ā and canāt ā tell you what you ought to do. Thatās because emotional intelligence is a psychological matter, but the question āWhatās the right thing to do?ā is an ethical one. To be fully human, itās not enough to have emotional intelligence. We need ethical intelligence, too.
Letās take a closer look at the five principles that form the core of ethical intelligence, and then weāll consider how they can help us determine the right way to tackle the problems from the beginning of this chapter.
SUMMARY
The five principles of ethical intelligence are:
1. Do No Harm
2. Make Things Better
3. Respect Others
4. Be Fair
5. Be Loving
As the quiz that opened this chapter suggests, itās not always easy to do the right thing, or even to know what the right thing is. The principles of ethical intelligence provide the foundation for making the right choices in every area of your life.
CHAPTER 2
The Five Principles of
Ethical Intelligence
Now that weāve identified t...