Now that we’ve identified the five principles of ethical intelligence, let’s examine them one by one, with an eye toward understanding how they imbue your life with meaning and enrich all of your relationships.
You may remember playing the party game “telephone” when you were a child: someone whispers a phrase or short statement to you, which you then whisper to someone else, who tells yet another person. After the message has been passed to a few more people, you discover that it bears little resemblance to its original form. When you’re a kid, it’s fun to notice this shift, and it’s always good for a laugh.
But we also play the game as adults all the time, even if we don’t recognize it as such, and with social networking technology, it’s easier than ever to do this. The effects, however, can damage businesses, careers, and lives. Consider this: On February 8, 2009, a Twitter subscriber tweeted that a man driving a silver truck had kidnapped a young girl, and the tweet included the truck’s license plate information. An Amber Alert (which signifies that a child has been abducted) went out from Salt Lake City all the way to Oklahoma, putting both law enforcement and citizens on the lookout for the truck. The only thing true about the tweet, however, was the license plate ID and the description of the car it belonged to.1 You can just imagine how the driver felt upon learning of this vicious and baseless attack. Even if the tweeter meant no harm by the prank or somehow found it funny, the power of the Internet turned the “joke” into a multistate, reputation-damaging scandal and an abuse of public resources.
The good news about the Do No Harm principle of ethical intelligence is that all you need to do to apply it is — nothing! Do No Harm is largely a principle of restraint. When you choose not to respond to a nasty gesture with more of the same, you’re applying Do No Harm. When you choose not to pass along rumor or gossip, you’re applying Do No Harm. When you decide not to use a knife to open those ridiculous plastic clamshell packages that encase so many products these days, you’re wisely forgoing an action that would likely send you reeling in pain to the emergency room. Here, too, you’re applying Do No Harm.
Speaking of the hospital, Do No Harm is usually associated with health-care professionals. Medical, nursing, pharmacy, and dental students are taught this principle early in their training, and for good reason: when you’re sick, you hope that your health-care providers will help you get better, but you rightly expect that they won’t make you worse.
When you think about it, though, Do No Harm applies not just to physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, and clinical social workers but also to attorneys, accountants, TV news producers, construction workers, teachers, students — everyone. The very least you can expect from your fellow human beings is their willingness not to inflict physical or emotional damage on you, and of course, they have a right to insist that you do the same for them. It’s true that people do just the opposite all the time, but they do so wrongfully; and depending on the nature of the harm caused, punishment is in order. To be a decent human being and to live in a civil society require a commitment to the first principle of ethical intelligence.
I use the term harm to refer to any type of action that damages others. These actions range in severity from mild pain or discomfort to severe distress and — the ultimate harm — loss of life. Generally speaking, harm is not the same as offense. When I was in Berlin many years ago as a graduate student, I recall seeing a marquee for a porn film whose title was written in large letters and could not have been more explicit. Many people would find this offensive, yet it’s a stretch to say that display was harmful. Of course, it’s a good thing to avoid causing offense as well as causing harm. But from an ethical point of view, we will focus on harm because it cuts deeper.
There are a few corollaries to Do No Harm that are worth mentioning: Prevent Harm and Minimize Unavoidable Harm. Let’s look at each of these in turn.
As we’ve seen, Do No Harm is a principle of nonintervention. If you’re tempted to do or say something hurtful, the ethically intelligent response is to restrain that impulse, as difficult as that can be. When you become aware of an imminent harm to others or yourself, however, you are called upon to do something rather than nothing. Preventing harm is an essential element of ethical intelligence.
The classic example of preventing harm to others is arranging for someone who has had too much to drink to get a ride home. Lifeguards who dive into a pool to save someone from drowning are also putting this idea into practice. But preventing harm isn’t limited to parties, pub crawls, or swimming pools, and the potential harm doesn’t have to be death or dismemberment. When my wife and I moved into our current apartment, we were told not to keep wet umbrellas or snow boots outside our door. This seemed like an extreme attempt to keep the hallways clean, until we learned that this measure was necessary to prevent our neighbors from slipping and falling. Preventing harm to others doesn’t even have to involve people. When you carefully choose the kind of toys you allow your pets to play with, you’re applying this rule.
When we revisit the ethics quiz, we’ll see how the duty to prevent harm applies to such diverse scenarios as waking up with the flu, overhearing colleagues discussing a client in public, and seeing that a Facebook friend has posted a picture of herself smoking pot. For now, the main thing to keep in mind about this first corollary to the Do No Harm principle of ethical intelligence is that it involves doing something rather than nothing when harm is likely to occur to people you know and care about (and even those you don’t know or like).2
Let’s face it: there are times you have to do things that you know will hurt people. When you’re breaking up with someone, downsizing your department, or punishing your kids, there is no way around the fact that your actions will be hurtful to others (or will at least seem hurtful to them). In these situations, ethical intelligence calls upon you to ask, “How can I minimize harm that is unavoidable?”
When I was single, I had plenty of first dates that were also last dates. Sometimes it was clear to both of us right away that it wasn’t going to work, and sometimes one of us wasn’t attracted to the other. In the second case, typically the uninterested one simply didn’t respond to the other person’s calls or emails. But was this the ethically intelligent way to handle the matter? No, because it made a bad situation worse. The spurned party was forced to wonder, “What happened? Did I do something wrong?” The sting of being rejected doubtless stung for longer than it should have.
June, a woman I went out with three times, demonstrated ethical intelligence on our third date. She said, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel a spark.” I was disappointed that she wasn’t interested, but I appreciated the fact that she had the courage to tell me directly that she didn’t want to pursue a relationship. Of all the dates that didn’t work out, this experience with June hurt the least, because she acted with ethical intelligence.
In the next chapter, I’ll talk about better and worse ways to criticize someone and let someone go. For now, let’s turn our attention to the second principle that ethically intelligent people live by.
Why did you choose to do what you do for a living? Was it because you wanted to become rich? Famous? Well liked? You may have achieved some or all of these goals, but I’ll bet that none of these were what you were really after. Instead, you’re in your line of work mainly because you wanted to make a positive difference in some way. Perhaps you wanted to improve the customer experience or your own family’s situation. Maybe your goal was to shake up the world with an idea — an invention or a much-needed service that wasn’t being provided. Or as an artist, you wanted to touch people with a song, a painting, a novel, or a screenplay. Every time you provide excellent service to a client, develop your entrepreneurship, write a story, or take your son to his music lessons, you’re making things better for the people in your life and for those you don’t even know.
But do you also take time every day to make things better for yourself ? Do you make sure to have three nutritious meals? Work out or go for a walk? Meditate, nap, or play?
Ethically intelligent people do. Ethics isn’t just about how you treat other people. It’s also about how you treat yourself. Regarding yourself in an ethical manner means making sure that your body, mind, and spirit are nourished and satisfied.
Flight attendants tell us, “Should the cabin lose pressure, oxygen masks will drop down from the overhead area. Please put one over your own mouth before you attempt to help others.” Why? Because the only way we can hope to be of service to others is if we’re in good shape ourselves.
But the reason to make things better for yourself is not just because you need to be in tip-top shape to serve others but also because you should treat yourself with dignity. It’s a simple argument, really:
PREMISE. Ethics is about treating people appropriately.
PREMISE. You’re a person.
CONCLUSION. Ethics includes treating yourself appropriately.
I don’t mean to trivialize the issue of self-regarding duties. It’s an issue that has been, and continues to be, the subject of rich, lively philosophical debate (the University of Chicago Press’s journal Ethics, for example, published a series of articles on the topic in the early 1960s). But if you accept the two premises above, the conclusion is inescapable.
It’s worth noting that principle 2 shows how ethics demands more of us than the law does. You’re not legally required to make things better for others or yourself. But ethical intelligence does require this.
Aretha sings about it. Eminem raps about it. Parents tell their children how important it is. But what does respect have to do with ethical intelligence? Isn’t respect just a matter of etiquette?
Not entirely. It’s true that when a dinner guest arrives empty handed, stays too long, and leaves your bathroom a mess, that person has disrespected you through his or her poor manners. But there are other aspects of respect that are squarely within the realm of ethics because they touch upon the things that matter most. It’s one thing for a dinner guest to chew with his mouth open; it’s another thing for him to tell everyone about a private conversation you had, steal money from the wallet you left lying around, or describe the contents of your medicine cabinet to his four thousand followers on Twitter. All of these acts are disrespectful, but the second set cuts more deeply and causes greater damage. Rude or offensive behavior is a breach of etiquette. Behavior that is harmful or violates another person’s rights is a breach of ethics.
Ethically intelligent people show respect in the deeper sense by honoring the values, preferences, and, most important, the rights of others. “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them” is another way of putting it.3 Note that this sounds like the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but it’s not exactly that.
Suppose your friend Gene invites you and three mutual friends over for a casual dinner party. When you arrive, you smell the aroma of five piping hot pepperoni pizzas. “Come and get ’em!” Gene says as he opens the gooey cardboard boxes. Gene, as everyone who knows him can attest, loves meat. But two of the people in the group are vegetarians. One is a vegetarian for health reasons, and another believes that it’s unethical to eat animals. Has Gene done anything wrong? Not according to the Golden Rule, because he has treated his friends the way he would like to be treated. But Gene has done something wrong since he didn’t bother finding out what would be pleasing to anyone else. He assumed not only that his friends share his food preferences but that they also share his values about what is healthful or acceptable to eat. To show respect for people, especially friends, means taking the time to find out what they like and don’t like, rather than just assuming they’ll like what you like. In other words, respect in the deepest, most meaningful sense means treating you as an autonomous individual whose preferences and even values may be different from mine.
You could argue that vegetarians, people with food allergies, and those with special needs have a responsibility to inform their hosts of these dietary restrictions in advance. If you want to have your needs respected, it helps to make others aware of those needs. But failing to do so doesn’t let the other person in the relationship off the hook. Gene’s pizza party was fun for Gene, but because he didn’t take the time to find out what his guests would want or need, he failed to act with ethical intelligence. It is the thought that counts, and Gene didn’t think this one through.
All of this seems so complicated. Do we really have to know the intricate details of everyone’s idiosyncratic values and preferences to be able to show respect for them? No. Even if I don’t know you very well, I can safely assume that you’d expect me to do the following things on your behalf: keep private things private, tell you the truth, and keep my promises to you. We ’ll examine each in turn, but it’s worth taking a look at a complex topic that is at the heart of the third principle of ethical intelligence: rights.
A right is an entitlement. It is fundamentally different from a wish, desire, or dream. If you have a right to x, then someone else has an obligation to give you x. Suppose x stands for “being paid to do your job.” If you have a right to be paid to do your job, then the person employing you has an obligation to pay you when you do your job. Of course, there is a limit to what you can legitimately claim as a right. You might like to have a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream, walnuts, and an all-natural cherry on top — who wouldn’t? — but unless it has been promised to you, you could hardly say you have a right to it. Since you’re not entitled to it, others have no obligation to give it to you.
Rights speak to the inherent dignity in human beings (and, many would add, all living beings). They are at the core not just of the third principle of ethical intelligence, as I’ll show in a moment, but of ethical intelligence in general. The most obvious problem with the concept of rights has to do with their origin. Where do they come from?
In his last HBO special, It’s Bad for Ya, George Carlin pokes fun at the notion of rights.4 He claims that people made them up, and to support this statement, he notes that different countries have different lists of rights; some don’t officially consider anything to be a right. With so much confusion about the issue, Carlin’s conclusion is that all we have are privileges, which can be taken away by the decision of whoever happens to be in power.
But Carlin fails to distinguish between a legal right and an ethical one. He is correct that legal rights are subject to the whims of one’s government, and they can (and do) change from time to time and place to place. But ethical rights don’t. They are the basis of legal rights, and they exist even when not codified by law. For example, in most countries, child pornography is not a crime, but in the United States, it is.5 Children have a legal right not to be sexually exploited in this country; they have no such right in Ethiopia, Thailand, or Iran.6 Can we conclude from this fact that children in the United States are entitled not to be abused but that elsewhere it’s okay to abuse them? The answer, of course, is no. A child’s right not to become fodder for pedophiles comes from his or her inherent dignity, which commands our respect whether or not there are laws that make this official. Rights in the ethical sense speak to what we are owed simply by virtue of being human.
For the remainder of the book, then, I shall use right in the ethical sense, not the legal sense, and I will take it on faith that you and I both accept the premise that we have a right to be treated with respect and that we have a responsibility to treat others with respect, too.
In chapter 4, I’ll explore more deeply the difference between ethics and the law. But for now, let’s get back to the third principle of ethical intelligence, Respect Others, and how it applies to the issues of confidentiality, truth telling, and promise keeping.
I was once in a hospital elevator and overheard two doctors talking about a patient. They mentioned the patient’s full name as well as the fact that he’d just had a quadruple cardiac bypass. I knew the person they were talking about but didn’t know that he’d had surgery. I didn’t even know he had a health problem. I wondered, “Should I send the fellow a get-well card? What if he asks me how I knew that he was convalescing?” I couldn’t very well tell him, “I heard your doctors talking about you in an elevator at the hospital.”
When we discuss confidential information in public, we betray the trust that someone has placed in us to keep private information private. It is nothing less than an act of theft. The doctors I encountered weren’t bad people, and I’m sure they didn’t intend to breach their patient’s right to privacy. But their conversation in that small public space nevertheless was inconsistent with ethical intelligence.
The ethically intelligent person respects confidential information and does his or her level best to protect it.7
A dear friend of mine named Maurice brought a bottle of wine to a party at my home. I took one sip and immediately spit it out. “Yech,” I said. “It tastes like battery acid!” Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have said such a crass thing; but my friend loves a good joke, and I figured he’d like this one. Besides, I was telling the truth. What could be wrong with that?
A lot, as it turned out. Maurice was hurt by my declaration, and I found myself apologizing over and over for my poor judgment. I learned the hard way: telling the truth isn’t always such an admirable thing. My friend hadn’t even asked me what I thought of the wine, but if he had, it would have been better to say something truthful that wouldn’t have been hurtful, such as, “It was very nice of you to bring us a bottle of wine, Maurice. Unnecessary, but much appreciated!” I would have been able to honor both the duty to tell the truth (entailed by the third principle of ethical intelligence) and the duty to avoid hurting my friend’s feelings and our relationship (entailed by the first principle of ethical intelligence).
One of the challenges in ethical intelligence is knowing how truthful to be, since telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in every situation can harm valued relationships.8 When you’re giving testimony in a legal deposition, you have both a legal and an ethical obligation to be completely truthful. The ethically intelligent taxpayer tells the IRS the truth about his or her income, even though he or she could save some money by fudging this information. When they make a mistake at work, ethically intelligent people fess up to their bosses rather than blame someone or something else. In all of these scenarios, ethical intelligence calls for being forthright about the truth.
Outside of such circumstances, however, ethical intelligence requires balancing the responsibilities of telling the truth and not causing harm. It’s true that Maurice’s bottle of wine was foul tasting, but I was under no obligation to tell him this. In fact, it’s just the opposite: I was wrong to do so. Striking the right balance between being truthful and not hurting people is what makes living with ethical intelligence so challenging — and ultimately, so rewarding.
A final word about balancing truth telling with doing no harm: Earlier I distinguished offense from harm and said that our discussion of ethical intelligence would be concerned only with harm. But isn’t what I said to Maurice about his gift more akin to offense than harm? How did I damage Maurice in any significant way?
The harm that followed from my poor choice of words wasn’t to Maurice per se but to our relationship. Our friendship has endured (and it would have been a mighty shaky one if a single slip of the tongue could ruin it). But words or actions that are merely offensive can harm a valued relationship, especially if this occurs often enough, the words or actions are particularly egregious, or the person on the receiving end is highly sensitive. Good relationships are characterized by mutual respect and trust; offensive speech can compromise this. Such speech thus falls within the purview of ethical intelligence (or unintelligence, as the case may be). Telling the truth to someone should take into account the degree to which your relationship could be harmed by what you say.
It’s time to look at a third crucial component of respecting others: honoring the promises you make.
You know that friend you have who keeps breaking appointments with you? The two of you make plans to have lunch or meet for coffee, but at the last minute, your friend calls or texts to say he or she can’t make it. The reason may be plausible, and things do come up from time to time; but when someone habitually reneges on a promise, it feels as though that person doesn’t really respect you. That’s because he or she doesn’t really respect you. The third principle, Respect Others, addresses the importance of being true to our word.
In 2008, the company that owned the Dr Pepper brand promised a free can of its signature soda to “every American” if the rock group Guns N’ Roses released its long-gestating album Chinese Democracy by the end of the year. The management may have reasoned that because the record’s release had been delayed for so long, it was highly unlikely that the company would have to make good on its promise. But when Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose surprised the music world by completing the work and putting it out before the end of the year, Dr Pepper was deluged with requests for a complimentary drink and initially couldn’t meet the demand. The media presented the story as a public relations debacle, but the issue was really an ethical one: the company made a promise it couldn’t keep (at least at first). Its website crashed under the weight of far more visits than the company had anticipated, and many people were frustrated by their inability to get the free sodas they’d been told they would get.9
Eventually, things worked out, but the incident does present a valuable lesson: keep the promises you make, and don’t make promises you’re not prepared to keep. We may not always be able to do this — it can be difficult to honor a promise when something better comes along, and it’s not always possible to predict how many people will take you up on an offer you make in good faith — but striving to be true to one’s word is an essential element of ethical intelligence.10
The third principle of ethical intelligence, Respect Others, is founded on the idea that human beings ought to treat one another as ends in themselves and not merely as a means to an end.11 When you keep a friend’s confidence, or tell a client the truth about your products and services, or uphold a promise you’ve made to your spouse, you honor that person’s right to be treated with respect, and you honor the dignity of two people — the other person and yourself.
In an episode of The Andy Griffith Show called “A Medal for Opie,” Ron (at the time, Ronny) Howard’s character decides he wants to win an upcoming foot race. He practices hard for days with Barney. He fantasizes about a stadium filled with people cheering him on as he is awarded the first-place prize. But on the day of the race, out of four contestants, he comes in fourth. He mopes back to his house all alone and spends the afternoon feeling sorry for himself. When his father arrives, he tells Opie that it wasn’t very nice of him to walk away without congratulating the winner.
“I didn’t win!” Opie replies.
That’s true, his dad tells him, but the important thing is that he was in there trying. “It’s nice to win something,” Andy says, “but it’s more important to know how not to win something.” It takes courage to be a good loser, Andy stresses, and he implores his son several times to graciously acknowledge the other boy’s victory.
But Opie won’t hear of it, and you can feel Andy’s growing anger at his son’s stubbornness.
So how does Andy resolve the impasse? Take Opie kicking and screaming out to the woodshed for a spanking? Send him to bed without supper? Carry him out to the car and drive him over to the winner’s house for a forced apology?
None of these things. Andy’s solution is much more powerful: he ends the discussion by saying, very slowly so that each word is not only heard but felt, “All right, that’s the way it’s going to be, as long as we understand one another.”
And then comes the kicker: “But I want you to know one thing. I’m disappointed in you.”
End of scene. Cut to commercial.
What do you think happens next? If this show were made today, we’d probably see Opie getting ready for the next race, training even harder, and leaving the other kids in the dust as he takes the first-place medal. But Frank Tarloff, the writer of the episode, wisely chose to make the climax of the story not about winning (which would have undercut the message of the previous scene) but about what it means to discipline a child appropriately. The story’s conclusion is a single scene in which a despondent Opie walks into his father’s office, throws his arms around his dad, and says tearfully, “Paw, I don’t want you to be disappointed in me.” They hug each other, and the episode ends.
We never see Opie run another race, but we know that he has been changed forever by what his father has said and the way he said it.
I can think of no better example in TV (or film, for that matter) that shows how to discipline someone fairly. It’s only natural to be upset when someone you care about doesn’t do something he or she ought to do, or does something he or she shouldn’t have done. We appreciate Andy’s growing anger at his son’s refusal to be a good sport. But Andy doesn’t let this emotion get the best of him. He modulates his anger and uses it to help Opie become a better person, which is (or should be) the goal of discipline. To be fair is to give others their due, and when it comes to disciplining someone, what is due is neither an extreme display of anger nor an absence of it. What’s due is the right amount of it. Andy Taylor’s reaction to Opie’s behavior prompts the boy to get back on track and is a powerful illustration of ethical intelligence in action.12
I love the Beatles — who doesn’t? — but John Lennon was wrong when he sang, “All you need is love.” To be fully human, and to live your life with ethical intelligence, you need more than love. You need to treat people fairly, too. What constitutes fairness, of course, has been, and will continue to be, fiercely debated. But the essence of fairness is beyond dispute: it is about giving others their due.13 Of particular importance in ethical intelligence are these three areas of giving others their due:
• Allocating scarce resources
• Disciplining or punishing
• Rectifying injustice
Let’s examine each in turn.
Allocating Scarce Resources
“If you don’t manage your time, someone else will.” This sensible rule is the cornerstone of time management books and seminars, and no one can hope to be successful — in business or anywhere else — without organizing one’s schedule wisely. But time management isn’t really about management; it’s about fairness. It’s about how to properly allocate the most precious commodity of all. Time is the only thing that you are guaranteed to have a limited supply of and that keeps getting more and more limited, no matter what you do.
When you spend more time on a project than is warranted, that’s not unfortunate; it’s unfair. When you don’t spend enough time with your family and friends, that is also unfair. When you overlook giving yourself enough time to take care of your own needs, you’re being unfair. Making sure that you give everyone in your life, including yourself, what you owe is a crucial component of ethical intelligence.
When we ask who should get a liver transplant when there aren’t enough donors, we’re not asking a medical question; we’re asking an ethical one. By the same token, when you ask yourself, “What should I do first on my overstuffed to-do list?” you’re not asking a strategic question; you’re asking an ethical one. To manage your time well is to make ethically intelligent decisions, and this means doing the best you can to allocate the right amount of time to every project and every relationship.
Disciplining or Punishing
We saw from the Andy Griffith episode how one person (all right, a fictitious one) showed ethical intelligence in the difficult art of discipline. The next time you’re in a position to discipline or punish someone, demonstrate ethical intelligence by your willingness to be fair rather than being swayed by things that shouldn’t matter. One of the questions on the quiz in chapter 1 concerned an errant employee who is the daughter of a friend of yours. Should your friendship determine how you deal with the problem? It does for many people, but it shouldn’t, as I’ll discuss when we review the quiz. Lots of things can influence the way you discipline someone — company policies, the law, what’s going on in your personal life, how you’re feeling at the moment — but disciplining someone in an ethically intelligent way means putting aside everything that isn’t relevant, as hard as that may be.14
Rectifying Injustice
I recall reading in Backstreets magazine many years ago that when Bruce Springsteen was a boy, he was walking down the street in his hometown when he ran into some older kids, one of whom spit on him. Springsteen said that he felt humiliated, and rightly so; no one deserves to be treated like that. This incident may have been a signature moment in his development as a musical artist who strives to inspire his audiences and bring out the best in them. I’m not suggesting that a single nasty episode in Springsteen’s life instantly turned him into a person of conscience. But as Springsteen himself noted, being on the receiving end of an injustice stayed with him for years, and it doubtless played a role in the kind of writer and performer he became.
Even those of us who aren’t rock stars can rectify injustices when we have the opportunity to do so. Ethical intelligence calls for it. For example, the ethically intelligent manager doesn’t stand for injustices such as racial or sexual harassment in the workplace. Yes, this behavior is illegal, but it was wrong even before there were laws against it. It’s not just managers, of course, who are in a position to rectify injustices on the job. In 1968, for example, a group of women in England fought to gain equitable treatment of women in the automobile industry. Nigel Cole’s film Made in Dagenham (written by William Ivory) dramatized their struggle, and it was news to many, including me, that there were no laws anywhere at that time that guaranteed equal pay for equal work. The story of these brave women shows that the courage to challenge the status quo is integrally linked to the ethical responsibility to turn an unjust situation into a just one.
The saying “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” can prompt you to make the best of a bad situation. But suppose you’re on the receiving end of a serious injustice, such as discrimination based on age, gender, disability, or race? It’s one thing to look on the bright side if you’ve been stood up on a blind date; but being passed over for a job because you’re sixty-two, female, disabled, or African American is a more serious injustice and thus calls for a different approach.
Or does it? When you’ve been treated wrongly and the stakes are high, it is possible — and indeed essential — to respond with ethical intelligence. You can allow the situation to get the best of you, and you can strike out in vengeance; or you can take action that honors your inherent dignity. This isn’t to say it’s possible to single-handedly vanquish systemic injustices such as racism or sexism, or that it’s wrong to allow yourself to experience unpleasant, even harsh, emotions after you’ve been treated unfairly. However, the ethically intelligent way to handle any sort of injustice, wherever you find it and in whatever form it takes, is this:
• Realize that the other party is to blame, not you.
• Refuse to allow the situation to get the best of you. Let reason temper your rage.
• Respond in a way that brings out the best in you.
Faced with job discrimination, for example, you could hire an attorney and seek legal redress, but a better use of your time, energy, and money might be finding an employer who values what you bring to the table.15
We ’ve now looked at four principles that are the basis of ethical intelligence. But there is one more principle that ethically intelligent people live by. It may be the most important one of all.
You might be surprised to find this principle presented as an element of ethical intelligence. Discussions about ethics usually center around issues raised by the first four principles. As Tina Turner might ask, “What’s love got to do with it?” Here’s how I’d respond to the Queen of Rock and Roll.
Recently, I purchased a scaled-down version of a stair-climbing machine to use for workouts in my apartment when it’s too cold to go for a run outside. For the first few days, the device worked smoothly, but then it developed an annoying squeak. It still functioned adequately, but using it became a much less pleasant experience than it had been, because of the noise. After doing some research on the Internet, I discovered that the favored solution was squirting a bit of WD-40 on the moving parts, and sure enough, the problem disappeared after I did this. Now, not only did the machine work well; it was more agreeable to use.
Love is like the WD-40 of relationships: it’s not absolutely necessary, and you couldn’t be blamed for not using it — but it sure does make things flow better. Applying the first four principles of ethical intelligence is much easier to do when you use a little bit of love.
If love seems hard to fathom in a business context, just think of care, compassion, or kindness instead. They’re close cousins.
The word love is usually used in one of the following contexts:
• “I love my children.”
• “I love my sweetheart.”
• “I love old movies.”
• “I love chocolate.”
As powerful as these feelings can be, the concept of love historically didn’t apply just to romance, parenting, or the pleasure associated with eating and leisure activities. It was much broader in scope, as Erich Fromm notes in The Art of Loving.16 Smiling at the people you pass on the street, saying “thank you” to the cashier at the grocery store, or truly listening during a conversation rather than thinking about the next thing you’re going to say are all loving things to do. Love in this sense is what some call “brotherly love” and is akin to care or compassion. It is the basis of the fifth and final principle of ethical intelligence.
In his book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie talks about the importance of showing sincere appreciation to the people in your life.17 Although Carnegie’s book is sometimes thought of as a tool for salespeople to increase their ability to close deals, the rules Carnegie presents make a lot of sense for anyone who wants to have strong, meaningful connections to people.
Consider Carnegie’s suggestion to give honest and sincere appreciation. You don’t have to be in sales to recognize the importance of letting people know when they’re doing a good job. They feel good for being recognized for their hard work, and you feel good for making their day. Employees who feel appreciated usually do better work, and stick around longer, than those who don’t. At the very least, taking an active interest in the people who work for and with you enhances their feelings of well-being, as a recent Gallup Poll has shown.18
Philosophers use the technical terms obligatory and supererogatory to refer to two different kinds of actions: those that are required and those that are above and beyond the call of duty. The five principles of ethical intelligence — Do No Harm, Make Things Better, Respect Others, Be Fair, and Be Loving — tell us what we ought to do. But are these calls to action obligatory or something that’s nice to practice but not required?
This isn’t merely a matter of semantics, because two important things are at stake: the kinds of things you are rightly expected to do and how you should regard people who don’t do them. Suppose, for example, that your job description includes landing two new clients a month and that for the past three months, you have done just that. Can you rightly expect praise? No. You did what you were supposed to do. But if next month you land six clients, that is indeed praiseworthy. Of course, it still behooves your supervisor to express his appreciation to you from time to time, even if you’re just doing your job, but if you don’t receive such accolades, you can hardly claim to have been slighted. You are, though, entitled to praise if you go above and beyond what you’ve agreed to do.
It isn’t praiseworthy to avoid harming people, as the first principle of ethical intelligence exhorts us to do. It’s the least that can be expected. Making things better, as the second principle specifies, may not be a legal requirement, but ethically intelligent people do it anyway. Some use a theological justification by appealing to the commandments of their religious traditions; others hold that using our abilities to make a positive difference in the world is what gives life meaning. Either way, we opt out of this at our peril.
Keeping private things private, telling the truth, and honoring the promises we make — all of which are elements of the third principle of ethical intelligence, Respect Others — are also not above and beyond the call of duty. They are the foundation of our relationships. And when we put the fourth principle, Be Fair, into practice by disciplining someone appropriately, we can’t expect a pat on the back for doing so. This is simply what an ethically intelligent person does.
It’s when we get to the fifth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Loving, that it may not make sense to speak of obligations or requirements. Can you rightly be faulted for not being compassionate toward the guy yelling into his cell phone in front of you at Starbucks, or the driver who cuts you off on the highway and then curses at you, or the neighbor who refuses to turn her music down? I don’t think so. It might be good for both you and them if you can find a way to be loving toward these obnoxious individuals, but expecting you to be compassionate toward them is asking too much. For the people closest to you, then yes, the fifth principle can’t be set aside without good reason. For the encounters you have with the rest of the world, only the first four principles of ethical intelligence are essential.
Choosing not to do caring or compassionate things may not amount to an ethical violation, but it’s not consistent with ethical intelligence, either. The ethically intelligent person goes above and beyond the call of duty when possible (depending on the circumstances), even though, strictly speaking, he or she isn’t ethically required to do so. To be an ethically intelligent person is to strive to be the best human being one can be. There are many benefits to living this way — peace of mind, strong and meaningful relationships, a feeling of purpose and direction — but it’s also worth remembering that the main reason to live an ethically intelligent life is because it’s the right thing to do.
To say that there are five principles (or five anything) is to imply that each member of the group is unique and distinct from the others. But there is some inevitable overlap among the five principles. For example, when you write a note to a friend who has lost a family member, your compassionate act will probably make things a little bit better for your friend. It thus honors both the second and the fifth principles of ethical intelligence. Making things better for someone avoids harming that person, so the first principle of ethical intelligence is upheld, too.
The list of five principles is intended to delineate our responsibilities toward one another (or, in the case of the fifth principle, an ideal to which we should aspire). The principles are broad in scope and cover a lot of ground, so it’s not surprising that they intersect in places. They shouldn’t be thought of as constituting a checklist or providing a formula for doing the right thing. It’s better to regard them as a framework for making ethically intelligent choices in every area of your life. In their simplicity, they offer a way for you to think through tough problems and arrive at the best possible solutions.
Now that we’ve taken a closer look at the five principles of ethical intelligence, the next chapter will show how they apply to the quiz presented in chapter 1.
The first principle of ethical intelligence, Do No Harm, is a principle of nonintervention. We apply it by restraining the impulse to do or say harmful things. However, two corollaries call upon us to do something, rather than nothing:
• Prevent Harm
• Minimize Unavoidable Harm
The second principle of ethical intelligence, Make Things Better, takes us further and exhorts us to improve the lot of others and ourselves. This underscores how ethics concerns our responsibilities to ourselves and not just to our employer, colleagues, family, and friends.
The third principle of ethical intelligence, Respect Others, has three components:
• Protecting confidentiality
• Telling the truth
• Honoring your promises
The fourth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Fair, means giving others their due. We do this in three critical areas:
• Disciplining or punishing others
• Rectifying injustices
The fifth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Loving, speaks not to romantic feelings but to kindness, care, and compassion. It may rightly be understood not as an ethical requirement, as the first four principles are, but rather as an ideal to which we should aspire.