Powerful Principles For Navigating Through A Crisis

 

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

Arthur Ashe

 

In these uncertain times, sales leaders and business owners wonder how to make the best decisions, both at work and in their personal life. While there's no scientific formula to follow, you can use a framework to lead with ethical intelligence.

Bruce Weinstein, a business ethics speaker and an author for the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics, says now's the time to reflect on some powerful principles that will help you navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Principle No. 1: Do no harm. Physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dentists and clinical social workers are taught in school, "First, do no harm." Weinstein says this principle also applies to professionals who don't work in healthcare. The best thing about this principle, Weinstein says, is that it doesn't take anything to apply it. It is a principle of restraint. You can apply this principle by following your company's guidelines, as well as those of the government, by staying home now. Weinstein says if you're carrying the virus but don't know it because you don't have any symptoms and haven't been tested, you will be unwittingly violating the "Do No Harm" principle by being out in the world.

Principle No. 2: Make things better. Ethical leaders are also committed to making things better during the pandemic. Consider Microsoft, which donated $1 million toward the Puget Sound response fund. Microsoft is doing this because it is the right thing to do. Weinstein says this is a great example of how ethical leadership is good for its own sake and good for the leader's company, too.

Principle No. 3: Respect others. According to Weinstein, ethical leaders show respect for people by keeping their promises, telling the truth and projecting confidentiality. When you work from home, there are more distractions than you'll find in an office setting. There's no one watching to keep you on track. All pose risks to the promises we've made to employers or clients. Weinstein says promise-keeping is a two-way street. Companies that lead with ethical intelligence do all they can to assist employees during a crisis, including providing flexibility, when possible, with respect to childcare and other crucial needs.

Think on this: What will you do to make sure you minimize distractions at home and honor your promise to your employer or client? How are you helping your company keep its promise to employees?

Principle No. 4: Be fair. Weinstein says that to be fair is to give to others their due. Darden Restaurants, whose properties include Olive Garden and other casual eateries, has established a paid sick-leave policy for its 190,000 employees. In so doing, the leadership of Darden Restaurants is displaying ethical intelligence. Not all companies are in a position to offer such a benefit but those that can create incredible loyalty among employees.

Think on this: What will you do to ensure that you're treating your employees and customers fairly during the pandemic? What are you doing in your personal life to be fair—such as when stocking up on supplies, will you leave enough for others who need them, perhaps more than you do?

It takes commitment and courage to live by these principles every day. But when you do, you show that you're striving to make a difference in a tumultuous time in history.

 

Compiled by Audrey Sellers

Source: As The Ethics Guy®, Bruce Weinstein's keynote speeches, training programs, webinars and online courses help companies promote ethical leadership at every level. The result is an engaged and satisfied workforce, more and better clients, and a strategy for long-term financial success.

The Affair in Retrospect

The desire to find happy endings for sad human stories is probably lodged in most couples therapists' DNA. When the "sad story" is about infidelity that threatens a marriage, therapists generally aim for their favored resolution: saving the marriage. As a field, we've tended to think about this story in terms of a straightforward, three-part narrative:

 Part 1: A couple is shattered by the discovery of an affair and comes to see us.

 Part 2: We help them get through the immediate crisis, tend to the underlying wounds in the marriage, and then take a deeper look at childhood scars. We provide compassion and advice as needed, and encourage new trust, forgiveness, and intimacy in the relationship.

Part 3: As our preferred denouement, the couple leaves therapy weeks or months later, their marriage repaired, stronger, even transformed---or at least improved. We consider treatment a success; the couple has weathered the storm.

Of course, some couples refuse this neat storyline and, instead, use therapy as a gateway out of the marriage altogether. But, hopefully, they still live happily ever after.

I identified three basic patterns in the way couples reorganize themselves after an infidelity---they never really get past the affair, they pull themselves up by the bootstraps and let it go, or they leave it far behind.

In some marriages, the affair isn't a transitional crisis, but a black hole trapping both parties in an endless round of bitterness, revenge, and self-pity. These couples endlessly gnaw at the same bone, circle and recycle the same grievances, reiterate the same mutual recriminations, and blame each other for their agony. Why they stay in the marriage is often as puzzling as why they can't get beyond their mutual antagonism.

A second pattern is found in couples who remain together because they honor values of lifelong commitment and continuity, family loyalty, and stability. They want to stay connected to their community of mutual friends and associates or have a strong religious affiliation. These couples can move past the infidelity, but they don't necessarily transcend it. Their marriages revert to a more or less peaceful version of the way things were before the crisis, without undergoing any significant change in their relationship.

For some couples, however, the affair becomes a transformational experience and catalyst for renewal and change. This outcome illustrates that therapy has the potential to help couples reinvent their marriage by mining the resilience and resourcefulness each partner brings to the table.

All marriages are alike to the degree that confronting an affair forces the couple to re-evaluate their relationship, but dissimilar in how the couple lives with the legacy of that affair.

This article was written by Esther Perel.

Esther Perel is a Belgian psychotherapist who has explored the tension between the need for security and the need for freedom in human relationships. She has promoted the concept of Erotic Intelligence in her book Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, which has been translated into 24 languages. Her latest book is: The State of Affairs, Rethinking Infidelity published in 2018.