Smile :)

The current pandemic is adding a layer of stress to everyone’s life, and that layer will only get thicker as the pandemic lingers.

For ethics & compliance professionals, this means that we are likely to deal with more agressive employee misconduct at work. It also means that we will approach these situations with diminished capacities, being ourselves the victim of additional stress in our lives.

So now might be a good time to remember that smiling reduces the stress of the person smiling and of the person receiving the smile (by activating the reward center of the brain). Eighty percent of the people we smile at smile back, strangers included. By simply smiling, we can sprinkle moments of calm and peace throughout the day.

That’s something we could all use today.

🙂

HT to Melanie Katzman for her book Connect First, 52 Simple Ways to Ignite Success, Meaning, and Joy at Work. I plan to share more of her tips in future posts.

Words

My favorite description of culture is that it’s an outcome of our processes.

But we can go further than that. Processes are a series of actions. Actions follow thoughts. Thoughts can be expressed with words.

Words like trust, respect, and integrity. Words that express values and virtues.

What words describe your organization? The same words describe your culture.

I didn’t mean to

Prisoners often regret the pain that their incarceration has caused to their loved ones more than their own loss of liberty.

The same goes for employees fired for misconduct, now deeply ashamed of depriving their family of an income.

Even small, “victimless” infractions will cause a certain measure of injury on a third party.

Wrongdoing usually creates unintended victims.

Mental toughness

Many studies have found that the most successful people are not the ones with the most intelligence or talent, but the ones with with the highest levels of mental toughness. Mental toughness, it turns out, is a skill that can be built by a series of small but regular wins.

So let’s say you want to become a more ethical leader. You start by defining what that means to you. It might be leading a training session on conflict of interests instead of letting HR do it. It might be sharing an ethical decision that you made in the company’s monthly newsletter. It might be recognizing an employee who made a good call as part of your weekly all-hands meeting. Whatever it is, the key is to find something easy, something that doesn’t require motivation, and to do it consistently. As you accumulate these small wins, you will assume the identity of an ethical leader. Once you truly think of yourself as an ethical leader, you will be emboldened and move from small wins to big ones.

What small win can you commit to for next week, and every week thereafter?

A year from now, you’ll wish you had started today

The obstacle in the path becomes the path.

Ryan Holiday

Many individuals have made the most out of the pandemic. The time not spent commuting or working has made room for learning a new skill, a new language, or a new instrument. For starting a podcast, a YouTube channel, or writing a book.

Others have spent these first 6 months watching Netflix.

When the pace picks up again, will we look back at this time and wish we had spent it differently? Will we have more to say than “I was stuck at home” and “I spent a lot of time on Zoom”?

Even in good times companies die because they keep doing what they did last year. Imagine what fate awaits them if they hold on to the status quo in troubled times.

Business is war

“We must undergo a hard winter training and not rush into things for which we haven’t prepared.”

Epictetus, Discourses, 1.2.32

Back in the days when war was a series of summertime raids, soldiers spent their winters in training. Every day of the winter.

Today’s employee is like a soldier. When at the front lines, she is interacting with colleagues, dealing with a supplier, negotiating with a customers, or meeting with a government official. Ethical bullets are fired at her and compliance grenades lobbed at her. The key to winning each raid is in the training she received previously.

In too many companies, the training is provided once, during a kind of boot camp after enlistment. In other companies, the training is repeated but once-a-year. Rare are the companies that prepare their soldiers for battle every winter day by embedding their values in every act and every communication.

Which is why so many soldiers are wounded or die in battle, and why so many companies lose wars.

What I miss

I have been working from home since March 16.

I don’t miss the commute. I enjoy not having to shave on occasion. I’m saving money on gasoline and dry cleaners.

I do miss colleagues stopping by my office to discuss a project or just to say hello. Each occasion produce a small dopamine rush. Small, but still greater than the one I get with a Zoom invitation via email.

The longer this lasts, the more it will affect us. In many societies, we were taught to greet each other with handshakes, kisses, or embraces; to offer coffee, tea, and biscuits; to offer a seat or a cushion; and, more subtilely, to smile and speak warmly. All of these practices are diminished or lost when meeting online.

And we miss it.

The impact is real and it will get worse with each passing month. Let us be aware of it, acknowledge it, and vow to treat each other as well as possible.