Posts Tagged ‘Golden Rule’
April 15, 2013
Business ethics students often ask me what’s the connection between ethics and religion, and I stumble to answer, something like all religions share the Golden Rule, which is the heart of ethics. As Hillel said in the 1st century, “All else is commentary.”
And at the heart of the Golden Rule is the ability to see others as like you, not as “other.” Father Greg Boyle, SJ, must be the world champion at seeing others this way. And he does this in the unlikeliest of environments: the Latino gangland of South Los Angeles, where he ministers to/saves/employs/buries—and most of all, loves—gang members and ex-gang members, most of them covered in tattoos and recently released from incarceration. He created Homeboy Industries, which has given thousands on gang members a path to employment and responsibility.
I first heard Greg Boyle (“G-dog” to his “homies”) being interviewed by Krista Tippett on her “On Being” radio show. He’s such a compelling person that I immediately ordered and read his memoir, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. He’s (obviously) religious and I am not, but his steadfast belief that we are all the same before God is an attitude all of us, believers and not, could strive for. He calls his God “not the ‘one false move’ God but the ‘no matter what’ God.”
The book is heartwarming, funny, heartbreaking, and page-turning. Father Boyle is a man of unbelievable courage, love, compassion, and faith. And a heckuva storyteller.
34.064458
-118.451661
Tags:Business ethics, compassion, courage, ethics, G-dog, gangs, Golden Rule, Greg Boyle, Hillel, Homeboy Industries, homies, Jesuits, Krista Tippett, On Being, other, religion, South Los Angeles, tattoos, Tattoos on the Heart
Posted in Books, Criminal justice, Ethics-general, Leadership, Religion, Tolerance | Leave a Comment »
March 8, 2013
1) I’ll visit your workplace or school and do a pro bono seminar on either
- The Ethics Challenge: Essential Skills for Leading and Living, or
- The ABCs of Ethical Leadership
If the seminar is out of the LA commuting area I’ll ask you to cover my reasonable expenses.
2) Alternatively (or in addition), you can buy my latest book(co-authored with Mick Ukleja) in hard cover for only $10, with free shipping.
Here are the details on the offers:
Seminars: email me at bobstone17@gmail.com to make arrangements, for (more…)
34.064458
-118.451661
Tags:authenticity, buoyancy, conviction, ethics, ethics training, Golden Rule, Mick Ukleja, pro bono seminar, The ABCs of Ethical Leadership, The Ethics Challenge, unenforceables
Posted in Business ethics, Education, Ethics-general, Leadership, Organizational | Leave a Comment »
August 14, 2012
1) I’ll visit your workplace or school and do a pro bono seminar on either
· The Ethics Challenge: Essential Skills for Leading and Living, or
· The ABCs of Ethical Leadership
If the seminar is out of the LA commuting area I’ll ask you to cover my reasonable expenses.
2) Alternatively (or in addition), you can buy my latest book(co-authored with Mick Ukleja) in hard cover for only $10, with free shipping.
Here are the details on the offers:
Seminars: email me at bobstone17@gmail.com to make arrangements, for
· The Ethics Challenge: Essential Skills for Leading and Living
This is unlike any mandatory ethics training: no talk about FCPA, SEC, or DOJ. It covers what it means to behave ethically, and how that differs from merely behaving legally or in compliance with the rules. I start with the basics: keep your word and follow the Golden Rule. I finish with three essential skills for living and leading. These skills are easy to describe, not so easy to live, but living them will sharpen one’s ethical sensitivity and make it easier to keep strong and to follow one’s good intentions.
or
· The ABCs of Ethical Leadership
The ABCs, are authenticity, buoyancy and conviction. Simple stuff. (more…)
34.064458
-118.451661
Tags:authenticity, buoyancy, conviction, ethics, ethics training, Golden Rule, Mick Ukleja, pro bono seminar, The ABCs of Ethical Leadership, The Ethics Challenge, unenforceables
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general, Leadership | Leave a Comment »
July 13, 2012
1) I’ll visit your workplace or school and do a pro bono seminar on either
- The Ethics Challenge: Essential Skills for Leading and Living, or
- The ABCs of Ethical Leadership
If the seminar is out of the LA commuting area I’ll ask you to cover my reasonable expenses.
2) Alternatively (or in addition), you can buy my latest book (co-authored with Mick Ukleja) in hard cover for only $10, with free shipping.
Here are the details on the offers: (more…)
34.064458
-118.451661
Tags:authenticity, buoyancy, conviction, Ethical Leadership, ethics training, EthicsBob, Golden Rule, Mick Ukleja, seminar, The Ethics Challenge, unenforceables
Posted in Books, Education, Ethics-general, Leadership | Leave a Comment »
March 5, 2012
To mark two years of EthicsBob.com and 25,000 views I’m celebrating with these two offers:
1) I’ll visit your workplace or school and do a one-hour seminar on either
· The Ethics Challenge: Essential Skills for Leading and Living, or
· The ABCs of Ethical Leadership
I’ll do the seminar pro bono; if it’s out of the LA commuting area I’ll ask you to cover my reasonable expenses.
2) Alternatively (or in addition), you can buy my latest book (co-authored with Mick Ukleja) in hard cover for only $10, with free shipping.
Here are the details on the offers: (more…)
34.064458
-118.451661
Tags:authenticity, buoyancy, conviction, Ethical Leadership, ethics training, EthicsBob, Golden Rule, Mick Ukleja, seminar, The Ethics Challenge, unenforceables
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general, Leadership | Leave a Comment »
September 13, 2011
Jack Marshall raises an interesting ethics issue here, as he does so often in his Ethics Alarms. This time it’s the conflict between empathy and justice. He explains how the Golden Rule can get us into some uncomfortable ethical conflicts. He writes,
‘Empathy is considered an ethical virtue for good reason: it is at the core of the Golden Rule. A person without empathy is less likely to put himself or herself in the other person’s place. The criminal justice process, however, is not a good fit for the Golden Rule. In the place of a guilty criminal, I would still probably want to be pardoned, set free, and given a second—or third, or fourth—chance to be law-abiding.”
Marshall defends Gov. Rick Perry’s answer at last Wednesday’s Republican debate to moderator Brian Williams’s question whether Perry was troubled by the idea that there might have been some innocents among the 234 people executed while Perry was Governor. After the audience cheered the grisly tally, Perry answered:
“No, sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which — when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, (more…)
34.064458
-118.451661
Tags:Brian Williams, death penalty, empathy, ethical conflicts, ethics, Ethics Alarms, executions, Golden Rule, humanity, Jack Marshall, justice, leadership, Republican debate, Rick Perry, Supreme Court, Texas
Posted in Ethics-general, Government, Politics | Leave a Comment »
August 30, 2011
I’ve discovered that many corporate ethics officers don’t really have time for ethics, because they’re up to their necks in compliance training and issues. As important as compliance is—and it’s vital, especially, to comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and with Sarbanes-Oxley—it isn’t ethics.
Ethics is the Golden Rule, telling the truth, and other non-legal mandates. That’s my passion: ethics, to live it and to teach it. That’s what was behind the book that Mick Ukleja and I wrote, and it’s what I try to teach at the University Of Redlands School Of Business.
So here’s my proposal: if you provide the audience I’ll visit your place of business and do a one-hour seminar on ethics, really ethics. Here’s a brief synopsis:
The Ethics Challenge: Essential Skills for Leading and Living
This is unlike any mandatory ethics training: no talk about FCPA, SEC, or DOJ. It covers what it means to behave ethically, and how that differs from merely behaving legally or in compliance with the rules. I start with the basics: keep your word and follow the Golden Rule. I finish with three essential skills for living and leading. These skills are easy to describe, not so easy to live, but living them will sharpen one’s ethical sensitivity and make it easier to keep strong and to follow one’s good intentions.
I’ll do the seminar pro bono; if it’s out of the LA commuting area I’ll ask you to cover my reasonable expenses.
34.064458
-118.451661
Tags:Business ethics, compliance training, corporate ethics officers, ethics, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Golden Rule, good intentions, mandatory ethics training, Mick Ukleja, pro bono, Sarbanes-Oxley, The Ethics Challenge, University Of Redlands
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general, Organizational | Leave a Comment »
August 2, 2011
Everybody talks about ethics but it seems nobody cares about it. The “ethics” talk is all about rules: bribery, conflict of interest, financial disclosure laws, nepotism, and the rest of the litany of rules of conduct that you can be fired or prosecuted for breaking.
If you subscribe to a Google alert for “ethics” you learned today that a key aide to the governor of Illinois was fined $500 and forced to resign for sending a campaign email on his state-issued cell phone. Or that the former Massachusetts State Auditor was fined $2,000 for by putting his unqualified 75-year-old cousin on the state payroll. Or that lobbyists are buying meals for Oklahoma lawmakers. That’s not about ethics, that’s about rules
Moreover, corporate ethics officers are so concerned with preventing criminal violations that they don’t have much (…any?) time for such things as the Golden Rule, arguing with the boss, or keeping one’s commitments. This became depressingly clear to me after I attended a meeting of ethics officers and academics. The meeting had focused on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for American companies to pay bribes overseas.
After the meeting I made an offer to the attendees that I thought they couldn’t refuse: (more…)
34.064458
-118.451661
Tags:bribery, campaign email, conflict of interest, corporate ethics officers, ethics, FCPA, financial disclosure laws, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Golden Rule, Google alert, lobbyists, Massachusetts State Auditor, Mick Ukleja, nepotism, Oklahoma lawmakers, Redlands School of Business, rules of conduct, Sarbanes-Oxley
Posted in Business ethics, Ethics-general, Media, Organizational | 9 Comments »
June 6, 2011
At a circus of a press conference, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) admitted tweeting a photo of his brief-covered crotch to a 21-year old college student, then panicking and lying to cover it up. What ethics rule did Weiner break?
The Golden Rule, for one. He hurt a lot of people, starting with his wife, his loyal Congressional staff, the people who believed in him, and apparently, even Andrew Breitbart, the scurrilous right wing defamer and doctorer of videos.
The nearly universal rule against lying, for another. If we lie to each other society crumbles.
The rule that says do what’s expected of you. The voters who sent Weiner to Congress expected –reasonably—different of him.
In addition to the ethics violations Weiner violated the First Law of Washington Scandal: the cover-up is worse than the crime. In this respect he is forcing his admirers (including me, as of last week) to question his sanity: What in the world was he thinking when he made up those pathetically lame, unbelievable lies. Nobody, no matter their politics, not even Chris Mathews, believed he was telling the truth.
To Weiner’s credit, and there’s not much in this to his credit, he set the standard for apologizing. No “I’m sorry if you thought…” or “I was under the influence of a new allergy prescription,” or (more…)
34.064458
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Tags:Andrew Breitbart, Anthony Weiner, Apologies, Chris Matthews, cover-up, crotch photo, ethics, Golden Rule, House Ethics Committee, lying, Nancy Pelosi, tweeting
Posted in Apologies, Ethics-general, Government, Media, Politics | Leave a Comment »
February 8, 2011
If not me, who? If not now, when? That’s one of the ethical guides laid down by Hillel, the great Jewish scholar of the first century B.C.E. His other guide is his expression of the “Golden Rule.”
Hillel’s guidelines are aspirations of ethical people in all cultures, but they are aspired to more than adhered to.
But when Wake Forest baseball coach Tom Walter learned that freshman outfielder Kevin Jordan would likely die without a kidney transplant, and that Jordan’s family didn’t qualify as a compatible match, Walter got tested and found out last week that he was a match: his kidney might work for Jordan.
Yesterday at the Emory Transplant Center in Atlanta, Walter had one of his kidneys removed and donated to Jordan.
Both are recuperating nicely. Walter will be running in two months, and the docs have told Jordan that he could start to swing a bat in six to eight weeks.
Everybody thinks it was a big deal, but Walter demurs.
“I would do anything to help any one of my players and any one of my family members. Anything that I could do in my power that I could do (more…)
34.064458
-118.451661
Tags:baseball coach, Emory Transplant Center, ethics, Golden Rule, Hillel, Kevin Jordan, kidney donor, kidney transplant, Tom Walter, Wake Forest
Posted in Ethics-general, Health care, Sports | 1 Comment »
Business ethics students often ask me what’s the connection between ethics and religion, and I stumble to answer, something like all religions share the Golden Rule, which is the heart of ethics. As Hillel said in the 1st century, “All else is commentary.”
Ethics Bob 