[Anna] I mean, I think, from every decision, everything that you do, you can learn something.
Obviously, I learned that that's not what you should do and I
would never do that again.
[Professor Mary Gentile] One of the most commonly heard
reasons for not acting on our values that people will give
is that they'll say, "I didn't have a choice."
Giving Voice to Values is all about recognizing, first of all,
that we all make the choice to act or not to act on our values
every day.
We all can think of times when we found ways to effectively voice our values,
and we all can similarly think of times when we failed to do so.
The point is, we have made a choice,
and we can learn from this past experience.
[Krupa] We were upgrading one of
our systems for one of our clients, they were going from an older version to a newer version,
and they lost a functionality that they had had in the past.
So they had always been using this function and it was no longer available
on our new version.
Standing up to my executives and saying no,
this is, you know, while I understand that they are our clients and,
we aren't going to do free work for them. This is something that
they should have had and I'm not going to go to them and say that they need to pay for it.
My manager was fantastic.
He really was open to hearing anything that you had to say…
he was my director, but even when I was…
had started and was a month into working, he was someone that you could
very, very easily approach. It's one of those situations where if I had just chosen to say nothing,
I'm sure my clients would have said, "Alright, we will pay for it,"
but, for me it was morally wrong, they shouldn't have to be the ones that pay for that enhancement.
If we reflect on the times when we have voiced our values,
we can probably generate a list of the factors that made it
easier for us to do so — "the enablers."
Perhaps we had a boss, or a teacher, or a friend who was very open minded
and was willing to patiently listen to our concerns. Perhaps the issue at stake was
very important to someone we cared about deeply
and that made it easier for us to prioritize the situation.
When I was younger than twenty-one I didn't want to participate in underage drinking,
which is common on a college campus, and there's many opportunities to participate in that.
In that situation it's probably best to bring a friend with you that also
doesn't want to drink at a party.
You are more likely to fall into peer pressure, in that sense,
if you are there by yourself with everybody else participating
because you're just going to want to be with the crowd,
but if you have someone that shares the same values with them,
you're more likely to
live how you want to live.
If we reflect on the times when we did not voice our vales,
we can generate a list of the types of things that made it more difficult for us —
"the disablers."
Perhaps we were under tight time pressure
and the challenge caught us off guard with little time to prepare a response,
or maybe it was a close friend who was asking us to do something
that conflicted with our values and we didn't know how to say no to him or her.
In high school,
I was very young and I had a boyfriend, my new boyfriend, and I had a best friend,
she had a boyfriend, and it was my boyfriend's cousin.
So, my best friend's boyfriend cheated on her
and, of course, I wanted to tell her because I don't want her to be in a relationship
that's that way. However, my boyfriend told me that if I told her, he
would break up with me.
I didn't end up telling her because
I was in love with my boyfriend, even though she's my best friend
and I value that relationship immensely, I should have told her,
but it wasn't an easy choice.
And looking back on it I know I made the wrong choice,
but I think people in those situations
they do have a choice but it's very hard to make the right choice.
By identifying these enablers
and disablers. We can begin to think about them before
we are in the actual high-pressure choice situation.
For example, we can look to work in an organization that maximizes the enablers.
A culture where open discussion is encouraged,
and where folks are not punished for raising questions.
Equally important, we can understand the kinds of things that tend to disable us
and practice responses in advance. For example,
we can pre-script a response that we might use if a friend
asked us to cheat in an exam, something that made it clear that we still cared
very much for them
and were willing to help them to study in advance, but weren't willing to be
dishonest or to cheat.
One time I was, in a way, kind of coerced into participating
in getting one of my colleagues fired.
I was asked to lie about seeing them commit an act that they did not commit at all.
My relationship with my boss was definitely ruined.
I think that, you know, after I told him, no, I wasn't going to lie for him,
I think that he felt like, he didn't want me around anymore.
I lost my job two weeks later.
You know, at the end of the day, I built a better relationship with
my colleague because I reached out to her about what they were doing.
And so I think, at the end of the day, I gained a friendship.
And I lost a job that obviously wasn't for me.
By recognizing that we,
ourselves, have made the choice to act or not to act on our values,
it also makes it easier for us to recognize that capacity in others.
And in that way, we'll feel more comfortable talking about our own
values with them
when necessary.
I think if you are working with a leader, manager, that is difficult approach
and difficult to talk to, and that kind of makes you feel like you can't
voice your opinions...
In those situations you're a lot more likely to take the
"I didn't have a choice" route.
You can't feel pressure because other people are
hanging something over your head or because you feel obligated to
do something you know is wrong. You have to understand there is importance in,
subscribing to these values and that once you, you know,
accept these values, you have to adhere to them.
I mean, even in the most pressuring situations.
I think if I would have talked to, maybe,
my mom, or my friends, other friends,
they would have told me what I knew was logical they would have reinforced that in
my brain and I would have made the right decision.
[Jacob] And I think preparation is pretty key to doing it because it's very hard to live
ethically on-the-fly. So you gotta know what you're dealing with
and when you are liable to make mistakes,
and prepared to not make those mistakes.