Living into the core values

Welcome back. This is Don Mayer, Professor of Business Ethics and Legal studies at University of Denver. This is Lecture 4 in Henry Stewart talks, what about business ethics. Lecture 4 living into the core values.

In this lecture I'd like to talk about how easy it is to get morally confused in times like these. Then we will go into greater detail about the six core values and then talk about how practicing those values will be challenging yet rewarding.

The messages we get about values can be confusing to young and old alike. Many teenagers now grow up in societies where church attendance is diminishing, divorce is common, drugs and social media are all pervasive. In the US, people are now estimated to encounter between 6,000-10,000 ads every single day. Teenagers are especially susceptible to countless claims that they just need money to find their identity and personal style to better their status among their peers and all against the backdrop of political polarization, gun violence, and the potential for catastrophic climate change. Small wonder that teenage suicide is up in the US and Europe. According to a Gallup poll in 2017, 81% of Americans surveyed believe that the United States moral values are at best, fair to poor, 77% said that the country's moral values were slipping a trend that began in 2002. We seem in short to be morally rudderless without a clear moral compass to guide us. Moving from family to social settings into business settings creates even more significant challenges. In these times everyone needs their own personal moral code, but here is an important cautionary note. Consistently living up to your own moral code is no easy matter. It will require daily focus, self-reflection, and even some self-criticism as well as trusted friends and advisors who can act as sounding boards for really tough decisions. Your best self can only emerge through the crucible of experience. The rough and tumble of daily life whether in family relations, community relations or the workplace. Because ethics is a contact sport you will need good people around you to help you look at tough decisions from a point of view outside of yourself. Why is that? As the saying goes, two heads are better than one and when we're just talking to ourselves our egos can often get in the way of rational reflection and progress in becoming the people we could be. Are you already the person you've dreamt of being? Very few will answer yes. Greater self-confidence comes from knowing your own motivations and values, recognizing your own mistakes and practicing self-compassion. We will come back to self-compassion a bit later in these lectures. For now, we need to look at the core values and how they are generally recognized as basic to good ethical decision-making.