CHAPTER 6

DECENCIES ARE CONTAGIOUS

Hospitals around the country have learned the value of decency especially well because they have measured the costs imposed by doctors and staff who are indifferent to decency. Indifference to decency leads to bad outcomes: breakdowns in process, more medical errors, more lawsuits, resentful patients, resentful juries, and costlier judgments.

Every hospital has its share of what the medical industry calls “temperamental doctors.” Read this as rude and arrogant doctors. These doctors may be technically skilled but have somehow missed the bulletin about the importance of humility and empathy. When lawsuits occur, these doctors often tend to be involved.

In response to the issue of temperamental doctors, hospitals around the country are requiring doctors who have incivility complaints lodged against them to attend what the administrators call “charm school.” This training in empathy is intended to minimize unnecessary impatience, arrogance, harshness, and other behaviors that lead to everything from negative patient reviews to complaints to lawsuits. What these trainings really focus on, when all is said and done, are decencies.

Los Angeles hospitals have taken the lead in insisting that doctors set the tone for their medical residents. This is an example of “tone at the top” at its most critical, as human lives are at stake. Hospitals subscribing to this effort train their workers to look out for unreported instances of incivility, such as impatiently cutting corners, ignoring handwashing protocols, and nurses refusing to work with doctors.

At Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, decency is a core tenet of what is expected of every physician and support staff. Every employee receives a laminated card with 10 tips on maintaining civil discourse and behavior at work. The Center reports that decency in its workplace builds stronger, more productive teams that deliver the highest-quality healthcare to patients.¹

Normally, the absence of decencies isn’t a matter of literal life and death, so the hospital example is a special case. But a culture of indecency among physicians in their workplace can rob support staff of motivation and empathy. Every organization is better off when the leaders set a tone of coaching their followers for decency. This coaching takes several forms. It depends less on what the leaders say they value and more on how they behave. Employees rightly look at what their leaders do—especially when the leaders think no one is looking—to evaluate whether they are worthy of that role.

Tone at the Top Matters

Many organizations have adopted rules for decency. The Irvine, California–based law firm Bryan Cave went through a visioning process where associates defined the behavior norms they valued for the practice and agreed on the rules for which they were willing to hold one another accountable. Ten norms were the basis of the firm’s code of conduct. Shortly afterward, Bryan Cave was ranked number one on the list of the Best Places to Work in Orange County. Here is the firm’s Code of Civility:

•   We greet and acknowledge each other.

•   We say please and thank you.

•   We treat each other equally and with respect, no matter the conditions.

•   We acknowledge the impact of our behavior on others.

•   We welcome feedback from each other.

•   We are approachable.

•   We are direct, sensitive, and honest.

•   We acknowledge the contributions of others.

•   We respect each other’s time commitments.

•   We address incivility.

Zappos, the online shoe retailer, bakes an ethos of decency into its 10 core values. Each one of these values is founded on a sense that decency at every level of the organization is required to develop the value ownership that makes execution at a high level sustainable. The Ten Core Values of Zappos are:

•   Deliver WOW Through Service

•   Embrace and Drive Change

•   Create Fun and a Little Weirdness

•   Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

•   Pursue Growth and Learning

•   Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication

•   Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

•   Do More with Less

•   Be Passionate and Determined

•   Be Humble

Bottom-Line Value

Organizations can reap significant bottom-line value when committing to a culture of decency. When organizations adopted ethics and compliance principles, even to a minimum standard, employees were 132 percent more likely to report misconduct and 270 percent more likely to be satisfied with the organization’s response compared with an organization with no program, according to the 2018 Global Business Ethics Survey, a report by the Ethics and Compliance Initiative.² The Ethics and Compliance Initiative (ECI) is the oldest ethics research and best practice community in the United States. The findings of the report focus on the impact that an ethics and compliance (E&C) program has in the workplace and the return on investment (ROI) for program development and improvement.

The findings of the report, “Measuring the Impact of E&C Programs,” are significant. Since its release, hundreds of E&C practitioners have been trained using these principles. The report demonstrates that as the quality and strength of ethics and compliance programs increase, organizations see improvements in several key performance areas, including the establishment of a stronger, more resilient culture and significant decrease in misconduct. ECI also found that adhering to any of the 15 operational standards of a high-quality ethics and compliance framework resulted in a dramatic return on investment.

In organizations where ethics and compliance take a front seat, employees demonstrated a tenfold increase in confidence and trust in the organization. “This report makes the case that when it comes to ethics and compliance programs, every effort by an organization makes a difference,” said Patricia Harned, CEO of ECI. “Yet program quality matters—the higher the quality, the higher the ROI for the organization.”³

Cultural Guide Rails

Decencies serve as guide rails for protecting the company culture. When crafted with intention, delivered with resolve, and honored even when the going gets rough, decency encourages employees to make good decisions, to take the correct action, and to hold their colleagues accountable when they violate the norms.

Coaching is an integral part of transmitting a culture of decencies. Coaching for decency focuses on helping followers learn to listen, to give and receive feedback, to avoid judging and accept personal responsibility, to work across differences, and to deal with difficulties head-on. Coaching is more than just imparting information.

Decency reminds us that we can be true to our values both at home and at work, and that the more humanely we treat one another, the better we will be as people and the better we will be in doing our life’s work. The common thread is that ethical behavior is an expected side effect of focusing on something besides generating results. Let’s focus, instead, on small business decencies for their own sake precisely because doing so brings meaning to the workplace. If we do that, we believe that the corporate cultures in which we operate will grow in the ways we desire.

All this is by way of saying that although we are businesspeople, we’re people first. We are colleagues who can make a difference in another person’s day, and we’re people who want to be treated with respect, humanity, and care. Out of such actions, multiplied dozens of times a day, corporate cultures take root and sprout what George H. W. Bush called “a thousand points of light.”

Decencies Inspire

When you think about the indelible stories defining an organization, decencies are invariably at their core. Decencies manufacture mobile memories; they form the foundation for traditions; and healthy traditions are the building blocks of great places to work. Indra Nooyi, for example, was the chairman of PepsiCo from 2007 to 2018. Her employee satisfaction ratings stood at 75 percent. Early in her role as CEO, it occurred to Nooyi that she had never thanked the parents of her hardworking executives for the gift of their child to PepsiCo. She started to write personal letters to the parents expressing her appreciation. It was always a positive report card. She wouldn’t write anything less than complimentary.

The letters opened a floodgate of emotions. The parents were so delighted about receiving the letters, they told neighbors and extended family members. Decencies produce momentum, and as we have seen, they also create powerful stories.

Jim Lukaszewski recalls his first management training process to become a first line supervisor at the Schmitt Company in Minneapolis. Supervisors were trained by managing different departments for a month. At one point Jim was put in charge of the stereo and hi-fi components department. This department had five of the most successful salespeople of these products in America. His assignments were simple: write at least one or two complimentary notes to each salesperson and conduct a sales meeting at 7:30 a.m. every Tuesday morning focusing on a fresh idea the salespeople could use. He was 26 years old at the time.

During the month Jim was in the department, one of its top salespeople passed away. His boss asked Jim to go through the employee’s desk to make sure there was nothing embarrassing there because the family wanted to come in and spend some time in the area where this man had worked for so many years so successfully. As Jim went through the desk, he found a collection of papers in the back of the bottom drawer. It wasn’t immediately clear why these papers were stored in the back of a desk drawer. But as Jim went through the items, he noticed they were in chronological order going back some 32 years. Each item was a letter or note to the salesperson with a compliment, and there on the top of the pile was the congratulatory note Jim had just given to this employee earlier in the week. The man had apparently saved every positive response he had ever gotten. Jim always interpreted this as an indication of the power of a timely note and a compliment. The family recognized almost all of them because he talked about them at home every time he got one.

Effective leaders use decencies to build great workforces one gesture at a time. Reuben Mark, former chairman and CEO of Colgate-Palmolive, credits his success to a simple decision. “I have made it my business to be sure that nothing important or creative at Colgate-Palmolive is perceived as my idea,” Mark said.

At biotech company Genentech, every member of the leadership team has at least one “open office hour” each month—taking a cue from academia, where professors are available to students during office hours.

Jim Donald, former CEO and president of Starbucks, insisted that “hour-long” meetings be completed in 45 minutes. As a time-management technique, this policy improves efficiency and saves untold hours. But the small decency embedded in this policy is what Donald suggested meeting participants do with the freed-up 15 minutes. “I want you to use your extra 15 minutes to call someone you usually do not contact every day,” he said.

As commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1984 to 1989, Peter Ueberroth attended dozens of baseball games every year. Most people don’t know that every major league baseball stadium has a special box reserved for the commissioner, which invariably has the best view, food, and drink. “I never sat in one of those boxes,” Ueberroth says. “Not once.” When Ueberroth attended baseball games, he sat among the fans. Sometimes fans recognized him, but mostly they didn’t. “I was a better commissioner of baseball for having so many conversations with regular fans,” he says.

Every Incivility Creates Permanent Damage

Rudeness and verbal bullying undermine the effectiveness of organizations large and small. The impact of verbal and gestural rudeness undermines performance equally at the bottom of the organization (at the level of work that delivers services to customers) and at the top (in the boardroom). Those who are on the receiving end of rudeness or who simply witness rudeness tend to normalize the incivility and thereafter see the world through “rude-color glasses,” imposing significant costs on organizations.

Rudeness from authority figures is a huge problem because it signals to everyone lower in the chain of command that workplace indecency is acceptable. A study from the University of North Carolina, published by the Journal of Applied Psychology, adds to a growing body of research showing the economic pain caused by workplace rudeness.⁴ Research has demonstrated that worker disengagement flows predictably from personal experiences of workplace rudeness, resulting in loss of revenue, time delays, and turnover.

Half of all workers report that they experience rude exchanges in the workplace at least weekly. The study defines rudeness as low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm. When rudeness is tolerated or unchallenged, it is easy for corporate cultures to normalize indecency. It’s a mistake for leaders to tolerate rudeness because, left unchecked, it’s as contagious as the flu. Workplace rudeness has long-lasting impact far beyond the individuals directly implicated. The secondhand effects of rudeness are often more destructive than the original acts because they can extend to every employee in the organization.

The adage “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never harm you” is simply a lie. Injuries from sticks and stones will heal. An insult, an embarrassing statement, a humiliating confrontation leaves no scars, no visible wounds, no bleeding, but everyone remembers an insult, an embarrassment, a mean-spirited comment by somebody that may have happened years ago. What we learn from working with the victims of verbal assault is that the damage caused is usually permanent.

When rudeness is normalized, every employee is on alert to being on the receiving end of indecency. The anticipation of being targeted by rude colleagues exacts a measurable toll on the ability to perform complex tasks requiring creativity, flexibility, and memory recall, according to another study by the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.⁵ Verbal abuse affects more than just those who experience it directly. It can also harm innocent bystanders, suggests the authors in their study published in the Academy of Management Journal.

Rudeness, sarcasm, and cynicism in the boardroom primes dysfunctional outcomes, such as inappropriate aggression and a hostile workplace, elsewhere in the enterprise. Behaviors that lead to #MeToo moments often begin with unchallenged workplace rudeness. Employee engagement and teamwork suffer as colleagues intentionally avoid perpetrators, file grievances, quit, and generally spend less time working productively.

Rudeness, unless quickly interrupted, can hijack organizational effectiveness. Here’s a three-step process for challenging rudeness on the factory floor, in the boardroom, or elsewhere:

1.   Model decency. The contradiction to rudeness starts and ends with how leaders model interpersonal behaviors such as empathy, humility, patience, professionalism, and self-discipline.

2.   Call it when you see it. It’s tempting to ignore incivility from colleagues, but ignoring it just makes it worse. If you witness indecency from a subordinate or a peer, challenge it immediately. It’s best to start with the offender personally, preferably in private, and without beating around the bush. Stick to the behavior and its consequences. The point is not to shame the offender, but to explain the negative impacts on the team that flow from rudeness. The offender will often try to minimize or offer what to him or her seems like justifications. Listen empathically but reject rationalizations. The message communicated without rudeness is that the rude behavior must stop. When the rudeness is from someone higher in power and status, the task becomes more difficult. It is best to recruit someone higher in authority to advocate for decency.

3.   Get a commitment and follow up. Rudeness or bullying are learned behaviors; it takes effort and time to substitute new behaviors. Formalize the intervention. Get a commitment from the offender that he or she will honor standards of decency at work. Communicate clearly that there will be consequences for violations of the standards. Set targets, if appropriate. Put the agreement in writing. Ensure that violations have consequences. Accountability is the key.

Decency Role Models

Wegmans Food Markets is a $9.2 billion supermarket chain with 49,000 employees in 100 stores that is perennially honored as one of the top 100 great places to work in America. Founding president Robert Wegman was famous for instilling its now-famous rich, enabling culture.

Within the employee population at the headquarters flagship store, the founder of Wegmans was noted for his attention to individual employees. At one point, Wegman was puzzled by the behavior of one devoted, longtime employee (we’ll call him Henry), a parking lot attendant who gathered the empty shopping carts and returned them to the store. Wegman knew Henry was loyal and pleasant to customers and employees alike, but he was puzzled that Henry never seemed to smile when he was greeted. After some discrete probing, Wegman learned why Henry didn’t smile: He was embarrassed by having lost most of his teeth. He couldn’t afford to go to the dentist. This was a secret that Wegman secretly fixed. Without Henry knowing his benefactor, an orthodontist was arranged, and Henry was all smiles thereafter.

Reuben Mark, the ex-CEO of Colgate-Palmolive, is a legend of humility and cultural sensitivity. Notoriously press-shy, he is as comfortable on a factory floor as he is with Wall Street analysts. He’s known to joke with factory workers in Spanish. When a newly hired (from Dial Corporation) employee slipped him a copy of Dial’s current marketing plan, Reuben’s response was vintage Mark: He sent the sealed package unopened to Dial’s CEO Herb Baum. Reuben led with honor.

Ken Iverson (1925–2002), former chairman of Nucor Corporation and author of Plain Talk: Lessons from a Business Maverick, is one of our heroes. The way he promoted employee engagement allowed Nucor to revolutionize the steel industry and run circles around its competitors. Iverson was a brilliant strategist, but we believe he succeeded because he understood how employee engagement leveraged Nucor’s effectiveness. Iverson abhorred hierarchy and overhead. Even when Nucor’s annual revenue approached $4 billion, the company operated from modest headquarters, with only four layers of management. He pushed authority and accountability close to the customer-facing workers. Iverson knew that by giving employees a stake in the business and turning them loose—by inspiring teamwork—Nucor would thrive.

Herb Kelleher (1931–2019), legendary founder and CEO of Southwest Airlines, was a poster child for decency at work. His death at age 87 as this book was being prepared saddened us, but his impact on the organizational culture of Southwest Airlines endures. Herb piloted the storied growth of “the airline that love built.” His work made air travel a regular part of America’s middle class. That culture was recognized as a model of employee empowerment. Herb established the annual “Top Wrench Award” for the maintenance crew and the “Top Cleaner” award acknowledging the efforts of those who may otherwise be lost in unglamorous but indispensable jobs.

We admired Kelleher for injecting the concept of “love” into employee culture, for eschewing standard corporate practices, and for his down-home business wisdom. We can think of no better way to honor his memory than to share some of our favorite Kelleher quotes.

On loyalty: “The core of our success. That’s the most difficult thing for a competitor to imitate. They can buy all the physical things. The things you can’t buy are dedication, devotion, loyalty—the feeling that you are participating in a crusade.”

On strategy: “Think small and act small, and we’ll get bigger. Think big and act big, and we’ll get smaller.”

On leadership: “Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats. Leadership really involves responsibility.”

On people: “Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that.”

On humility: “You can’t really be disciplined in what you do unless you are humble and open-minded. Humility breeds open-mindedness—and really, what we try to do is establish a clear and simple set of values that we understand. That simplifies things; that expedites things. It enables the extreme discipline I mentioned in describing our strategy. When an issue comes up, we don’t say we’re going to study it for two and a half years. We just say, ‘Southwest Airlines doesn’t do that. Maybe somebody else does, but we don’t.’ It greatly facilitates the operation of the company.”

Indelible Stories

Decencies are indelible stories. Albert Schweitzer said, “The ideal in life is only in small part due to bold public action by important people. All the rest is made of small and obscure deeds.” Sometimes, says author Joseph Badaracco, “It’s the smallest acts that influence other people months or years later.”

In their extensive research on employee engagement, the consultants at the Gallop Organization suggest this as the typical employee wish list: “Focus me, know me, care about me, hear me, help me feel proud, help me review my contributions, help me grow, help me build mutual trust, challenge me.”⁶ We would add: “Lead me with decency.” And if the time comes to say goodbye, do it with class and civility, because leaders who are called on to terminate an employee are making a different kind of memory.

Living Decency

Dan Clarino has been the president of the award-winning Re/Max Benchmark Realty Group in his region of New York state for more than 25 years. He is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War vet who is the recipient of two purple hearts. Dan is also on the board of the regional Habitat for Humanity.

Dan has served as guardian on the biennial Honor Flights for World War II and Korean War vets who are honored for their service when they arrive to fanfare in our nation’s capital. In addition, Dan cashes out military vets and police officers in restaurants and supermarkets; provides free lunch every week for all his agents, staff, and tenants in his office building; and handwrites at least five thank-you notes each week to deserving Re/Max employees throughout his organization.

In a refreshing departure from standard industry practice, Clarino refuses to let his agents wait for their commission check following a closing transaction. Years ago, Dan arranged for his agents to receive their commissions immediately after the transaction via direct deposit.

Netflix Culture Deck

If you want to experience how a world-class company articulates its vision and values, you can’t do better than checking out the “Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility” PowerPoint deck.⁷ It’s available on SlideShare. The 124-page presentation has been called the “the most important document ever to come out of [Silicon] Valley” by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. The executive behind the presentation is Patty McCord, the former chief talent officer at Netflix. The common theme within the company’s values is to treat employees as adults.

In practical terms, treating employees as adults translates into fewer policies, rules, and restrictions than any Fortune 500 company we are aware of. Netflix employees have no formal limits to vacation days. Travel policies are virtually nonexistent. There are no annual employee reviews. What Netflix wants to attract and retain are self-aware, self-sufficient, “fully formed adults” who agree to be accountable. “If we start with the assumption that everybody comes to work to do an amazing job, you’d be surprised what you get,” McCord says. Highlights of the values articulated in the Netflix Culture Deck include:

The work of management is to build great teams and individuals, rather than to control people. When managers build great teams, they do amazing stuff.

People want to do work that means something. After they do it, they should be free to move on. Careers are journeys. Every employee who leaves becomes an ambassador for not only the product but also for who you are and how you operate.

Everyone in the company should be able to handle the truth. Humans can hear anything if it’s true. Rethink the word “feedback,” and think about it as telling people the truth, the honest truth, about what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong, in the moment when they’re doing it.

Fringe on Top

Charles “Chip” Bell is an author, keynote speaker, and consultant in customer loyalty and service innovation. In a recent newsletter, he recounts the following story:

I stopped at a grocery store in a small town on my drive to my remote river house for the weekend. Standing at the checkout counter, I watched as the check-out clerk bagged my groceries. Unexpectedly, she pulled from her uniform pocket a single bright-colored balloon and extended her hand. “I’ll bet you are somebody’s grandpa and you will put this to good use.” I was stunned! My day just got enchantingly fringed!

As Bell explains, the “fringe on top” phrase originates from Rogers and Hammerstein’s hit Broadway play Oklahoma! The cowboy Curly wins the attention of Laurey when he promises a ride to the box picnic social in “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.” The decorated carriage was a metaphor for adding magic to a moment, an action that breaks the humdrum of daily life. It is a random act that not only creates a special experience and memory, it beckons its recipient to return for more. There can be no better definition of a decency.

Bell suggests that all leaders can create such lasting memories through small gestures. “It demands initiative to make a difference in another person’s life,” he adds. “It requires valuing a whimsical moment that, like a Cracker Jack prize, might be financially worthless but emotionally priceless. Go forth and put your own fringe on top of the experiences you create every day.”

Principal Financial Group

Dan Houston, CEO, president, and chairman of the board for the Principal Financial Group, Des Moines, Iowa, is a classic example of someone who’s risen through the ranks. After joining the company in 1984 and through a series of promotions, he is recognized as both an industry leader and an involved and committed citizen. He is an example of leadership with an eye toward the near-impossible, making a big company feel culturally small. To that end, the company holds regular “town hall” meetings with employees. He’s accessible to colleagues from boardroom to lunchroom. Dan is a tireless advocate of a multicultural environment, symbolized by eight separate, active employee committees.

During Principal’s rare workforce reductions, Dan leads the effort to place or transfer employees to ensure income continuation. At-risk employees are given ample time to post for jobs internally and are given assistance in their external searches. He and the Principal leadership team are kept up to date on the success of jobs found. Dan is openly committed to “living Principal’s values every day”: ethical corporate governance, social responsibility, sustainability.

Baxter International

Baxter International is accustomed to being recognized for leadership excellence. If there were a national “above and beyond” award, CEO José Almeida would be a prominent honoree. The company has received the seal of approval from CR Magazine (Best Corporate Citizens), Forbes (Best Large Employers), the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s Employer of Choice for Gender Equality, The Human Rights Campaign, Diversity Best Practices, and The National Association of Female Executives. Baxter is also a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. And somehow, Baxter has found time to perform financially and operationally while touching the lives of millions of people around the world every day. Baxter International’s mission is simply this: save and sustain lives.

José Almeida believes that corporate governance sets the tone for an enduring culture. Committed as he is to advancing the diversity of Baxter’s workforce, José has introduced “Gender IQ,” the company’s new leadership development program. Its focus: to bring heightened awareness to gender differences and its role to create a more productive and inclusive environment. He encourages all Baxter employees to sign the company’s “All In(clusive)” workplace pledge, and Almeida’s signature on PwC’s “CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion” pledge underscores this commitment.

José Almeida believes that Baxter’s commitment to diversity and inclusion “fuels the company’s ability to deliver on our ultimate mission: Save and sustain lives. . . . Corporate responsibility is an essential part of who we are.”

The Lee Hecht Harrison Twinkle Awards

We can attest to how motivating a well-considered and highly personal employee recognition program can be. The Twinkle Awards grew out of its history of giving gifts as awards to colleagues at the annual Holiday Gala party—an event attended by colleagues and their spouses or guests. The original idea for the Twinkle Awards was inspired by an employee, Pat Pursley.

This was a program based on peer recognition rather than management acknowledgment. Colleagues were asked to nominate their peers for the Awards by completing this sentence: “(Name of coworker) is a Shining Star because . . .”

Each associate could nominate as many peers as they wanted. The nominations were anonymously placed in a big sparkly container in the middle of the office. When a Twinkle Award nomination was put in the tub, a whistle was blown and a big “ta-da” was announced.

The results were amazing. The nominations were heartfelt, personal, and endearing. They showed the true affection, respect, and gratitude the department members felt for one another. Over the years, Twinkle Awards were given out at the Holiday Gala. The award was an ornament in the shape of a star as well as a dinner for two, courtesy of Lee Hecht Harrison. As each award was announced, the audience heard what their coworkers had written about the recipient.

Over the course of the program, everyone received a Twinkle Award. Everyone felt special, honored, and inspired. They recognized that everyone belonged to a fabulous group of people that shined together.