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[Gael] I'm delighted that you're here because what I hope to accomplish in our time together
is to give you some strategic advantages that when you select the career, that area that
you're going into that you have a chance to learn some skills or enhance the ones you
already have that will tremendously increase your value in a company. The topic is "Giving
Voice to Values in Your Life and Career". What I'm hoping we'll accomplish is, did any
of you go to the earlier program this month on "Vision, Mission, and Values" that Mr.
Fletcher and Janey Roeder were taught? If not, I can get you up to speed. That was about
values and how your own personal values are really important for you to spend time thinking.
That fits into what I'm going to be talking about too and takes to beyond. So the actual
point about values is that how you define what you believe really will determine the
actions that you take, which will either create success or, as we'll see, can create significant
problems and crises. Ultimately it's about relationships, of trust and reputation and
that's what you're constantly building and that's part of what your career is going to
be based on. If any of you read the article that you were sent in advance about B corporations,
you saw that Patagonia is one of the companies that has filed in California to promise that
it will do certain things to impact positively the environment. B corporations are very intent
on making a profit, but they're also really intent on being models of how, from their
employees as well as from their actions, they do good in the world. Conscious capitalism
companies like Trader Joe's, Whole Foods The Container Store, Ben & Jerry's, Stony Field
Yogurt or Stony Field Farms are also companies that say profit matters, success matters,
but we really want to do good things. So ideally these are companies where the values conflicts
are probably less but they're the tiny majority of companies. Almost every organization you're
going to be a part of is likely to have more than its share of values conflicts. And one
of the problems with values conflicts is that we kind of think they're the anomaly. We think
they're unusual. We're surprised when something like that happens. And part of what I want
us to talk about is that it really is the norm it's. It's what reality is. And the way
in which you navigate that gives you a tremendous advantage and that's what I'm hoping that
we'll accomplish. Giving voice to values is a really neat sort of phrase. Even if there
wasn't a book that had been written two years ago about it and a curriculum that about a
thousand faculty around the world are now teaching college called "Giving Voice to Values".
So the exercise that we're gonna talk about, and I hope that you'll be willing to do, is
from Babson College's "Giving Voice to Values. The creator of Giving Voice to Values now
teaches there. And then I want to make sure we focus on thoughts that you have, impressions
that that you find valuable, and what else we need to discuss that will make it easier
for you to give voice to values in what you do. "I know the difference between right and
wrong but it hasn't held me back." Does that cartoon suggest anything to you when you look
at it? What comes to mind? [Student] Wall Street
[Gael] Yeah. Wall Street. In fact they're obviously looking out on a city. It could
easily be Wall Street. But what do you mean about that? When you say Wall Street, what
are you talking about? [Student] Just the corruption, all these mortgage
backed securities and all these things that wasn't sustainable. And they took the government
bailout money. [Gael] So you're talking about things that
don't inspire confidence and trust basically? Anyone else have any thoughts about what the
cartoon says? Well I think you set up the next slide beautifully. The Gallup organization
does a survey every year about US confidence in institutions. The last one they did on
this is June and the next one will be this June. And you can see, if you look at the
bottom six, that banks enjoy ten percent of peoples' great deal of confidence. When you
think about the economic driver that banks are, the importance of banks to our economy,
to new jobs, to giving advice to entrepreneurs and small businesses, and you think that only
ten percent of the people polled have a great deal of confidence in banks, it really suggests
what happens when you've lost confidence. And look at Big Business, eight percent. So
rather than banks spending a lot of money on PR and marketing, the restoring of trust
has a great deal to do with actually living the values that you say you stand for. Anyone
identify this kind of wall of shame here? Recognize anybody?
[Student] Tony Hayward [Gael] Yep, BP in the middle, a man who no
longer has his job. At the top-right, that's Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide Financial, the
subprime mortgages. The man in the middle of the right is William Weldon from Johnson
and Johnson, and as you probably remember, Johnson and Johnson has been this sterling
brand, this brand that everyone looks up to, most admired company. But in the last couple
of years they've had recall after recall after recall and questions about business practices.
He's no longer going to be chairman. He's no longer going to be CEO. He will just be
chairman. Don Blankenship from Massey Energy, the company that had twenty nine miners die
in the largest mining explosion and death that we've had in this country for forty years,
who insisted, hi please join us, who insisted that it wasn't their fault. The safety of
the mine was fine. And it was the federal government's problem. Reports have found that
Massey is directly responsible for the deaths of those miners. Mr. Blankenship is no longer
CEO of Massey Energy. The company was acquired. To your point about Wall Street, these are
the cast of characters of many of the people in Wall Street. And at the top left is the
chairman and CEO of Toyota. All of these men were called before Congress in the last few
years because there were investigative committees looking at their business practices, the recalls,
the global meltdown, how things happened. In almost every case that the senators or
congressmen where grilling these CEOs and leaders, the issue came up that you have not
operated according to your values. If you said that clients come first or customers
come first which Johnson and Johnson said, which Goldman Sachs said, which Toyota said,
there was no evidence that how they behaved suggested that. If you said that safety came
first, the way Tony Hayward and Toyota and Massey Energy, completely inconsistent with
the choices and decisions they made. The peaceful protest at UC Davis in November got a response
that is a really good example of value conflicts. Aside from all the other things it does when
you see this captured and you realize these are students and it was a peaceful demonstration
and you realize that the administration was operating with certain values that they were
putting in one position and there are other values that were completely ignored. Take
for example the perceived value of safety. The fear the administration had that outside
agitators would cause problems and that they were responsible to the students' parents
to keep them safe. The irony of that is a justification for wanting to remove the tents.
When the police's perception of safety was obviously that they felt threatened by the
peaceful students and they needed to use force in their mind and justification because they
obviously felt in some way threatened. So you have this irony of safety being important.
The perspective of how you really determine what you're thinking. As a university, freedom
of speech, freedom of assembly, the safety of dissent is weighed against safety. And
they didn't do a very job at all. The finding of the report that came out last week was
that the incident never had to happen, that the administrators never prepared for the
likelihood of a conflict, even though Occupy Wall Street was happening in cities around
the country and universities around the country were starting to have protest based on rise
of fees. Nobody planned. So when the tests showed up one day, there was obviously panic.
And the direction that the leadership team gave to the police was, "We don't want another
Berkeley". What does that mean? The police obviously had their own interpretation of
what that meant. And the other piece of this that's important for us in terms of giving
voice to values is that the finding of the report, the task force report, was that many
leaders after the fact said that they never really agreed with the decision to remove
the tents. But they were silent, and there's no record in the discussions of that being
a point of disagreement. So this is a great example, really, of when there are a number
of values that need to be talked through, understood on the part of leadership, not
preparing, not being clear about what you're trying to do, leads to a situation that's
just appalling. And so use that as a dramatic example for the kinds of things that we're
going to talk about that will enable you to see what the steps are that you take to be
able to give voice to values. There was in fact no clarity about what the values were.
All there was clarity about was that it was a complete disaster. Our values drive our
actions and we need to be careful that in how we practice them, what's driving our actions
may not be at all the values that we say are important. And so the context of you thinking
about what you want to stand for, what the values are that matter to you, that will be
driving how you act and it matters to be intentional about them because otherwise they're just
this vague kind of thing. One of things about internalizing values is if you have an issue
that comes up, you think about how that aligns, how that impacts a value that you say is important
to you. If you care about respect, if you care about honesty or trust or transparency
and an issue comes up that is the opposite of that or you'd have a chance to choose to
do something that would be easy for you to do, but then you think about how you have
a value that kind of would drive how you actually would handle that. Decisions are really much
better when we kind of go through this process of intentionally looking at what we want to
do and what we're thinking about and aligning it to what we said matters to us. Otherwise
it's really haphazard and you don't really get very far. And that's really how we, one
of the ways we use our voice. Trust is one of the most important things that defines
any of our reputations. And if values are used for just public relations, if you have
something in your website, if you have something that you talk about, that you believe like
Tony Hayward saying that he was a safety guy, that safety was the most important thing to
him, but then decisions are made that clearly put safety at risk, you're just using values
in a way that makes them meaningless. Values, instead, are like a GPS system. They really
help us keep on course and get a direction. Value conflicts that aren't addressed effectively
lose trust. It'll be a long time before the top administrators at University of California
Davis are going to have the trust of faculty and students and even the Davis community.
Actions and inactions that create harm, well, you lose trust. But particularly values that
aren't spoken in some way, well the people who are silent don't trust either. Obviously
the financial meltdown, the criticisms of Wall Street put a lot of pressure on business
education. There was this sense that, you know, here we are recruiting the best and
brightest to Wall Street and yet nobody was raising the kinds of issues that might have
suggested that ethics mattered at all. Mary Gentile, who is now at Babson for the last
ten years, has been working on a concept of teaching ethics differently both in universities
as well as suggesting how companies might train people in their organization to think
about ethics more. In traditional focus of ethics and maybe this has been true, some
of your classes, it's about awareness and analysis. You spend a lot of time figuring
out what's the right thing to do. But in most disasters, in most crises and most problems
situations, people knew what the right thing to do was. They just didn't do it. And so
the question becomes, if you know that you're gonna act on your values and you know what
the right thing to do is, what would you do and say? And often people don't have the tools
that helps them do that and that's what's so good about giving voice to values. If a
situation occurs that's a possible values conflict, take for example the University
of California Davis situation, when there's so many variables going on. If you're not
really focusing on some of the steps that are what we're going to talk about, it's really
easy to just say, "You know, this is really complex and I'm not really wild about this
course of action but it'll probably be fine." And so we opt out. We don't get involved.
Giving voice to values makes it easier for us to look at a complicated situation and
start to handle it in a way that in our companies or where we might be working in the future
where you might be working in the future, you become a much more valuable leader because
you're raising questions that otherwise might not get raised. There are seven things that
giving voice to values, the curriculum, and the approach is based on. No surprise values
would be at the top of the list. And there are a number of values that we kind of all
hold in common. Most of us want to be respected. Most of us want to be he trusted. What are
some other values that you think pretty much everybody might agree on? Anything occur to
you? [Student] Having a good work ethic?
[Gael] Yeah, exactly. People want to be in a place that... Exactly. Anything else? Most
of us appreciate dealing with honest people. Most of us like not to be abused and yelled
at. So respect is important. We like to know what's going on so transparency is kind of
important. So there are some values that may not be your personal values but values that
you could agree if you were in a disagreement with someone. You can both agree that it really
matters that however we handle this we do it in a fair way because fairness is a value
that most people care about. The second thing is that in giving voice to values, we realize
we have a choice. We can speak up. It's not that we have to not know what we have to do
in a situation. The third thing is that values conflicts are really, as I mentioned at the
beginning, an expected part of doing business. So what are some of the majors, what are some
of the areas that you want to get into? What do you hope your first job is? In what?
[Student] I want to start my own business. [Gael] Okay, so you're gonna be an entrepreneur.
What do you hope your field is gonna be? [Student] Marketing
[Gael] Marketing. How about you? [Student] Accounting
[Gael] Accounting [Student] Entrepreneur
[Gael] Entrepreneur [Student] I'm an IT
[Gael] IT [Student] Marketing
[Gael] Marketing [Student] International business and trade
[Gael] International business and trade. How about you?
[Student] Entrepreneurship [Gael] Entrepreneurship. Okay, so if you know
kind of where you're heading, let's take marketing for example, there are clear conflicts of
interest and problems that are likely to happen if you're director of marketing. If you are
thinking about what possibly could go wrong, if you're thinking about what are the issues
that might come up, just as if you're a university president, it's probably a good idea to think
that at some point there's going to be protests on campus. How would you handle it? But if
you're in marketing and you're aware of some of the issues in your field and you've started
to think about it, you are so much better prepared when you get hit in the face at the
last minute with something. You're not operating emotionally. You're not operating out of fear.
You've got an idea of what's going on. Same as true as an entrepreneur. There are clear
issues about how you do business, how you start, where you get your funding, what all
of this means. If you think about that as you doing it, you can anticipate. So nobody's
going to catch you at a disadvantage. What else did I hear? I heard accounting. There
are clear issues in finance that have logical, ethical implications. Not being blindsided
by them, but by being able to think about them in advance, makes a great deal of sense.
In international business, values are different in so many different countries. Culture drives
so many different things. Your sensitivity and awareness to that and thinking in advance
about doing business in China. What might some of the issues be? Or in India, bribery
isn't the same. We have laws in the United States that would impact me if I behaved in
India the way that people... The complexity gets reduced when you start taking control.
[Student] There's behind the screen and then there's front of the screen.
It depends if you're in the trade business or it depends on what market you actually
focus on. [Gael] Exactly. And there's certain things
that because you're accountable to laws in the United States, If you're operating here,
that you do not want to get caught. So the whole point is understanding what that is.
One of the things that stops us from giving voice to our values often is that we haven't
thought about what to do or say and we're afraid of conflict. Most people hate conflict.
So therefore if I see something and I'm gonna have you talk to you about it directly, I
might let it pass. But if we operate with a sense of some of the other things that we're
going to talk about, we take away that conflict piece of it and we take away the emotional
piece of it. If something hits your hot button and you're furious with someone because of
what they're doing and you're talking at them in a judgmental, emotional way, you can be
completely, they're not gonna take you seriously and you reduce your own effectiveness. So
and these are sort of things that help us be more effective in using our voice. How
we define our own professional purpose as an entrepreneur, it may well be that you both
think of yourselves in terms of people who want to make money but you want to do good
too. You don't want to harm the world. That's a large statement. You don't wanna do harm
or something. So that's a screen that you use when decisions come up. If your larger
purpose isn't just making money, then that's a real help to you. If you're in a company
and you're an IT and your larger purpose isn't just to have a good salary and pay but is
to want to make a difference and want to help people succeed, that's a larger purpose that's
a screen that when there are values conflicts that come up and you're new challenged, you're
in the game for something more than just your paycheck. That make sense? Self knowledge
is really important in giving voice to values. Do you remember what it was like to do your
first resume? Was it a painful experience? It was very painful if yours was anything
like mine. You sit there and have no idea what you have to offer. You don't have tangible
evidence of a job in the past. So you have to start looking at yourself in terms of awards
you might've won or leadership opportunities you might've had in school or a committee
or a project. But by the time you were finished with it, did you feel fairly good after you
did your first resume? Were you surprised at what you can say about yourself? Yeah it's
amazing. The exact same thing is true when we start thinking about ourselves in terms
of where we've used our voice in the past. Nothing may occur to us in the moment, but
when we start thinking about it, what matters for us is the story we tell ourselves that
we can prove the same way with the first resume that we have leadership ability or that we
have skills is that in the past we've been able to integrate what we stand for and what
we say. And we need to pull those examples out, just like you had to pull out examples
of your leadership on a resume so you could talk credibly in a job interview. And when
we talk about voice, we're not just talking about using our voice. We're not talking about
confrontation necessarily or arguments. We're talking about the power to ask questions.
What happens when we do research? We're talking about providing new data that might change
the way somebody thinks about something or using persuasion or negotiation or leading
by example or finding allies who feel the same way you do so it's a group dealing with
it, not just one person. So voice means a lot of things, and when you realize that,
you have a lot more tools than you acknowledge. And then lastly, it's about recognizing that
you're going to hear a lot of excuses why people want to do things that may not be ethical.
In accounting, you're gonna have lots of people who want the balance sheet to be one way and
they think there's some flexibility and in your gut you know there isn't. In marketing,
there may be a desire to market bad products to Africa or to market to children even though
that's against certain procedures, but you can do it quietly. The more we understand
what shortcuts people may be trying to take in a given situation, the more we can develop
and practice our approaches, the questions that we would ask, the counter arguments to
respond and persuade. If you were to ask any CEO who's had to pay millions of dollars in
fines, "If you wishes somebody in the organization had raised a question about what they were
doing", he'd probably tell you that he wishes people had. Now in certain circumstances,
we've heard of whistle blowers and other people. We know that people have raised questions
and they haven't been heard. That doesn't mean that you don't try and you keep trying
effectively to be heard so the process of understanding how to practice and how to you
think about your response is really very powerful. I gave you all a sheet of the twelve assumptions.
Would somebody read for me please? You don't have to read the subtext, but would somebody
read what the twelve assumptions are? Any volunteers? Did you get one? No, it would
be very hard for you to read if didn't have one. You might be able to do it but... Will
anyone volunteer to read the twelve? [Student] All twelve of them?
[Speaker] All twelve of them. [Student] Number one: I want to do this. Number
two: I have done this. Number three: I can voice my values more often and more effectively.
Number four: It is easier to voice my values in some contexts than others.
Number five: I'm more likely to do this if I have practiced how to respond
encounter conflicts. There are frequently heard rationalizations and reasons for not
voicing and acting on values and there are possible responses you could use to counter
them. Thinking about those responses in advance increases our confidence and the degree of
freedom in decision situations. Number six: My example is powerful. Number seven: Mastering
responses to frequently heard rationalizations can empower others who share my views to act,
but I cannot assume I know who those folks are. frequently heard rationalizations
for not behaving ethically, strengthen our own and may inspire others
to share their . Number eight: The better I know myself, the more I can prepare
to play to my strengths and protect myself from my weaknesses. The greater our self-knowledge,
the more likely we can anticipate and manage our responses to value conflicts. Number nine:
I'm not alone. Number ten: Although I may not always succeed, voicing and acting on
my values is worth doing. Number eleven: Voicing my values leads to better decisions. Number
twelve: The more I believe it is possible to voice and act on my values, the more likely
I will be able to do this. If we support mechanism and practicing the development
and delivery of responses to frequently heard reasons and rationalizations for unethical
actions. We can expand the sense of what's possible.
[Gael] Thank you very much. As you look at those twelve, any of them jump out at you
as something that makes to you, that kind of resonates, that surprises you, that makes
sense now or that you like? I'm gonna ask if you don't like any but first let's start
with if you do like any. What do you think? Yes?
[Student] I know it's short but it's number nine. It says, "I'm not alone", but I think
that's important to understand because it's really hard to go through a lot of things
if you feel that you are alone and to use other people with examples too to help you
do that. I think that's a good one to use. [Gael] I think that's a really good one. Any
other ones that jump out at you as being pretty valuable? Yes.
[Student] I think that fact that my example will be powerful is very interesting because
I thought about it before but I didn't realize how true it was .
[Gael] And we don't have any idea who's watching us. Who in their head may be looking for someone
to voice something and they see you do it and it makes it safe. Yeah, it is powerful.
Yes? [Student] I like number ten. That says, "Although
I may not always succeed, voicing and acting on my values is worth doing". Because I think
sometimes even If you don't succeed, you can get what you want out of saying and acting
on it, just building that and and getting that experience of having stood
up for yourself or doing what you feel is right is worth something to me .
[Gael] Oh, I think it is. And if you think about the story that you need to develop about
who you are, the more examples you have of doing that, give you a lot of confidence.
When you also think about the fact that we all know that business and life are pretty
challenging and complicated and we don't win all the time. But we gain something. We make
progress even if we don't get what we wanted. Other things can happen. So I totally agree.
Anything else appeal to you on this list? [Student] The last one: The more I believe
it is possible to voice and act on my values, the more likely I will be able to do this.
Just because you can pretty much do whatever you want as long as believe it and put your
mind to it [Gael] That's my favorite because I think
that it is... I mean all of them I like. But I think that... Well I really like eleven
too. All of them I can say... We can go one through twelve. And then I like nine. I think
that the whole sense of understanding what it is we can do and I go back to the first
resume that we did. We suddenly see ourselves as having the power to make a difference.
And that's about using our voice. Okay, somebody needs to talk about eleven because I really
think it's a great one. Anybody like that one? Or do you think it's true?
[Student] I think it's true, especially when you look at other people's behavior. There's
been situations in my company where other people are taken advantage either of myself
or others and I've spoken up about it and nothing's been done and there were other people
in the company that felt the same way as I did but didn't want to say anything. And then
I said, "If you guys let this continue, it's just gonna get worse. This person is just
gonna keep acting like this." And sure enough, every one of those people got taken advantage
of by that person. And now they're unhappy and I said, "You know what, you guys let this
happen. You knew what was coming up. Nobody said anything. So now you have to deal with
it. You knew what was coming." And now they're kind of like, "Yeah we should have spoken
up at the beginning." [Gael] I think that that happens in so many
organizations and one of the things about keeping a problem a problem instead of it
becoming a crisis is how we communicate and how with the decisions that we make that keep
it small as opposed to it becoming big. Have we left out anything that you think really
matters? There's one that I think we probably could talk about.
[Student] Number seven [Gael] Okay, talk about that if you would.
[Student] You cannot always assume that people know, people always understand
what you're trying to tell them and plus their capability of understanding as well.
And I really think that the responses strengthens more confidence of voicing and
acting as a joint group together coming up with a conclusion.
[Gael] I think that's very true. And I think... [Student] Teamwork I was trying to say. Working
together as a family in a company as the corporate ladder. Everyone's working on their own relationships.
For example, vice president . What I'm trying to say is that they all should
have a common interest. Fairness and equality. [Gael] I think that's true. And the opposite
of a bad situation would also be true with what you just said. For example, if somebody
has excuses why they're probably going to take a shortcut and understanding where that
person is coming from and listening and understanding that they're not the enemy. They have a point
of view. They're not evil. They're making a decision and it may be because they're scared.
It may be because they don't have enough information to know, you know, what exactly to do. And
our ability to engage with them as part of a team and part of a "we're all in this together"
which didn't happen in your situation can really change a dynamic. And a lot of times
when people are going to do something because it's the easiest thing to do, they can get
arguments presented to them by somebody who's not really angry or judgmental. They can change
the course of stuff. So I think that's a good point. It really starts I think was number
one. You really have to want to do this. You really have to believe that there's value
in it. To your point about you may not always win but it's worth it. When we decide that
we want to give voice to values, we're deciding something about ourselves as a leader. And
that's a really important thing to recognize within. You have to want to do this not because
it's hard or difficult. You have to want to do it because it's engaging you in things
that are not just cut and dry. And you learn and grow. Yes.
[Student] I was going to say for number ten. I was thinking about a situation
where voicing my values helped somebody else make a better decision. Somebody that's in
a management position towards me and they're new to it and they were frustrated with the
situation about approaching someone. And them when I spoke to the about it, I said, Try
to come up with something. It doesn't have to be confrontational. of
empathy. Where you let somebody know you understand what's going on with them." So I sort of gave
him a pep talk and then he went and dealt with the person and came back. He was like,
"Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for saying that because I just made a 100 percent of
difference in how I approach the situation." So they made a better decision about how to
deal with somebody. [Gael] That's a terrific example. Can you
imagine what would have happened going back to UC Davis if when the leadership team was
sitting around the room, those people who had reservations and said you know, "Why do
we have to take the tents down by three o'clock? Why don't we have to involve the police? Have
we checked to see if they're outside people or if they're just our students?" Anybody.
To your point about team, if we're all in this together, we're trying to get the best
decisions. Sometimes leaders make that really difficult. Somebody like *** Fuld, who was
the CEO of Shearson-Lehman that went under at the beginning of the financial crisis,
didn't want anyone to disagree with him in public. Can you imagine what that was like
for his executive team? Something would come up in meeting and he'd say, "Well you can
say anything you want to me privately, but in public we're going to be united." Well
that puts a real jam on my interest in being part of this organization. I'll just let you...
If you're so smart, I'll just... People opt out and that's not what we want. Okay, is
there anything on this list of twelve that didn't work for you, that makes you uncomfortable,
that you wouldn't want to do? No? Okay, so my hope is that you'll keep that list handy
cause it'll inspire you maybe. Anything more on this before we go on? You already handled
all that beautifully. All right we have... Whoops, I didn't mean to do that. Part of
what I want us to accomplish is for you to kind of get a sense of that first resume and
pull out some things that you might not have thought of. We have two exercises. The first
is recall a summer job, internship, student club, team project et cetera, and if you're
working now, include that as well, in a job situation where your values conflicted with
what you were expect to do. And not a trivial example but something that's non-trivial and
you spoke up and you acted to resolve that conflict. I'd like you, if you four would
work together and I'd like you four to work together. What I'd like you to do is spend
about ten minutes on your own story kind of writing and making notes about how you would
answer these questions. And then what I would like to have happen is for each of the two
groups to talk among yourselves for about ten minutes. I'll time us and kind of share
the bottom line of what you did, what motivated you, how satisfied where you and what did
it feel like? Because there're certain things that happen and then I just you know jot down
some of the things you say when we share them as a group. Do you have a clear sense of this
or should I share a story that I did? Are you good going right into your own? Story?
Okay. When I was in college, I was vice president of the English Club. You guys probably don't
even have an English Club because it's probably archaic but in any event there was an English
Club. And I was an English major side. So that made sense that I was involved in the
English club. And the president was a really cool person, very in, very clique-ish, had
her own crowd. And she loved being president. And poets and writers and other people would
come to campus and there was an elite group that would get to meet with them. And it struck
me that if we were trying to build an organization, there'd be a lot of people who'd feel left
out, who would feel that this was a marginalization and it just didn't feel right. So I went to
her and she wasn't a friend and I didn't know her well. We both got elected and we had to
work together and she blew me off. She thought that the way things were going was just fine
and, you know, wasn't interested. Well I didn't prepare in advance and I was emotional about
my argument because it just made sense that you wouldn't have an organization and be elitist.
It made sense that you'd be inclusive. So I didn't do very well. I said the right things.
I didn't say them necessarily in the right way. We met with the faculty advisor and because
she hadn't, you know, moved at all on the needle, I shared a little bit better this
time, my frustration about what was possible for us to accomplish. The faculty adviser
loved it, told her she needed to change. She dropped out of the organization and I became
president. Not the way you really want to become a leader. And I didn't know at time.
I felt good. I thought this is great. Now we're going to be inclusive and we've tripled
the membership. It was all great except I got a later that you should be able to have
these conversations as win-wins instead of win-lose. So for me, with that example, how
satisfied was I? I would've liked to have responded differently. I would've liked to
have seen things from her point of view and figured a way to make us both agree, going
back to the tenants of giving voice to values. She had values in common with me. I didn't
even try to figure out what those were. I just went for the bottom line: we needed to
change. We needed to do it differently. And so you may have examples where your communication
and your process and how you did it was great. Part of this is it isn't just that you do
the right thing, it's figuring out how to do it in a way that's effective. And so while
I can give myself points, I also learned a lot how to do it better, differently. And
that's part of what this is too. It's what we succeed and then we also learn how next
time, you know, we can accomplish our goals slightly differently. So I don't know how
that moved by itself but obviously it did. So could I ask the four of you to get together
and either turn your chairs around. And the four of you. And for the first ten minutes
or so, I will ask you just to work on your own story, to think about various things and
then I'll ask you to talk as a group and we'll share what our... Does that make sense? Okay
thank you. So let's start. [Gael] Excellent. All right, I would love
it if you all would share some examples. I think that we already concluded in our earlier
conversation that giving voice to values is gonna lead to better decisions. Do you feel
less strongly about that or more strongly now that you've had the exercise? More strongly
about that. You all have any opinions? More or less strongly?
[Student] About the same [Gael] Okay. And you thought it would help.
[Student] not going to go away.
[Gael] And sometimes not only do we have to speak up, but in the case that you used earlier,
when there are people who don't see what you see as fast as you see it about someone, there's
also to the point of someone, I can't remember which of you, I think it was you who said
the idea about not being alone, was it you? No, not you but was it you? Somebody said
they liked on the list of things they liked that we aren't alone. Forgive me, that was
you. It's really important to remember that. Part of not being alone means that we have
lots of possible tactics that we can use to help bring other people along who aren't where
we are. And that's a really important thing to think about because you are alone and you
might want to think in a situation, any of us might want to think in a situation where
we're feeling alone because we're seeing something that other people aren't seeing or experiencing
yet, but we know it's not going to work or be good, we need to think about the ways in
which we can engage and involve others, in ways that help everyone accomplish the same
thing which is move forward without being harassed by a bully or whatever the person
is. Alright, so the second thing is can you share with me what you observed about how
you used your voice successfully in the past? Did you learn anything? I asked some of you
individually, but as we think about the story that you want to tell about yourself, did
you get added ammunition or are you more intentional about understanding how your voice has played
in the past? Cause part of the whole point of this is for you to have background information
about the power of your voice. So when you used your voice, how did you feel?
[Speaker 30] Well in my situation, when I spoke up, I did it in kind of like I guess
an angry way, like very emotional. And I guess, I've already learned that I could've approached
the situation in a different way. It would have been received a lot better
[Gael] And that's what practice does for us. That's why this is something imperfect. And
the more we do it, the better at it we get. And if we go into it with a good heart of
just trying to express what we are feeling and thinking, that's the best that we can
do. What occurs to you about how you can increase the strength and effectiveness of your own
voice? You mentioned being less emotional is powerful. Yes.
[Student] Use it more. [Gael] Ah, use it more. Any thoughts about
increasing the strength and effectiveness of your voice?
[Student] I think sometimes even just taking a little bit more time if
you're going to make a decision but not rushing to it, taking your time to approach it .
[Gael] I think that's really true. And again I'm going back to University of California,
Davis, when we're surprised, when we haven't planned or anticipated something, when we
create arbitrary deadlines and do certain things because we want to be effective and
efficient, we can sometimes be setting the stage for really bad decisions and it's important
to know that too. So what will you do differently regarding giving voice to values? Anything?
What ? [Student] Use it more.
[Gael] Use it more. Okay. Any other thoughts? [Student] I think I would trust my voice more.
Cause I was kind of looking at some of the things I did and I noticed that you know I
really think about it . I need to believe in myself
the message I'm trying to get out there. [Gael] That's probably the most powerful thing
that any of us can do because it's really hard if we're not confident. It's really hard
to put ourselves out there. And the ways of getting confident are doing exactly what you
just did, adding up some of the things you've already done and thinking, "Oh, well that
worked and that worked and, oh, that worked too". So suddenly we can believe that we have
the ability to this and it comes back to we believe it's possible. So we do more of it.
Any thoughts you have? [Student] I really heard
that speaking up it gives... It gives other people power. So it helps them have a voice.
and I know other people probably felt the same thing. So if I've been like
could've helped some of the other people.
[Gael] Exactly. That's a really good insight. [Student] I feel like I'm a very unconfrontational
person, pretty passive. I think using some of these methods could help
me be a little more confrontational, but in a good way, not like accusing someone, but
a win-win situation . [Gael] And maybe even changing the word confrontational.
Maybe it's... The whole point of some of these other methods of voice is you get into a discussion.
In a confrontation there's no discussion. This is how I feel and you're wrong. That's
hard for any of us to do although sometimes we're motivated to do it. But it's so much
more effective to think about the power of questions negotiating, understanding where
the other person's coming from. It's really a part of the most effective way to figure
out how to get a better decision. So I think that's great. Anything you might do differently?
[Student] No, I speak up. I'm kind of known for speaking up when stuff like that goes
down. In fact, people in my company kind of like let me take the lead on stuff like that.
I'm just kind of like in the past, they're not gonna back me and then I just kind of
go, "That's what you get." [Gael] Or there're ways that you can think
about... You know one of the things about giving voice to values is looking for allies.
Is there a strategy that you can use to figure out what people have in common and not put
yourself out there as the lone ranger? It's just something to think about. That might
make it easier. [Student] There're some situations where you
don't have allies. You know that the people that are involved aren't really doing anything
. You just kind of have to like suck it out.
[Gael] Sometimes you're right. Sometimes you also can come up with information and you
can come up with various approaches that can shift the dynamic because somebody's self
interest is greater than it might be in a regular approach. The nice thing about this
is there's no one way to do it. Any thoughts you have about how about using your voice?
[Student] Use it more [Gael] Are you more comfortable doing that?
Why? [Student]
[Gael] That's great. One thing we all need to know is there no wrong. Each time we just
get better. And it's practice. Anything you might do differently?
[Student] Well I feel that I have like more tools now to I guess more confidence in any
action that I'm taking. I have a new awareness .
[Gael] Hopefully you have a new awareness of your own power because one of the things
that we don't even think about is our power connected to our values. It can be really
powerful especially if we figure out how to say it in a way that moves something forward.
How about you? Anything about you voice that you...
[Student] I think I learned to ask more questions. To help confidence
[Gael] All of you are in the process of becoming leaders and building and adding to your leadership
and the nice thing about giving voice to
values is that it supports you in using a voice that
not only helps in value conflicts, but that helps you build a team, build a department and
work with people in a way to
help them find what's possible. Cause good decisions are what companies survive on
and leaders are looking for other leaders who have the courage to do that. So thank you
very much. Are
there
any questions? You've
all been terrific. Well then thank you
very much.