How important is it to you to be a good person? Apparently, not very. When advertising executives James Patterson and Peter Kim set out to "take the moral pulse of America," they discovered that most Americans are willing to do anything for money: abandon their families, change religions, lie, cheat, steal or even murder.
Touching, isn't it? And it doesn't get any better. Take a look at some of the other results they documented in The Day America Told the Truth (1991, New York: Prentice-Hall):
- Lying has become part of our national character. Just about every one (91%) of us lies-regularly. In fact, most people can't make it through a week without lying. Some can't even make it through a day.
- When asked what changes they would make to better fulfill their potential, most people wanted to be richer and thinner. "Smarter" ran a very distant second. Becoming a "better person" didn't even make the rankings.
- When queried about the "sleaziest ways to make a living," car and insurance salespeople, Wall Street executives, real-estate agents, lawyers and investment brokers ranked at the bottom of the moral sewer.
- The majority of respondents (70%) believe that the United States has no living heroes and that our children have no meaningful role models. Across the board, we believe that our religious, political and business leaders have failed us miserably.
- There is only one clear moral authority and it isn't God, church leaders, teachers or even parents-it's the individual. That is to say, nearly all respondents (93%) believe that they and they alone determine what is and isn't moral in their lives. And their actions bear this out: Most respondents (more than 80%) report that they've violated a law or an established religious rule because they thought the law was wrong.
In modern society, we expect money to make us happy, so we pursue it with religious fervor. You'd never know from the way we exalt it that the "bottom line" is morally neutral. It won't get you into heaven. It won't make you a good person or a bad one (although how you make your living has a moral value). Parading as "realists," some people would have you believe that the whole world is a jungle, a dog-eat-dog place where people watch out solely for themselves and only the cruel survive. The "bottom line" is a convenient excuse to indulge predatory instincts. So much for human evolution and the advances of civilization. Let's go back to the jungle and shoot each other for dinner.
An interest in softer things like "being a good person," "valuing people" and "social responsibility" can make you sound like a moral goody-two-shoes or a naive idealist. Yet you can be a good person, live an ethical life and still make lots of money if you don't let power corrupt your vision. You can even use your power to accomplish some good. Principles and ideals aren't a luxury that you can't afford. They're a necessity you can't live without if you want to maintain your integrity amid the chaos and moral corruption all around you.
Some highly ambitious people have a second bottom line, something more spiritually or emotionally fulfilling that motivates them to achieve great things in their work. They may feel the need to serve, for example, or to live with integrity and self-respect.
For example, James Autry, president of Meredith Corporation's magazine group in Des Moines, Iowa, sees management as a calling-a life engagement that combines an executive's technical and administrative skills with vision, compassion, honesty and trust. The goal, he says, is to create an environment of trust where people can grow, feel fulfilled, contribute to a common good and share financial and psychic rewards.
Says Autry: "Management is, in fact, a sacred trust in which the well-being of other people is put in your care during most of their waking hours."
To honor that trust, Autry, author of Love and Profit: The Art of Caring Leadership (1991, New York: William Morrow), recommends five simple guidelines for managers:
- Avoid in-box management. Don't sit around waiting for employees to make errors. Instead, develop open lines of communication that allow you to avoid most mistakes, and to prevent those that do occur from turning into catastrophes.
- Care about yourself. You can't jump-start anyone else if your own batteries are weak.
- Be honest. It will help you set fair standards and maintain them across the board.
- Trust your employees. They may surprise you with hard work and good ideas.
- If you don't care about people, get out of management be-fore it's too late. "Save yourself a heart attack," says Autry, "and save many other people a lot of daily grief."
Other heartfelt career contributions are inspired strictly by the "joy of service." For 44-year-old lawyer Gregory Vranicar, the "call to serve" was so strong that even an active religious life, volunteer work and fatherhood couldn't satisfy the void created by the absence of meaningful employment. After a year of searching for the right answer (which included time with a career counselor and three to five informational interviews per week), Vranicar became the fund development director for the Midwest Christian Counseling Center, a mental health agency with strong religious grounding and a community-service bent. In doing so, he relinquished his 10-year partnership with one of Kansas City's most prestigious corporate law firms.
It wasn't some violent dislike for the law that impelled Vranicar into such a bold career change. Rather, it was a fundamental awareness that time was passing and he wasn't using his wisely enough.
Still, it wasn't an easy decision. It didn't help that his two sons are approaching adolescence, and in the not-so-distant future, there will be two sets of college-tuition bills to worry about.
"It took me a year to figure out what I wanted to do and then find the right place to do it," says Vranicar. "But I know I did the right thing. For the first time in a very long time, I can say, 'I love my job.'"
Vranicar says he was inspired by the book Meaning and Medicine (1991, New York: Bantam), in which author Larry Dossey suggests that job satisfaction is a much more valid predictor of heart disease than major physical risks such as smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Vranicar decided to follow Dr. Dossey's advice and "put myself in a place where meaning and work can be in sync."
Improved personal health may be a wonderful side effect of Vranicar's career change but it wasn't his strongest or only motivation. He is also a deeply religious person with bedrock of strong faith. He believes firmly, "Every person is a child of God, and regardless of economic status, every person has his or her own unique story. We are here to serve each other and to make lives richer."
Vranicar says his career switch has inspired changes in other aspects of his life.
"I'm more of a 'feeling' person now," he says. "The kind of work I'm doing now requires so much heart."
