Love, Honor, Duty, Forgiveness
Four Extraordinary Business Strategies

The longer I work with executives and businesses, the more I realize the value of old-fashioned terms like love, honor, duty, and forgiveness. Here's a whirl:

Obviously I'm not talking about romantic love or touchy-feely, Leo Buscaglia hugfest love. In 1979, M. Scott Peck wrote the book, The Road Less Traveled, which was The Purpose-Driven Life of the 1980s. It was on the bestseller lists for 15 consecutive years. In that book, Peck defined love as supporting another person's spiritual growth. I'm going to change that a little. I'm defining love in a business context as "respecting the other person and supporting his or her growth."

With that definition, imagine "loving" your boss, peers, direct reports, staff members, customers, suppliers, and competitors. In doing so, you would respect each person and you would support his or her growth as an individual. If that were the case, would you have time or desire to bad mouth other people or take advantage of them? Would you ever try to manipulate them or exploit them in a financial sense? If you knew you could get the short-term financial upper hand, would you implement your advantage and take the money? I don't think so. Not if you truly loved the other person. You would always treat them fairly and always make sure they gained from the situation. As a boss, you wouldn't humiliate the person in front of their peers because you know that doesn't accelerate individual growth.

Honoring another person means remaining open to their input. It means not cutting them off or avoiding their perspective. It doesn't mean you always agree with them, but it does mean you would never intentionally embarrass them. I really, really encourage you to read the book, Leadership & Self-Deception (The Arbinger Institute). This is one of the seven best business books I've ever read. It is so powerful because it shows us how we all deceive ourselves on a regular basis, and how that self-deception ruins business relationships and weakens business results. (And, as an added bonus, it shows how we hurt relationships in our personal lives as well.)

To me, "duty" means "doing what you should do even when you don't want to." In a business sense, duty refers to calling back that pain-in-the-butt customer even when you don't want to do it. Duty means always, always, always being honest about travel reimbursements. Duty means never, ever, ever slipping in a little extra special bonus that wasn't agreed upon. Duty means showing up when you said you would show up. Duty means being honest with your boss, your peers, your direct reports, and even your customers when it is not comfortable or easy to do.

At a workshop last year I was asked a brilliant question. We were discussing how to build an effective business relationship. One person said, "What happens if your trust with another person has been broken? How can you ever move past that and rebuild the relationship?" Wow, imagine standing in front of 50 people with the person's boss in the room and being asked that question. I didn't need my Starbucks Hot Chocolate Grande to wake up. Without thinking very long I said, "Forgiveness. Unless you are able to forgive the other person, you won't be able to build trust with him or her. That doesn't mean you're going to ignore what they did, but if you can't forgive than you might as well move on." During the many reports on Pope John Paul II, I was reminded of how he forgave the man who shot him. If the pope could forgive a guy who planted a bullet in his chest, couldn't we all benefit from forgiving people for saying rude things, damaging our reputation, or dropping the ball with an important client? As I told the workshop participant, the person who benefits the most is the one who forgives the other person. When we forgive someone, we no longer have to carry around the incident and our associated anger.

If you want to accelerate your career, I encourage you to dial into the old-fashioned virtues that don't get as much attention as they used to get.

Republishing Articles

Each month my e-newsletter gets republished in approximately 20 blogs, on-line publications, and internal publications for businesses, universities, and not-for-profit organizations. If you would like to republish all or part of my monthly articles, please send me an e-mail at dan@thecoughlincompany.com with "Republishing Article" in the subject heading. I will send you the article in a word document. All I ask is that you include my name as the author of the article and a short paragraph at the end of the article about me with a link to my website.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

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