You Can’t Be Neutral All the Time…

I recently found a blog that has some great content, it’s called “Slow Leadership” and it contains articles on effective leadership, to include things such as ethics and morals in the office setting.

The following article is similar to one I wrote about the importance of honesty in the workplace, you can read it here. This one, on the subject of loyalty also contains a similar message.

In the end, you have a choice to make. You can accept everything your bosses tell you as fact, and be complicit in their wrong-doing, or you can make up your own mind based upon the facts that you learn on your own.

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in times of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality” – Dante

Enjoy the article…

The Lure of Fake Security

Posted on 02 March 2009

Why you need convictions even more in turbulent times

I don’t mean the kind that come as a result of appearing in a court of law; I mean the type that the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as “. . . a strong persuasion or belief; the state of being convinced.” ‘Conviction’ and ‘convinced’ come from the same basic word and idea: that you hold to a position because you have examined the evidence and reached a firm conclusion.

Anyone can hold some belief or an opinion on any basis whatever-with or without actual evidence-but, for me, a conviction can only come about as a direct result of discovering, weighing and sifting evidence, for and against, and using your mind to come to a reasoned position. I think this is important. The workplace, and management teaching and practice in general, are full of unexamined beliefs and opinions: notions that exist on the basis of hearsay, anecdotes, insufficient evidence, disproved evidence or no evidence at all. Where are the skeptics ready to point out how many organizational emperors have no clothes?

I recently came across this quotation from Josef Stalin, the former Soviet dictator, which seems to me to sum up perfectly the attitude of all too many of today’s macho managers: “I prefer my people to be loyal out of fear rather than conviction. Convictions can change but fear remains.”

Convictions can indeed change. That is their strength. Since real convictions depend on rational agreement to a body of evidence, if new evidence comes along (or old evidence is disproved) a conviction can, and should, be changed or dropped altogether.

Dictators, whether they are found in presidential palaces or corporate boardrooms, dislike the whole idea of ‘ordinary’ people questioning what they have been told. It makes them too hard to control and threatens the dictator’s security and position. That’s why they prefer to rule by fear and impose obedience to their views.

“But I have a right to my beliefs, don’t I?” One of the attitudes that I often observe-and dislike greatly-is summed up in that trite phrase: “I have a right to my beliefs.” Like all truly pernicious ideas, it is both true in one sense and dangerously false in another.

In a free country, no one should be forced into accepting anything that they don’t truly believe, whether by social pressure, political pressure or any other kind of coercion. In that sense, you do indeed have a right to your beliefs, provided that you don’t act them out if that will produce behavior that is contrary to the law. However, this isn’t how the phrase is generally used. Instead it’s used to prevent challenges to irrational and evidence-free beliefs. It’s used to claim that you should not be asked to explain why you believe whatever you say you do; that for anyone else to challenge your beliefs is somehow unacceptable.

A manager can believe, for example, that people will only work if they are bribed or forced to do so, and-despite all the evidence proving that this is not so-he or she can create a corporate system built on that myth, and inflict it on others, because that is what they believe. . . and (chorus) they have a right to their beliefs and opinions.

Let’s be plain. No right of free speech can make what you say correct. You may be allowed by the law to say it, but that doesn’t stop it lying anywhere along the spectrum from sublime truth to total rubbish. Besides, I cannot see that anyone has a ‘right’ to push their opinions onto others-especially if those views ignore plain, basic facts-just because it suits them.

“But it’s what I feel!” Another pernicious idea going the rounds equates emotion-passion-with some species of correctness. If you believe whatever you believe with real emotion-if you’re passionate in your belief-that somehow makes it better or more ‘authentic’. That’s an abuse of the concept of authenticity. Why should it matter if your passion is authentic, if what it’s directed towards is wrong? If you are truly passionate about something, the passion itself may be authentic, in the sense that it is real to you. But, if you use ‘authentic’ in the sense of “based on fact; not fake or imitation,” a good deal of the passion being spread around in the world is definitely not based on fact-it’s based only on myths and common falsehoods.

Quite a lot is fake too, acted out by people who have found it a useful way to sell anything from dubious ideas to cheap make-up.

The poet W. B. Yeats expressed this clearly in his poem ‘The Second Coming’ where he wrote:

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction,
while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

Today too, the ‘best’-in the sense of those who would try to base the way we live on civilized and rational principles-seem dangerously short on real conviction, while there is no shortage of passionately intense proponents of panaceas, quick fixes and hokey ‘cures’ for all our ills.

Since when has emotion been proof of anything save itself?

Where next? What are you truly convinced about? How rigorously do you check out whatever you put your trust in, whether fact or system or teaching? How openly do you base your actions on your convictions? How ready are you to change them if the evidence moves against you?

I ask because, if thinking people fail to stand up for rationality and evidence, we will get the alternative: a world of work dominated by passionate advocates for untested and irrational notions, often backed up by force.

The more confused and afraid people become-and there’s a good deal of both around right now-the more they long for some certainty in the world.

The proponents of blind belief are right there, handing out fake versions of certainty. It’s tough to be the person who points out the plain truth that there is no certainty in the world (and never has been), but vitally necessary if we’re not to be swept along by plausible, power-mad rogues.

The only bastion that’s proof against the most passionately held belief in nonsense is to demand the evidence. Skeptics often have a bad name (usually given them by people who fear that the skeptic will uncover their particular fraud), but they don’t reject all beliefs. They just want proof before believing.

Is that so wrong?

This post was written by:

Carmine Coyote – who has written 320 posts on Slow Leadership.

Carmine Coyote is the founder and editor of Slow Leadership, with a career that stretches from early employment as an economist, through periods in government service, academia and several multinational companies, to retiring as CEO of a US consulting company and partner in a large business services firm. Carmine now lives in Arizona, but is British for all that.