TEDx Talks · Transcript · · Updated
Creating ethical cultures in business: Brooke Deterline at TEDxPresidio – Transcript
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- Brooke Deterline explains that courage is a skill that can be built with practice to act on values in the face of fear.
- Dr. Phil Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment showed that even ethical people can betray their values in challenging situations.
- Social fitness training helps retrain the brain to override natural fear responses and act consistently on personal values.
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Hi. So, I got an email last week from the conference organizer. Said, "Good news, you're going after Van Jones." And I thought, in whose alternate universe is it a good thing to follow Van?
And then I remembered, I'm here to talk about courage. Our ability to act from our hearts in the face of fear. And courage as a skill that we can build with practice.
So, thank you for this tremendous opportunity to practice. First, let's take a look at what does life look like without courage? The Enron fraud is the story of synergistic corruption. There are supposed to be checks and balances in the system. The lawyers are supposed to say no. The accountants are supposed to say no. The bankers are supposed to say no, but no one who is supposed to say no said no. So, has anything changed in the last 10 years?
And please raise your hands when you've had enough. Yeah, me too.
And it doesn't have to be this way. What if the people in these circumstances had the courage and the skills to act on their values in the face of fear? I met a man who did in exactly one of those types of circumstances. We'll call him Ted.
He found an illegal trading ring in his department, and he didn't know what to do, so he did nothing. And as the days passed and the stress built, he decided he would have to quit.
Uh he confided in his friend uh in another department, and his friend said to him, "If you went into the system, could you find the program?" And Ted said, "Yes." And his friend said, "Then you have no choice."
And what Ted says is he was reminded of who he was, of his values in that moment reflected by his friend. So, he came forward and justice prevailed. I had my own subtle experience with powerful situations. I was working for a company, and I found out the CEO was doing something unethical and illegal.
So, I called a meeting with my boss, the CFO, and his other direct reports. In a scenario that looked shockingly like this stock photo. And went to deliver the news, and I knew he would struggle. Um although a very ethically driven man, the CEO was also good friend of his.
So, I delivered the news, and he looked at me and he said, "I think we should do some more research and give it a little time." I was so dumbstruck by the answer that everything went into slow motion like it did when I was a kid playing soccer.
And I looked around, and everyone has their head down or is slowly nodding. And I was so perplexed. I know these people, they're good people.
And the last thing you want to do is put more time between when you know and when you say in a circumstance like this. So, I was confused, but the humbling part of the story for me is then my thought process goes to maybe we don't have to do anything.
Maybe it isn't such a big deal. I don't even have to say anything. And then I was given a gift. The CFO was called out of the room for a minute, and in that moment, I remembered, this is one of those moments.
This man hired me because he believed in me. He believed I would do my job and act on our shared values when it was hard. So, he came back into the room, I stepped back into time, and I said, "We should go to the board."
And he paused, and he looked at me, and he nodded. And we did. But what I will never forget is that I am and we all are vulnerable to situational influence all the time. It's just natural human wiring.
Thanks for sharing that. This from our founder, uh Dr. Phil Zimbardo. He found this out in 1971 when he conducted the famous Stanford Prison Experiment that showed that even the most ethical and compassionate among us can easily betray our values in the face of challenging situations.
I won't make you raise your hands for this one, but think back over the last 6 months. How many of you've been in a situation where you thought, "Someone should do something." Or I should I should say something. And think of the subtle ones cuz those are often the ones that get us.
And you and no one else did anything. It's natural, it's a natural human tendency to be a bystander, to follow a leader or a group that we know is doing something wrong for a sense of acceptance or sense of security.
The good news is we get to choose. Um but it's first, it's even harder for us in business to do the right thing. Research out of Harvard on ethical fading shows that when we're focused on operational objectives and you throw pressure on top, sound familiar?
The ethical implications of our acts will fade from our minds. Pay attention when people say, "This is business." Find out what they mean when they say that. So, now the good news is we get to choose.
Um between stimulus and response, there is a space. And our work is about using that space to get us to reconnect to our values, to our hearts, to our natural wisdom to act courageously.
The kids in our program call it the magic pause button. The way we do that is we use something called social fitness training. It was developed over 25 years by Dr. Lynn Henderson. And the great news about it is with practice, we can actually retrain our brains to override our natural fear response to act consistently from on our values in the face of fear.
Start to think the key aspects of her work to remember. Start to recognize your patterns. Where do you stand up easily and where do you not? Once you know your patterns, practice the situations that scare you.
We call them social flight simulations, and just like with pilots, if you practice with some level of fear, it creates the muscle memory, so that when the actual moment arises, you can act in the way that you've practiced. Um you start to use that shot of fear or adrenaline as your cue for mindful action versus avoidance.
In neuroscience, they call it priming the brain. So, how do we foster these ethically courageous corporate cultures? Become a pattern interrupter. Start to interrupt your own patterns. Create your own pause button. Create it for your teams in your organizations.
I think if we we can all agree if we look at the challenges facing our economic system, our political system, and the world at large, we're going to need a bigger pause button. What I also know by our work is that we're all born with the innate capacity for courage. It's a choice, one I hope we'll all make, and it matters. Thank you.