Morality

As much as we need to feel that we belong and that others want us, it is even more critical to know that we matter, that we have something to offer, and that our contribution is seen and appreciated. Here are some actions that can facilitate a culture of mattering.

The experience taught me a lesson about fear. It’s not just the dark and wicked emotion that we all wish would be gone because it seems excessive compared to its survival value in the relative safety of the 21st century. Like all emotions, it has an upside, for it possesses a certain goal orientation that urges us to act. When we move beyond our own selfish worlds, fear can give rise to moral emotions such as pro-social anger.

All of us can learn from paragons of strengths. The film, Selma, about Martin Luther King Jr. and the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, is an opportunity to reflect upon and celebrate the virtue of open-mindedness and judgment.

Although life may simply be a meaningless ride that we try and cloak with a fulfilling purpose, humor allows us to laugh at the insignificance of most things in the vast flow of human experience and yet connect to what we find truly important.

Approaching the world as fundamentally fair makes us sensitive to when it is not. This is good and powerful and essential for proportionality and equity in our world. It is how laws are made and changed. It is what calls us to protect the vulnerable. But if we are not attentive to the biases and wishes cast by our strengths, they can also blind us to other values that may be at stake. You might not see that there were other facts holding the scales in balance.

Civility is the subject of Christine Porath’s chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship. She presents the state of empirical research into civility in the workplace. She notes that there has been less empirical research into the benefits of civility than into the costs of incivility. She also makes several suggestions for building civility into workplace cultures.

There’s a saying that only a family will plant an oak avenue because it takes so long for it to grow, one has to be able to think of one’s grandchildren enjoying it. Prudence is taking that long view. It involves creating, assessing, and harmonizing multiple goals. It may involve making hard choices.

If virtuousness is excellence in the human soul, what comprises excellence in the soul of an organization or business?

How do we transcend self-interest and contribute to the greater good of our own communities? I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind and newly appointed professor of ethical leadership at the NYU Stern School of Business. I asked him for practical ways I could apply his Moral Foundations Theory with my family, my business clients, my community efforts, and as a practicing member of the positive psychology community,

Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion, holds a view that can help bridge the ever-widening gaps that occur in politics. His research on Moral Foundations Theory suggests that there is more to morality than caring and fairness. In fact, he describes the moral landscape as being like a tongue with six taste buds.

Do you think of marketplace behavior as neutral, negative, or moral? Paul Zak and other researchers argue that market behavior on the whole is moral behavior that both benefits from and contributes to social connectedness. Surprised? Read on.