The ethical mind. A conversation with psychologist Howard Gardner

Business leadership has become synonymous in the public eye with unethical behavior. Widespread scandals, massive layoffs, and inflated executive pay packages have led many to believe that corporate wrongdoing is the status quo. That's why it's more important than ever that those at the top mend relationships with customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Professor Gardner has spent many years studying the relationship between psychology and ethics at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. In this interview with HBR senior editor Bronwyn Fryer, Gardner talks about what he calls the ethical mind, which helps individuals aspire to do good work that matters to their colleagues, companies, and society in general. In an era when workers are overwhelmed by too much information and feel pressured to win at all costs, Gardner believes, it's easy to lose one's way. What's more, employees look to leaders for cues as to what's appropriate and what's not. So if you're a leader, what's the best way to stand up to ethical pressures and set a good example? First and foremost, says Gardner, you must believe that retaining an ethical compass is essential to the health of your organization. Then you must state your ethical beliefs and stick to them. You should also test yourself rigorously to make sure you're adhering to your values, take time to reflect on your beliefs, find multiple mentors who aren't afraid to speak truth to your power, and confront others' egregious behavior as soon as it arises. In the end, Gardner believes, the world hangs in the balance between right and wrong, good and bad, success and disaster. "You need to decide which side you're on:" he concludes, "and do the right thing."     

Sense and reliability. A conversation with celebrated psychologist Karl E. Weick. Interview by Diane L. Coutu

Most of us see the organizations we operate in--our schools or companies, for instance--as monolithic and predictable, subjecting us to deadening routines and demanding dehumanizing conformity. But companies are more unpredictable and more alive than we imagine, according to Karl Weick, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan and an expert on organizational behavior. Weick says executives can learn a lot about managing the unexpected from organizations that can't afford surprises in the workplace--nuclear plants, firefighting units, or emergency rooms, for instance. In this conversation with HBR senior editor Diane Coutu, Weick examines the characteristics of these high-reliability organizations (HROs) and suggests ways that other organizations can implement their practices and philosophies. The key difference between high-reliability organizations and other companies is the mindfulness with which people in most HROs react to even very weak signs that some kind of change or danger is approaching. For instance, nuclear-plant workers Weick has studied immediately readjust dials and system commands when an automated system doesn't respond as expected. Weick contrasts this with Ford's inability to pick up on weak signs in the 1970s that there were lethal problems with the design of the Pinto gas tank. HROs are fixated on failure. They eschew plans and blueprints, looking instead for the details that might be missing. And they refuse to simplify reality, Weick says. Indeed, by cultivating broad work experiences and enlarging their repertoires, generalist executives can avoid getting paralyzed by "cosmology episodes"--events that make people feel as though the universe is no longer a rational, orderly system.     

Technology and human vulnerability. A conversation with MIT's Sherry Turkle

For most of the last 50 years, technology knew its place. Yes, we all spent a lot of time with it, but even five years ago, few people would seriously claim that technology had taken over their lives. It's very different today. Technology is not only ubiquitous but has become highly intrusive as well. On the Internet, people invent imaginary identities in virtual chat rooms, playing out the lives they wish they really lived. Children are growing up with interactive toy animals that respond to them like real pets. Indeed, some critics claim that technology has not just entered our private lives but started to define them. If we want to be sure we'll like who we've become in 50 years, we need to take a closer look at the psychological effects of current and future technologies. The smartest people in technology have already started. Universities like MIT and Caltech have been pouring millions of dollars into researching what happens when technology and humanity meet. To learn more about this research, HBR senior editor Diane L. Coutu spoke with one of the field's most distinguished scholars: Sherry Turkle, MIT's Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and the author of Life on the Screen, which explores how the internet is changing the way we define ourselves. In a conversation with Coutu, Turkle discusses the psychological dynamics that can develop between people and their high-tech toys, describes ways in which machines might substitute for managers, and explains how technology is redefining what it means to be human. She warns that relatively small differences in technology design can have disproportionate effects on how humans relate to technology, to one another, and to themselves.     

Negotiating without a net. A conversation with the NYPD's Dominick J. Misino

In some languages, the word for "business" is the same as the word for "negotiation." That's not really surprising: Every interaction--with customers, suppliers, and even partners and investors--entails negotiation. And some involve very high stakes: The breakdown in negotiations between Hewlett-Packard's management and its founding families, for instance, put the company's future in doubt. Dominick Misino is a man who knows about negotiating when the stakes are at their very highest. As a hostage negotiator for the New York Police Department, Misino successfully persuaded the hijacker of Lufthansa Flight 592 to lay down his gun and turn himself in. Misino spent the last six years of his career as a primary negotiator, handling more than 200 incidents and never losing a life. Since his retirement in 1995, he has taught negotiating skills to law enforcement officials, military personnel, and business executives. Anyone can become a crisis negotiator, Misino contends. It takes what he calls "applied common sense." Be polite. Listen. Acknowledge the other guy's point of view (no matter what it is). But it's clear that in dealing with hijackers, kidnappers, and child molesters, Misino is far from passive. Negotiation, he says, is really a series of small agreements, and he is adept at orchestrating those agreements from the start so that his adversary learns to trust him and come around to his point of view. In vivid and sometimes hair-raising detail, Misino demonstrates how he gets criminals to trust police officers enough to refrain from harming innocent parties and give themselves up. Many of the techniques he describes are surprisingly applicable to business negotiations, where the parties may seem equally intractable and failure is not an option.     

Sleep deficit: the performance killer. A conversation with Harvard Medical School Professor Charles A. Czeisler

Companies today glorify the executive who logs 100-hour workweeks, the road warrior who lives out of a suitcase in multiple time zones, and the negotiator who takes a red-eye to make an 8 A.M. meeting. But to Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, the Baldino Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, this kind of corporate behavior is the antithesis of high performance. In fact, he says, it endangers employees and puts their companies at risk. In this interview, Czeisler describes four neurobiological functions that affect sleep duration and quality as well as individual performance. When these functions fall out of alignment because of sleep deprivation, people operate at a far lower level of performance than they would if they were well rested. Czeisler goes on to observe that corporations have all kinds of policies designed to protect employees- rules against smoking, sexual harassment, and so on-but they push people to the brink of self-destruction by expecting them to work too hard, too long, and with too little sleep. The negative effects on cognitive performance, Czeisler says, can be similar to those that occur after drinking too much alcohol: "We now know that 24 hours without sleep or a week of sleeping four or five hours a night induces an impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of .1%. We would never say, 'This person is a great worker! He's drunk all the time!' yet we continue to celebrate people who sacrifice sleep for work." Czeisler recommends that companies institute corporate sleep policies that discourage scheduled work beyond 16 consecutive hours as well as working or driving immediately after late-night or overnight flights. A sidebar to this article summarizes the latest developments in sleep research.     

Storytelling that moves people. A conversation with screenwriting coach Robert McKee

When executives need to persuade an audience, most try to build a case with facts, statistics, and some quotes from authorities. In other words, they resort to "companyspeak," the tools of rhetoric they have been trained to use. In this conversation with HBR, Robert McKee, the world's best-known screenwriting lecturer, argues that executives can engage people in a much deeper--and ultimately more convincing--way if they toss out their Power-Point slides and memos and learn to tell good stories. As human beings, we make sense of our experiences through stories. But becoming a good storyteller is hard. It requires imagination and an understanding of what makes a story worth telling. All great stories deal with the conflict between subjective expectations and an uncooperative objective reality. They show a protagonist wrestling with antagonizing forces, not a rosy picture of results meeting expectations--which no one ends up believing. Consider the CEO of a biotech start-up that has discovered a chemical compound to prevent heart attacks. He could make a pitch to investors by offering up market projections, the business plan, and upbeat, hypothetical scenarios. Or he could captivate them by telling the story of his father, who died of a heart attack, and of the CEO's subsequent struggle against various antagonists--nature, the FDA, potential rivals--to bring to market the effective, low-cost test that might have prevented his father's death. Good storytellers are not necessarily good leaders, but they do share certain traits. Both are self-aware, and both are skeptics who realize that all people--and institutions--wear masks. Compelling stories can be found behind those masks.     

Lessons in power: Lyndon Johnson revealed. A conversation with historian Robert A. Caro

No one can lead who does not first acquire power, and no leader can be great who does not know how to use that power. The trouble is that the combination of the two skills is rare. Amassing power requires ambition, a focused pragmatism, and a certain ruthlessness that is often at odds with the daring, idealistic vision needed to achieve great things with that power. The tension is as real in business as it is in politics. This magazine is replete with examples of successful senior managers who could not make the switch from ambitious executive to corporate leader because they did not know what to do with the power they had so expertly accumulated. Robert Caro is a student of power. For the past 27 years, the two-time Pulitzer prize-winning biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson has focused on the question of how Johnson amassed and wielded power. Caro's deep understanding of the inner workings of power offers senior executives a nuanced picture of leadership at the highest level. In this wide-ranging conversation, Caro shares his insights about the nature of power, the complexity of ambition, and the role that the greater good can play in the making of a leader. Power doesn't always corrupt, he insists. But what it invariably does is reveal a leader's true nature. "Today, when CEOs have acquired more and more power to change our lives," Caro says,"they have become like presidents in their own right, and they, too, need to align themselves with something greater than themselves if they hope to become truly great leaders."     

In praise of boundaries. A conversation with Miss Manners. Interview by Diane L. Coutu

The past three decades have been a time of increasing informality in the American workplace. It's easy to characterize this growing comfort with the casual as a positive step for workplace culture, an outgrowth of the American democratic belief in workers' equality. Informal environments are said to be more trusting and open, and workers who are free to express their personalities are more comfortable and thus more creative--right? According to etiquette guru Judith Martin--known far and wide as Miss Manners--informality in the workplace may do more harm than good. Without some formality in social intercourse, Miss Manners argues, human interactions end up being governed by laws, which are too heavy-handed to serve as a guide through the nuances of personal--or professional--behavior. Since our earliest beginnings, we have developed formal rules to accompany shared human experiences, such as eating and mourning. Yet, says Miss Manners, something in us rebels against form and etiquette, and every so often, an anti-manners movement takes hold, and people come to believe that following etiquette is unnatural. One recent such movement has led to the belief that a distinction between our work life and our professional life is unnecessary. If we hope to reassure our customers that we are indeed professional, however, we need to be aware of the boundaries of professional behavior. On the whole, Miss Manners argues, informality in the workplace leads to a host of problems, from making employees feel pressured to "socialize" with coworkers during weekends and evenings to sexual harassment. Despite the shortcomings of informality in the American workplace, though, Miss Manners believes that we have the best code of manners the world has ever seen-in theory. In practice, American etiquette is undoubtedly still a work in progress.     

A reading list for Bill Gates--and you. A conversation with literary critic Harold Bloom. Interview by Diane L. Coutu

In today's technology-driven world, who has time to pick up a 400-page novel? Most executives don't--they have urgent e-mails to answer, training seminars to attend, meetings to lead, and trade publications to scan. But according to Harold Bloom, one of America's most influential scholars, they should make time in their hectic schedules to read great works. In a wide-ranging conversation with HBR senior editor Diane Coutu, Bloom discusses the importance of literature: every individual--regardless of profession--needs to stretch his or her mind and reflect now and again on the human condition. "By reading great imaginative literature, you can prepare yourself for surprise and even get a kind of strength that welcomes and exploits the unexpected," he says. Because there are so many great works and there is so little time, Bloom presents a reading list for busy executives. Shakespeare's King Lear can teach businesspeople about change. Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays capture the ethos of the American spirit--individualism and inventiveness. Bloom says Sigmund Freud's conceptions "form the only Western mythology that contemporary intellectuals have in common." And people will never fully understand some aspects of themselves until they read Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote. In short, Bloom believes the humanities have much to offer businesspeople: great books broaden their awareness and their range of sensibility, he says. But reading literature will not make businesspeople more moral, he cautions. Bloom also discusses other topics such as how to read well, the state of popular fiction, the role of irony, and the subject of change.     

Putting leaders on the couch. A conversation with Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries. Interview by Diane L. Coutu

Much of the business literature on leadership starts with the assumption that leaders are rational beings. But irrationality is integral to human nature, and inner conflict often contributes to the drive to succeed. Although a number of business scholars have explored the psychology of executives, Manfred F.R Kets de Vries has made the analysis of CEOs his life's work. In this article, Kets de Vries, a psychoanalyst, author, and instead professor, draws on three decades of study to describe the psychological profile of successful CEOs. He explores senior executives' vulnerabilities, which are often intensified by followers' attempts to manipulate their leaders. Leaders, he says, have an uncanny ability to awaken transferential processes--in which people transfer the dynamics of past relationships onto present interactions--among their employees and even in themselves. These processes can present themselves in a number of ways, sometimes negatively. What's more, many top executives, being middle-aged, suffer from depression. Mid-life prompts a reappraisal of career identity, and by the time a leader is a CEO, an existential crisis is often imminent. This can happen with anyone, but the probability is higher with CEOs, and senior executives because so many have devoted themselves exclusively to work. Not all CEOs are psychologically unhealthy, of course. Healthy leaders are talented in self-observation and self-analysis, Kets de Vries says. The best are highly motivated to spend time on self-reflection. Their lives are in balance, they can play, they are creative and inventive, and they have the capacity to be nonconformist. "Those who accept the madness in themselves may be the healthiest leaders of all," he concludes.     

The effects of perceived salesperson listening effectiveness in the financial industry

The goals of this paper are twofold: (a) to test the multidimensional structure of the listening construct and (b) to identify major consequences of perceived salesperson listening effectiveness. A survey was completed by more than 400 buyer–seller dyads. Following structural equations modelling analyses, results show that customers’ perceptions of listening effectiveness is positively (and strongly) associated with service quality, trust, satisfaction, word-of-mouth propensity, purchase intentions and sales performance. Numerous managerial implications are proposed to entice organisations to emphasise salespeople listening skills as a competitive advantage. Research opportunities are also presented to accrue academic efforts in understanding the truly rich role of listening.     

Leadership and the psychology of turnarounds

Turnaround champions--those leaders who manage to bring distressed organizations back from the brink of failure--are often acclaimed for their canny financial and strategic decision making. But having studied their work closely, Harvard Business School's Rosabeth Moss Kanter emphasizes another aspect of their achievement. These leaders reverse the cycle of corporate decline through deliberate interventions that increase the level of communication, collaboration, and respect among their managers. Ailing companies descend into what Kanter calls a "death spiral," which typically works this way: After an initial blow to the company's fortunes, people begin pointing fingers and deriding colleagues in other parts of the business. Tensions rise and collaboration declines. Once they are no longer acting in concert, people find themselves less able to effect change. Eventually, many come to believe they are helpless. Passivity sets in. Finally, the ultimate pathology of troubled companies takes hold: denial. Rather than volunteer an opinion that no one else seems to share, people engage in collective pretense to ignore what they individually know. To counter these dynamics, Kanter says, and reverse the company's slide, the CEO needs to apply certain psychological interventions--specifically, replacing secrecy and denial with dialogue, blame and scorn with respect, avoidance and turf protection with collaboration, and passivity and helplessness with initiative. The author offers in-depth accounts of how the CEOs at Gillette, Invensys, and the BBC used these interventions to guide their employees out of corporate free fall and onto a more productive path.     

Pricing and the psychology of consumption

Most executives know how pricing influences the demand for a product, but few of them realize how it affects the consumption of a product. In fact, most companies don't even believe they can have an effect on whether customers use products they have already paid for. In this article, the authors argue that the relationship between pricing and consumption lies at the core of customer strategy. The extent to which a customer uses a product during a certain time period often determines whether he or she will buy the product again. So pricing tactics that encourage people to use the products they've paid for help companies build long-term relationships with customers. The link between pricing and consumption is clear: People are more likely to consume a product when they are aware of its cost. But for many executives, the idea that they should draw consumers' attention to the price that was paid for a product or service is counterintuitive. Companies have long sought to mask the costs of their goods and services in order to boost sales. And rightly so--if a company fails to make the initial sale, it won't have to worry about consumption. So to promote sales, health club managers encourage members to get the payment out of the way early; HMOs encourage automatic payroll deductions; and cruise lines bundle small, specific costs into a single, all-inclusive fee. The problem is, by masking how much a buyer has spent on a given product, these pricing tactics decrease the likelihood that the buyer will actually use it. This article offers some new approaches to pricing--how and when to charge for goods and services--that may boost consumption.     

Revisiting the ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment : A conversation

In 1991, futurist Bruce E. Tonn proposed a ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment to the US Constitution. His proposed ‘Court of Generations’ lacked punitive powers but, hopefully, would have sufficient legitimacy to counteract extreme present-minded thinking evident in US political processes and institutions. Although Tonn's ‘Court of Generations’ Amendment has been well received in the futures community, who else has heard of it? Otherwise, has it made any difference? How can the cumbersome and nonfuturistic amendment procedure in the US Constitution generate a futures-oriented ‘Court of Generations’? And for those who sincerely look forward to a ‘Court of Generations,’ precisely what kind of tactically savvy visionary leadership will give the ‘Court of Generations’ any chance of being approved? During 1997, Vincent Kelly Pollard engaged Dr. Tonn in an Internet conversation aimed at clarifying these issues.     

Big Five personality traits and financial salesperson performance: An application of Chernoff faces

Identifying the personality traits of effective sales people has been a long-standing challenge to sales managers and researchers in a wide range of contexts from business-to-business, to retail and services. A definitive identification of the characteristics of the ideal salesperson remains elusive. We investigate the impact of the Big Five personality traits on the performance of salespersons in a large financial services organization, our purpose being to graphically illustrate how personality traits differ according to different levels of sales performance. We present the results graphically using Chernoff faces. The study demonstrates that this approach provides valuable insights to sales managers and has several possible applications in relation to financial salesperson performance management.     

Leveraging the synergies between design science and behavioral science research methods

For over two decades, information systems researchers have grappled with defining what constitutes good design science research. With too many older papers simply documenting the development of systems without a clear message of the contribution to science, design science fell out of favor with the information systems discipline. With the emergence of intelligent systems and the re-shaping of knowledge work, substantial effort has recently focused on articulating what constitutes a design science research contribution. In recent years, however, the discussion on the role of behavioral theory and behavioral research in complementing design science research has faded away. In this paper, we argue for a broader view on the synergies of behavioral and design science research with an emphasis on the greater role that behavioral science can take in shaping and validating design science research and motivating future research. We use the INSOLVE program of research as a proof of concept for how this synergistic relationship can be leveraged.     

Disciplining the shopfloor: A comparison of the disciplinary effects of managerial psychology and financial accounting

This paper is concerned with a theoretical and empirical examination of the nature and impact of two kinds of managerial discipline. Following Foucault's insight that discipline is embedded in routine social practices within modern power-knowledge regimes, we compare the technologies of psychological (i.e. human relations) and financial accounting managerial power in terms of their disciplinary effects on an all-male shopfloor of manual workers. The effect of management's attempt to communicate with, and be more available to, the shopfloor was only to reinforce worker suspicion and distrust. By contrast, but perhaps because this distrust was further confirmed by them, the financial accounts presented in a redundancy audit went unchallenged. The paper seeks to understand how financial, in contrast to psychological, discipline is rendered more effective because of the subjective positioning of male shopfloor workers as economic breadwinners with a tough, masculine, practical and independent sense of reality. In other words, the subjectivity of the male manual workers contributes significantly to the effective power of financial accounting to discipline labour.