Aligning Personal Values with Company Core Values, Do no harm

In my?first article in this series , I stress the importance of aligning personal values with those that you uphold in the workplace. In the next 10 posts, I will be covering my values and how they can be actioned in the workplace.

Family Rule No. 4: Do no harm.

I grew up in a rather difficult environment, and unfortunately so did my boys in different ways. While we have all built different measures of resilience, we've also built tendencies to be defensive and that could be harmful to others in many ways.

As a family, we decided that just because others had hurt us, or each other, it doesn't mean that we should continue that behavior too. We decided to take different actions, break the cycle, and ultimately do no harm.

At home, the more visible ways this rule is followed can be in the following ways:

1. Do not answer any emotional response with a physical or verbal attack.
2. Focus on controlling your reactions since you can't control others, if you need to withdraw to limit an escalation it may be a better step.
3. Be compassionate and love those, even if you have been hurt in the event of a misunderstanding; teaching them that forgiveness is possible.
4. Learning positive and empowering behavior instead of using hurtful words to destroy others.
5. Work on forgiveness.

These are simple, but with your ideas and values around doing less harm in the home, you may be surprised at what changes it may bring you.

How can the practice of "Do no harm" be applied in the workplace?

It depends on the culture of your organization, team makeup, and value system. Many organizations are dysfunctional, coming from stitched-together teams and a variety of disciplines. Do your best by implementing these:

1. Corporate responsibility, especially when it comes to consumer safety; including recalls and transparency.
2. Ensuring brinkmanship or zero-sum games do not exist. Essentially, in order for one person to be promoted, someone else's career doesn't get destroyed.
3. When hiring, you're bringing someone in to perform a role that will be not only good for the company but good for their career and ultimately bring them into a succession plan.
4. Don't harm the product or service with your opinions, align the merit of what you're offering with the quality of what it does versus what you think about the world.
5. Assume that there's unification and everyone is goal-oriented when communicating on business calls, don't take it personally. You're not there to harm one another.

How can?"do no harm"?be a value identified while interviewing an organization?

If this is an important value for you and you're interviewing companies, some questions you may want to ask in the interview process may include the below:

1. How do we handle customer transparency with our products and services?
2. What do performance reviews and promotion plans look like? How do you encourage growth?
3. What does the organization or teams do to prevent interpersonal communications from impacting business and goal-oriented meetings?

The term "do no harm" is often heard in the medical field, it applies at home and in the workplace too. Harm can take many shapes and forms. What happens at the workplace can leave scars on people for years that structure the way they move through their teams and future places of work for decades to come. As leaders, we share a responsibility to impact the way those we lead, and showing them that we care about them will pay dividends for the organization.

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