The Need for a Moral Compass

We are in the middle of a profound sea of change affecting all aspects of life: social, cultural, economic, and political. Changes are being played out all over the world. Prompted by the alienation and uncertainty of our age, people—now more than ever—want to find a reliable moral compass. They want to integrate their whole selves; integrate who they are with what they do. Some are coming to recognize a deep-seated drive within each one of us to use our talents, intelligence and imagination for the greater good.

—From a talk given by the late James L. Nolan, author of Doing the Right Thing at Work

Nearly every company has a values statement, but rarely can the typical employee recite it—or even articulate the ways the company practices them. Values should be more than a plaque on a wall or a bulleted list on a website. They are guiding principles and serve as our inner voice to advise us about what is right or wrong. It is important that personal and professional values are integrated and aligned. A finely tuned moral compass can provide us with a set of core values that help guide our decisions throughout our lives. Ideally, there should be a balance between what is good for us and what is good for our company (and society in general).

Leaders are not likely to begin their careers with a fully developed moral compass. Good moral and ethical judgment is learned and cultivated over the course of a career. Over time, a person’s moral compass will likely evolve based on some combination of faith, life experiences, relationships, and the simple passage of time. Leaders with a strong moral compass will work hard to live up to their values and make sure the colleagues and clients in their circle of influence will always feel the positive impact of those values. My moral compass has largely been determined by how I was raised by my parents, my life and work experiences, the crucible of adversity, helpful mentors, friends who challenge me, and my strong faith. How about you?

The most important aspect of having a moral compass is actually using that moral compass. If we invest in developing a moral compass and then ignore what it tells us or never read it at all, I hope we can agree it does us absolutely no good. By “reading” our moral compass, I simply mean thoughtfully and logically considering our choices in a given situation and making sure our internal values and ethics square up with the decisions we make. Are they well aligned or are they in conflict?

With leadership comes not only rights and privileges, but also duties and obligations. I am making the basic assumption that if you’re reading this post, you desire to accept these duties and obligations and to be men and women leaders of strong character who strive to do the right thing at work and serve the greater good, as my dear friend and mentor Jim Nolan described in the quote at the top of the post. Many of us are tired of the division, confusion, and anger so prevalent in society today and want to make a positive difference in the world (and in the workplace). If so, how do we continue to refine, develop, and use our moral compass? How do we apply these positive behaviors?

Six Ideas for Effectively Using Your Moral Compass

• Do you have the right list? Clarify your core values. Write a list of what they are, then modify your behavior to work with your values rather than against them. Distinguish between your aspirational values and your actual values. In other words, there are values you truly live day in and day out and other values you aspire to achieve but have yet to act on. I recommend that your list of actual core values be five or less.
• Ask the right questions. To find out if the core values you have selected are ones you actually live and act on, ask yourself the following questions:

Are you willing to fight for them?

Are you willing to sacrifice for them?

Are you willing to spend time on them?

Are you willing to share them publicly with others?

By wrestling with and eventually answering these questions, you can begin the journey of discovering what really matters to you, aligning your actions with your core values, and raising your expectations for how business can be a positive force in our society.

• Navigate the challenges. There will often be stress and negative pressure associated with situations and encounters where you need to rely on your moral compass and make the right decisions. It can feel like a shock to the system if you are not prepared. The capacity to manage these challenges will be critical to your long-term success in living out your values in the workplace.
• Resist excuses. “Everybody else is doing it.” “It’s not my responsibility.” “It’s not that big of a deal, and we should let it go this time.” “I am afraid of the ramifications if I speak up.” When you ignore your moral compass and hide your values in the face of challenging ethical situations, you are making harmful compromises that eat away at you and diminish your overall leadership. Resist this temptation. Take a stand.
• Keep it simple. The mere idea of engaging your moral compass may invoke perceptions of a standard that is almost impossible to achieve. Far from it! Consider focusing on the small acts of good, ethical, and moral behavior that can help you make good use of your moral compass and develop them at the same time. Treat others well. Honor your commitments. Don’t lie or mislead. Give proper credit where it is deserved. Practice servant leadership inside your company and in your community. Own your mistakes. Be humble. These behaviors are basic yet powerful, and all of us are capable of exhibiting them each day. These behaviors can also serve as a supportive foundation to help you make the more difficult choices that will inevitably come your way throughout your career.
• Be consistent and courageous. Like it or not, fully utilizing the moral compass you have carefully worked hard to build requires you to be a consistent role model. You can't ask others to follow an ethical and moral path in the workplace with certain expected behaviors if you are not willing to consistently do the same. That would be the worst form of hypocrisy. Be prepared at times to walk a lonely road. It takes courage to realize that you may sometimes be the only person willing to take a stand and do the right thing . . . and do it anyway.

I hope these six ideas will appropriately frame your thinking about ways to fully engage your moral compass. Utilizing your moral compass is important, but so is developing approaches to strengthen it. How do you strengthen your moral compass? Where can you go for help and encouragement?

Four Ideas for Strengthening Your Moral Compass

1. Seek out good mentors and role models. Who do you know who has a strong moral compass? Who models the right behaviors you wish to emulate? Who can you turn to for answers to your difficult ethical or moral questions? Reflect carefully about your current work colleagues or professionals outside of your company who may be willing to spend time with you in a mentoring capacity. This can also include family and close friends. Always be clear about what you are seeking from them and be respectful of their time. I have greatly benefited from these types of mentors over the course of my career, and I would have had a significantly more difficult path without their help.
2. Choose friends who will challenge you to grow. Iron sharpens iron and men sharpen men, as the old saying goes. Choose your friends well. Spend quality time with people who will challenge you to grow your moral compass. For example, I am part of a group that I helped co-found in 2007. We are all Catholic business people seeking practical ways to integrate our faith with our work. These good men and women are a great source of personal and spiritual growth for me, and I am grateful for their friendship and willingness to always challenge me to be a better parent, spouse, and business leader
3. Choose your environment wisely. Sometimes you just don’t fit a team or organization. You may have a feeling in the pit of your stomach that says you should just walk away because their values directly conflict with yours. Listen to that inner voice. If interviewing for a job, ask probing questions of the interviewer to get a feeling for their moral compass and the values of their organization. We all have to make a living, but we should never have to compromise our values or who we are to do so.
4. Find a strong pillar to lean on. The greatest source for clearly understanding what doing the right thing at work and in life looks like comes from my Catholic faith. My greatest source of strength comes from my active prayer life. My moral compass would be greatly diminished if it was not fed daily by my life as a Christian. This is my example, but I know countless other professional men and women of all ages and backgrounds who would share similar views about their Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, or other faith experiences. I am not saying people without faith are missing a moral compass. No, not at all! As long as your source of inspiration provides you with an unchanging standard, you’re starting in the right place. It’s unlikely that any two moral compasses are exactly alike, but most share common traits that can help you distinguish right from wrong.

A well-formed moral compass can help us strike the right balance in our lives between emotion and reason, idealism and practicality, and our needs and those of others. Simply put, a moral compass can and should guide us toward what we ought to do in a given situation, not just what we want to do—or even what other people want us to do. The strength of our moral compass helps us define our character, which determines how people choose to interact with us and contributes to the overall quality of our relationships. A strong moral compass is an essential strength of the leader who desires to consistently do the right things at work and in life.

It is fair to say that consistently using your moral compass can be extremely difficult and challenging. If you have a strong moral compass, does that mean you will never make mistakes or suffer through an ethical or moral stumble? I am afraid not. Instead, those of us with a well-defined set of core values will be able to learn from those failings and use them to make better and more appropriate decisions in the future. In fact, it’s often the situations that present adversity and test us that help our moral compass to grow stronger. This has certainly been my experience.

It sometimes feels as if the world has become a challenging place for men and women of goodwill to thrive. Many of us want to make a positive difference in the world, but we don’t know where to begin. Why not consider the workplace as a place to make a difference? Displaying courage in the face of our polarized society’s obstacles may seem overwhelming, but perhaps we should focus our attention on developing our moral compass and manifesting small acts of bravery to promote ethical and moral principles that are meaningful at work, where we spend so much of our adult lives. These small acts, in turn, can absolutely have a positive ripple effect on the bigger world around us.

Much of what you will read in my book (Essential Wisdom for Leaders of Every Generation) emanates from the moral compass I have endeavored to refine and utilize over the course of my career. I am far from perfect, and I assure you I have stumbled and made mistakes, but I keep on trying—and I encourage you to keep trying too. I promise the positive impact you will make on the people around you will make the effort well worth it.

What steps will you take this week to develop and strengthen your moral compass?

?*Adapted from the 2021 book, Essential Wisdom for Leaders of All Generation

Check out Randy Hain's brand new book, Upon Reflection: Helpful Insights and Timeless Lessons for the Busy Professional. Learn more and order the book from Amazon here.

Randy Hain is the president of Serviam Partners, the award-winning author of nine books, an executive coach, leadership consultant and thought leader on candor, time management and business relationships. He is also the co-founder of The Leadership Foundry