Why ethics matter & how they influence health. Let's look at 10 cases from real-life experiences:

As a senior partner in global business, I have come across a variety of other businesses 'doing business' with me / our organisation over the past almost 10 years [ yes, my anniversary will be in 2025 ].

These impressive encounters led me to write this article. This with the intention that you can benefit from my real-life experience, learn from it and ' do it better '.

To start with your learning-journey right away, let us define the word 'ethics' first:

For me the word 'ethics' contains [ at least ] the values of 'doing good', 'do the right things', 'do no harm', 'respect', 'appreciation' and 'kindness'.

Why does encountering another human in such a 'manner' matter?

Well, this manner matters, because the way 'manners' are lived, 'set the tone' for the interaction 'now' [ in the present, right in front of you ] and for future ones - and thereby defines what 'manner' is being set into the world ' that can [ more often does than does not ] potentially multiply in unforeseen ways.

Interacting with others is like throwing a stone into the water and observing the ripples in the water the [ thrown ] rock creates.

These ripples - that only can be deviated / changed / transformed by a rock that is stronger than the ripples.

Translating this situation into 'human being' [ viceral experience / somatic experience ], it means by someone with a backbone: A backbone means having and living courage and a strength of character.

When interacting with others in a 'mean', 'nasty, 'disrespecting' way, we can create 'bruises' through the way we interact. This is quite like the inside of a bruised apple, an inside we are unaware of being hurt in that moment.

Here is where 'health' comes in:

We humans need time to heal [ at least re-cover ] from those kind of interactions, literally allowing our tissues to be healed from the hurt.

Having to experience such interactions often times can develop - over time - into carrying a [ (too) heavy ] allostatic load [ or even trauma ], which then in turn can lead to visible 'bruises' on a person.

The humans really looking at other humans - seeing others the way they are - can become aware of the signs of these 'bruises' [ yes they are visible indeed! ] on the outside of that human being.

We can see 'life experiences' in skin tone, facial expressions, gait, posture, how one carries him-/her-self, the words we use, as well as on immune-system-levels, because our immune system sets boundaries - naturally - if we let it [ and don't over-ride our internal warning-signals with pain-killers, binging etc ].

Look at a 'bruised apple':

Oftentimes when interacting with our fellow human beings - by the way fellowship inquiries are upen until the 15th of December 2024 - we (can) underestimate the impact we have on the other, because we are unaware and not trained in this or because we 'do business coldly'.

'Doing business' is oftentimes created in ways that are actually ( highly automated, efficient and ) de-humanising processes.

[ With this I mean that a lot of businesses are no longer taking into account what humans, their employees really need, but rather/only prioritise what 'business' needs to get done in order to reach its numbers (profit) -> thereby following a 'false prophecy'? - I wonder - because we now see what 'exponential growth' leads to: It leads to countries using more than 5.1 earths in ressources in one year. This means eating into future existences and already putting todays' generation in danger. ]

Anyhow, drawing our attention back to 'why ethics matter':

and how living with 'morals', 'values', 'ethically' helps creating a healthy environment and thereby influences health positively.

Let's look at 10 cases, all taken from real-life experiences:

1. Insurance companies that offer building retirement funds for you: Since we have our own organisation, we have to take care of our own pension fund. In order to do this we transferred a certain amount, on a monthly basis, to an insurance company - the father of one of us did business with for decades. Said insurance companys' representative was a person from the same village one of us grew up in. Knowing this person from the same village, suggested 'we know him' and 'we can place our trust in what he is saying'. He 'sold us' the retirement-fund-solution with the argument: "When you do this you get guaranteed 100TCHF pay-out when you retire. My wife even invested double the amount on a monthly basis." Believing this was 'doing business in good faith', we naturally believed him. However, through the covid-lockdown in 2020, we noticed that the funds we transferred monthly were not growing but were getting smaller and smaller with each monthly payment. Upon investigation from our side, we found out that this 'product' was no longer being sold. But we received invoices to be paid by this insurance anyway. We were not informed by the insurance company about this change. Even the addressed CEO didn't respond - even he didn't adhere to 'good faith' and 'ethics'. Because of that we wanted to stop 'sinking money' and get back at least our full investment, so we asked for a pay-out. Unfortunately they kept 1/3 of our payments for covering their 'administrational fees' - ours were uncovered... This means instead 'saving for retirement', we lost more than 1/3 of our retirement fund. [ Healthy goverance and ethics in this case would have meant the insurer to pay out at least the full amount that has been paid in - without needing us having do attend to correspondence going back and forth for months and causing even more administrational effort for both parties - and at our side these expenses were not covered by anyone. ]
2. Purchasing Executive Coaching [EC] / Leadership development [LD]. A stock-traded financial institution purchased EC/LD for one of its youngest team-leads, setting [ unvoiced ] high expectations on the newly appointed team-lead as well as the Executive Coach. Scheduled online video-conversations with the institution were agreed upon prior to the start were held through 'hiding' behind black screens, not voicing the internal turmoil the organisation went through, because of its unhealthy rapid growth, and not listening to the needs of the team-lead. Leaders and groups within the organisation that should have ensured 'psychological safety' and 'caring for their employees' failed to listen to these issues and failed to address the dire straits within the organisation. [ Learning: an organisation can engage the 'best Executive Coach' / 'Consultant' they can find, BUT the desired development can only be strived for and achieved when all relations within the organisation are collaborating mutually / do have a common understanding and are aligned to the common goal - and willing to support a 'healthy lived organisation' - also in their day-to-day business. If not, the engagement is 'doomed to fail' - and the employee gets hurt. ]
3. An IT Platform offering 'connecting suppliers to clients'. When we started out with our endeavour 22 years ago, we tried to reach potential clients through a variety of channels. One of the channels was an IT platform that offered to connect suppliers with clients. During the covid lock-down in 2020 we tested this system thoroughly and found out that the organisation running this platform was - not only inviting potential clients to inquire with another organisation offering similar education right after they had sent out an inquiry to us - but also used the acquired contacts of these potential clients to sell similar offerings through a third-party by e-mailing-campaigns. Strange for us was that none working in law or institutions representing the law - we got in touch with - in order to stop this 'shark-environment' and trying ot address the malpractice in regard to the competition-law, also to protect our fellow competitors - was interested in 'making a case'. Our decision was to leave this platform after a collaboration of more than a decade. Such business ethics show a lack of respect towards the potential client as well as us, a potential supplier. [ and probably showed that law doesn't seem to be interested in 'doing law', ie 'setting it right' ]
4. A big organisation in the health-care industry - through referral - inquired irregularly regarding our services over a period of roughly 3 years. After we had started the contracted training, we found out that only one part of the core-team was supposed to benefit from the training [ this meant for us a non-alignment of the whole crew ]. Furthermore we witnessed that unethical behaviour was practiced, ie. 'hot-desking' [ meaning: employees coming to work - after a long commute in the morning - didn't even know, were unsure, whether they had a desk to work on. Some employees even had to work in the aisles. ] or 'unwillingness to cooperate and cover our expenses' [ ie. trying to make profit on the back of the 'smaller organisation' ]. This is why we had to pull the plug off this mammoth engagement. [ This was a tough decision, because we needed the income. ]. What we heard after was that this organisation communicated towards the participants that it was 'our fault it didn't work out'. The participants knowing us from the training from which we were referred to were shocked, because we were doing a fantastic job in the other mammoth project, as 98% of the participants confirmed in their feedforwards towards us. This means that even organisations in the 'health-care-industry' also (partly) have forgotten what 'health' and 'care' really entails.
5. Department heads HR of global organisations. After having worked / collaborated with them for a few years as an employee, responsible for ensuring the youngest employees get a proper training and supervision, I was starting to set up meetings for others in the same role as I had, but from other organisations. This in order for us all to meet and exchange experience in this field. Through this I developed a training for the preparation of final exams in the field of business administration. Said Head HR - on a phone call with me later on - informed me that it was her idea to set up this training in the first place and not mine. Me reminding her of how this developed, she responded to with: "Don't you moralise me!" Such a behaviour shows that people [ with roles / 'status' ] deflect and 'adorn oneself with borrowed plumes' when they envy success of others [ or think they are not good enough themselves? ]. This not only happened to me once, but twice. Another Head HR blackmailed me [ her managing director even protected her toxic ways ] so that she could get the 'role of leading this event'. This ended with a group of others bragging on a front-cover-page on a local news-paper and informing that they were the initial group setting this up. This means that one needs a backbone in order to digest 'these blows' and 'stamina' to not being part of the 'blackmail-game', but stop the toxic collaboration.
6. On a human level between friends it seems inappropriate to voice that one is a 'friend' and then cancelling appointments with the friend on short notice, because something 'better' came up or even 'stonewalling'. This shows a high disregard towards agreements made. [ The same is valid for 'agreements being broken' in other settings/constellations, like in business. I don't mean psychological contracts here.]
7. A 'boss boss' in a M&A situation shows up in front of the team of his subordinate and ensures the team that everything will remain the same. However only two weeks later, another announcement is received by the team, informing that they are going to be split up and need to move to other locations. This means that there was a lack of clarity / transparency in communication in the first place. This way the team felt being fooled by this manager.
8. Another 'boss boss' was calling the team for a team-information and informed the team that their immediate boss will leave the company - on his own will, because he 'wanted to do something else' - after having worked there for 15+ years, practically 'day & night'. The team members sensed that the 'boss boss' was lying and that this was not the truth. [ They came to know that the immediate boss got fired. ] Such behaviour shows that the 'boss boss' does have neither regard towards the feelings [ sociopathic tendencies ] nor regard towards the bond that was built between the team and their immediate boss over the years. The consequence is that the 'boss boss' loses the trust of the team, because they feel fooled. He got the label 'bully'.
9. Another IT services provider, in this case a country-wide website hosting provider, decided in the beginning of this new year - 2024 - to stop offering hosting and only communicated this though their website in the beginning of the year. There was no cancellation information, neither by e-mail nor letter up until the end of May to the customers. This lack of foresight and care would have left the organisations having to transfer their websites within the one month cancellation period. No organisation is prepared to do this on such a short notice. Luckily we saw the information on their website in the beginning of the year already, but needed up to 11 months to have our website up and running and accessible in the new form nevertheless. Such a behaviour hints towards the 'not-knowing' [ or not caring that a website is the business card and/or shop / income of an organisation ] that other organisations need to have enough time to adjust towards the new circumstances that another organisation creates for them.
10. On a governmental level: Employees of the government body itself are neither adhering to agreements, contracts nor law [some don't even know the law]. An example is to reduce the CO2-Levels on a global scale. Paying a fee was implemented in Switzerland in 2008 in order to reduce fossil fuel use. This 'fee' generates an income for the state of approx. 1.2 Mia. CHF per year of which 536 Mio. CHF are being paid back to the citizens through the mandatory health insurance policy. Such a hefty fee burdens the organisations, needing to earn even more to cover these fees and then having no extra resources for healthy, sustainable investments, the financial partners needing to transfer the fees from all the organisations to the state and the state then in turn does transfer part of the received fees to health insurers to give part of it back to the insured people. This is a massive administrational construct that is in essence already unfeasible. Especially since the amount of raised money does not go towards reducing the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but is only circulated - a kind of 'circular' 'casino economy'. This shows that also in 'such big endeavours' as these, it is essential to do the due dilligence in order to decide carefully and considering that no further harm is being caused, but the 'right thing' is being done.

What would you have decided in these real-life cases? What would have been the right thing to do in each of these 10 circumstances - from your point of view?

Indeed, adhering to Ethics is a good start: 'do good', 'see the beautiful', 'say the truth'.

Ethics: " Do good and do the right thing, even if none visible is observing your actions. "

In order to arrive at healthy decision making, living ethics, adhering to your values, you can ask yourself:

• Is this the right thing to do?
• What do I lose?
• Who is being harmed?
• What good do I create?
• What am I guided by?
• Is that what I am intending to do worth it?

In todays' times we all know - it is general knowledge by now - how important 'psychological safety' is.

This means that such an safe environment needs to be created, held and being safe-guarded, so that people feel safe enough to speak up openly, address issues, being listened to, being heard and being responded to respectfully [ and not being ridiculed, laughed at, being shamed, ignored, excluded or harmed when interacting with other humans ].

Psychological safety is the fundamental building block, the glue of any healthy society that we urgently need to ensure, because it is the one building block / the 'secret (invisible) ingredient' that makes societies survive, grow in a healthy way and flourish.

In invite you: Let's create a ripple effect, leave good ripples, do good & flourish together.

This might have been a lot and quite a complex article to take in. You might be unsure about how to implement 'ethics' and 'psychological safety' in your environment.

This is why I ask you directly:

Do you need advice on how to do the 'right thing' in your particular circumstances?

Yes?

Then please do reach out & let me support you in your ethical decision making process by thinking things through together thoroughly.

You can conveniently book here your live conversation with me.

[ Note: fees apply, because we need to cover our business expenses too. ]

I look forward to meeting you!

With kindness,

Manuela

P.S. 1: As mentionned above, our fellowship-cohort 2025 is open for registration until the 15th of December 2024. What you need to know to register for this fellowship, you can read here.

P.S. 2: Should you not be able to access our website, then please place your inquiry via here.

P.S. 3: This article is written by a human without the support of AI.

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