Middle Way Management and Virtue Ethics

In my last post, I introduced and discussed the Cognitive Domains™ of Middle Way Management™. As Middle Way Managers™ work to practice compassion, they can now put team members' habits and behaviors into meaningful contexts in order to effect the changes necessary to relieve their suffering. In this post, I will consider the complementary relationship between Middle Way Management and virtue ethics.

A World-class Crisis
As I teach MBA and doctoral-level courses in management and leadership, I like to remind students that my favorite oxymoron is “business ethics.” I also remind them that I’m mostly kidding. I’ve spent many years as an entrepreneur with and without partners. I’ve contracted to organizations of all sizes, bought and sold businesses and started them up from scratch. I can say with complete confidence that the single most significant, ongoing crisis in American-style business is a large and expanding deficit of ethical behaviors.

The Philosophers’ Big Idea
We have many options available to us when considering ethics. As a branch of philosophy, some of the greatest minds of all time have mulled over and presented their ideas in the context of everyday life. Business leaders and managers have easily adopted these approaches and continue to define and refine what it means to be ethical in daily practice. Some do their best to maximize the good for all according to an accepted set of rules. Some carefully consider the consequences of their decisions and actions in the organizational context. Some don’t really care about what happens to organizational members as long as the outcome is an inflated bottom line.

One ancient and eminently useful approach available to us today is virtue ethics; it is based solely upon the virtue, or moral character, of a person and was originally presented in Western literature by Plato and Aristotle. Virtue ethics took a back seat for many, many years to utilitarian (consequentialist) and deontological (rule-based) approaches. Now, with the advent of leadership approaches such as Servant Leadership and my own Middle Way Management, virtue ethics is making a comeback worthy of Elvis in ’68.

The Virtuous Person
What is a virtuous person? This question lies at the heart of virtues ethic and is probably debated more than the legitimacy of virtue ethics itself. Aristotle presented the idea that the ultimate goal of the virtuous person is living well (his term is eudaimonia, but I won’t bore you with the definitions here). Of course, in ancient Greek thought, this was not related strictly to physical comfort, pleasure or luxury, though these could be the outcomes of being a virtuous person. No, a virtuous person is someone who always does the right thing for the right reasons.

If we think about virtue ethics in the context of organizational culture, we see that the rules (policies and procedures) and consequences (strategies/tactics and planned outcomes) have already been created for us. These constraints are necessary for an organization to operate efficiently and effectively, yet how do they influence the virtue of organizational members? As many of you are intimately aware, managing people is a delicate undertaking that requires compassion, empathy, patience, and kindness on the part of the manager. HR policies and procedures are the beginning of the people management process, while virtue ethics allow us to practice in meaningful ways on a daily basis within those necessary constraints to discover equitable and fair outcomes.

In the end, virtue ethics is a way of being, rather than a way of doing. Rather than asking “What are the rules for proceeding?” or “What are the consequences of my actions?” when confronted with situations requiring ethical choices, the manager who practices virtue ethics will ask herself, “What sort of person am I?” For instance, an employee who consistently shows up late for work when his timely arrival is crucial to the success of the organization may be managed in two ways: 1) according to organizational policies and procedures with little to no regard for root causes or 2) with compassion and care while seeking to understand root causes and then finding a remedy within the constraints of company policies. Interestingly, both of these approaches offer a maximization of good for all parties concerned, even the organization, yet only one of them relies on the personal virtue of the manager to find resolution.

Big Decisions for a Small Business
Over the years, I’ve come to the decision that I will never have another employee – period (perhaps I will regale you with the stories behind this decision in a future post). This puts me in the same position in which many of you find yourselves: Singletons in a sea of organizations. As such, we are left asking ourselves how the people management aspects of virtue ethics apply to our work lives; they do, but in different ways. In our cases, we can call upon virtue ethics in every business relationship and interaction. As we engage in commerce with customers, suppliers, competitors, government regulators, and others, we are in a position to frequently ask that important question: “What sort of person am I?”

Like you, I have many examples of how asking this question might have saved me and others from imminent grief. If you have not considered this question in any kind of detail, take some time out of your busy day and begin the process of defining yourself within a virtue ethics context. This way, the next time you are confronted with an opportunity to exercise your morality, you will be crystal clear on what to do and why you are doing it. This may seem like an effort at defining the obvious, yet I know from personal experience that my workload has prevented me from making decisions in the past based upon what sort of person I am. In the rush to make a decision, any decision, I have compromised my ethics and inevitably regretted the decision. Now, I am able to pause and ask the question before making any ethical decision.

Virtue Ethics in Action
As you think about virtue ethics, you may be wondering how one might fit them into an existing leadership or management approach. In my case, I have settled on virtue ethics as the foundation of Middle Way Management. While Middle Way Management is based upon Buddhist ethical concepts, it is very much linked to Western ideas about virtue ethics, especially when and where the rubber meets the road—during daily practice.

Middle Way Management emphasizes the practice of managerial compassion as a way to relieve suffering at the individual and organizational levels (yes, organizations can suffer, too). As a Middle Way Manager goes about managing team members with compassion, he must remain mindful of his values and of the sort of person he is because both are basic parts of his daily practice. In this way, Buddha meets Aristotle and both leave us examining ourselves in fundamental ways that increase our chances of success in the competitive marketplace.

What sort of person are you?

Onward! Darin

Copyright © 2009/2010, Darin R. Molnar, PhD. All rights reserved.