TBC Flashback - The Conscience Code with Dr. G. Richard Shell (2021)

A boss pulls you aside with a quiet request: “Research this and tell me it’s fine.” Then comes the real tell: don’t put anything in writing, don’t talk to anyone else, and don’t come back with “no.” That moment is where careers bend and consciences bruise, and it’s exactly where we start with Wharton professor and negotiation scholar Dr. G. Richard Shell, author of The Conscience Code. We unpack the true story that sparked the book, a young lawyer pressured to justify a move that could cross the line under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and what her choice reveals about power, fear, and ethical decision-making at work.

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Transcript

Flashback Setup And Guest Intro

John Broer 0:04

A warm welcome to all of our friends out there in The Boss hole Transformation Nation. This is your host, John Broer, bringing you yet another TBC flashback. We started doing this toward the end of last year because we had so many wonderful episodes from the early days of The Boss hole Chronicles. We started this in 2020. And this episode that features Dr. G. Richard Shell was originally published in June of 2021 when he published his most recent book at that time, The Conscience Code. Just a fantastic book and as relevant today as it was then. So let me just tell you a little bit about Dr. Schell. He is an award-winning teacher, scholar, writer, and leader at the Wharton School. He is the author of five books now. He's written amazing books on negotiations, one of which is required reading at many business and law schools, and his titles have sold over 500,000 copies in 17 languages. Interesting, his legal scholarship has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, and he has taught everyone from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 CEOs to FBI hostage negotiators, Navy SEALs, and United Nations peacekeepers. But my connection with Dr. Schell goes back to when I had him come in and speak to an organization with which I worked years ago, and I just knew he would be an excellent guest and subject matter expert on the Boss Hole Chronicles. So let's flashback to this episode from June of 2021 with Dr. G. Richard Schell and make sure you check out all the details in the show notes. Let's jump in. The Boss hole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode. So, Richard, it is absolutely a pleasure to have you here on The Boss hole Chronicles, and we can't wait to learn more about The Conscience Code and really just your inspirations for the book itself.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 2:29

Thank you, John and Sara. Wonderful to be with you today and uh to celebrate the launch of uh book number five in the Shell uh bookshelf. But uh really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.

John Broer 2:41

Oh, it's it's our pleasure to have you here. And one of the things that caught me initially when I got into the book, and I and I saw it in Springboard and your and your other uh the books on negotiation, the book on negotiation was everything you write is really from very relevant personal experience. In other words, what do you experience not only in the classroom, working with your MBA students, uh just in life in general, you translate that into something very practical. But what's interesting is the conscience code starts with Sarah's story, not our our Sarah, Sarah Best here, but a different Sarah. And really was what I take as the inspiration for saying this story has to be told. Can you just shed a little bit more light on what that spark of inspiration was from Sarah? Sure. Thank you, John.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 3:29

Um, so I teach a course at the Wharton School that I actually helped to invent. Uh, it's called Responsibility and Business. Uh, it's a required course, but the students get to choose when to take it. So it's a required course, but it's a little bit of an elective too. You know, they can time it when they want. And one of the assignments I give is for them to bring a story of their own personal career of some challenging moment when uh their values uh were at stake, uh, or they had uh an ethical problem that uh troubled them. And then we share them, and it's a really wonderful opportunity because we have very talented students. They've all had jobs after college and the MBAs, they're about 28 to 32 years old. So they've had they they've been they've been around once, uh, and they're of course they're gonna go around many other times. But this is the first time they've, you know, I think has really reflected on the values that they've been asked to implement, both positive and negative. So was uh this one uh this one year, about five years ago, um, a student volunteered to speak. Um, and um and she was very unusual because she had gone come to Wharton having already had a career as a lawyer. Uh so she went to law school, she'd gone into law practice, and uh her story really was that she'd gone from working for a small company as a lawyer to a dream job in a big law firm in California, where you know everything that she dreamed about when she went to law school was coming true. She was well paid, she was prestigious group. But within a few weeks of getting there, um a boss, uh um a boss hole, as it turns out, um uh asked her um sort of on the QT to work on a little problem that she would like to get some advice on, which is um they wanted this partner wanted to hire uh the son of a Chinese uh business executive as a summer intern. And she wanted Sarah to do the research on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is the anti-bribery statute in America, that essentially would say it was okay to do this. Uh and she was told not to put anything in writing. She was told just to do this work for her, not to consult with any other lawyers in the firm. And Sarah was a new lawyer. She just, you know, took the assignment on, but her research uh disclosed that it actually was uh very, very close to being over the line of being a violation of the Foreign Court Practices Act. Um, this company had a lot of ties with the Chinese government and hiring nephews and sons and daughters of Chinese executives had already been sort of litigated as a problem in uh from the American regulatory standpoint. So she went back and said, sorry, my analysis is you can't do this. Whereupon the partner got very angry at her and said, Well, go back and try again because there's an answer here. I don't want you to find it. And so she went back, she actually whispered in the ear of the firm's expert on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act whether he had any suggestions without revealing what was going on. And he said, No, this is probably a real problem. So he she went back to the partner again and said, I just can't be done. You know, I I've done the analysis, I've double-checked it, and it can't be done. At this point, the boss started screaming at her that uh that there and and and people who were walking by outside this office stopped because there was such a cacophony coming out of this office that she she didn't get the message that this was an answer that was unacceptable and that she had one more chance to get it right and to go back and do this. And uh so Sarah just was totally shaken. She was quivering. She went back to her office, she sat there for a second. She realized she was so shaken that she needed to take a walk. So she grabbed her purse, went outside the building, walked around the building, breathing deeply, walked around the building again. And then she said, and this was the thing that astonished me and the rest of the students. She said, I realized what I had to do. What I had to do was walk away from this job. And she just kept walking, went home, and never went back to the law firm. Wow. And uh I I kind of was astonished, but but and I I congratulated her on standing up for her values and and and not being complicit in what was essentially uh both a bullying technique and an attempt to um deliver a memo that was against the law. Right. But but but what really triggered it for me was that she walked out. And it seemed to me like that's great when you had the option to walk out. But and she was young and she was talented, and she there she was sitting in a Wharton MBA classroom, you know, ready to reset her career.

John Broer 8:22

Right.

ROAD Framework For Ethical Action

Dr. G. Richard Shell 8:22

But what about the people who can't walk out? Uh, what about the people who need some tools to stand and fight? So the conscious code really is my, you know, guidebook to standing and fight, uh, standing and fighting, so that you can stand up for your values and advance your career and help the organization to become a more positive place to work for you and everyone else. So that was the spark. It was the story was dramatic, but it was the missing part of it that inspired me to write the book.

John Broer 8:53

So when I hear that story and having read it and hearing you tell it, what I think about is a person who has the courage of her convictions and who has a moral code. But truly the word courage comes through of being able to walk away because that she has to be in the minority there. I mean, most people would feel trapped and bullied and cornered in that there's no way out. I I am going to have to compromise who and what I am. I I hope never to be in that kind of a situation. But you talk now about what are the tools that you can provide people within the book itself. And one of the things that really still stands out for me is I love your use of acronyms. And I opened it up to the one where within the conscience code, you talk about the road ahead.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 9:42

Yeah.

John Broer 9:42

And the word road, it's really kind of the initial, am I wrong? It's really kind of the initial tool or it's the foundation. And then the codes actually are built within that. And road, actually, I'll just share this with our listeners. The acronym stands for recognize that a value is at risk, own the problem, analyze your decision, and design your action plan. Well, Sarah essentially designed her action plan while she was walking around the building a couple of times, right? Exactly.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 10:10

Um, and and her action plan was to exit. You know, I I gave her credit, as I said, both because she stood for her values, but also she uh she told her story in class to help others understand uh what she'd gone through. Uh and uh the the framework that you just described, recognize, own, analyze your decision, uh, decide to act, is the sort of architecture of the book. So there are 10 chapters, there are 10 rules of the code, but each of the code rules really falls under one of those four letters. And recognizing that a value is at risk seems pretty obvious. Like Sarah kind of immediately had this emotional attack feeling that you know someone's asking her to do something very wrong. So that that's that's uh that's easy. Often recognizing value is at risk is much more difficult and uh subtle because people sometimes gaslight you. And and they, especially toxic bosses, will, you know, kind of beguile you into thinking, well, it's just this little thing, it's not illegal, it's you know, do it for the firm, take one, you know, show your loyalty. Be a team player. Be a team player. And and so you're sort of beguiled um into thinking, well, my value is really not at risk. And so, so that's where one of the most important parts of that recognition is to understand the pressures and be able to identify them so that when you feel the pressure being applied, everybody does it. It immediately triggers on a little alarm bell that you ought to be thinking twice before you just go along. And then then from there, you have to make decisions about, okay, this is a problem. I'm gonna take responsibility for it, I own it. And then uh and then think about the options. Sarah had one option, she took it, but as you say, many people are are trapped in their organization in the sense that they don't feel that there are too many options. And so they have to analyze their options within that context and then uh execute the plan, you know, go ahead and take action.

Sara Best 12:24

I have to say, too, that while she, you know, taking that action immediately is maybe the rarity, you talk about the ethical refugees that, you know, that disturbing trend you uncovered in your MBA class classes of people that were encountering unbeknownst to them, perhaps, this subtle and then not so subtle challenge, which um which shocked me a little bit. I I'm grateful though that in your education program, this is a required course that you know people have exposure to the stories, and the stories help bring into clarity, you know, what they may be experiencing and what to call it.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 13:02

Well, there's a there's a magical moment in my class when we when we tell these stories, uh, because all the students have to come up with one. I put them in small groups, they tell them to each other. So everybody gets a chance to to verbalize what their story is. And there's a concept in social psychology called pluralistic ignorance. Pluralistic ignorance is the tendency, if you have a group of six people and one tells a sexist joke, and uh the other five people are sitting there trying to figure out, you know, they all are offended by it, but they're not quite sure what the other five people think. And so their assumption is, well, no one's speaking, so therefore they must think it's funny, or someone's actually chuckling at all, so they must think it's funny. And so uh in their confusion over uh what other people are thinking, they all remain silent. And the sexist gets to think that he told a funny joke, but actually all five of them were offended by it. And if only one of them would speak, that would break the ice, and everybody would then be five to one telling this person to shut up and to stop being insulting to people.

John Broer 14:15

Right.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 14:16

But they don't speak. So in my class, it's I think it happens that you know many of them have had this sort of formative experience in their first jobs where they've been asked to do stuff that made them very uncomfortable. You know, some some more, some less. Uh, but you know, Sarah's example was probably an outlier on the high end. But um, but as soon as people start verbalizing, then everybody else goes, oh, you too, you know. Uh and some of them were more successful in their attempts to uh push back. And that then becomes a grist for the mill of, hey, now that I look back on my experience, I realize there were some tools there that I could have used, but I didn't. Uh and so maybe next time I've got some more options that I can think about. Uh so this collective breaking of the silence of people's uh sort of ethical dilemmas and how they face them, I think really empowers everybody to start being advocates. And and one of the terms that I use in the book that I feel very strongly about is I try to instill an identity for them that is less fraught than the usual identity for people who stand up for values, because the most fraught term is whistleblower.

John Broer 15:31

Right.

The Power Of Two Allies

Dr. G. Richard Shell 15:32

And like you have to be a moral hero, you have to go to the New York Times, you have to be this, you know, person who's willing to sacrifice everything on behalf of whatever the value is. And I, you know, there are certainly some amazing stories and amazing people who are whistleblowers, but the everyday battles in the office, I think, are fought by people I call people of conscience. They're people who identify with their own values, they hold their identity as a person of conscience as an integral part of how they operate at home, in their community. And then there's this problem at work where they're sort of feeling alone and a little beleaguered, and they're not sure how to bring that identity to work. But I try to sort of hold that up and say, look, you're an employee, you're a worker, you're a uh supervisor, whatever you are, but you're a person of conscience in addition to all those things. And the one thing you should never compromise is your conscience. Uh the scars that it leaves, even subtle compromises of your values are long-lasting. You you tend to regret them. Uh, and every time you compromise on your conscience, you lose confidence for the next time when you'll be called to stand up and speak truth to power. And so the little the little ones make a lot of difference because they help build your confidence and momentum so that when the larger challenges are there, you have a habit of putting that person of conscience identity in the forefront. Now, you know, I think the book is is you know, tries to motivate that, but I think just as important is what is the toolkit to be effective as a person of conscience? It's not just enough to stand on the rooftop and scream, you know, this is against my values, uh, and then and then get minimized, fired, or whatever. You know, uh the bossholes have a tendency to know how to manipulate the system pretty well. So you really have to meet uh the the motivation has to meet the skill to uh to gather uh momentum and to advance the value in an effective way that uh will reinforce the culture of the firm as a positive place. Um I'd say the most important uh single thing in the book uh on that toolkit is something I call the power of two.

John Broer 18:09

I was gonna ask about that. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 18:10

Yeah, I mean the power of two. What what is what is remarkable about the stories I've heard is so many people tried to take this on alone. And part of their ineffectiveness was they felt isolated, they didn't feel like they had any allies, they weren't articulate enough to meet the moment. They were uh outmaneuvered by a sexual predator who was protecting their sexual harassment habit. Uh, and uh and so they just withdrew because they they were the only spear carrier. The power of two is is never, never take this on alone. So it means you just have to find one ally, one compatriot, one sympathetic ear. First of all, it breaks the pluralistic ignorance barrier because now you've got one other person there. It also reinforces the fact that, I mean, the social psychology on deference to authority and peer pressure are famous and reliable, but what isn't publicized as much is that these social scientists who did these formative experiments found an escape condition which was guaranteed to work. If you want to escape um authority pressure, if you want to escape peer pressure, all you need is one ally to stand up in the room with you, and you get it doesn't mean you win. Right. It just means you have the courage to resist. And then winning is about how skillful are you beyond that. But the actual psychological motivation uh in the Milgram experiments, in the Ash experiments, on authority pressure and social conformity both indicate very strongly in the peer pressure, it the compliance rate, people willing to say things were untrue that were untrue, and they knew they weren't true. And peer pressure was drawing them to say black is white. All they needed was one ally in the room who would say, no, black is black, black is not white. And they then suddenly to 100% found the courage to go with what they knew to be true and to articulate it themselves. So it's really important uh before you do anything and you find yourself in a values conflict at work is to seek an ally and and to consult. Now, there could be an ally at home and you articulate it, and then you start looking for the ally at work. Uh, but never, never go it alone. Never walk this path alone.

Personality And Conflict Avoidance Tools

Sara Best 20:37

Such powerful advice. And I I have to reference that you are a scholar, you know, we use predictive index, those behavioral analytics. And and thank you for the research and the way you so uniquely put all this together. Some of the things you said just sparked a couple of thoughts. I I just want to share. When people are naturally wired to be collaborative and and the fear of risk is so high, so there's one hindrance for being able to speak out and stand up against something. Then you bring in the stakes, real or imagined, you know, in certain situations the stakes become very high. But it just reminds me, Richard, that um no matter how we're wired, we are gonna have to adapt. And and the values piece is the way to build that adaptation. So if, and I forget how you said it earlier, but if the values are identified and clear and come first, then it it would be more feasible to become more assertive with our voice and our actions, um, especially if there's an ally in the room. And as we do that, the skills of emotional intelligence assist us. You know, I think uh most of the professionals I get to meet, we see that they have low self regard. Uh they they could have the most uh, you know, the highest credentials and the best briefcase on the Planet and great accomplishments, but a lot of times inside they're small or they feel small. But what you're talking about brings together, you know, a way to adapt our natural behavioral pattern with skill, first of all, with value. You know, get in touch with your values. Then you you provide a roadmap and some skills and tools for each of us to be able to apply that in whatever situation we may face. And there's a lot of them. There's a lot of awful situations.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 22:29

Well, I I congratulate you guys on your emphasis of sort of personality uh and effectiveness at work. And and actually in the book, I have a chapter on personality. And and I think it's again, my students have taught me this. Uh, you can have great values and um and even have an ally, and you still might face a barrier that you're conflict averse, that you're simply you're simply shy in the face of the potential confrontation that may come with somebody else. It doesn't even have to be someone in power, it could just be someone else. So it's really important to be self-aware that if you have this sort of shyness about interpersonal confrontation or conflict, that's something else you can compensate for uh by partnering, not with another shy conflict of person, but add to your team someone who's got a few more assertive tools that are natural to them that don't cause them stress as much. And so then you uh actually are collaborating across personality domains so that you can effectively push the shared agenda of honesty uh with the client, for example. I mean, a lot a lot of a lot of a lot of these cases are just, you know, if the boss says send the report out, even though the data's not reliable.

John Broer 23:48

Why?

Dr. G. Richard Shell 23:48

There's a deadline and the client won't read the report anyway. So it's easy to talk yourself into thinking, well, you know, the boss knows, I don't know. But you do know, you do know that you're uncomfortable because you know this is dishonest. You know that the client is being lied to. And um, but it's going to take not just the fact that you know the value, and maybe that your partner on the project also knows that this isn't right, but neither one of you has the personality to be able to confront the boss. So now you need to sort of expand the the envelope a little to a colleague or a mentor, someone in the firm who has your interest at art, who can then bring it to the boss and say, you know, the team is uncomfortable with uh this approach. Um, we understand why it's urgent, but we think we've got a solution that might be able to solve the problem and maintain the value of honesty, uh, it's strict, you know, strict value of honesty uh to the client as the firm, you know, the firm mission statement says we're supposed to do. Right. And so rally uh, you know, that kind of persuasion process to effectively assert the value without accusing the boss of some immoral character trait. I mean, I think that's the kind of tools I try to work through in the book where you're really just working to solve the problem consistent with your values, as opposed to turn everything into a nuclear war where you're accusing everybody else in the firm of being evil while you're the only virtuous one. That's that's not likely to succeed. But it does take insight. It takes, it takes uh insight into your personality, it takes insight into what your values are and social awareness that this moment is here.

John Broer 25:31

Right.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 25:32

So we can't, we're not to turn, you know, it's not acceptable to just turn away. We have to confront it and then decide, okay, I'm gonna lead. Uh how can I lead effectively?

John Broer 25:43

Right.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 25:44

And often that's with humility, you know. Uh I'm gonna lead. I don't have all the answers.

Sara Best 25:48

That's such powerful advice for the world right now in the climate that we live in. John, what were you gonna say?

John Broer 25:56

Well, uh So Sarah referenced Richard, you know, in our work with our people science, as we like to call it a predictive index, but when we think about an individual in an organization, we think about the whole person, but we also think about three specific aspects, and we call it the head, the heart, and the briefcase. So the briefcase is just a person's credentials, resumes, knowledge, skills, abilities, the head. That's where our science comes into play, where we can map and diagnose natural behavioral drives. You know, you're a scholar, I'm a captain, Sarah's a persuader. We can also diagnose or map out their general cognitive ability, their ability to deal with complexity. The one that's always been a bit elusive is the heart. And the heart has to do with a person's core values, their gifting, and really how they approach this world. And as I was reading the book, I'm thinking, and I think about in the chapter where you talk about a personality and some of the questions you ask to help people think or select, okay, where do I see my answers for these particular prompts? Those are all heart issues. And you talk about, you know, fairness, honesty, and integrity. Well, you know, you think about Sarah in your original example. Had she really been able to gauge the heart, if you will, or the value structure or moral code, if you will, of that manager or the organization? Is that permitted through the organization? Could that, because that eventually influences the culture of an organization. She could have made a decision. It was a dream job, but it's like, this is not the dream job. I'm not going to go here. But she she found herself in a position to make a decision.

Are Ethics Worse Or Just Seen

Dr. G. Richard Shell 27:34

Well, maybe, maybe, you know, maybe it was her dream job and she had her nightmare boss. That's true. And and see, I think the I think the uh the the challenge is if you're a parent, if you're a father or a mother, and someone says, uh, leave your child in the grocery store aisle and come over here with me, uh, we're gonna we're gonna get some money out of the ATM. You would go, are you are you kidding? I'm a I'm a father. I'm not gonna leave my child in a in the aisle of the grocery store alone. Right. All I'm trying to do is get people to think of their identities as people of conscience with that same conviction. So when someone asks you to lie, you say, Really? I'm a person of conscience. How can I possibly do that? Now, what are you gonna do about it? Okay, that's a nice, interesting, strategic organizational strategy problem. Uh, and I've got lots of stuff in the book about people managing the organization in a way that leads to the right outcome. And maybe the right outcome is that someone does get fired. Or maybe in the end, the right outcome is you're in a toxic organization that's run by a criminal enterprise and you do leave, you know, uh, and the sooner the better, and you blow the whistle on them because they're gonna do a lot of harm and damage in the world. So that's the extreme case, but a lot of distance in between, uh, where you can actually work to change the office culture of your business unit, or you can educate people about how they are people of conscience too, and we can create values that we all commit to that are non-negotiable in the way we conduct ourselves with our clients. And that's what leaders do. That's what we look to leaders to do. And so as soon as you buy your own identity as a person of conscience, I think that's the heart.

John Broer 29:27

Oh, it's that's a great way to put it. So let me ask a more broad question when you think about the scope of your experience in the business world, working with business leaders and organizations as well as students or soon-to-be business leaders. And and I want to go back to that term ethics refugee because it jumped out at me as well. Do we have more of an ethics problem in business now, or is it just more visible, or how would you characterize that?

Dr. G. Richard Shell 29:57

Uh great question. Uh let me draw an analogy.

unknown 30:01

Okay.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 30:02

Um, before the Me Too movement, do you think that there was more than, less than, or the same as amount of sexual harassment as there was the day after someone coined Me Too? I think there was the same amount uh going on, but it was like an iceberg that has suddenly surfaced and it had always been there, but now it was visible. Why? Because pluralistic ignorance had been broken and women began to speak up and say, Me too. So with the birth of a movement, then the chances come that there might be less of this, although it may appear that there's more because more people are speaking up. Uh, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't happening, just because they weren't speaking up. And I think I think ethical violations are part of the dynamic of social life. There are pressures that come basically, they're results-oriented pressures. And even good people will take shortcuts sometimes under pressure of uh deadlines, of expectations, of incentives. And we humans have this amazing ability to, you know, in in medicine there's a term called homeostasis. It's the term that uh the body's essential ability to sort of set itself right, even when, you know, after some sort of disruption by a disease or an injury. And I think there's there's ethical homeostasis too. I think, I think um the violation, the tendency of people to push the envelope and to give in to pressure and to yield to rationalization is pretty consistent. And I don't know, you don't have to look further than the book of Genesis in the Old Testament to realize that uh there was a little temptation going on there and that people gave way to it.

John Broer 32:06

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 32:06

Uh so it's really part of the human condition. But because of that, it's up to each of us internally to realize there's this battle going on between the good angels and the lesser angels, and it's a battle of values and temptations. And, you know, we have to listen to the better angels and we have to be the advocates for the values against the beguiling voice of rationalization and to show leadership on that because most people, as you said earlier, uh Sarah, a lot of people are insecure. And they're they're insecure, not just in self-confidence sort of ways. Everybody, I think, unless they're a psychopath, has a hum, a sort of humble sense that there's things that they wish they could be better at or wish they'd done better. But there's a sense of ambiguity about what's more important here? Uh, what's the cost-benefit analysis? What's the what's the greater good? And that that's not clear. That that's not something everybody knows the answer to instantly. But when you're a leader for values, you stand up and say, this may be a values problem. We need to think about it more carefully. We need to get more data, we need to consult more people, we need to make sure we're on the right side of this question before we just act under the pressure of the moment, which is the exigency. That's what so when I when I summon people to be people of conscience, uh, it's not summoning them to be righteous. Right. It's summoning them to be open-minded and uh curious and uh and be willing to investigate uh to lead toward uh balancing uh this dynamic, which I think is internal to human nature. And because it's internal to human nature, it's always gonna be there. Uh until we perfect humankind, which I don't see happening anytime soon, um, then they're always gonna be boss holes and you're gonna have to deal with them. Now, here's here's you know, fundamental insight that I have had work working on this project is the boss holes don't think they're boss holes. And if they if they did, they wouldn't be able to get up in the morning. And this homeostasis of ego uh basically is self-repairing when people engage in bad behavior, they talk themselves into thinking they were pushed to do it. And it really isn't their fault, they're a victim of something, right? And uh, so you're you're dealing with people who it isn't really good against evil, in my view. It's uh everybody thinks they're behaving reasonably on some basis or another. It makes sense to them, right? And and you know, Sarah's a persuader. How do you persuade people to behave differently? You don't do it by attacking them, you you show them that it's in their interests to behave differently. Right. And I think it isn't you turn a bosshole into a saint, but you learn to work with the bosshole by showing the bosshole there's a better way. Yeah, right. And a person of conscience just maintains that motivation.

Sara Best 35:11

I think you touched upon what what I've read about called the fundamental attribution error, where it's our human nature to assign maybe over credit uh circumstances to our situation. When something bad happens, well, this there were circumstances, and don't you know this is how it went down. But if it's somebody else, it's our propensity to say, that's a bad character. Wow, they made a bad choice. And you're talking about, you know, becoming a person of conscience. You refer to that as what I would call an inside job. It's an inside job. So as part of your MBA class, that's what you're setting out to do. And that's what the book is setting out to do is to help each one of us intentionally become more of a person of conscience.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 35:57

Well, I I think it's it's embrace their identity.

Sara Best 36:00

There you go.

Integrity As A Whole Life

Dr. G. Richard Shell 36:01

I think I think they are actually people of conscience already. Uh in some part of their life, it's salient. And in other parts, it tends to get either beaten down or submerged, or or they they draw a boundary and say, well, over here, person of conscience, over there, uh, do what I'm told. And I'm just trying to say, integrate your life and bring the best of you to all of it, as opposed to segment it and let other people control one part of it while you try to, you know, sort of find your soul in the other part. So it's a journey of integration for some, but in the end, I think you feel more fulfilled, you have more self-confidence in yourself as a moral person, which is the fundamental part of identity. You know, there we have a colleague uh in my department who's done some amazing research on moral identity, and she actually had a um a group of people who have Alzheimer's and they're caretakers, and she gave them questionnaires about when did the person with Alzheimer's stop being themselves? If you're the caretaker, when did that person suddenly sort of disappear and were they replaced by someone that you just didn't recognize? And interestingly, the fact that a person with Alzheimer's loses their memory or parts of their memory was not the fundamental factor in saying I've lost grandma. They still saw grandma there. It's just grandma with some imperfect memory problems. But when grandma started acting like a different moral person, when she became someone who was always outraged, or when she became someone who was lying a lot, or someone who they just didn't recognize the moral person, that's when they felt they'd lost grandma. And I think moral identity is the most important core part of who we are. And and when we lose that even a little to ourselves, we really diminish the quality of our lives. And we become, if everybody would could observe all of our behavior, we become unfamiliar to the people who love us. And so I think that the the continuity of bringing your values, your character, your sense of conscience across all domains of your life is really a way of making your life whole. And there's very little that can replace that. Life is short, right?

unknown 38:39

Yeah.

Book Launch Plug And Closing

Dr. G. Richard Shell 38:40

I always, as John knows, I like to say, if you're lucky enough to live to be 90, you get 32,850 days. That's it. Now there may be a life after, in which case, you know, good, good if you earn it, good for you. But the uh but that's all the number of days you get on this planet. Right. And and so how you spend them, uh, whether you spend them feeling like you're in a part of the world around you or in the social community that you're in, or whether you spend them feeling alienated from yourself, right, uh, is a huge opportunity cost. You know, it's just it's one more day on the planet that you don't get to feel connected to the people that you love and who love you in the closest way, in the most intimate way, because you've compromised your values and you can't reveal it. You feel guilty about it, you're ashamed of it, you know, all these emotions that then become barriers between you and an actual connection. And and the way you attend to that, it's it's uh takes awareness and you just have to be taking care of it every day. It's not uh you don't get a week off.

John Broer 39:46

Every day. That is that is so great. Is it any wonder that I absolutely think Dr. Richard Schell is amazing? I mean, you know, Richard, every time I'm telling you, you I am going right back to when I heard you talking about Springboard, and it just is energizing and exciting. And I think this this piece, um, this book, The Conscience Code, is so relevant, and I'm so excited for people to read it. I I want to remind our listeners that look in the show notes. Dr. Shell's information will be in there. Access to the book, we'll put a link in there. It will be available as of today, June 8th. All those boss holes out there, you'd be well advised to get a copy of this. Dr. Shell, what else is coming up for you, other than an amazing launch of a book? Is there anything else happening? Other than the fact that I just want to let everybody everybody know that you became a grandfather just a couple of months ago. Congratulations on that.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 40:41

Yeah. And you know, that that just raised this whole thing for me again. Thank you. My first grandchild, uh, our first grandchild. I've I've been uh lucky enough to be married uh to a uh a woman that I met when I was in college at a Grateful Dead concert many years ago. I remember that. And uh so uh there's a lot of continuity in my life in that department. And then uh our older son had their first baby, Little Mira. And the thing, the thing that I realized when that happened, in it kind of in connection with what we've been talking about, is uh the first time we drove down from my home in Philadelphia down to Bethesda, where they live, and we were on the road, it's about two and a half hour drive. And I've driven that road a thousand times over my life, you know, the the corridor between New York and DC is like a groove, right? And I I sense about halfway down the the road something different about this. And then I realized this is the first time I've driven that road as a grandfather. And and I and I'm gonna meet my grandchild. And and it was an identity thing again. I was like, you know, something had happened in my life that added a dimension to it.

John Broer 41:49

Right.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 41:50

Uh, and that I had a new part of an identity that uh I never had before. And there was a kind of thrill to think that, you know, the envelope, uh I learned something with my own kids. We had our first child, we loved our first child, that was wonderful. Then we had our second child, and I thought, well, you know, is this gonna divide our attention? Are we gonna, you know, uh, you know, and I realized, no, love is an infinite resource. You can it it grows with the opportunities. And so yes, yes. So here, here I have a third object of my love. And so I've just gotten I've gotten richer as a result of that by uh by just having that new relationship in my life. So it's interesting.

Sara Best 42:33

Man, if our listeners could see your face light up, my eyes are leaking a little bit too. Wow, such a powerful story. Oh, you're amazing, Dr. Shell. Thank you so very much for joining us today.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 42:43

Oh, thank you, Sarah and John. It's real pleasure to reconnect with you, John, and to meet you, Sarah. And you know, good luck. Uh, have compassion on the bossholes. Right. Uh we're here to help them, right? Yeah. Uh they just need to be brought to a little more wisdom and they'll they'll uh they'll help us.

Sara Best 42:59

Maybe they just need to get back in touch with their values, too. I think that would be helpful. Absolutely.

Dr. G. Richard Shell 43:06

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks a lot.

Sara Best 43:08

Thank you.

John Broer 43:13

Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Bosshole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here. And if you have your own bosshole story that you want to share with the Bosshole Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystory at the bossholechronicles.com. Again, my story at the bossholechronicles.com. We'll see you next time.