Book Excerpt August 31, 2010, 1:06PM EST

Book Excerpt: Giving Voice to Values

So many times, we see something that's just wrong at the workplace, yet we don't know how to speak up in protest. Author Mary C. Gentile offers her advice

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Recent events at BP, Toyota, and Goldman Sachs have made it painfully clear that just knowing what you think is right and even saying something about it—as several engineers and employees did prior to the BP oil spill disaster—is just not enough if you can't speak powerfully and persuasively, in a way that your peers and superiors can understand and respect.

Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What Is Right offers instructions on developing a powerful voice. My interviews with scholars and conversations with individuals who have voiced their values effectively have yielded a number of principles to help you do so throughout your career. One of the most powerful—and (unfortunately) counterintuitive—principles is to speak and act in ways that come naturally, rather than trying to develop an entirely new way to behave in challenging times. I hope the excerpt below will help guide you whenever you endeavor to do the right thing. —M.G.

Generate a "self-story" or personal narrative about the decision to voice and act on your values that is consistent with who you already are and that builds on the strengths and preferences that you already recognize in yourself. There are many ways to align your unique strengths and style with your values. If you view yourself as a "pragmatist," for example, find a way to see voicing your values as pragmatic.

One of the most powerful lenses through which to view values in the workplace—and one of the most powerful sources of the strength and confidence to act on those values—is the lens of self-knowledge. A knowledge of oneself allows the crafting and embracing of a desired self-image. Managers at all levels in their firms report that a significant enabler of values-based action is the clarity, commitment, and courage that is born of acting from our true center, finding alignment between who we already are and what we say and do. Some people say they are able to voice and act on their values because they have always had a strong sense of right and wrong and a need to act on this conviction. Psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut describes this kind of moral courage as a person's commitment to "shape the pattern of his life—his thoughts, deeds, and attitudes—in accordance with the design of his nuclear self."

Not all people see themselves this way, however. Let's borrow a taxonomy from Gregory Dees and Peter Crampton's discussion of ethical negotiations. They argue that most people categorize themselves as "idealists" (who attempt to act on their moral ideals no matter what), "pragmatists" (who seek a balance between their material welfare and their moral ideals), or "opportunists" (who are driven exclusively by their own material welfare). Dees and Crampton point out that most people fall into more than one of these categories at different times and depending on the issue, but in our experience with business students and practitioners, the largest group is those who self-identify as pragmatists. They want to act on their values but do not wish to place themselves at a "systematic disadvantage" by doing so. This does not mean that they would never pay a price for voicing and acting on their values, but rather that they believe it may be credibly possible that they could be successful.

This seems a profoundly hopeful observation, because it suggests that there are many who would voice and act on their values if they believed they had a reasonable chance of effectiveness. This observation supports our primary starting assumption for Giving Voice to Values: that most of us want to find ways to voice and act on our values in the workplace and do so effectively. After all, to create and preserve ethical organizational cultures, not everyone has to voice and enact our deepest shared values—just enough of us do.