You’re born to be happy. In fact, everything in the world is conspiring every day to make you happy.

The sun, the stars, the wind, the rain, the birds, the flowers and the trees. Everything around you sings happiness. Do you even notice?

We spend our lives looking for happiness in things we acquire, people we encounter and goals we achieve only to get disappointed as happiness quickly fades away. 

We confuse happiness with pleasure. 

Happiness is a state of being, a journey, a frequency you acquire as you live your higher purpose, what I call your “Purposehood.” All you need to do to receive happiness is to direct your receiver, your heart, and mind to it.

There are three simple steps to living your purposehood:

1. First, you need to find it. 

Start by writing your purposehood statement. It’s the anchor that will allow you to explore possibilities. It’s not complicated. Your purposehood statement is your answer to two simple questions:

a. The selfish one:  If I could never fail, what would I want to achieve in my life? 
b. The selfless one: In exchange for achieving what I want for myself, what would I want to do for the world?

Your purposehood statement states what’s in it for you and what’s in it for the world. In the days and months as you practice the second and third steps and reflect on your purposehood statement you will discover your True North, your higher purpose, the meaning of your existence, the reason of your being, the passion and energy that drive you and fills your life.

2. The second step is to answer this one question first thing when you wake up in the morning: 

For all the blessings I have in my life, what selfless act do I intend to do today? 

This is the most powerful daily habit that will improve your life, bring you happiness and help you achieve your goals.  It’s the price that you pay to purchase a seat on the train destined to your dreams. 

I will let you in on a little secret; you already do daily selfless acts! You take care of your children, your parents, your pets or your plants. You smile at strangers; you pick up trash from nature, you say something nice to your coworkers, you help others with their work, you inspire, you teach, you share, you greet, you compliment.

All you need is to be aware of your actions and have the selfless intentions to do them for the well-being of others. Don’t walk the dog because you have to, do it because it’s a beautiful being that enjoys walks. Do it for the dog, not for yourself! You get the point.

So, start by listing all the selfless acts you already do and just make sure to focus your altruistic intentions on your daily pick.

3. The third step is to share what you accomplished with others.

Imagine if the icebreaker at the dinner table with your family is ‘so, what selfless act did you do today?’ Wouldn’t that change the whole experience of a dinner? Imagine the impact it will have on your family if that’s the icebreaker, every day! Make this question your icebreaker for your forum, business meetings and time out with friends.  Inspire them and get inspired by their stories. One can’t succeed alone. Together, it’s much easier. Imagine people in your community, at school, at work, in your neighborhood around town, caring a little bit more, smiling a little bit more; it will change your life as it will change theirs. 

Here’s the surprising side effect, as people who share your values and purpose get inspired by your stories, they will also be encouraged to help you reach your personal goals. 

This is exactly how the world works, give and you shall receive. 

With these three simple steps, you will find your purposehood, gain happiness and achieve your goals. It’s guaranteed! 

Don’t delay it. Take the first step now!

My Purposehood Statement: I want to inspire people to live well, do good and be happy every day of their life. Therefore, I will live well, do good and be happy every day of my life!

To write your purposehood statement go to purposehood.org 

 

Over the years, there has been an increasing realization – in part kick-started by the millennial population – that the employer-employee relationship goes two ways. Years ago, and by ‘years’ I mean in the industrial revolution, the relationship between employees and employers was cultivated based on money.

Over time, that transitioned to one where benefits would be forthcoming, and unions and work councils were formed to protect the rights of employees. Since then, the perceived value of the work being undertaken has gained greater focus and individuals want not just to earn money, but also feel like their contribution is meaningful.

This article is not intended to be a review of the advantages and disadvantages of the millennial population as a whole, nor is it intended to suggest that a whole demographic has exactly the same traits, behaviors, and values. Instead, I’d like to recognize the fact that the millennial population signaled, not just for themselves but also for other generations, that it was okay to start shifting the employer-employee relationship, and that it was perfectly reasonable to ask for what was important to them.

It’s clear that there has been an increasing amount of requests for meaningful work, different styles of contracts to enable job shifting over time, flexible vacation policies, new ways of engaging, and a value or essence that persuades people to engage with the organization – a higher purpose or cause that individuals can believe in. We work in organizations across the world and see a broad spectrum of performance at individual and team levels. This takes me to where this article began, and the coaching conversation I had with a client about a member of their team.

The team member had a great deal of potential, and previously demonstrated a significant amount of discretionary effort. The manager thought his work in the past was typically solid and was in a position to see the member of the team get promoted shortly. However, what became apparent throughout the coaching conversations we’ve had with the client was that the employee was trying less and less to meet the requirements and occasionally just ignored requests that previously had been agreed upon. The manager was at a loss as to what to do next.

I expressed my view that this individual clearly could do the work that was asked of him and was aware of the expectations that had been placed upon him. There was no lack of knowledge or resources that inhibited his ability to be successful. The manager repeatedly asked the team member what the issues were and how he could help him be successful.

Despite many attempts by the manager, this employee was not fulfilling his end of the contract within the employer-employee relationship. If the team member had not made a shift in a day, a week, a month, or six months, then it was obvious that regardless of the amount of time he was given, he would never make the shift.

To make a long story slightly shorter, I will fast forward to the outcome. The employer persisted in trying to meet the needs of the team member and asked what he could do in service of the team member’s success, happiness, and fulfillment. The manager came to me recently asking what he should do, and I said that there had been many opportunities for the employee to shift their performance, and the fact that they were not doing so was because they didn’t want to. Hearing this, the manager had an “aha!” moment. I explained to him that the reality of the situation is that we can go 100% of the way to help someone achieve what they need to achieve, but if the team member is not willing to take steps that would ultimately be in their own best interest, there is nothing else we can do.

The reality of the situation is that at some point we have to realize that we are not serving them, but rather hindering their success by enabling them to stay in a position where they are neither thriving nor attempting to succeed. That is, of course, in addition to the harm caused to the manager from the stress in dealing with the employee, or to the team who repeatedly see the employee fail to meet their obligations – which generates resistance and resentment within the team. I caught up with the manager recently and was delighted to hear that he had taken steps to resolve the issues.

The team member no longer works at the organization and has the opportunity to reflect on what he might do differently next time to balance the employer-employee relationship that ultimately has to go both ways.

 

For more than 30 years, I have been writing books, teaching in colleges, working in communities, leading non-profits and speaking at workshops throughout the world. In all that time, I have come to know one thing: leadership is everything. The needs of the 21st century cannot be met by followers.

The world is changing at warp speed, and people must be able to stand on a solid platform of self-awareness, equipped with the tools required for self-leadership that allow them to adapt to the ever-changing technologies, ideologies and circumstances of their lives. I want to change peoples’ mind-set from that of a follower to that of a leader. My program produces results: people become self-motivated leaders in their lives, inspired by their dreams and their values. Further, they inspire themselves to succeed, no longer dependent on outside forces for motivation or discipline.

People who understand Identity Leadership develop the capacity to reassure and motivate themselves. They are self-reliant. They learn to self-execute valuable, thoughtful actions, often creating innovative ideas that revolutionize their personal and professional effectiveness. The world needs leaders who understand the importance of self-awareness, self-discipline and self-leadership.

We need people who know themselves to lead organizations away from the idea of commerce for commerce’s sake, to the new paradigm of success based on integrity; with self-actualized individuals at the helm.

www.StedmanGraham.com

 

Stedman Graham’s new book “Identity Leadership” is a personal and prescriptive guide based on his philosophy that a leader cannot lead others until they first lead themselves — the more you work on yourself, the more you can give to those around you. Graham examines why self-awareness matters, how leaders lead, and the importance of communication. He then shows how to step into your role as a leader and create an identity leadership plan. Key to the journey is believing in yourself, knowing your competence, and continually challenging yourself — and being patient
with yourself.

 

What Top Leaders Are Saying About Stedman Graham’s Identity Leadership:

“Stedman Graham is one of today’s leading authorities on emotional intelligence (Identity Intelligence). He makes you focus on the true leader within yourself.” — David M. Reynolds, Associate Director, Merrill Lynch

“Stedman is an artist with unique communication skills that effectively helps reach individuals on levels they have possibly never previously experienced. I believe that the candor, openness of communication, “tough talk,” and practical discussion around skill development will lead to remarkable maturation, an appreciation of greater personal accountability and personal development.”  — Mike Fox, CEO of the Muhammad Ali Center

 

It’s been 28 years since Julie Farkas and Seth Goldman made one of the most important decisions of their lives; to marry each other.

In time, they chose careers they loved that were fulfilling: Julie creating and running programs focused on economic and racial equity and Seth as a social entrepreneur, both agreeing to take the risk of entrepreneurship with the co-founding of Honest Tea a few years later. The mission was to create great-tasting, healthy, organic beverages. In 2011, Honest Tea was acquired by The Coca-Cola Company, becoming the first organic and Fair Trade brand in the world’s largest beverage distribution system. Today, Honest Tea is the nation’s top selling ready-to-drink organic bottled tea and carried in more than 140,000 outlets in the United States. Over the years Julie and Seth have identified the three decisions we all make that have the greatest influence on our success and happiness. Here is some of the timeless wisdom they recently shared with me.

Who you choose as a life partner

It’s critical to find someone who shares your values, who you respect intellectually and professionally. That person should be a partner in every way. Entrepreneurs usually have a certain tolerance for risk, but if their partner doesn’t share that same tolerance, then you may end up with an unsuccessful home life. There are many examples of entrepreneurs who have successful companies, yet unsuccessful family lives. We’re fortunate to be aligned around the goals and vision for our careers, and most importantly, a willingness to venture into the unknown.  Having a male and female opinion on the branding of Honest Tea has been invaluable – after all, our product is sold to both. It’s interesting how many consumer-driven companies are led by male teams, and yet their customer base is at least 50% women.

What work you do

There is one thing we always warn people about: Don’t become good at something you don’t like doing. At business school, recruiters may present you with an amazing career opportunity – a fantastic job in a big city. They will try and convince you that this is crucial for your next big opportunity in life. The danger of taking this job, is that you may actually do well at it; at the expense of something you may really be passionate about.

Julie’s father was the son of immigrants who wanted him to become an engineer, because that was the practical thing for an immigrant child to do. He became a television producer instead, and he didn’t want his children to do things just because they were practical either. He wanted his children to follow their passions. And that’s the advice we gave our sons. It’s advice we’d give to any 18-year-old: Develop a passion for things and then follow them and make a life and career from it. Then you’ll enjoy what you do every day.

If you’ve earned the capital to invest, remember these same principles. There are many investment advisors that will place your money with companies that are not aligned with your values. Instead, make investments that are sound AND create social good in the world, and avoid investing in practices and impact that go against your values. We make some of our impact investments through our Donor Advised Fund at ImpactAssets, and whether you’re passionate about finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease or wanting to promote vegetarian alternatives to meat, options now exist to align your investments with your personal values.

Where you choose to live

We chose a location with a strong sense of community. There’s a park at the back of our house which is a gathering place and our children were lucky enough to walk to school. Everyone walked, and so we got to know all our neighbors too. We made a commitment to invest back into our community by supporting the local schools and leading efforts to plant more than 200 trees in our neighborhood. One of the lessons we’ve learned with work is to make sure you have a short commute. So much of your life can be spent in traffic. It’s unproductive for your health, your family and your social life. It helps us spend more time with our family, which is far more enjoyable than traffic.

www.HonestTea.com / www.ImpactAssets.com

Taking a startup from an idea on a napkin to a successful business takes perseverance and often a decade of full commitment. An absolute unwillingness to quit is much more than just a required ingredient in a complex success equation.

Simply making that deep, 10-year commitment to your life’s mission will create almost immediate effects. You transform into a magnet, drawing in money, talent, and business partnerships. Of course, you must also follow through, which takes grit.

Elon Musk said building a company is like “staring into the abyss and eating glass.” I wholeheartedly agree, but consider this — you don’t need any special innate skill to eat glass, you just have to be willing to do it. The likelihood of success is far higher than published stats seem to indicate, as long as you are truly committed. The journey can be painful but it may help to keep asking yourself the following five questions.

Are people joining me?

What I’ve learned in two decades of entrepreneurship, if you are a truly committed founder, you become a magnet for talent because your passion energizes the company, shapes its culture and lands investors. When I was very much in the ideation stage of Applied Semantics, I spent time on the phone brainstorming ideas and chatting about aspirations with close friends and a few relatives. One of those long phone calls was with a cousin, Ari Barkan, an engineer who grew up and lived on the East Coast. (Ari was one of the first employees at Network Solutions, which basically ran the internet back in the day.) Only a few weeks after that call, he called me, saying he was willing to drop everything and move to California to join me.

You must ask yourself: How much difficulty am I having in signing up initial employees or co-founders? Struggling to attract talent, in the beginning, is natural, but if problems persist, it may indicate that you are not as authentically committed as you need to be. If any potential candidates turn you down, make sure you are diligent about finding out the reasons why. It will help you better understand whether the issue is your core commitment or how you are communicating your vision.

Is my commitment real?  

A very common reason for company “failure” is that the founder simply decides to move on to their next chapter of life. As an investor, one key thing I look for is evidence that the company reflects the founder’s underlying personal mission and passion rather than just a way to collect a paycheck. I need to know that the founder is committed to fulfilling the mission regardless of obstacles that will inevitably present themselves.

Commitment must even transcend the financial exit. The most strategic (read: lucrative) acquisitions involve a corporate “bet” on a committed team that can continue to build upon a mission, leveraging new resources and networks.

When Google was looking to penetrate the huge future market for the “Digital Home,” they saw in Nest an incredibly passionate and capable team that dreamed big. Google didn’t acquire Nest just for its digital thermostat. Google saw in Nest an opportunity to invest in a winning team that could pursue an ambitious dream for the future home.

You must ask yourself: As a founder, is my commitment unwavering enough to build the company to last.  

Are my values strong?

Commitment works for attracting talent and investors, but you need to immediately and continuously demonstrate it. A 10-year commitment involves a huge number of meetings, interviews, documents, emails, conversations, presentations and more — roughly 100,000 tasks from start to finish.

Amazing things happen if you can apply consistent effort over a long period of time, but a single flub can really set you back. For example, being very disrespectful to a colleague at a company meeting perhaps because you let frustration get the best of you — that single moment can have profoundly bad consequences.

You also must ask yourself: Am I adhering to values inside and outside the office and living them consistently? It’s important that you do. Character wins over the long haul.

Have I avoided the shiny object syndrome?

Ten years is also a magical number when it comes to developing expertise. While some founders bring deep industry expertise, many successful founders put in the 10 years that it takes to become the expert in your field.  

Conversely, many competitors will not be able to match you over a 10-year commitment, so the field will thin out. Computer science instructor Randy Pausch’s famous last lecture discussed the obstacles that enable the eventual winner to demonstrate their commitment to achieving success — those obstacles stop the others from keeping up!

When I started out, I worried about a growing set of competitors. Some had more money than us, others had more PhDs and better marketing. But, they all eventually seemed to be less relevant and threatening. One had very strong technology but couldn’t find product/market fit because they didn’t focus on any specific use cases. Some went through early acqui-hires. And one just spent too fast and ran out of money. A few years later, we found ourselves still standing, alone and in position to leverage years of expertise, data and technology. We were positioned to dominate a massive new market in contextual advertising.

You must ask yourself: Have I avoided the “shiny object syndrome” in the past 10 years?  Being a committed founder means occasionally saying “no” to things in the short term that take you too far from your original plan.

A process of 100,000 tasks

Some statistical analyses have concluded that startup success is exceedingly rare. For example, only .06 percent of startups reach unicorn status. At the same time, any data scientist knows that stats can be manipulated to fit your headline. The truth is for the small subset of founders who commit and follow through on the 10-year process — the chances of success are significantly higher.

Personally, I have dedicated myself twice now, over 20 years to two companies: Applied Semantics and Factual. Each has required over 100,000 small tasks that I’ve given my best efforts, each an opportunity to demonstrate my ongoing commitment. It hasn’t been easy, but both have been incredible journeys filled with learning, shared achievements and fun.

Building a company is very much about the journey, continually committing to making each step count and not getting fixated on the eventual destination. Are you ready to commit?

 

Deval Patrick has been successful in the world of business, government and non-profits. In a recent conversation, I was curious to learn what leadership lesson he had taken away from each.

Emerging from a childhood in a Chicago tenement to graduating from Harvard Law School, and serving as Governor of Massachusetts, his journey has been a fascinating one. He is now a Managing Director at Bain Capital Double Impact, a social impact private equity fund he conceived and founded. Here, he shares refreshing words of wisdom, his life’s journey and some lessons along the way:

 

I keep meeting people my age who tell me they’ve reached a stage in their lives where they’re searching for meaning – something separate from their business or professional lives. I feel fortunate to have figured out relatively early how to inject this deeper meaning into my career. We all spend so much time at work that there is hardly time to separate our work lives from the rest of our lives, and little reason to separate our work values from our personal values in any event. Finding that deeper meaning won’t happen overnight. For me, it required moving out of my comfort zone.

When I was 21 years old and freshly graduated from college, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. I thought about going to business school, joining the bank I’d worked at during summer break, going to law school, or even the seminary. Winning a Rockefeller Traveling Fellowship eventually made that decision for me. The scholarship required that I live for a year in a non-Western culture and find a project to work on. They offered me just enough money to get there and back. I had never traveled outside the United States before and wanted to go to Africa, despite not knowing a soul. After much correspondence, I finally got a response from a guy in Khartoum in Sudan, who said, “I don’t know what you’ll do, but we’ll figure it out.” So, I bought a backpack and set off for Khartoum. When I arrived, my contact guy had left for Long Beach, California for two years and had notified no-one of my arrival!

Eventually, I persuaded the folks in the office (who wanted nothing to do with me) that I could do something if they just gave me a chance. To get rid of me, they sent me to do a research project in Darfur – 700 miles away, across a desert. I rode on the back of a cargo truck for five days to a village with no mail, phones, airport or trains. I stayed for seven months and figured it out – learned the language, how to do the job, how to make friends in a foreign language, and how local customs worked.

When you find yourself in a strange place, without your familiar support systems, you start focusing on what’s essential in life. You think about what’s meaningful and what really matters, not only short-term issues but what lasts. These revelations don’t come to you in a flash, it marinates over time, and as I look back at the zig-zag path of my career, one of the reasons I’ve been willing to try new things outside my comfort zone is because this comfort zone is pretty broad. Like my experience in Darfur, I knew I’d figure things out. What I initially mistook for a problem became a blessing.

The qualities of a leader, regardless whether the setting is political or business or law, are basically the same: Intellectual honesty, rigor, curiosity and humility. We need to stay curious and open to other people’s ideas. I’ve been fortunate to surround myself with people who are smarter than me. They raise my game and have interesting ideas. It doesn’t matter whether these people are my superiors or my subordinates.  I just want to be around people who will challenge me to be better.

From my experience, it’s middle management that makes things happen. You can issue as many edicts as you want, but if you don’t win middle management and they don’t understand what you’re trying to do and that you respect their role in making it happen, then you can fire off all the directives you want, but nothing will move. You need to be open to hearing, “We tried this approach before you got here, and here’s why it didn’t work. Here’s a better way to accomplish the same thing. Here’s what you should be focused on instead.” Humility, curiosity and being open to ideas can sometimes get the job done faster and better.

As a leader, you need the courage sometimes to fail. An extraordinary result of a superior education is all the options it brings. Yet, one of the strange things I’ve noticed is that graduates from these schools frequently seize up. They’re afraid that if they exercise one of their many options, they’ll lose out on others. Activating one of those options may open up others you didn’t realize you had. One of the fascinating things about the innovation economy in which we currently find ourselves is that it’s required us to raise our tolerance for failure. We’re going to have to learn to tolerate failure in public policy too if we want to find new ways of doing things as a nation.

When I was in 6th grade my teacher, Mrs. Quaintance, had 35 kids in her class who were just like me – all from challenged backgrounds – yet she managed to do much more than keep order in our class. She took us to our first opera. I didn’t have a clue what they were singing about (and still don’t today), but I loved it, and still do. She took us to see The Sound of Music to expose us to modern European history and taught us to count and greet in German. She was the first person to give me a sense of what a global citizen might be.

Mrs. Quaintance’s leadership was subtle and responsive to the gaps in our lives (that we didn’t even know we had) and it made me hungry for more. That’s the kind of generous leadership that lifts you up and broadens your horizons. It begins with an open mind and ends with a richer, more rewarding life.  I hope to become that kind of leader.

 

“I’d rather be a fake somebody than a real nobody.” — Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr Ripley.

I love that film. The irony is acted brilliantly. Duplicity or authenticity? As a leadership coach and business owner leading my own team, I have spent my life mastering authenticity — a truth based on personal daily and long-term intentions. It involves living by respectful human values and embracing a congruency between my inner thoughts and feelings, as well as my actions. I don’t get it right all the time, but there’s merit in trying.

Screaming out for accurate information

We all seem to be drowning in bad data and misinformation. We live and work in the fake-news era, and sometimes we feel like we can’t believe it all. We question its validity, and rightly so. I know I have.

There have been some prominent — and very public — fallings from grace in the news recently. In the past few months, ex-Fyre Festival CEO Billy McFarland and ex-Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes have been ousted for spreading their own, fraudulent narratives of misinformation to investors, consumers, and even the US government. They’re wonderful examples of the very best fraudsters. Inauthenticity in action. They epitomize voodoo leadership. They are able to sail through lie-detector tests because they don’t believe they are lying.

They have tapped into the golden age of the con — using social media to drive a brand that seems worth investing in. It’s the illusory truth effect. The more you repeat a lie, the more people will believe it to be true. We’re all guilty of this to some degree, but why do leaders who might posses genuinely game-changing ideas go this route?

We live in a world where success is defined by achievement

My perceived status in the world, the people I know, the wealth I have created, the degree of influence I have, the number of followers, likes, and shares I get on social media. All of this is imaginary, right? It isn’t real.

Yeah sure, having that fancy house in the south of France is real. Or the Aston Martin in the driveway, too. But the perceived idea of success – the status – isn’t real. Knowing yourself, trusting yourself, and being yourself — that is real — and a sign of true leadership.

Putting on a show to grow your business

In business, I sometimes hear that you have to fake it ’till you make it. “We must create the right brand online,” I hear. “We must become a ‘thought leader.’ A self-styled guru.” I don’t disagree with this if the intention is right. But to what extent are you being truthful? The real you? And how does this public persona feed into your leadership style? If you tell everyone that you can revolutionize blood testing or host the most luxurious festival the world has ever seen despite knowing these claims aren’t possible, it won’t suddenly make these things possible. What happens behind the scenes counts.

So can you set the tone for your specific industry by being real? Or are you just good at marketing spin?

How can leaders make themselves future-proof, if at all?

When I work with leaders, I’m not in the business of trying to turn them into something they’re not. I certainly don’t suggest ways to portray themselves as a thought leader, or a voodoo leader.

Instead, I aim to help leaders discover their truth, speak it and then live it. To uncover their authentic selves and their essence in every circumstance. Leaders must discover and believe in their unique creative power to influence. That’s how you’ll become a leader that stands the test of time. Being mindful, respectful and (it sounds obvious) lawful, will future-proof you and your business. Not just because you think you should do these things, but because they’re the right way of doing things.

By leading intentionally, you live truthfully — serving others by understanding human nature and embracing the combination of your thoughts, feelings and actions.

The hard way, but the right way

Being an authentic leader isn’t easy. That’s why so many Holmes-type leaders exist. It’s easier to lie your way to the top, but the faster you rise, the easier it is to fall. Instead, it’s all about the long game. You have to be observant. You have to notice how you are feeling and thinking and how you are responding to this. Crucially, you must become aware of the feelings, ideas and actions of others. This allows you to serve with intent. It’s an ongoing process and everyone is capable of doing it.

When we do this, we can let go of duplicity and embrace authenticity. We can let go of our attachment to status and perceived ideas of success. We can embrace a knowing of ourselves, trust ourselves, and stop portraying ourselves as something we are not.

Think of intention as an attitude of mind. Let your purpose drive your behavior, the way you communicate and how you engage with others. Ensure your intentions are underpinned by respectful human values.

Create a vision for yourself. Live this vision purposefully each day. Visualize how you’ll act each day. Then, take note of how your inner state of mind or attitude (your intention) matches your thinking and doing. Help others to do the same.

Duplicity or authenticity? Voodoo or truthful leadership? You choose.

 

It sounds like a complicated idea, but the unintended consequence of consequentialism is what happens when people value outcomes over methods…or worse yet, when they completely lose sight of the method in pursuit of the outcome.  

The recent news announcing the widespread college cheating scandal involving, what is potentially, hundreds of parents over more than a decade raises an interesting juxtaposition…and it got me thinking. When powerful, influential and successful people – many who are inarguably effective leaders in their own realms – simultaneously have a complete moral collapse in their value system, you have to wonder why. How could so many people have fallen prey to what most people would see as having a serious lapse in judgment at best and going morally bankrupt at worst? 

To answer this takes me back to my days at Reed College, where I majored in Philosophy. One of the more memorable debates was in an Ethics class on the concept of intentionalism vs. consequentialism. The fundamental question we were asked to consider was this… if you save a drowning man while trying to steal his watch, is it a moral act? The consequentialist would argue that the outcome is what counts—you saved a life, which is a moral act. The intentionalist would say that your intention was to steal – an immoral act. 

Here’s the thing. We live in an increasingly consequentialist world, where results matter over anything else. And when we are all focused on the outcome, then the process gets lost in pursuit of the goal. For consequentialists, the ends justify the means. Many great atrocities have been committed based on that premise.  

I would suggest that what got these leaders and parents into trouble was an over-rotation on outcomes and a lack of internal clarity all exacerbated by the sense of entitlement that wealth can bring.  

The parents in this case were blinded by their pursuit of a seemingly moral goal. They didn’t care HOW their kids got into a good college—they only cared that they did. The irony is that most of these same parents spent their children’s formative years teaching them right from wrong… good from bad… moral from immoral and that if asked whether they would rather have their child win by cheating or lose honestly, most would have chosen the latter. Yet in this case, their commitment to an outcome blinded them to their own sense of morality. 

This happens with business leaders and CEOs all the time. They have to report results every quarter and are often faced with choices where they have to violate their own values in pursuit of that goal. Admittedly this is a real quandary – even for the most morally clear among us. 

Neither a consequentialist nor an intentionalist be.

Perhaps this situation has created a moment in time for each of us to reflect internally. Am I an intentionalist or a consequentialist? Where do those come in conflict for me? Does one feel more “right” than the other? In a world that is out of balance and at odds, in my opinion it is up to leaders to find their own moral compass first. And for me – and perhaps for these people facing serious criminal charges – that means that there needs to be a balance between the two.  

We can only create lasting change in this world when we start with ourselves. Know where you are coming from and why… but take heed in seeking only outcomes. Yes, we need to produce results. But how we produce them matters as much as the results themselves. The world may not be black and white, but in this case – with these decisions – the world wasn’t grey either. To be an effective leader is to navigate these with great attention and balance process with outcome – and that isn’t always easy.

Perhaps Edward Deming said it best, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, then you don’t know what you are doing.” If these parents had taken the time to do that, they would have noticed that their process wasn’t sound – that at some level they had no idea what they were doing – and as a result, produced some very unintended consequences.