Leadership BITES
Leadership BITES
Roger Steare, The Corporate Philosopher
Roger Steare, a philosopher in business, helps people think about their purpose, values, and how to make the right decisions. He has developed a moral reasoning framework and emphasizes the importance of compassion, friendship, and fairness in ethical decision-making. He believes that integrity is demonstrated through the alignment of values and actions, and that good, simple rules are necessary to guide behaviour. Steare also discusses the impact of greed and fear in the corporate world and how they can influence decision-making. The conversation explores the themes of greed, fear, conformity, and moral leadership. Greed is described as a form of fear, driven by the fear of not having enough. The primal fear of not having basic needs met, such as belonging and material possessions, is hardwired into humans. However, the pursuit of wealth and material possessions does not lead to happiness or fulfilment. The conversation also emphasizes the importance of moral leadership and creating organizations with a shared moral purpose, values, and simple agreed rules. Conformity is seen as a jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth, while humour, humility, and humanity are highlighted as essential qualities for individuals and organizations.
Takeaways
- Ethics is the art of moral reasoning and involves deciding right from wrong.
- Integrity is demonstrated through the alignment of values and actions.
- Compassion, friendship, and fairness are important values in ethical decision-making.
- Good, simple rules are necessary to guide behaviour.
- Greed and fear can influence decision-making in the corporate world. Greed is a form of fear, driven by the fear of not having enough.
- The pursuit of wealth and material possessions does not lead to happiness or fulfilment.
- Moral leadership involves creating organizations with a shared moral purpose, values, and simple agreed rules.
- Conformity is a jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
- Humour, humility, and humanity are essential qualities for individuals and organizations.
Sound Bites
- "Compassion is the basis for morality."
- "Teamwork is not a moral value."
- "Share resources fairly, not equally."
- "Greed is a form of fear."
- "There is no correlation between wealth and happiness."
- "Conformity is a jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."
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Guy Bloom (00:01)
have to be professionals. So on that note, Roger, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on this episode of Leadership Bites. Welcome.
Roger Steare (00:12)
Guy, thank you very much. I'm delighted to be with you today and thank you for inviting me.
Guy Bloom (00:18)
Well, I'm excited because, well, I've done it, do you know what, I say this every single time somebody comes on the show, because I only have people that look really exciting come on the show. So you've got to fulfil that criteria. But Roger, for those people that just don't know who you are, and just give them a sense of what you do, who you are, and almost how you define yourself in the world.
Roger Steare (00:40)
Sure, thank you. Well, if I was at a barbecue and someone asked me, what do you do? I always tell the truth and say, I'm a philosopher in business. I help people in business think about their purpose, their values and how to make the right decision. And I've been doing that job for well over 20 years now. And a lot of it's been helping clear ups.
when things have gone wrong, but thankfully some of it's also been preventative. And I don't tell people what to do. I don't tell people what is right. I help them work it out for themselves.
Guy Bloom (01:26)
So the reason you came to my attention was just seeing a little bit of you around on the internet and then realizing that I actually owned your book, Ethic Ability, and How to Decide What's Right and Find the Courage to Do It, which is just a great title. And I...
really want to get into that. I work with senior teams and I think understanding and having a conversation with somebody deeply immersed in the content of ethics is going to be a glorious conversation. Just before we get there it would be I think super valuable just to get a sense of your journey to being where you are because I
I've never seen an advert for corporate philosopher, so you must have got there somehow and it would be lovely to understand the journey.
Roger Steare (02:18)
you
Yeah, and it wasn't a title I invented, although people say it's really cool. It was given to me by the former dean of the business school, formerly called Cass Business School, now called Bayes Business School. So, yeah, going back 60 plus years, my dad was a builder during the week and a Methodist preacher on a Sunday.
and our family was the traveling congregation because so many of the chapels he went to were quite small. Many of them didn't have an organ or piano, so he used to play the hymns on his melodica, if anyone remembers. It looks and sounds a bit like a recorder, but with a keyboard. And that's where I guess that upbringing gave me my sense of right and wrong, and it was obviously based on religion, although my work is not.
based on any one religion today. But what he did teach me was not only how to think about right or wrong, but he was really good at preaching. And I wouldn't say I'm a preacher, but his ability to engage the congregation in our terms now, the audience, was really powerful. So I often use props, and he used props in order for people to memorize something.
Then I'm going to fast forward to when I went to university. I studied history at Royal Holloway College in London. It was called Bedford College at the time, then it was merged. And I read the history of Western philosophy as part of that course, not with Bertram Russell, I'm not that old, but with his son, Conrad Russell. And I had to critique his father's history of Western philosophy.
read the book in a week and it was a very, very large book and then write an essay on it. And my essay was as honest as I could make it. I wasn't intimidated, if you like, by the fact I was critiquing one of the West's greatest ever philosophers. And when I delivered my essay verbally, those were the days where there was one professor and two students.
He sucked on his unlit pipe and told the story of how his father had had to write that book in six months in order to pay off his creditors. And that sort of really weird set of circumstances has always stuck with me because, you know, we have this image of the great and the good being demigods. And in fact, they're just ordinary people like you and me.
It also taught me the courage of my convictions and if I didn't think something was right to challenge it and ask about it. So that was really important milestone. The next one was I played safe with my career initially and sort of thought about my parents upbringing, which was quite tough, like most parents of our generation. So they...
grew up in deprivation during the Second World War through rationing. And they were telling, I was the first of the four children to go to university. And they said, you've got to get yourself a good job. You know, you can have a mortgage, a car, blah, blah, blah, kids. And so I joined banking, retail banking with what was then Midland Bank, now HSBC. And...
It was a good job, but it was boring as hell. And that's what, you know, banking is a utility. It should be boring. If banking is exciting, someone is losing money or we're breaking money and we're breaking trust. So...
So I did that for a couple of years, but after spending two weeks filing paper statements alphabetically, I was wondering what on earth I was doing there. So at the time, my older brother was working as a mental health practitioner in one of two youth treatment centers in the country. So youth treatment center is where children under the age of 18 are sent at what was the time Her Majesty's Pleasure because they committed an awful crime like.
murder, rape or arson. And I thought, oh, I'd quite like to understand people who have that sort of experience in life and have gone off the rails. So I didn't work there. I got a job as a residential social worker with what was called a community home with education at the time. It used to be called Borstels here in the UK, reform schools in the US. Kids weren't locked up.
but there was a very high stuff to pupil ratio. And I call that my MBA in life guy. So I found out a lot about people who hadn't had the sort of safe, warm, loving, privileged, relatively experienced that I'd had. And then after my experience of banking and delinquency, if you like,
I put those two together and became a headhunter in the city, haha, because I wanted to, I needed to earn more money in order to buy a house and get a mortgage. And from that moment, I realized that one of the things I was able to do was to, as a recruiter, I was able to understand people quite quickly and I didn't.
Although I obviously used computers were around in those days, I'm not at all. So the computers would match job descriptions to CVs. But that, you know, if that's all you do as a recruiter, you're going to be replaced by AI very quickly. What I was able to do is to recruit to match the character of the candidates with the culture of the organization, the character of the leader who was hiring them. And that, I guess, is where.
that my current work really started. I did quite well in the recruitment game. I eventually became a group, a subsidiary CEO for Adeco, which is the world's largest employment agency. So I got my grounding in corporate, multinational corporate life with that. Didn't really enjoy that aspect. I disagreed, I had a disagreement with the group CEO. Obviously I left.
He didn't, haha. And I decided to put my experience of leading a senior team, trying to inspire a company to do great work into work as an executive coach. And I was, funny enough, my first two assignments with Goldman Sachs and Bank of America was as a remedial coach, which harked back to my
social work where I was working with toxic managers whose behaviour was creating problems even though technically they were brilliant. And again, those were quite seminal experiences because I began to learn that good people do bad things and bad people can do good things, etc. And I was able to help them primarily by working out why they were going off the rails, why they were behaving.
in a bad way with colleagues. And from that, I started broadening out into coaching leadership development. And then I think the pivotal moment was when I met the head of training and ethics at the Financial Services Authority in 2002. I was working with Benedictine Abbott and
who I've met through a business school course. And he and I set up some conversations with business leaders to help them make better decisions, do the right thing. And long story short, he and I were asked to write a paper for the FSA on integrity. So we wrote that. And as a result of that, I started doing some research around banks, insurance companies, wealth managers.
you know, how they decided to do the right thing, how they handled ethics and ethical dilemmas, and they didn't. I mean, there was very little formal process going on there. So from that, I realized there was a need to do two things. One was to have a moral reasoning framework, which the first version of which I set out in that book that you bought, Ethic Ability.
And the other crucial thing, which became more and more important as I did the work with a number of different banks, insurers and other sector companies, was it's all well and good having a moral reasoning framework. But if your boss is a misleader and abuses their power, it doesn't matter. You can't make the right decision if your opinion and views is being shut down and you're afraid.
to challenge what the boss thinks is the right decision. So as well as a moral reasoning framework, you have to create a microculture within a team meeting, a decision -making meeting, which helps the team make the right decision without fear or favor from the person who wields most power in the organization. So it's those two aspects, if you like, that have
have developed, so a thinking framework, a moral reasoning framework, and secondly, creating a safe environment for open and honest debate, which was way ahead of the time where people were talking about psychological safety. And I was then fortunate or unfortunate for them, but I started to become known and several things happened. So first of all,
My book was picked up by a CEO called Joe Garner who was running HSBC branch banks in the UK, the retail bank. And he invited me in for breakfast and we got chatting and he eventually hired me as an advisor to help him and his team make tough decisions.
That was in 2007 -08, just as the banking crisis was unfolding. Then in 2010, the Macondo rig in the Gulf of Mexico owned by BP but operated by subcontractors. The well blew up, the rig blew, 11 people died, 15 were injured, an ocean was polluted and BP looked like it was going to go bust.
And they hired me to design and develop a responsible or ethical leadership program for 4 ,000 leaders around the world, senior leaders. So that was the next one. And then in 2012, we had the LIBOR manipulation scandals, both at Barclays and RBS. RBS also had a massive IT outage.
and both organisations hired me in to help them reshape their culture by building and designing responsible leadership or leading with integrity programmes, whatever they wanted to call it. And again, that was in the thousands. So by that time, I was, you know, my work wasn't tactical, it was strategic, although I was running workshops and so on.
And literally, I think when I sort of sat down and worked it out by 2016, when I was working with Joe Garner again, this time he was CEO at Nationwide Bills Society, I think I'd either directly or indirectly developed programs attended by over 20 ,000 leaders around the world. At the same time, I developed a psychometric diagnostic called Moral DNA.
So I did that in 2008 with a psychologist called Pavlos Stamboulidis in Athens. And psychometrics are important for people to understand what's going on in their subconscious. And there wasn't really enough, you know, an accessible one for people to use to work out how their moral compass was spinning. So Pavlos and I worked it out together. We were very fortunate that we...
had an opportunity with the business school I was working with, with the Times, which had just gone online, but no paywall yet, and PWC, the consulting firm. And together we created a pilot through the Times website. We hoped for 200 to 2 ,000 people completing moral DNA in two weeks, and 20 ,000 people.
completed it. So our data was very rich. And from that moment, we've been deploying moral DNA as a, if you like, a moral mirror. So you can do it for free at moralDNA .org and it will tell you how you prefer to make difficult ethical decisions. The paid version tells you how you rank on 10 values, your preferences there, moral values.
And we use it for team analysis. So we look at how people think both in their personal lives and professional lives and how that changes. And I can explain that in a little while. And then just to bring you up to date, I've now pretty much, I've done all I want to do, I think, in terms of large scale program and change. What I want to do now is I describe my career as being in the autumn.
of my career, even though it's spring. And what I want to do is I think I'm beginning to understand what it is I'm talking about. And I am now spending more time as a public speaker, not just at conferences, but at team days, off sites, because having now done it hundreds, probably thousands of times, I can do what is called a rapid intervention.
So I was doing a session last week, conference, I had 45 minutes and people realized at the end of 45 minutes how they could be even better at thinking and making better decisions. So that's what I love doing. I love interacting with people, helping them see the fact that making difficult decisions is hard, but it's not complex. It doesn't have to be complex.
which is why you said earlier, the subtitle to the book is how to decide what's right and find the courage to do it. The easy bit is deciding what's right. The hard bit is finding the courage because often it involves self -sacrifice or losing personally in order for the greater good to benefit. So that was a very long answer, Guy.
to your question around the journey. Sorry about that.
Guy Bloom (19:01)
Perfect. I think it really helps just to understand very often somebody's journey to where they are now to make a decision on how I think I want to listen to somebody in terms of their history and their background. And so that's for me, that's spot on. There's a lot here and we can't turn a life's work.
Roger Steare (19:13)
Yeah.
Guy Bloom (19:26)
and unpack it completely in the time that we've got. But in the time that we've got, I'm going to take the part of being a little bit purposely niave in my questions, I think, to allow, you know, and to maybe get the best answers. If I think about what ethics is, and please, please decide to read...
Roger Steare (19:49)
Hmm.
Guy Bloom (19:52)
word my question to suit a better answer. But if I was to say that one might want to understand what ethics is and somebody might say, so what's the difference between ethics and integrity or ethics and values or ethics and having a moral compass or and it might be look they're all in the same cluster.
Roger Steare (20:07)
Hmm.
Guy Bloom (20:15)
but also there's maybe there's a differentiation. So I think it would just be good to hear you just talk on the topic of before we get going, let's just have a starter for 10 of when Roger says ethics, what he's talking about is.
Roger Steare (20:31)
So
ethics is the art of moral reasoning. It's our ability to decide right and wrong. And as simple as that, integrity is a word that refers to, if you like, the collection of moral values that we say we believe in and that people can see in our behaviors, in our actions. The opposite of integrity, therefore the antonym, is hypocrisy.
which we see a lot of in the world today where people say, these are the values I believe in, and then we don't see them in their actions, we see the opposite. So if I was to break down ethics or moral reasoning into the three components that people find helpful, and here I'm turning into everyday English, long words that philosophers love to do because they want to appear really intelligent and they may or may not be. So the long...
The first word that I use is people. So when we're making a decision, we have to think about the impact of our decision on other people and perhaps ourselves. Now, philosophers call that consequentialism, utilitarianism, and also the feminist ethic of care.
So consequentialism obviously means you're looking at the consequences of your actions. Utilitarianism means you're looking at the utility of your actions, which means the greatest happiness for the greatest number. But the problem with that final word, utilitarianism, is if you're a minority, you're screwed. So utilitarianism can justify fascism, can justify...
all of the horrors that we're seeing in the world with ethnic cleansing and the conflict between various minority or majority groups. So it's actually in my humble opinion to have a moral code based on the greatest happiness for the greatest number, falls foul of all, you know, describes some of the problems we've got today. Certainly in terms of the greatest number, the greatest happiness is also a problem because
happiness is not a constant state and it's an illusion created by the consumer capitalist economy that's dominating certainly the West and other parts of the world they're trying to catch up with. And that's boiling our planet alive, you know, we're boiling ourselves. So however, if we flip it around and say, well, it's not about the greatest happiness for the greatest number, it's about leading a modest good life in the service of other people.
which is the root of friendship, and it's also the root of parenting and being a good child to your elderly parent as they become infirm. Then we have a very different perspective on that. So you can already see how that, you know, things that people think are the basis for morality are not, they're the basis for immorality. So that's the first one, people. So...
I do the right thing because I'm thinking about the well -being of others. And the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer suggests that compassion is the basis for morality, quote unquote. Compassion is the basis for morality. And I actually say that friendship is the ideal, a genuine friendship between people. And obviously, we hope that's the case between us and our partners, spouses, as we're.
living our lives together and as we're raising children etc etc as we're being good neighbours and good colleagues at work. And it's sort of friendship at work is actually one of the most powerful drivers of having a highly motivated engaged workforce by the way. I was in a conference with Bruce Daisley who's the twice Sunday Times bestseller.
author on workplace culture, former tech vice president in Europe for YouTube and Twitter. And he was sharing similar research about friendship being so important. And by the way, it's not unprofessional to develop professional friendships in the workplace, as long as they're appropriate, obviously. So that's the first philosophy. So let's call that, I call it people, let's call it...
you know, kindness, compassion, humanity, if you like. The next one I call values and I mean here moral values. So CEOs and senior teams agonize over coming up with values for their organizations. And that's fine. But unless they include moral values, they're not going to help them make the right decisions. So when I go into an organization, I talk to the CEO,
or the board, and they can remember actually what their values are without looking them up, and that's often rare. So it just shows you how embedded they are. I say to them, OK, let's look at your values. How many of these could you use to run a Gulag or a death camp?
there's normally a stunned silence. So I'll give you an example. Teamwork.
Teamwork is not moral value. If you're going to run a Gulag or a death camp, you need to work together as the guards and exterminators in order to achieve your purpose. So you won't find teamwork in any list of moral values. It's not part of integrity. It's morally neutral.
So if you're an organ, you know, if you have a set of organizational values, just test them and say, first of all, can I, could I use any of these to do really bad things? And secondly, why don't we have moral values or virtues at the core of our business community? Because in an unspoken sense, that's what they are at home and with family and friendship. They're rooted on.
core moral values such as love, fairness, excellence, you know, doing the best we can, et cetera, et cetera. Courage. You know, these are core moral values. There aren't an endless list of them. Don't waste time inventing them or having votes about them. It's not a democratic thing. We are who we are.
homo sapiens of the design as a social species is a fact. It's not a multiple choice question. It just drives me nuts guy when people, you know, driven by marketing departments and CEOs who have overblown views about their insights and power just creates confusion for people.
So people first, moral values second, the final one are good, simple rules. So why do we have good, simple rules? And the rule of law, as people talk about it at the moment, is because we don't have the time to sit around meeting rooms deciding things like, it's not right to smack someone in the face.
It's not right to touch someone else inappropriately. It's not right to shout at someone and make them feel afraid. That's why we have rules. And there are two basic sets of rules which I will share. I've thought about this a lot. The first one is the positive side is there's a, if you like,
what Immanuel Kant would call a moral imperative, which is be kind to others. Always be kind unless they're being hurtful to someone else, in which case you need to do something differently. And the flip side of that is don't be an ass. Don't be horrible to other people. That's rule number one. That makes sure that we don't hurt or kill other people. The second one is share stuff fairly.
By stuff, I mean any energy or material resources. Power, water, sanitation, food, shelter, clothing, access to healthcare, access to culture. Share it fairly. That's not equally. Equality is not the same as equity or fairness. So I'm not some sort of yogurt knitting, bleeding heart liberal that says,
You know, we all need to have the same amount of stuff. No, that's not appropriate because if you have a disabled child, the community should acknowledge that that child is going to need more resources to care for it than a child who doesn't have physical or mental or emotional issues. That's what equity, that's what fairness means. Each according to their need, not their wants, but their need.
And unfortunately our society and our economy is based on the maximized satisfaction of unlimited wants. And our healthcare system has got into the same trap. So one of the reasons why we have one of the highest, well we have the highest historical spend in the NHS and yet we have the breakdown and collapse of the NHS is that we are not allocating resources.
to health prevention, you know, to disease prevention and, you know, having, if you like, a positive health message. And we're also, we also think it's right to spend huge amounts of money on extending life at the cost of quality of life. So if anyone listening to this has seen a parent or a grandparent in end of life care, it's more, you know, we're all gonna die, Guy.
We can't assume that we're going to live forever. And I personally, my wife and I have made a decision that, you know, when we know we're on the final runway, that we just want to die with dignity and without pain and say goodbye to the people who love us, but without putting huge strains on them and the system. That's a moral thing. So again, we have a very
I wouldn't even call it infantile because I actually think kids are very smart. But we have this weird belief that, you know, we're going to live forever. How selfish is that? We can't live forever. If we did, we'd certainly run out of planet Earth quicker than we are now. So we need to go when our time is ready for others who follow us. You know, I...
And this is a very deep personal thing. I'm not afraid of death. I'm afraid of dying painfully, but I'm not afraid of death because I think I've lived a very happy, well not happy, I hate that word, a good life. I've experienced the things I want to experience. I enjoy life. I would not like the, if you like the pain, the grief that people who love me would go through, but I would want them to know that I'm okay.
So that's a bit deep. I didn't realize I was going to go there, Guy. But I think that when you're talking about right and wrong and ethics and morality and the integrity of our values, you have to start with those at a very basic level and say, what does it mean to be human? And why are we investing billions in extending the life of people who know they are dying?
just because we can. You know, we could, you know, people today will be people like you and I could live to a hundred. But you know, if I was told tomorrow guy that I'd be, you know, I'd be dying within three months, I'd be a bit pissed off, but I wouldn't think it was something I'd want people, lots of people to stop happening. If I knew it was going to happen, I just wanted a death that was, you know,
as painfully as possible and one that I could say proper goodbyes to people.
Sorry about that.
Guy Bloom (33:50)
Never have to apologize when you're talking from the heart. That's my way of looking at it. So that gives me a really solid kind of sense of where you're coming from. I think when I look at the world that I operate in, which is usually working with senior managers, and we're bringing in...
programs of leadership and management or team effectiveness when I'm working with senior teams. There are two things that I see. One is greed and one is fear.
And one could boil it down to you move towards something and you move away from something. You move towards some form of add value to yourself. At its most simplistic, it's praise and not getting told off. But actually, very often at senior levels, it can be around the earn out. It can be around...
the avarice of another person's position. You know, one's personal brand, greed's a big word, but it's about how I'm seen, how I'm heard, how I feel, and it's a very self -fulfilling place that if people get it wrong, they can inhabit. And it can be in the same person, or it can be somebody operating from a place of fear. They don't want to get in there, maybe if it's imposter syndrome found out.
but they don't want to fail their, again, their self -validation is wrapped up in their image and who they think they are and all these kinds of things. So when it comes to...
Roger Steare (35:39)
Hmm.
Guy Bloom (35:44)
Paul Evennels at the post office, when it comes to Martin Wintercorn, I think he was the CEO of Volkswagen when he was doing the emissions cover up for Volkswagen. I don't know, I can't look into their hearts. I don't know the reality of what actually went on, but just looking at it, I either seem to see fear or I seem to see greed. And I just wonder how that feeds into...
you know, because I am not talking potentially in your terms because you've really thought about this where I've thought about it, which is slightly different. So I just wonder how that sort of sits as an observation or does that need calibration?
Roger Steare (36:22)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it's a good observation slash question guy. So I think it's a really important point, which I like to spend a bit of time on. So greed is a form of fear. Greed is the fear of not having enough. So and it's a primal fear. So as human beings, we have some fundamental basic needs and they are.
to be part of a group that loves and cares for us, that will protect us. So physically, we are a weak species. Doesn't matter if you're a gym bunny, we're weak. Any other primate, kilo for kilo, can rip us apart. So if we met a gorilla, an angry alpha male gorilla, our weight, we wouldn't stand a chance. Absolutely no chance. I don't care who you are.
unless you have a weapon. So we want to belong in groups because it keeps us strong, it enables us to survive in a hostile environment. We also need to have stuff. We need to have, as I said earlier, shelter, clothing, food, water, sanitation, healthcare, access to fun, culture, art, etc.
The fear of not having that stuff is hardwired into us. However, we can control that unless you're driven at a psychological level. Your fear about not having enough means that you're more interested in how much money you're earning as a CEO compared with how you're leading an organization.
that should be doing the right thing for other people. There is no correlation between wealth in excess of twice the UK average earnings and happiness. So the studies have been done that the average earnings in the UK are sort of 35, 40 ,000 for an adult. If you earn twice that, so between 35 and 70, you will get a marginal increase in...
happiness Beyond which you flatline there is no additional level of happiness generated from that At a macro level happiness levels or in contentment levels in the UK have not improved since the 1950s they improved after the Second World War and they improved after rationing finished in the early 50s, but from
1960 onwards, people are no happier than their parents and their grandparents said they were, despite the fact that as a nation we are consuming even more resources than we had. You know, when you look at, I remember, you know, our home, which was, you know, a nice home, but it wasn't filled with all the crap that people are buying on Amazon and other...
retail websites that obviously are available. You know, we were religion, you know, shopping was not our religion and people were just as happy. They seriously were. I mean, the psychology is overwhelming. So in a way, part of me is quite sad and perhaps compassionate towards people who are addicted to wealth. I mean, why did they call it compensation?
Compensation for what? Being, you know, running a large organization is a privilege. You shouldn't have to be compensated for it. People, you know, you and I both know people in the military and the healthcare sector who are earning good money, but not many people in the military are earning six -figure salaries. And yet they've got huge responsibilities for life and death, the well -being of their colleagues, for us as citizens.
Et cetera, et cetera. They're highly skilled. I mean, the vaccine rollout, post -COVID vaccine rollout, was managed by a very senior army logician because he had no how to do it. No one in private sector had that knowledge, that capability and skill. And I guess he was on, I don't know, maybe 70 ,000 a year.
I haven't a clue, but he certainly wasn't on six figures. And he certainly wasn't paid by like a FTSE 100 CEO. So that's a bit of a ramble, but basically, if your ambition is to, in life, is to earn loads of money, it's not gonna make you feel better about yourself, or the world around you. If you think that turning left on a plane is what life is all about, well, that's your choice.
but it's not gonna make you feel better. It will do for the time you're flying across the Atlantic. But when you get out the other side and you're off the plane, you're walking down the street, no different to anybody else. So, you know, I'm sad about the fact that pay is, if you like, a measure of people's, of some misleaders, as I call them, their addiction, their addiction to having more.
And yet, if they were really honest, it doesn't make that difference. And the cost of it to the fact that their kids grow up without really seeing them, I mean, it's appalling. It costs them in terms of marriages and partnerships. Being on 80 hours a week doing these things, doing these jobs, okay, you look good, I'm a...
I'm a high profile CEO. Look at me. Aren't I wonderful? And yet the cost of them, that's why it's called compensation is is soul destroying, absolutely soul destroying. My wife and I talk about the miserable Millionaires Club.
because they are members. Does that answer your question?
Guy Bloom (42:56)
Yeah.
Yeah, it does, actually. And, yeah, and I guess...
It probably leads me into what it is that maybe it's the conflict, maybe it's the internal dialogue or the compass that says if I'm fearful or if I'm, and wherever that kind of motivation is coming from, if I'm behaving like this or I'm about to behave like this because I fear.
or call it greed or the fear of not having, then actually that... How do people deal with the conflict or how as an organisation do we recognise that actually most people have a... I call it the interview question, which is most people have a good understanding about what good looks like and how do you find that out if you say, if this was a job interview and we pose this exact scenario to you?
what would you say you'd do? And it would be full of integrity, it would be full of moral behaviour, it would be full of strong ethics, it would be full of things that you would be offering because you know what good looks like. And yet, be it as simple as giving somebody who needs to receive feedback feedback.
or speaking truth to power or whatever that might be. Some people have the strength to do it. Others, maybe the majority sometimes just keep quiet because having the strength or the moral fortitude sometimes might lead to a negative output or be perceived to be giving you that. Others then just keep quiet.
and they dial their volume down and just learn to be relatively passive at the very least maybe on that particular topic or in that particular context. And then, so I think I'm interested in conflict and how maybe when you're working with senior teams, listen, you're going to get to moments where the crossroads, you know, the crossroads will come, the fork in the road will come and you know, how are you going to take the left -hand side rather than the right -hand side?
or whichever is the appropriate journey. No, I think when you're revising, when you're bringing that into organisations, it's the conflict, I think.
Roger Steare (45:31)
For me personally, I mean...
Yeah, I'm not sure if it's conflict. I think I understand what it is you're driving at.
Guy Bloom (45:48)
Or
reword it, yeah, reword it to what is it that, if people know what good is, but bad is in front of them, there's an internal, there's a balance, there's a decision to be made. I would, I call it conflict, but call it to suit yourself.
Roger Steare (46:01)
Yeah, so let's
deconstruct it. First of all, all workplace organizations are there as an organization, which is an arrangement of people and resources in order to achieve a purpose, which is to manufacture or sell goods and services. Now, you have to start with, are those goods and services
a reasonable need for humanity. That's where you start. If your goods and services not a need for humanity at a time where, you know, humanity is looking at a perfect storm of environmental, social, geopolitical threats, then it's very difficult to engage your people and for people to feel that what they're doing is worthwhile.
Now I'm going to take one industry that just springs to mind, and it's not armaments, by the way. You cannot fight a just war with a stick. If you're going to stop bad people doing really bad things with really dangerous weapons, you can't literally take a knife to a gunfight. So I'm not going to talk about the armaments industry, although there are many aspects of it which are appalling. I'm going to take gambling, for example.
So I'm not going to name any names, but gambling in the way that it's designed as an addictive, compulsive, life -destroying, family -destroying activity is very difficult to justify morally.
So I would never ever, unless someone asked me to help them change their gambling business into a gaming business, for example, without money at stake and all the rest of it, I wouldn't take that on. I wouldn't take that work on. So why have I worked with banks and oil and gas companies and technology companies and all the rest of it is because they're essential for life at the moment. We need.
financial system, at the moment we need hydrocarbon energy in order to transition to something more sustainable. But those oil and gas companies need to follow that journey. Would I work for a tobacco company? No, I wouldn't. So it starts with what is the moral purpose of our organization or is the purpose of our organization moral? How can I justify it?
Would the world be a better place without it? Or would it be a worse place without it? Does that make sense to put it in a very stark binary way?
Guy Bloom (49:03)
Yeah.
Roger Steare (49:03)
And I
wrote about this with the late Gareth Jones and Rob Goffey in 2018 in an article in Management Today, which was entitled, What Would a Moral Organization Look Like? And it's, we basically said very clearly, the challenge is to build moral organizations resting on a upon a shared moral purpose.
moral values and simple agreed rules, which is the, if you like, the moral reasoning framework that I described earlier.
So if you're a leader, and by the way, leadership, I'm not a fan of leader anymore, I think leadership is a skill, it's not a positional ego trip.
If you regard leadership as a skill, then you are accepting and respecting your fellow adults in the organisation to have a contribution. I mean, the way I look at it very simply is that if you can raise kids, if you can sustain a marriage or a civil partnership, if you can be a good friend, you have capabilities there which are of value in any workplace organisation.
and too many people are dumbed down and not understood and accepted for those qualities, by the way. So if I was interviewing someone and they were, as a parent, raising a child who is autistic, for example, I would see that as a very strong positive because it tells me they have depth and they have character and they have care and compassion. I would want that sort of person in my team, even though they may need to take time off work at short notice.
in order to look after that child.
So what I was saying, if you're looking at leadership qualities, they are behaviors and thinking which builds a community. Those capabilities are based on the ability to have a debate about what's right. So you have to ask the questions, you have to have a challenging debate. You then have to feed in your moral values. So you have to ask questions like, what would be the fair thing to do? What would be the kind thing to do?
what would be the courageous thing to do sometimes, and then comply with good simple rules. So in that process, this is not complex. As we said in the article, shared moral purpose, moral values, and simple agreed rules. And the job of a leader, if it's a positional job, is to make sure that that happens with every decision that's being made.
And I don't know if that answers your question or point about conflict, but there is no conflict in that. If you say, well, if we do this, I'm not going to earn my bonus as a senior leader, boo hoo. Get over it. You're a grown up. If you had that approach to raising children or looking after elderly parents or a sick neighbor, that's hell.
We can't have a society that runs on that level of self -interest and selfishness. It's just not sustainable.
Guy Bloom (52:33)
So I hear that. I think I'm interested in those people that do behave like that and those people that aren't doing the thinking that you're doing and are not bound by that same self -regulation.
Roger Steare (52:59)
Okay, so I think, and this is how I square the circle, I understand your question now, better guy. This is how I square the circle. In our research with moral DNA, we ask people to answer the questions thinking of themselves at home with family and loved ones, and then again, thinking of themselves at work with work colleagues. What we generally find is a significant variation between who I am,
and who I become at work. And when I talk to people in a sort of very, you know, sort of passionate way that I've talked to you today about what it means to be a human being and a good friend and a good parent, a neighbor, whatever, 97 % of people get it, understand it, try and practice it, and we all fail from time to time. Most people know what it's like to be a good person.
in their private lives. But the way that we've designed the corporation, the workplace, and it's true for the public sector and the third sector, the not -for -profit and charity sector, is that that is designed in such a way that it brings out the worst of us. So in Britain, we live in a sort of democratic, sort of just society, and it's work in progress. But when we go to work, we work in a feudal, medieval design.
You vote to join and you can vote to leave. But when you're in that organization, you do not get a vote. You do not elect your team leader. You do not elect the CEO or the board unless you're a shareholder, in which case you're one of millions maybe.
So we're transported in something that you know I talk about. If we live in Norway, so Norway is a really quite ideal, a bit cold sometimes, but an ideal Western democracy, which seems to function quite well. If we live in Norway, when we come to work, it's closer to North Korea, where you have a dear leader who's...
often whose purpose is to maximize personal wealth and who executes policies, you know, strategies, what a word of violence that is, executes. And they're called executives because they execute things and they tell you what to do. If they're a good leader, they'll ask your opinion and listen to it and maybe change their mind. But most of them won't because the whole game is set up to be the equivalent of Game of Thrones.
Honestly, Game of Thrones is, if people want to understand what really goes on in boardrooms and C suites at their worst, watch Game of Thrones.
And that's why so if you like the hack which I share with people and obviously people who have the most power can do the most to change this is remember who you are as a partner, a friend, a parent, a child to LD parents. Remember how you think and behave like that and try and be more of that person at work.
They they don't I'm not teaching them anything. They don't already know I'm just revealing to them that they that you know, there's a famous phrase I can't remember who who wrote it that bosses want capitalism for themselves and feudalism for their workers and that is a truth That is a truth in many many organizations not an absolute truth You and I have talked about the fact that there are very few absolute truths other than death, for example Let's not get too morbid again. Um, I
But that truth enables people to see they already know how to do it. The role of a moral leader is to create more of that environment in the workplace where people can be fully paid up members of the human race, grownups who are able to discharge big responsibilities in their personal lives and leaders who can tap into that character.
and that skill set and that potential in the workplace.
That's the that's the trick. That's the hack. You already know it you already know it
Guy Bloom (57:35)
I like that a lot. Yeah.
Yeah, I like that a lot. I talk about umbrella beliefs, which is an umbrella has to be bigger than you. And in essence, you believe in something that has a, that is bigger than you are. And I haven't used the phrase, remember who you are. But I think it's a great phrase that should probably be turned into a t -shirt. And I think we should all walk around with a t -shirt that says, remember who you are. That's fabulous. Yeah. And I think it is holding to that kind of, call it a moral compass, but your sense of identity and not
Roger Steare (57:47)
Yeah.
Guy Bloom (58:12)
losing
who you are, which very often is a drip feed. It happens over time, you know, because you're in these environments for a decade or two decades, three decades, and you can suddenly turn around and realise you're not who you wanted to be when you started out. So one last topic, I think, is conformity. And...
You know, again, people can have a sense of who and what they are. And I think that leads nicely into it. But when I am in the herd, then conformity is an incredibly powerful lever. And it can go both what it can, you know, can work for the good, it can work for the bad. So rather than me give what I think about it, just just
Conformity in the context of this topic, I think, would be definitely worth hearing you talk about.
Roger Steare (59:17)
Yeah, so conformity is not a moral value. Absolutely not. Compliance is not a moral value. So again, think about could you run a Gulag with conformity as a value? Yes. Can you run a Gulag with compliance as a value? Yes, you can. Conformity is a jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. That's John F. Kennedy.
and he was a liberal politician, so a Democrat. Conformity is about control. Trying to control other people is, in my view, by definition, immoral.
And it's actually not very smart. And we're looking at, obviously, people today are very conscious of diversity and inclusion. And at a very philosophical level, we are strong, not because we are a monoculture. That makes us weak. If everybody is the same, it means that if...
A virus or a bacteria more funghi could crack one person they can kill the whole species. The same is true for the way we think so conformity is not something that i encourage i encourage descent loyal descent so loyalty to the purpose if you like of your organization or your family or whatever it is yes you have to stay true to that.
And you have to stay true to that moral purpose in work and life. But in order to get it, I don't have all the answers. I mean, I've got quite a lot of experience, but I'm beginning to, I'm every day realizing how much more I need to learn and learn with and from other people. But, and I, as you probably gathered, by definition, Guy, I'm not someone who will take any orders from anybody easily.
And I will always say why I'm like the irritating three year old and say, why are you requiring me to do this? So if we... Yeah, it's a moment.
Guy Bloom (1:01:39)
alignment isn't that? You aligning is different
to you conforming.
Roger Steare (1:01:46)
It is, and that's a very good way of putting it. An analogy you can use is look at a migrating flock of geese. They fly thousands of miles, but when it comes to, so they have direction, they have an end goal, but if you watch the flock, it's constantly changing. It's sort of in a formation, but when ornithologists track them, the leadership role changes.
Every goose has the chance to be the leader because it's hard to work. And if you look at the formation, it's always moving around because why, you know, maybe they're looking for threats. Maybe they're sensing air currents and all the rest of it. The same is true in a murmuration of styling. One of the most amazing phenomenon in nature. You can also see it in shoaling fish where you can literally have thousands of individuals.
in the most amazing balletic dance, which looks like it's orchestrated, but it's not. It's actually thousands of individuals making decisions about the behavior of the individuals around them in 3D space. It has to happen at the quantum level, which is my interest in if you're listeners who are physicists, that things like those phenomenon are probably happening at the quantum level because you just couldn't.
You couldn't program a swarm of drones to behave a murmuration of starling. You just don't have that level of science. Anyway, so that's quite a long explanation around conformity, generally speaking. It's a good thing if there's a fire in the building and you need to get out, then you must follow the instructions of the fire marshal. So this is not an absolute definition, but most of the time,
We learn when we have difference, we learn when we play and fail and so on and so forth. And one of the things that I do talk about sometimes when I'm talking to leaders about leadership and morality and philosophy is I talk about Roger's three hum words. I'm going to just explain them if that's helpful. So I think this gives us an insight into the opposite of conformity.
So I did this at a dinner last week. I took a basil herb plant in the dinner, put it on the table and said to people, what's this? And they smelled it and said, it's basil, the herb. I said, what's it growing in? Compost. OK. The Latin word for compost or soil is humus, H -U -M -U -S, not humus, which is what you dip your Doritos in.
So humus gives us three words that are really powerful for us to remember. The first one is humor. So why is humor an important, and you can think of joy as well, but humor is the environment that enables us to be creative. We send our children to nursery or play school because we learn most when we're having fun. How many people are having fun?
in their workplaces today. Some will, but most won't. And that then sort of really degrades our ability to think and work and do the right thing. The next hum word is humility. Get over yourself. Leadership is a team sport. Without other people, you can't achieve anything.
Every endeavor of any scale takes a team of people. Because we're a highly social species, we're highly interdependent. And the final one is humanity. And humanity is, if you like, the backstop. We have to remember to show humanity to others. So those are my three hums and my friend Basil, the pot plant.
throwing in humus, humus, not humus. And I guess I'm saying that is because, you know, I know you've got a family guy and your kids, when they are stuck into something and having fun and playing with it, they are learning so much. And we strip that out of them with the straight jacket of the national curriculum and...
everything else that's so wrong about our education system today. And we're turning out homo economicus whose job is to make and buy, makes crap and buy crap from other people and then put it in landfill. I mean, that is, that is just, you know, we have come nowhere in, you know, since the industrial revolution, if we think that that's, that's what a moral and just society is, he says, getting off his soapbox.
Guy Bloom (1:06:56)
Roger, the best thing about the guests I have on this podcast is every now and then somebody's hard work, but out of 120 odd podcasts, maybe 130 that I've done, 99 .9 of them have been like this, where people have talked with enthusiasm and energy. And I realized that really I want to go, I, you know, what a great dinner.
conversation, you know, I would, I would lose myself in that conversation with you. Now I'm super alert to times for podcasts. And I think about hour is about right for most people. So I want to keep going and spend the afternoon with you, but I can't, and you've probably got stuff to do. So if people want to, I'm hearing about moral DNA, but if people are wanting to reach out and just get more Roger,
There's your book, Ethicability, How to Decide What's Right and Find the Courage to Do It. Where else do people make contact or see what you're about?
Roger Steare (1:08:06)
Well, if they Google, other search engines are available. If they Google Roger Steer, S -T -E -A -R -E, there's only one of me. And you'll go straight to my website very quickly. There's a Wikipedia entry. You can buy my books on the website. You can get to moral DNA and do it for free on the website. There are contact details on the website. My LinkedIn profile has my.
email address on it so you can go there and get it. I'm easy to find. I guess I need to thank my father's paternal family name for that and both of them for calling me Roger.
Guy Bloom (1:08:51)
Perfect. So listen, Roger, I'm going to bring us to a close. I'm going to get you just to stay on for a few moments just to make sure everything uploads. But just from me to you and from those that are listening, this has been really enjoyable, very thought provoking. I think it's a topic that I think anybody can pick up and just bring into a conversation.
would add value to any team or any individual's thinking. So on that note, thank you from me to you.
Roger Steare (1:09:22)
And Guy, thank you to you because this is a team game. And the reason why 99 .9 % of your podcasts are interesting is as much down to you as it is to your guests. So thank you.
Guy Bloom (1:09:38)
That's a wonderful thing to hear, thank you sir. On that note, I'm going to press that stop button.