Leadership, Business Ethics, & Speaking Up: A Conversation with Dr. Ryan Bisel

Dr. Ryan Bisel has been doing really important and really innovative work related to leadership, business ethics, and employee voice.

What's employee voice?

In short, it is communicating bad news upwards. More specifically, it may be disagreeing with your manager, voicing concerns about policy or practices, or otherwise articulating issues up the chain of command.

What happens when we have a workplace where employee don't feel safe expressing concerns?

We create a culture that is conducive to ethical breaches. Little oversights can morph into larger ones quickly, especially when employees think their concerns are not shared by the majority.

What then?

Silence.

Ryan walks us through the ins and outs of employee voice, how it impacts ethics talk, and the role leaders play in shaping healthy, prosocial work environments.

Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose.

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Transcript

Dr. Leah OH: 0:00

Dr. Ryan Bisel, Professor of Communication at the University of Oklahoma joins us today. Ryan is a professor of organizational communication and his research which is lauded and plentiful. It centers around leadership communication, organizational culture and behavioral ethics. He does some really cool stuff, folks. Ryan translates his breath of research in a conversational way to help us as employees lean into our agency and power to speak up when something at work doesn't feel quite right. Hello, and welcome to the communicative leader hosted by me, Dr. Leah Omilion-Hodges. My friends call me Dr. OH. I'm a Professor of Communication and a leadership communication expert, and the communicative leader. We're working to make your work life what you want it to be. So, Ryan, before we dive into your research, can you tell us a bit about yourself? And what brought you to this area of expertise?

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 1:04

Yeah, well, I'm really glad to be with you this afternoon. I got interested in organizational communication, probably because of my mom. There was a point in my early childhood where my mother left a very a position with a multinational organization, she was very high ranking. And she hit the glass ceiling actually. And my mom is tough as nails, and she wasn't gonna put up with that. And I'm very proud of her for that. So, so my family, we kind of risk wrist at all, to open a printing company. And so a lot of my teen years were spent watching her build that company. And she was always so gracious to get me involved and ask me questions and get my perspectives, which of course, I didn't know anything. But she's just a great coach and mentor teacher that way. And so I've got to believe that that had a huge influence on me, it was time for me to go to college and look for what I wanted to study organizational communication, I think at that point just seemed like a very good fit. And I'll tell you the sort of epilogue to that story is that my mother and I have just published a book together on entrepreneurship. So 30 years later, cool. Yeah, it's very, very fun to get to be part of that.

Dr. Leah OH: 2:23

Yeah, what a neat way to get into it, because you saw, certainly the challenges of organizations with your mom hitting the glass ceiling, but then the empowering the flexibility and the latitude and how much goes into being in an organization, let alone running one starting it and running it.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 2:42

Absolutely. And it, it was just like, as we're starting any kind of business, it was perilous, it's tough. It's tough stuff. But she worked through it, and assembled an amazing team of people. She sold the business 25 years later. So she she made it past all those statistical boundaries that you hear about in the US, I think it's 70% of businesses fail in five years. Right. And so that was it was it was a family affair in the sense that it really affected all of us. And we worked through it. My father was a milkman. You know, yeah, that's the honest truth. He was a route driver. Yeah, blue, blue collar kind of guy. And we joke that he was the biggest venture capitalist of the whole ordeal, because, you know, there we go, we needed him to do his thing so that the business could get off the ground. And it was, it was a wonderful experience, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Dr. Leah OH: 3:38

Thank you for sharing your background. And now we want to think about some of your more recent work, and you've done so much cool research and from different perspectives, which I really love. You've looked at a leaders perspective, employee perspective, you looked at context and culture and all from, you know, this outcome of employee voice. So can you help us understand what employee voice is and why we need to be aware of it?

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 4:04

Yeah, I'd love to I've certainly spent a greater part of the last 20 years thinking about these issues. employee voice is the phrase that we use when we're talking about disagreeing with the boss primarily. It has to do with expressing concerns, disagreements, it could be about policy, it could be about practices, it could, in other words, is communicating bad news upward up the chain of command, and employee voice matters? for lots of reasons, but I would say the place I think I would want to take people first is to say, there's this thing that happens in organizations where when you get into management, you often start to get further and further from the location where the real work gets done. Ironically, and, you know, very often it's the people who are customer facing who are providing goods and services, who know the most about the kinds of immediate pressing needs and troubles and concerns that the organization needs to be dealing with. And so that kind of irony that occurs, you have people with increasing decision authority, who know increasingly less about the most pressing issues. That dynamic is why employee voice matters, because we got to create a communication culture where people can, you know, speak about their concerns, or they can discuss those openly. Candidly, frankly, that's not to say that every bit of employee voice is created equal, it's always important to come back with that, you know, there really is complaints and moaning that is not high quality. But the fact of the matter is, it's the, you know, it's the, it's the price to ride, because, after all, what we're looking for is that key insight, the idea, the concern that we need to address right now, if we're going to remain a strong organization, we're going to remain fit with the environment and organizational environment. So we don't go the ways of those many entrepreneurial efforts that do end up failing, you know, within the first five years.

Dr. Leah OH: 6:13

Yeah, when you were talking, I feel like we almost have the setup for a bad joke that, of course, only organizational scholars would think is funny, like, the more authority less experience, like it just feels like we're getting ready for a bad joke set up there, but could not be further from the truth. Right. And that's, that's the reality for employees. So thanks, thanks for giving us that context. And that understanding? So we know what employee voices. So how do those in these leadership positions these with authority? How do they impact the likelihood of someone speaking up of voicing dissent or calling attention to something that's not working anymore?

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 6:59

Yeah, there are a lot of forces at play, which basically tend to encourage employees to hold back the expression of their concerns or aspirations or issues. That mean you. So on one hand, you have lifespan socialization, anytime we, for many of us, when we interacted with authority figures, even as children, we sort of knew we sort of learned implicitly, there's some stuff that you say to adults, and there's some stuff you don't. And we in strangely, there's great research that shows, we take those implicit theories. They're called, we take those experiences with us into the workplace. And we try and kind of transfer that over to bosses, which you know, when you say it out loud, sounds silly, but it is the fact of the matter. Yeah. And then also in terms of leaders. I mean, if we're talking about what is it that Where do leader, where are they implicated when it comes to voice? I would just give you one word, the word is fear. Yeah, yeah. So leaders, whether we know it or not, whether we feed into it or not intentionally, where there is fear of retribution, that this won't be received? Well, there's going to be a holding back of employee voice. And you might even say, a increasing employee silence. But that's a really bad deal for the fitness of an organization. And so it's something to take very, very seriously. And it's going to take a lot of intentional effort to address those fears. Because I would say, it's not so easy as we started a neutral place. And we got to build trust, it's actually we started a fearful place because of socialization, lifestyle socialization, we, that's the default. So it's going to take a lot of effort to build trust, and a real sense that, okay, this is a place where I can speak my mind. And I might not always be right, or, you know, people, it might not always change things, but it's a place where I won't be seen negatively. And more than that, it's a place where as what I'm expected to do, I'm expected to, you know, raise concerns, think through ideas, maybe even raise an aspiration, and that kind of thing. So in a word fear is really the game here.

Dr. Leah OH: 9:12

Yeah. Yeah. And when we think about that, in especially retribution to the perception that this might happen, I think for some, they're like, What, you're not gonna get fired, but it's like, no, they might not like me, or I might be seen as normative, I might be on the fringe then. So all of these things that that make it really hard to keep going in and doing the work.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 9:37

Yes, exactly. It that that's a really good point to say, it may not just be like a fear, I'm gonna get fired. It could be a much smaller stakes kind of thing. Like, maybe people won't like me as well. Especially if my boss doesn't like me as well. Is that gonna show up on my evaluation? Lastly, and those are legitimate concerns that managers need to be proactive about managing through word indeed,

Dr. Leah OH: 9:59

yeah. Mmm, exactly. And so we've kind of hinted at this, Ryan, what? What have you seen in your research? Or maybe maybe some things that we've seen on the news that happens when employees don't feel safe expressing these ethical concerns that are happening at work?

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 10:16

Yeah. So the, I think the history of organizational wrongdoing is very instructive here. Very often these incredible organizational failures. When we go upstream, and we trace their origins, we see that lots of people knew things were wrong. But when when people see things are wrong, and they don't say anything, because there's fear of retribution, you can kind of get a scenario in which small problems they take on a life of their own. They grow. They grow incrementally, and then people come out long and rationalized, I think we see that with Enron, which everybody points to, as this great example, 20 years ago, of course, the huge firm, Enron collapse spectacularly, because of some really bad accounting practices, and some of the things that were going on there with anything going on. But well, some of the things that were going on, as they were, they were recording, next quarters, earnings on this quarter. And these are projected earnings, right? These are not actual earnings. And the thing is, if you take it back to the the moment where somebody comes up with this, quote, unquote, creative accounting idea to meet, you know, shareholders expectations, and the first time that goes through, it could have been that lots of people were like, Wait, that sounds wrong, that's uncomfortable. But the thing is, when we don't have an outloud conversation about ethics, and all of our conversation is about legal. Can we get away with it or accounting norms? And we don't actually have the ethics space conversation. Okay. And so let's say that it gets by once in that first quarter. Now, the second time it comes around, it starts to become businesses, you this is how we got away with it last time. And then people question themselves, don't they? They say, Oh, maybe I was just naive. Maybe this is how the world works. Oh, I see now. And so the moment of the moral intuition that might have gets increasingly numbed, it gets anesthetized because we don't have the conversation that we need to be having. And so incrementally, you add on top of that incremental silence, you add rationalizations where people say these kinds of things aloud to one another, that defend the rightness of an otherwise wrong thing to do. And it can spiral dramatically. And so what would have been a small issue has become a much more troubling issue.

Dr. Leah OH: 12:53

Yes, exactly. And one thing I really love that you pointed out, there was this idea that what are we talking about going back to the communication, and if the predominant streams of communication are profit and creative accounting, right, two words that we should never put together, but these are our main streams of conversation. And, you know, we're not looking at ethics, we're not looking at morals, you know, we can start to see why these things can happen. Absolutely.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 13:28

Yeah, we need to make we need to make those conversations more common. There's some amazing anthropologists of business talk, that did work in the 80s, and 90s, I think, of bird and waters, and, and Jack all and these these kinds of folks. And, you know, they really helped us realize that there is a, there's a way of talking in the workplace that we can take for granted. And it it sort of makes certain things in bounds and certain things to say out of bounds. Yeah. And one of the things I would I would point us to is that very often, we tend to think of very explicitly ethical conversations as kind of out of bounds as to, I don't know, fuzzy or philosophical or religious to have that conversation. But that's too bad. Because if we aren't talking ethics allowed, how can we think about ethics as a group? I mean, we can certainly think about ethics as an individual. But how can we think of it using the power of the group to make a group changes as we move forward?

Dr. Leah OH: 14:31

Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. So communication is power. So we've seen these examples of unethical behavior. And we just talked about some, unfortunately, we've probably experienced them at some point, that this brings me to some recent studies that you've done with some of your colleagues on moral talk contagion. And Ryan, I'm really excited about this. This is such interesting work and it's so optimistic. So you can you Talk to us a bit about your findings related to moral talk contagion.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 15:04

I'd love to Yeah. Moral talk contagion. There's supervisory moral talk contagion is the research finding that when bosses are known for using explicitly ethical vocabulary, will then employees are much more likely to voice explicitly ethical concerns. So there's kind of a matching. That's why it's called contagion. We live live in an era I think, when we think about that one's right, that's right. But in this case, is kind of a good it's in a good way, contagion in a good way, just just as bad things can catch on good things can do it as you said, it is an optimistic finding. And with as a as a scholar of organizational ethics, it's really nice to find optimistic findings every once in a while. And it tells us that, hey, leaders out there it this is, this is something we can do. And we need to use this vocabulary of ethics, morals, integrity, conscience, those kinds of things that are undeniably explicitly ethical. When we do that, it really puts people's fears on notice it calms them down into a laser anxieties and helps them when the time comes for them to also raise issues, concerns and aspirations, you know, to give voice to those, those those things they are already feeling anyway. You know, because that's the thing people have moral intuitions they just do healthy human brains do. And certainly working adults do. And so wouldn't it be great if we can capture that incredible resource and input and use it towards better deliberation, better deliberation, that and therefore better decisions?

Dr. Leah OH: 16:50

In so much to it's that we're role modeling as that formal titled leader role modeling the behavior that we want to be seen as normative?

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 17:00

I love that phrase role modeling that hits it. Exactly. Yeah. So moral, moral talk, contagious role modeling. Let's talk ethics out loud together. Let's do that. Yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 17:10

And so Ryan, how does this this moral talk contagion? How does that relate to the moral mum effect that you and colleagues have also kind of worked on and have a great scream of documentation?

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 17:22

Oh, thank you. Yeah, something that had been dedicating a lot of my life to for a long time and moral, the moral Mumme effect is the observation that silence regarding ethical concerns is common, exceedingly common. Another way to say this is that you can expect there to be a public private discrepancy between private can ethical concerns and what people say about it. That's why it's mum, m u m, right. Moral I know people are just listening to this moral mum effect is just this this issue that you can expect people to be quiet about their private ethical concerns. And that's a problem obviously, because like we were talking into get earlier, when you when people do have those concerns, and as time is moving on, when they don't hear others saying the same concern, they begin to sometimes mistakenly believe that they're in the minority, even though they might be in the majority, they still mistakenly believe they're in the minority, and then they start questioning themselves. And then sooner or later, people start adding rationalizations, and then the concern goes away, even though corruption is allowed to go on and fester. You know, it's so sometimes people talk about bad apples, and that Apple Barrels. So a bad apple, of course, is just a way of talking about, you know, nefarious actors, people who are really criminal who are doing terrible things. And that's one thing, but as you know, of course, as organization scientists, we were also very interested in Bad Apple Barrels, this would be environments, environments, that kind of encouraged us into corruption, and I would say a root cause of a kind of Bad Apple Barrel is moral Mumme effect that people are not having the conversation that they really ought to be having, you know, and I want to make a quick differentiation, which might help as well. Moral mum effect has to do really with here and now. Ethics talk, not necessarily there and then ethics talk so there and then ethics talk is the talk frankly of ethics training very often it's like obscure dilemmas or ethics there now ethics talk could be about scandals in the news or politics. It's It's It's ethics, but it has something to do with some somebody else somewhere else. It doesn't have to do with us in the here and now the here and now ethics talk is really critical stuff. It could be that there and then ethics talk is on the rise. I don't know it might it might well be but here are now ethics talk when it really implicates us in mo generally where we are with our particular work scenario? No, no, no, we will not tend to talk about that. And so our research shows, I mean, we have, I would tell you probably six or seven data sets of hundreds of working adults. So we're well into the 1000s. Now, we show that 90% of the time once people are asked to comply with an unethical business request 90% of the time, they do not deny it on ethical grounds. They find all they find lots of other way reasons to deny it. But they won't say a lot, even though privately, they say yeah, that's unethical publicly, they won't talk about it. So what do you have there, you have a self censorship, self censorship, especially when it has to do with ethics. And I get it, I don't mean to be judgy. At all, there's a lot of good reasons why we do feel very hesitant to talk this way. But it's something we need to be mindful of and realize that it really is at the core of the kind of cultures that are being created every time we speak. And it might contribute to these bad apple barrels. You know, whether we realize it or not. Yeah, and

Dr. Leah OH: 21:07

I was thinking that phrase, you just said talk this way. So if that is not our norm, if we haven't seen it modeled, then it just feels, I would imagine, like wildly inappropriate for the work. Yes, because you haven't seen it or experienced it. Like then let me give you all these other excuses that I can rationalize and come up with.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 21:29

And that's the power of oral talk contagion from from supervisors, they do burst that bubble that concern and says, Okay, this is normal, normal here, this is what we do, and and those with, with decision making authority are inviting us to add to talk in that way. And they're role modeling it as you mentioned, yes. And that's really powerful way to suppress the moral mom effect.

Dr. Leah OH: 21:53

Yeah, very exciting. And my next question, is it continuous with the here and now in your recent book on organizational moral learning, love that book, by the way, very, very cool. But you talk about how a lot of times organizations are not thinking about ethical dilemmas until there is a crisis. And also, as you kind of hinted before, these small a small breaches, they kind of roll lay eggs, and they can attach to other practices. And like they can foster these cultures that are kind of ripe for for a crisis or an ethical breakdown. So considering all of this, Ryan, what do you wish are titled leaders out there? What do you wish they knew about culture? And how that kind of can impact employee voice and ethics?

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 22:49

It's such a thoughtful question. I think I take us in two directions. The first thing I want to say is that there's a myth out there that where you have good leadership, everything always goes well. And that is a myth. I think the more healthy productive way of thinking about it is to say, where you have good leadership, trouble will be caught while it's small and still resolvable. And this is this hopefully, really can be, I think, helpful. Now, when we catch troubles and issues, while it's small and resolvable, we can adapt, and we can we can improve things and learn organizational moral learning, write the name of the book. Yeah, that's the point that we can still learn. But when we don't catch things, while they're small Resolve will probably impart me because we don't even know about it. Haven't heard about it, because there's been so much employee silence. That when managers don't catch issues, while it's small, and is all that they can grow and fester and become utterly intractable, and that's when systems begin to fail. And people get hurt. I mean, let's really talk we're talking ethics. So that's yeah, you know, people can be really, really be hurt. I mean, nation states can actually be hurt by organizational wrongdoing. It's really, it's, it's no small deal. And so so the first thing I want a leader to know about culture is, hey, let's get our heads straight and realize that stuff does go wrong. But great leadership occurs where we can catch issues while they're still small and resolvable. And the way you do that is you set up a culture that allows you to hear of trouble and allows you to adapt. And that's that's essentially what organizational moral learning is about. It's about a capacity to adapt to members communication about their moral intuiting. The other thing I'd want to say, other than small and resolvable, I'd want to say something about norms. That a norm coach, I don't know about you, but culture. It's almost too big of a concept for me sometimes is that bad that I'm admitting

Dr. Leah OH: 24:55

No, no, it is enormous. We could put anything we wanted under there.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 24:59

It's Yes, yes, exactly. And I have found in my studies that the concept of norm is, is maybe help, it's helpful for me to know norms are a key part, as you know, of culture and a norm is expected and accepted behavior. And so for leaders out there, if you, you know, that culture matters, and you're like, hey, how do I, where do I get a handle on this big old idea of culture, I would invite you into thinking about norms. Now, norm is expected accepted behavior, expected and accepted behaviors basically come into being almost every time we interact. And it's so subtle, it's so incredibly subtle. I often like to tell this, think of it this way, have you ever been to a friend's house for the first time, and and you slipped your shoes off at the door, even though it wasn't even asked of you? And it's because you notice that they greeted you without shoes on and there's a pile of shoes at the front door? And the thing is, you just fell right in line? That's what we do. We just We Can we read the scene for norms, and we follow suit. And so so it's amazing the influence that norms have on behavior of all kinds. And it's true of, of the workplace as well. And and so I would just say leaders out there, every time you talk, you have the chance to reinforce or challenge a norm. And so that's how that's your way into culture, people. People are signaling, we're signaling all kinds of expected and accepted behaviors, expectations about who talks when, who talks first, who talks longest? What do we talk about? And, and as I was mentioning, one of the things we in a lot of workplaces we don't talk about is here. And now ethics. So we need to be very intentional about violating that norm and getting a new new norm going. Because that's going to really set us up for success, that we can keep trouble small. While it's still resolved, that we can hear about it that we can get the bad news we need to leave.

Dr. Leah OH: 26:51

Yeah, exactly. I really liked that idea of having leaders tune into what am I signaling? And yes, what is that then saying to others? Exactly. So rang this next question. I it's a hypothetical. But when I was getting ready to chat with you, let's say I'm an employee, and I witness an event or series of problematic events, maybe it's just a slight change. We're not observing our standard operating procedures, or maybe there's little oversight, various reports. So one, just general advice, and then to what if this person who is doing these things is actually my direct supervisor?

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 27:37

Yeah. And that's, it's a realistic question. And it's one that we I think, need to be ready for in advance and we need to bake, that's going to help us when the moment arises, that won't we'll we'll kind of have a repertoire of behaviors to go with. And I think I think basically, the question is, how do I have this conversation? How do I raise the concern. And on some level, everybody needs to make these decisions for themselves, because it's going to take moral courage. Simply to do this, in most situations, it's going to take moral courage. But the other some other advice I would have for you is, is start soft, I would say, focus on a pro social approach to this. And by that, I mean, essentially a polite approach that gives the benefit of the doubt. But I would also encourage you to use words like ethics. And one of the things we need to do is we need to realize that a lot of our conversations around ethics are very dichotomous as the term as you know, it's just either on or off. And so what happens is people say, Well, I can't be for sure that that's unethical. So therefore, it must be ethical. But that is a really, in my opinion, thin way of thinking about ethics, dangerous and dangerous. Exactly. But I think for most people, that's where they live, they will stay there. They think of it in very bite dichotomous terms. So something you can do, to kind of change the conversation in a really rich way, is bringing words about integrity or ethical excellence, or highest highest standards of integrity or ideals. So So you could say, I don't know that that's unethical. But also I don't know that that's holding up to my highest ideals either. So it's a slight Judo switch there on people, but in the best way, in the best way, because I think it also takes some of the sting out. I'm not saying that's unethical, but also I don't feel great about it in terms of my highest ideals. Can you talk to me, maybe I'm missing something. You can even open it up at that point and have a question, because you've you've laid the groundwork of a better car conversation which includes explicitly ethical vocabulary making sense what I'm saying, what's yours? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 30:07

Gosh, it's such a beautiful response. Ryan. I don't know if I have thoughts aside from like, very well done. I just, I love the the pre planning and recognizing, I don't think anyone sees themselves being in the situation until they're actually in it. Yeah. So having thought about that a little bit, but I think by saying, Yeah, this, this doesn't quite, you know, what do I want to say? Like you said exactly that my high ideals or, you know, I think me even joking a little bit like, Oh, my integrity is tingling a little bit here. Like my integrity, spidey senses going off. And, you know, maybe we can return to this, maybe I didn't quite understand this, this process. So I think like you said, we're using politeness, some face work to help them maintain face and a little self deprecating humor, like I'm thinking about relationship and how to preserve it. Because if this is my manager, and they're gonna do my performance evaluations, and they're gonna think about my bonuses. I don't know that I want to start by saying, Hey, you unethical bleep bleep bleep.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 31:19

Exactly. Yeah, that's where our communication competence is really going to be challenged to its to its utmost. Your point about humor is exactly spot on as well, we have found a situation in our research, where, where humor was very helpful in saying, you know, oh, and should I drive the getaway car for you. Also, if there's that that kind of language can help people speak truth to power, Humor has always been helpful, that we call it the gesture roll, right? It's always been in high courts a way to tell people what they need to hear. You know, the other thing is to I think, maybe using we language, that's something that would be helpful, you know, is this is this in keeping with our highest ideals? Is this keeping with what? You know? And I'll tell you another one, which is how, you know, how would we feel about this been on the front page in a year from now? How would we feel about this being on probation can really help us think a bit more clearly in ethical terms? And so there's a number of ways around this, but yeah, it's gonna it's going to take some skill. And I totally agree, we're not gonna go harsh and severe at first. Yeah. But we meet, we're going to start polite restart pro pro socially. And according to casting, we might also think about the power of repetition. This might need to happen over a couple of conversations slowly, and that that might also help as well.

Dr. Leah OH: 32:44

Yeah. When you're just talking, I thought about a previous guest, and he has his team fail in advance. So it would mean we're thinking about amazing culture, very thoughtful leadership. But if we were to integrate that practice, where we're thinking about things and saying, Okay, let's fast forward a week, what could what could go wrong here, let's fast forward to next quarter, what could go wrong? If we continue down this path? I think that might be another way to kind of get into this, if we realize each, you know, this has the potential to breach some ethical boundaries that if we consider, you know, kicking the tires, what is failing in advance, that devil's advocate, some of that might also be a way as a group to kind of stop these before they get too large.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 33:35

I love that failing and advanced older grades. Right? It's a form of scenario planning. It sounds like it's, it's a form of disagreement, invitations, invitation disagree. Yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 33:46

Okay, so I have two final questions for you. So I'm the communicative leader, we like to leave listeners with really pragmatic leadership, or leadership, communication takeaways. And we're thinking, what is it that they can do now to make their work life what they want it to be? So the first part of this question, and I mean, you've already shared so many incredible tips with us, but for our title leaders, you know, our managers, directors, supervisors, maybe even in the C suite. So those folks, what advice do you want to leave them with?

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 34:19

I want to leave them with a challenge to begin to make the use of explicitly ethical terms in the here and now much more normal, much more normative, much more common. And, and that takes some intentionality as we plan for what we're about to do, and as we reflect on what we did, I would recommend that we don't just talk about was that ethical? Yes, no. We open up the whole conversation more by pointing people to ethical excellence. So you say you know, is this is this the most ethically excellent way of going about it? Is this in keeping with our highest ideals is this you know, is this to what we're going to be most proud of in terms of our own integrity and dealing with others. And when we use those words, we really help people allay their fears, we help really bring forth their dialogue and get their voice in involved as well. You know, so I encourage you to invite disagreement and like a conversation. One of the things we do find, too, strangely enough, is when we talk about the body, this is empirical research, our research is showing that when we when we involve the body, and that sounds like a, you know, what's our gut telling us on how that went last time? What's our gut saying about whether or not that was the most ethically excellent approach? That's going to help Believe it or not, when we talk about what the body knows about ethics, it's kind of a, again, a sidestep to, we don't need to be moral philosophers guys, we actually typical healthy human brains agree on a tremendous amount. We agree that we don't like to people to steal from us, and we don't want to steal from them. We agree that people we don't like you to lie to us, and we don't want to lie to them. And so, so So I think, some confidence in that, you know, using explicitly moralized language, using gut you know, sort of body referencing language we know to be true to our bones, what's our heart, heart telling us on this is all gonna be really helpful? And then moving the dialogue from just is it right or wrong? To? Is it you know, in keeping with highest? Is this ethically excellent of us to do it this way? Was that ethically excellent, and then implicit there is that we have to allow for room for growth. And that's one of the things about ethics is that unfortunately, it becomes this issue of, you have to be perfect, otherwise, you're corrupt. And that's just not the reality of it. There are many, many, many shades of grey, and more maybe shades of light is probably the way to say it. And you know, it's okay to have a pursuit mindedness of pursuing ethical excellence, as opposed to say, either were ethnically perfect or nothing? Because basically, no, no one is and no organization is, but that that myth keeps the silence going. It keeps us from being able to adapt. And so I don't know if there's if that was what you're hoping for. But I think that's some of the first places I would take people.

Dr. Leah OH: 37:25

Yeah, no, that is incredible. It is really helpful in a checklist, and I love that you frame it as a challenge, because it is it's, you know, I dare you to do this, I dare you to start transforming your workplace, and then hopefully your organization in this really positive pro social way.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 37:46

Absolutely.

Dr. Leah OH: 37:47

So with that in mind, Ryan, my last question for you. So our employees all ranks across all industries? What advice do you have for for those friends?

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 37:59

Yeah, um, you know, given. On top of the other things we've already talked about, I would say, don't underestimate the power of being the second. And what I mean by that is, you know, as a bystander, as a co worker, as another boss, if you do hear other people beginning this process of bringing here and now ethics, talk to the four, I want you to be encouraging. Because you're going to help produce that norm. I want you to say, you know, hey, I'm glad that you brought that up. And being the say, I'm saying second here is like, you know, motion, and then second, oh, that kind of thing. Yeah, there's it can be really powerful to have somebody else raise their voice affirmatively, and say, I hear what you're doing. I hear that I, let's talk about this. And again, sometimes when people raise ethical concerns, there's actually isn't much issue there. That is also a possible outcome, but much better that we deliberated about it, and then, you know, have that conversation and move on so so I think we can all kind of be helpful partners, we can be allies to each other. In this thing, as we look for Listen, for those who are trying to call into being a new norm, a new culture there for which we can have these conversations, be encouraging of it and be humble enough to be like, Okay, I think I do need to do I needed I didn't need to hear that I need to slow down a second and think about this. And you know, and as we do that, it can be very powerful. Yeah, it

Dr. Leah OH: 39:30

is it is so powerful. And you recognize that we really don't need a lot to get this moving in the direction we want, right? We do need a like a brave person to go first and to start to role model it but then we have some affirmations and validation that we can really start to build some steam and changing those norms.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 39:53

Yeah, if I might I sometimes think of this I get a mental picture of So I work on a university campus. And I can kind of imagine a class of, you know, doing Tai Chi out on the lawn, you kind of picture that Tai, Tai Tai Chi is this, of course, it's like slow martial art, it's kind of like yoga. And the thing that we know about practitioners of Tai Chi, you can do you can practice this well into your very, very senior years. And when when older adults do that, they are very slowly training a body brain connection, they are training their central nervous system. And in there, they're producing pathways right, that are slowly grow. They're, they're growing and not atrophying. And I think of here in our ethics talk, no matter where it goes, is kind of like that. Okay, so then if you hang with the metaphor for a second, once we've done that, we built a capacity. So that when, like the older adult is walking along and trips a little bit. They almost intuitively spontaneously, all that connections in the central nervous system will put that foot out where it needs to be and catch their fall, though, keeps them from ball falling. And that's what we're hoping to do. We're hoping to create a capacity in our conversations over time, such that when the moment is we really do need it, it will be there. We can adapt, we can catch the fall, before it happens. Keeping out of trouble small unresolvable.

Dr. Leah OH: 41:32

Yeah, I thank you for sharing that. I'm really visual. I imagine a number of our listeners are in it. It's just a really powerful way of thinking about what we're doing now is is planning certainly helping us now but also giving us some safeguards as we go forward as we grow, right. Or as we age as an organization. Ah, yeah. Oh, well, Ryan, thank you. This has really been a pleasure.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 41:57

It was so fun. Thank you.

Dr. Leah OH: 41:59

Thank you. I followed your work for literally decades. And I'm so excited that we get to share it in this capacity because I just I know it's going to help so many people.

Dr. Ryan Bisel: 42:11

Well, I'm honored to I've been following you for a long time read your book on leader member exchange theory, just so impressed with it. And I was just delighted when he reached out so just thank you.

Dr. Leah OH: 42:22

All right, my friends. That wraps up our conversation today. Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose. And looking forward to chatting with you again soon on the communicative leader.