Fairness is a virtue. The idea of virtue dates back to antiquity, to Plato and Aristotle, whose philosophies led to the development of the four cardinal virtues: justice, fortitude, prudence and temperance. Aristotle himself contrived a system in which he divided the concept of virtue into two categories, those that were related to knowledge and experience and those based on innate qualities, which he referred to as ethical virtues.A virtue is a character trait that can be used in different situations. In everyday parlance we talk about a person’s character. According to the philosophical notion of virtue, we “receive” our character in two ways: as an inherited property and as something that’s “acquired”, or perhaps more “attained”, over time through our upbringing, insights, common sense, customs, manners and actions.A few years ago I read an article about children and their sense of fairness. A group of children between three and five had been divided up into pairs to carry out a number of simple tasks. Their reward was ten sweets, which were to be distributed between them by an adult when the task was completed. The children were set to work in their pairs, with one child having been given a much greater workload than the other, whose own task involved little more than play.When the tasks were completed, each pair lined up to claim their reward.An adult divided up the sweets in such a way that the child who had worked the hardest was to receive three sweets and the one who had worked the least seven, the reward being subject to the proviso that both children had to agree on the payout for it to be made at all.Imagine it: in front of you are a number of children between the ages of three and five sitting in pairs in front of little piles of sweets. Their eyes are devouring the goodies, their mouths are watering. The sweets are within reach.What they found was that in each pair, the harder-working children chose to take a “fairness” line and forego their smaller share of the sweets rather than let injustice triumph and have their “playing” partners receive the greater reward.When the piles were then made equally high, some of the harder workers gave their approval of the division of reward. But most of them demonstrated what I’d like to call an innate sense of justice until the sweets were distributed more fairly in relation to their individual input.Fairness, flexibility, restraint, patience, goodwill, honour, receptiveness, integrity… It would be interesting to ponder over the virtues that I carry through life.Regardless of whether our virtues are inherent or not, all our individual characteristics are slowly carved out from context and wholeness. Some like to say that our characters are shaped on the path of life.Character-shaping. The term smacks of old-worldliness, of times before mobile phones, emails, teleworking and satellite conferences, even televisions. It’s more like a hero in a scratchy old silent movie.And browsing through modern management books, I often lament the absence of ideas of justice, courage, humility, patience, receptiveness, restraint – that is to say, qualities, habits and principles as part of a character. It’s to novels and autobiographies that I have to turn to find stories of human efforts to incorporate justice, courage, responsibility, honour and strength into character. Might we have forgotten that being a good employee and being a good manager is based more on our characters than on management techniques designed to temporarily grease the interactive machinery at the workplace?A “good” part of my character is responsibility, the capacity to be a person who takes responsibility for his own actions. We must always remember that when we point a finger at someone else, there are always at least three fingers pointing back at us. So the first question I must always ask myself in all situations is: What can I do?
Excerpts from the book “Manager and Employee.” Leadeshipbook of the year in Sweden.
Looking for a publishing house in USA, UK, Canada, Singapore, Australia etc.