Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What's Right

How can you effectively stand up for your values when pressured by your boss, customers, or shareholders to do the opposite?

Babson College business educator and consultant Mary Gentile draws on actual business experiences as well as social science research to challenge the assumptions about business ethics at companies and business schools. She gives business leaders, managers, and students the tools not just to recognize what is right, but also to ensure that the right things happen. The book is inspired by a program Gentile launched at the Aspen Institute with Yale School of Management, and now housed at Babson College, with pilot programs in over one hundred schools and organizations, including INSEAD and MIT Sloan School of Management.

She explains why past attempts at preparing business leaders to act ethically too often failed, arguing that the issue isnt distinguishing what is right or wrong, but knowing how to act on your values despite opposing pressure. Through research-based advice, practical exercises, and scripts for handling a wide range of ethical dilemmas, Gentile empowers business leaders with the skills to voice and act on their values, and align their professional path with their principles. Giving Voice to Values is an engaging, innovative, and useful guide that is essential reading for anyone in business.

This small volume presents directly applicable ideas and tasks that teach the reader how to feel empowered to speak up and persist in speaking up for what's right in the work place. Gentile (Babson College, Wellesley, Mass.) fashions the principles behind the concepts into a clear set of skills for action, with the belief that most people know the difference between right and wrong but are hindered for many reasons in speaking up in the workplace. Ethics, psychology, and philosophy are part of the text's content, but the main focus is on values and action, how to overcome fear of conflict, understand the motivation of others, look ahead to see risk, communicate with others, and generally feel empowered to act for what's right in the workplace. An appendix contains extensive study aids for the reader and materials for peer-coaching. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Mary C. Gentile, Ph.D., is director of the Giving Voice to Values curriculum and senior research scholar at Babson College. Her articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, strategy+business, BizEd, CFO Magazine, and Risk Management, and she has written several books on ethics and diversity.