Is there a core value I emphasize? Yes, there is.

 My core value as a Humanist is compassion. Here's why.  

I realize this list of humanist values doesn't include compassion. That's ok. It gets at it through the concept of empathy. 

I like to keep things simple. The list I use for myself has 3 elements. 

• Honesty
• Compassion
• Responsibility.

This list appears in my book The Humanist Approach to Happiness: Practical Wisdom. Which has been translated into several languages. https://humanistlearning.com/the-humanist-approach-to-happiness-book/

It also dominates all my online courses. 

Why Compassion? 

Let me answer that question with a question. Why be honest? Or why be responsible? Because if you aren't honest and responsible, you will hurt others and probably also yourself.  Why does it matter if you hurt people?  It doesn't, unless you are compassionate.  

Being compassionate means you are concerned, not just about yourself, but about others as well. The only reason to behave morally, is because of compassion. Without compassion, I don't think there is morality. 

Compassion is my moral compass. If I am ever in doubt of what to do, I think about the problem from the stand point of compassion. What will do the most good and the least harm for myself and others?  

Obviously, being compassionate isn't enough, but I do think it is a necessary starting point for all morality everywhere. 

Learn more by getting one of my books or taking one of my online courses: https://humanistlearning.com/jennifer-hancock/

Meaning & Purpose in Business

If you want to have more meaning and purpose in your business life, start by thinking about your values.

Ethics and values are critical to understanding meaning and purpose.  Your values help you figure out what it is that matters to you. When you know what matters to you, it becomes easier to make decisions in support of your values. This is true whether you are talking about your personal life or your professional life.

In the day to day hustle of just getting through the day, it is easy to lose sight of what you value. This is one of the reasons why people struggle with work life balance, relationships, and satisfaction and engagement at work.

At some point, most of us need jobs, mostly so that we can afford to have shelter, food and medical care. But what happens when the only jobs available cause harm to others or are exploitative?

I’ve known people who have left high paying jobs, because they didn’t want to be involved in making weapons. It just wasn’t worth the money to them anymore.  I’ve also known people who stayed at jobs that treated them badly because they needed the money.

Work is moral. Our choices, to either support or enable bad behavior or businesses that run counter to our values impacts the sort of world we live in.

The point of Humanistic Business Management isn’t just to encourage better treatment of the humans working for businesses. It’s also about what businesses do for business and in the course of conducting business.

Is the product or service net beneficial to humans and the world in which we live? Or is it harmful?  Does the company acquire the resources necessary to create the products and services in a comprehensively ethical way or not?

Think of humanistic business management as being concerned with three levels of business simultaneously. It is concerned with the problem being solve, how the problem is being solve and ultimately the impact this business has on all the people impacted by the business (workers, employers and clients).

Do you currently feel like your work has meaning and purpose? If not, what do you plan to do to change that?

To learn more consider taking: https://humanistlearning.com/workplacemeaningandpurpose/

Nothing is inherently immoral

The only immorality is not to do what one has to do when one has to do it. Jean Anouilh

Humanist ethics are situational ethics. And this makes a lot of people nervous. But it shouldn’t.

Humans all value the same things – for the most part. We value justice, compassion, and responsibility for instance. Studies have shown that there is indeed a common set of widely held human values.

Where these values come from is a matter of debate, obviously. But to me, as a pragmatist, I’m less interested in why we have these values than on how we apply them.  This is why I’m an advocate of situational ethics.

The reality we all face is that while we share common human values, those values are often in conflict with one another. Also, as individuals, given our personal experiences and beliefs, we may value some values higher then we value others.  We are constantly weighing our values to come to what we think are ethical decisions. Even if we don’t realize we do this – we are.

All situational ethics is, is an explicit acknowledgement of the reality of how we humans go about making moral decisions. The reason we do this is so that we can more effectively balance our moral values when making decisions.  We do this because it seems to yield better more moral decisions as judged by the real world effects of our decisions. We do less harm inadvertently when  we take such an explicit approach BECAUSE we considered the possibility that we might do harm while trying to do good.

Let that sink in for a moment. We might do harm while trying to do good. It doesn’t matter what your morality is or how it is based. If you aren’t willing to consider this possibility that you might accidentally do harm while trying to do good and you aren’t willing to think through how you might do the most good with the least harm, then you aren’t doing moral reasoning right.

I started this essay by saying nothing is inherently moral. But that doesn’t mean that anything goes. It just means you have to THINK through the potential consequences of your actions before taking action to insure your decisions are good and moral and will do the most good and least harm.

And this brings us back to the topic of leadership. Want to be a good moral and just leader?  Take the time to think through your actions to ensure you actually do good because good intentions aren’t enough. They never are.  Moral reasoning is hard. Put some effort into it.

Learn more about how to make more moral decisions with Planning for Personal Success – online course - https://humanistlearning.com/planforpersonalsuccess/