Moral intelligence is more than knowing the difference between right and wrong or how you ought to live. It directs an individual’s conscience (the seat of all the faculties we honour) to good and includes universal moral truths like integrity, responsibility, compassion and forgiveness. Most corporate value statements include integrity and responsibility – where integrity is doing what you say you are going to do with honesty, standing up for what is right and keeping promises; and responsibility is taking responsibility for your actions such that they are. Compassion and forgiveness though are less popular and yet most value statements include concepts like being a learning organization and the personal development of their employees. There’s a contradiction there which I’ll explore in the next post. Be inspired.
Working definition of moral intelligence
May 1, 2008 · 4 Comments
Categories: Emotional intelligence · moral intelligence
Tagged: Be inspired, compassion, forgiveness, integrity, moral intelligence, responsibility
4 responses so far ↓
Lester // May 4, 2008 at 9:48 am |
The problem with the mission, vision, values, ethics, blah, blah, blah, statement is that to many leaders spend little time developing these foundational elements. It’s boiler plate for the board and the investors. Too many people think they are too smart for this fluffy stuff. I don’t believe it’s seen as an integral part of the business decision making process and or part of setting the strategy. The immediate measures of earnings and meeting debt covenants come first all too often in highly leveraged deals. Once this happens who remembers the values? Enron here we come.
grahamwillcock // May 4, 2008 at 10:17 pm |
Hi Lester – thanks for your comment. Patrick Lencioni (whose approach to the utility of corporate value statements I think you share) likes pointing out that Communication, Respect, Integrity and Excellence all appear in the Enron 2000 Annual Report as values the company subscribes to. Bit unfortunate that. The problem of course is that no company will ever get it all right, all of the time. The difference in my experience is whether they genuinely care about getting it right (or wrong). The development of the corporate conscience finds its life force in this fundamental principle even when those conflicts you refer to in your comment come into play.
dudester4 // September 10, 2009 at 8:56 am |
I am very interested in this subject.
How does moral intelligence differ from spiritual competence? Does MI have non-business application as most people would expect it to?
Just as stress management and business ethics seems to be coming to the forefront in the business world, what implications does the increasing importance of MI have in the non-business world- the family, the schools, the home- in your view?
Graham Willcock // November 8, 2009 at 5:41 pm |
Thanks for your question dudester4 – spirituality and spiritual intelligence would require that an individual believe in a spiritual influence however (s)he conceives that influence to be. Moral intelligence does not have such a requirement and has no theistic requirement. Hope this ’sound bite’ response helps.