One of the traditional activities of the first day of class for college classes (at least for mine) was to introduce the class. This meant introducing myself, going over the syllabus with my contact information, office hours, projects, and expectations for classroom conduct. Our College of Business had a template with information that was supposed to be included, but over the last couple years I had started summarizing with “Don’t be a jerk!” We are each a part of society and (while this sounds corny), society works better when we recognize that and work together (or at least not against each other).
Today’s post has little to do with finance or business (although it does have some connection which we will get to later) and instead is more a matter of me responding to a news article that one of the people in my Facebook running group posted. You can see a tweet about it here.
Assuming this is an accurate description of the event, this is an example of violating the “Don’t be a jerk” rule.1 To me, this is worse than some ethical breeches because there is no personal upside to the person who caused the crash (I’m not going to call it an accident, because that implies that it was random misfortune and there was nothing random about the behavior). He doesn’t get a financial benefit. Instead, the only reward was from bullying and intentionally trying to make other people feel intimidated, with the potential downside of causing physical harm. This is pretty much the definition of being a jerk.
Part of being a better human is recognizing that while we all have personal freedom, we need to be aware of how our actions impact others around us. This is captured by the quote “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”2 Ideally our actions will make the world a better place, but this sometimes creates the misperception that we need to be proactively focusing on improving society in order to be doing our part. That is not correct. You can (and should) do things that you enjoy because you enjoy doing those things as long as those activities are not harming others. Things like bullying, vandalism, and other destructive behavior have no place in society.
Consider drunk driving. While there is a high probability that no one will get hurt, the chances of causing physical and/or financial harm to others (or yourself) is very real. If the only person being impacted was yourself, then it would be fine as you are bearing all the costs of your actions. However, once your actions have an impact on others then rules become essential to balance the tradeoff between your benefits and societal costs. This (which is closely related to the bike incident) results in the need for road regulations. There are speed limits, licensing requirements, traffic laws (for example what side of the road we drive on and who has the right-of-way in specific situations), etc. The rules get refined over time. For example, speed limits have varied dramatically over the course of driving in most countries. Rules, which are effective limits on our freedom, are an important part of society as they are a reminder that our actions can have consequences outside of ourselves.
Benefits to Not Being a Jerk
Okay, let me bring this back to personal and professional benefits to not being a jerk. Imagine you are interviewing for a job. One common aspect of most hiring decisions is the concept of references. While clearly there are some potential flaws to the system, the idea is to allow the potential employer to get a feel of your character.3 This can be thought of as reputational capital.
How important is reputational capital for firms? According to one study, reputational capital can account for over 50% of a firm’s value. For Apple and Microsoft, that amount was estimated to be over $1 trillion. While there are likely some judgment calls in that analysis, it is hard to argue that reputation is irrelevant. While Apple and Microsoft (along with other corporations) are not people, they are managed and run by people. If you go to a store and the cashier is rude, you are likely to associate that rudeness with the store. If you deal with a salesperson that is unprofessional, you are likely to associate that unprofessionalism with the company they work for. If you take a class at a nearby college and have a great experience because of the enthusiasm of the professor teaching the class, you are likely to associate that enthusiasm with the university. Our personal reputations get transferred, for bad or good, to the companies/organizations which we represent.
Apply it on a personal level. Have you ever chosen to pass on an opportunity because of someone else that would be participating? Have you ever dreaded a group assignment or work project because of one of the team members that you would have to work with? On the flip side, have you ever looked forward to an opportunity or work project because of one of the team members that you would get to work with? In general, acting with integrity, honesty, professionalism, responsibility, etc. are ways to enhance your reputational capital.
Kind and Generous
Here you can see a Tweet by Adam Grant regarding kindness and generosity. It only takes a few seconds to Google “benefits of kindness” and you’ll see multiple links addressing this. I’m not going to dig deep into it as it is WELL outside my area of expertise, but a couple of things that show up repeatedly4 are that
Kindness can help reduce anxiety and depression
Kindness can be good for your physical health (probably through reducing the physical impacts of anxiety)
Kindness helps you feel happier
Kindness is positively associated with longevity.
Kindness creates a positive feedback loop. When someone does something for you which you appreciate, it reduces your anxiety and makes you feel happier. This, in turn, makes you more likely to do something nice for someone else.
The flip side is that anger creates negative consequences. Granted, we rarely have the ability to control how we react to something. There is a physical reaction which is commonly referred to as the fight-or-flight syndrome and is largely out of our control. This is why we need to be aware of when it is happening and do our best to actively counter it. Daniel Kahneman discussed System 1 vs. System 2 thinking in his book “Fast and Slow” and our response to events/actions that happen is largely System 1 (more of an automatic reaction). What we need to do is recognize that if our response is anger, we need to actively defuse that anger instead of acting on it (which will often compound the problem). If kindness creates positive feedback loops, what kind of feedback loops do you think anger leads to? Take a step back and break the loop. Don’t “poke back” and “get even”. Be a better human!
Including the assumption that the incident is being captured accurately is an essential disclaimer. I was neither there nor in the driver’s head at the time, so am basing my commentary on the report.
Looking into the quote, which has been attributed to many people leads down a bit of an interesting rabbit hole.
For a comedic take on job references, you might consider these examples. One for the person who misses a lot of time is the phrase “It seemed her career was just taking off.”
Here is one of many examples of what you will find — https://www.dartmouth.edu/wellness/emotional/rakhealthfacts.pdf