We spend so much energy focused on success, we don't recognize the consequences of ignoring our emotional needs - which can feed or starve our energy levels and ability to succeed. Really great article!

I have a few trusted mentors, some paid (like my accountant and attorney) and some not - fellow entrepreneurs and friends. I think entrepreneurs often overlook the need for mentors. Honest, well-meant critical feedback and support is crucial to personal and professional growth. The trick is being able to take the advice or feedback, sit with it, filter it through my own needs and values, and include it in my decision-making process. My mentors are priceless. They have helped me avoid some disastrous decisions and learn for the bad ones I didn't avoid making.

As a career coach, I often draw the same analogies. One more: be authentic. Presenting yourself or your business as something other than you truly are means trying to maintain a false image - which is draining and ultimately fruitless.

Really great article. I work with entrepreneurs who need help with employee issues. And ironically, my work is often about exactly what you describe - helping them understand the nature and responsibilities of leadership. The courage to fail, and the humility to admit failure and adapt and change as necessary in clear sight of collaborators or employees is the hardest thing to teach entrepreneurs. Like they managers they escaped, they often feel compelled to present an image of competence, rather than authenticity. Thanks for a great article!

Health care is an ethical issue, not a political one. We need to look beyond our typical, tragedy of the commons approach to health care as a scarce resource and take our place among the other prosperous nations of the world as responsible citizens. While neither corporations or government are close to perfect systems, WE are the shareholders in our government, so as individuals we have far more power and responsibility to affect change. Great article!

Great article! So often business authors sidestep the power of emotions - negative and positive - and how they influence our success at work.

Great article! I've done some writing on a similar topic, but from the direction of how organizational dissonance affects employee engagement and customer service. I think your observation is great. The cost of a $5 meal compared to a priceless brand ambassador seems like a no brainer, but many managers miss the mark.

My friend's band is playing at Kick Butt at 8pm that night, so stick around for some good music after!

I agree that transparency in organizations should be the rule, not the exception. While sometimes secrecy is necessary, when it becomes ingrained in the culture it creates a distrustful environment.

Most of the ethical dilemmas I've witnessed or had to deal with myself at work have been related to internal politics and work relationships.

I had a manager who fired two fellow employees under false pretenses. She fabricated situations that indicated they were incompetent, and then had other managers she was politically aligned with corroborate her fabrications. I believe she was motivated to fire them because she herself was not competent in the area she had been assigned, and wanted to remove anyone who might draw attention to that fact.

What was my ethical obligation in this situation? As a bystander, I was getting my information second-hand, so committing career suicide by going over her head seemed unwise. However, pretending that her actions were warranted, and hadn't caused great damage to the careers of my co-workers created a great deal of unhappiness and internal dissonance for me. I felt that her actions were not only unethical, but harmful to the company, as the employees she had fired were highly competent, committed, experienced and productive. Still, she was politically and positionally far better placed than I was, and anything I said was unlikely to be taken seriously, other than to brand me as a troublemaker.

My imperfect solution was to find another job, and have a couple conversations with the managers above her before I left regarding my concerns. As I suspected, my reservations about this manager were largely disregarded. On a political level, I should have left it alone and avoided burning any bridges in the organization. But on an ethical level, I could not do so without violating my own values and personal ethical system.

I would hazard that most of the ethical dilemmas we face in the work world are of this interpersonal, messy nature. But I also believe that if we ignore these occurrences and allow our own values and those of our organizations to erode, eventually the company culture and values change to accommodate the norm. This is when larger ethical gaffs become a high risk.

Interesting point, Floyd. I wrote a critical article of Friedman's approach to organizational ethics for the very reason that he seems to excuse organizations from the discussion of ethics by claiming that organizations do not themselves have an ethical obligation beyond providing value to shareholders.

But Friedman may too have taken the view that ultimately, shareholder and "stakeholder" (all parties effected by the organization's actions) eventually coincide. My point is, whether you look at it from a Kantian or Utilitarian perspective, you eventually get to the same place if you look far enough into the future.

I think that even at their best, organizations are inherently Utilitarian. By becoming a member of any type of human society, social or work-related, you give up a certain amount of freedom to determine your own ethical framework in exchange for membership. The organization as a whole must then attempt to represent the dominant values of the group, naturally leading it towards a Utilitarian approach to ethics.

The challenge is then helping business leadership and employees to understand that they are part of larger social systems (communities, cities, countries, industries) and must consider the consequences of their actions in that context, not just the context of the individual company. This is where Kant and Utilitarianism merge; in the meta-system (the world), violating universal law has individual consequences: companies that engage in shoddy ethical practices abroad support corruption and poverty in those countries, limiting the eventual availability of those markets.

Conversely, organizations that work to solve issues of global poverty are increasing the potential market available to them. Viewed from enough height, what is right is what is also profitable.