Overview

This exercise helps participants explore the line (not always a fine one) between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. It uses a real-world scenario and asks participants to compare it to similar situations they’ve experienced.

Purpose

To encourage thought and discussion regarding instances when it may be appropriate to break, bend, or ignore the rules that govern a corporate entity.

Group Size

Any number of individuals can participate. The group should be divided into subgroups of four or five.

Room Arrangement

If possible, arrange table groups for four or five participants each.

Materials

Transparency 13.1, “Discussion Questions”

Projector for transparencies or for PowerPoint slides

Method

1.Share with the class this true story, as reported by Chicago columnist Mike Royko:

Brendan Hodges was a young musician, walking along Chicago streets, minding his own business until a thug made it his business to take Brendan’s bass guitar. When Brendan tried to hold on to it, the thief shot the young man in the eye. Although the boy was attended by some of the city’s best doctors at Cook County Hospital, his parents, Michael and Miriam Hodges, were told when they arrived that the boy might not make it.

Immediately after meeting with the physicians, they rushed to an elevator, anxious to be at their son’s bedside. The operator, though, informed them that they both needed visitors’ passes. Understandably agitated, Mr. Hodges told the operator that their son was dying, hoping the urgency of the situation would settle the matter. Instead, the elevator operator accused Brendan’s parents of having an “attitude.” He then called for security.

Wanting to avoid further delay and a confrontation with security, Mr. Hodges attempted to get the elevator moving up to his son’s floor but found the doors wouldn’t close, even though he had pressed the floor button. At this point, security officers arrived, pushed Mrs. Hodges to the side, and actually handcuffed her husband. They then led him off to their office, where he was forced to wait until the security lieutenant arrived. The lieutenant chastised the grieving father: “We have rules and regulations,” he informed him, “and if we let you get away with it, we’d have to let everyone get away with it.”

The officer, who had apparently received an erroneous update from someone else, charged, “You’ve been clowning around here since 11:00 this morning.” Mr. Hodges responded by pointing out that coming to the hospital to be with a dying child could hardly be termed “clowning around.” He was finally released, but precious time had been lost. Brendan Hodges died the next morning.

2.Ask small groups to discuss the questions shown on Transparency 13.1, “Discussion Questions,” for 15 or 20 minutes.

3.Have a spokesperson from each group deliver a brief summary.

4.Close with reference to a nationally publicized incident of subordinates questioning leaders. Cite as examples Coleen Rowley, FBI agent in the Minnesota field office, and Sherron Watkins, vice president of Enron Corporation. Each of them went out on a professional limb and voiced their concerns about practices in which their superiors were engaged. Leaders are simply not always right, as shown in the example of Jim Jones, who “led” hundreds of people to their collective suicidal deaths.

Variation

Related Programs: In leadership programs especially, the idea of challenging the leader instead of following him or her without question is worthy of exploration. Not only should leaders expect empowered subordinates to challenge, question, and even “blow the whistle,” but they should also welcome inquiries designed to ensure progress is being made, and made in the right direction.

Discussion

How can we develop the sensitivity required for situations involving raw human emotion?

What immediate and far-reaching benefits might ensue from such development?

How can an organization encourage rule enforcement and simultaneously encourage the occasional flouting of rules?

Quotation

“So many gods, so many creeds,

So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs.”

—Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (1850–1919)

Points of Interest

In their research on workplace incivility (“Assessing and Attacking Workplace Incivility,” authors Christine Pearson, Lynne Andersson, and Christine Porath of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill cite a recent national poll in which 90 percent of respondents regarded incivility as a serious problem, one that leads to violence and the erosion of moral values. Their research appears in a forthcoming book, Organizational Dynamics, a publication of the American Management Association.

TRANSPARENCY 13.1