Ethical Fitness® Process
Ethical Fitness® Seminar
The one-day Ethical Fitness® Seminar (EFS) is the nucleus of CCE's training program. Based on Dr. Rushworth Kidder's landmark book, How Good People Make Tough Choices, the EFS has been experienced by thousands of people worldwide in a wide variety of workplace environments.
In the last few years, the ethics responsibilities of business leaders have grown significantly beyond compliance to include the mandate to build ethical cultures, where trust can grow and thrive and where employees themselves become the security network for corporate ethics.
The core of CCE's approach to growing ethical cultures is the Ethical Fitness® Seminar. The EFS is positive, non-threatening, and highly interactive. Participants claim greater awareness of ethical issues, higher levels of decision-making confidence, and a high degree of relevance to their job responsibilities. Some have told us that the EFS was a life-changing experience; others say that the impact of their EFS experience has grown over time, rather than diminished. Most are content to share their gratitude for a disciplined way to approach life's very difficult decisions.
The learning objectives for the EFS aimed at corporate organizations include the following:
- Recognizing the importance of ethics — for individuals, for organizations, for the future
- Understanding trust — What is it? What encourages trust? What kills it?
- Tasking leadership with trust — What can leaders do to create a trust environment?
- Defining ethical values — Whose values are they? How are they applied in the workplace?
- Analyzing ethical dilemmas — How can real ethical dilemmas be distinguished from moral temptations? Can ethical dilemmas be categorized?
- Resolving dilemmas — Which principles best apply?
IGE's work assumes that fundamental, shared values can be discovered and applied. We also assume that individuals and organizations are capable of developing what we call Ethical Fitness® — which, like physical fitness, keeps you in mental and moral shape to recognize and address ethical dilemmas. Participants will leave our seminar with the tools and confidence required for resolving ethical dilemmas — equipped to confront issues that face them every day, at work and at home.
SESSION SUMMARIES
Our typical four-session seminar comprises discussions of Ethical Awareness, Values Definition, Ethical Analysis, and Dilemma Resolution, and employs a mixture of lectures, group discussions, and small-group exercises.
SESSION 1: Ethical Awareness
This first step consists of making ethics personally relevant to the participants by:
- Describing the current ethical climate — noting the signs of hope but also stressing the warning signals of a collapse of shared values, with reference to statistical studies, opinion polls, and corporate and governmental examples
- Defining ethics in two practical and useful ways
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- As "obedience to the unenforceable"
- As not only "right versus wrong" but more often "right versus right"
- Understanding trust as a social phenomenon that can be influenced by leadership and grown in an ethical environment
SESSION 2: Values Definition
Not to be confused with "values clarification," this step consists of group exercises that:
- Identify the shared values of the group
- Test these values against one another, looking for similarities and synonyms
- Test these values as a set to determine if it is complete and relevant and whether the individual values are mutually exclusive
- "Operationalize" the values within a group-defined setting — putting real values to work in the workplace
The result is a working "code of ethics" upon which the following sessions can be built.
SESSION 3: Ethical Analysis
This session begins by contrasting simple right-versus-wrong decision-making situations (moral temptations) with the tougher right-versus-right situations (ethical dilemmas). Participants explore the concept of "dilemma paradigms," based on the understanding that right-versus-right dilemmas, however complex and varied, typically reduce themselves to one or more of several paradigms. The session continues by examining ethical issues drawn not from written case studies but from fresh, individual experiences shared by the participants in the seminar. Using participants' own dilemmas helps to bind them to the decision-making framework.
SESSION 4: Dilemma Resolution
The last session explores three unique decision-making principles drawn from the traditions of moral philosophy. Each is widely respected but vastly different in application. Participants test the dilemmas raised in Session 3 with each of the resolution principles to determine the "highest right," recognizing that the "lesser right" is not necessarily "wrong" and that individuals drawn to it in this circumstance cannot be dismissed as unethical. After participants fully experiment with the three resolution principles, individuals reveal how they actually resolved their dilemmas.
Ethical Fitness® Seminars can be customized for any workplace environment and for any level of employee.
Train-the-Trainer Workshop
For companies that want to develop internal training capability, the Institute created the Train-the-Trainer Workshop. This program equips a client's employees with the skills and conceptual background to roll out the Ethical Fitness® program companywide.
The heart of the Institute's program — the Ethical Fitness® Seminar — is a pithy, tightly structured, fast-moving program that accomplishes its goal quickly. We've spent years honing our training skills to make sure the ethics message is delivered soundly and efficiently. Our Train-the-Trainer Workshop is designed to help new trainers become just as effective.
The Train-the-Trainer Workshop provides important conceptual background and skills — from ethics vocabulary, history, and philosophy to practice in fielding difficult questions, providing relevant and interesting examples, and sharing personal anecdotes with EFS participants. Honing leadership and group development skills, the workshop helps new trainees build the confidence and capacity to train their colleagues and coworkers in the Ethical Fitness® process.
The workshop assumes that candidates already have mastered classroom-style teaching. Working under this assumption, the class is able to devote considerable time to understanding and testing concepts, exercising Ethical Fitness® muscles, exploring different points of view, practicing facilitation, and discussing participants' examples in depth.
The workshop includes:
- A detailed trainer's notebook with essential background and conceptual information as well as scripts, additional exercises, and tough questions
- How Good People Make Tough Choices by Rushworth Kidder
- Tough Choices, Now and in History video
- Two workbooks designed for use with EFS participants of different reading skill levels
- Individualized coaching and group feedback as participants create their own scripts and practice their delivery
- A one-year membership in the Institute
- Special discounts on all IGE products
- A continental breakfast and buffet lunch every day
This program is the most efficient and cost-effective way to spread the Ethical Fitness® Seminar to all of your colleagues and/or employees.
Ethical Fitness® Online with Ethical Decision Making
IGE has experience in the production of high-impact learning solutions that enable companies to teach employees the ethical decision-making skills employed in the Ethical Fitness® process. An online program enables companies to effectively and efficiently send a consistent message to their entire organization.
Leaders as Trainers
Some organizations feel strongly that the most effective training is delivered by credible leaders from within the company. Using all of the tools above, IGE can give appropriate members of the leadership team an Ethical Fitness® process that they can deliver as ethics training. From a Train-the-Trainer Workshop that will enable them to present the Ethical Fitness® Seminar to videos with facilitator's notes for an hour of discussion, we can furnish what's most effective for your environment.