Ethics quiz: You are considering working on a business project with a person from another organization. You cross paths at a professional conference. While there, you see the other person cut in line; a.k.a. jump the queue.
Would that affect your willingness to work with the other person?
I confess that I'd have second thoughts.
That question causes me to wonder what other possible deal-killers are out there and - not to be self-righteous about it - how many I may have thoughtlessly committed. The advantage of the Big Embarrassing Blunder is it is so loud and obvious that we leap to apologize and make amends. The smaller errors may go unnoticed and uncorrected and eventually leave a lasting, negative impression; one that you may not even suspect. Those may become the real barriers to success.
Much has been made of the importance of small gestures of thoughtfulness, such as writing "thank you" notes. Less attention has been devoted to catching the seemingly minor infraction that may be regarded by others as the true picture of our character or abilities.
3 comments:
In Robert Half's Success Guide for Accountants, he relates a story of a prospective interviewee who was taken to lunch at a cafeteria by the manager. The manager had been quite impressed and was planning to offer the candidate the job. Then he saw the candidate deliberately place a $0.02 pat of butter under his dinner roll so he wouldn't have to pay for it.
He didn't get an offer.
At the end of the day, all we have is our integrity. Lose that, and your skills won't matter much. Integrity is measured by all actions, large and small.
It would certainly give me pause, Michael. I wouldn't make a decision based on a single incident, after all there might have been a reason I could understand about why person acted that way. But it would make me step back to determine if there was a pattern.
If you work with people you get them whole, good parts and bad parts. I've learned that there are some "bad parts" that I have no problem with and others that make joint ventures a nightmare.
Pawnking and Wally,
I like both of your comments. My intuition is that it is a sign of a deeper problem since this person is too smart not to realize what had happened. I'm aware of the strange nature of intuition and yet every time I've ignored mine, at least in the business world, I've regretted it.
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