Sunday, March 04, 2012

Promoting Discretion

It is a rare week when we don't read about someone who must have crawled out of a time capsule. Comments and actions that are clearly out of bounds push an incident into the newspapers as an organization quickly shifts into damage-control mode.

At the same time, it's easy to find stories of questionable outrage; accounts of hypersensitive (and often hypocritical) reactions that are driven by ulterior motives or zealotry. Does every thoughtless or cruel remark in a workplace deserve loud condemnation and a formal investigation? Certainly not if you want a climate of trust, if only because all of us have made comments that we wish we could delete. You don't want thoughtless louts rambling about but you also don't need an ongoing game of "gotcha."

I mentioned in an earlier post about the value of occasionally discussing various virtues, such as loyalty and courage, at staff meetings. The topic of discretion should be added to that list.

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