Tag: insidious behavior

Concise Advice #16: The Tools and Playbooks of Decency’s Enemies

Unconscionable actions, decisions, and behaviors

that are intentional, premeditated, injurious, degrading…

unethical…and some tend to be evil.

Decency’s enemies are obvious, expansive, and culturally corrosive. as are the playbooks of bullies, misbehaved buggers, and bad people. These tools and plays are intended to hurt, harm, and harass. Evil targets the innocent.  

Your first response:

Start Naming and blaming the predators and perpetrators.

  1. Arrogance
  2. Beyond the Boundaries of Decency, Civility, and Integrity
  3. Bullying
  4. Defaming
  5. Demeaning
  6. Dismissiveness
  7. Disparaging
  8. Disrespectfulness
  9. Evil
  10. False Suspiciousness
  11. Humiliation
  12. Intentional Embarrassment
  13. Intentionally Injurious
  14. Intentionally Irritating
  15. Intentionally Painful
  16. Intentionally Victimizing
  17. Meanness
  18. Negative Surprise
  19. Overbearing
  20. Overzealousness
  21. Punishing
  22. Ridicule
  23. Sarcasm
  24. Tone Deafness
  25. Unfounded Accusations
  26. Vengeance
  27. Victimization
  28. Vilification

Your second response:

  • If the perpetrator is someone you know, find someone else to know.
  • If the source is from someone you buy something from, find another source.
  • If it’s from someone in public life, disavow and shout them out.
  • If it comes from your local pulpit, find another pulpit.
  • Spend your energy on building a better life, expectations, and circumstances for yourself and those you care about.
  • Stop trying to change or reform the perpetrators and predators. They are always toxic and worthless.
  • Perpetrators, predators, evil public figures, and leaders will never really change.
  • Your efforts are far better spent on new endeavors and new approaches where you can clearly make a difference and others will benefit more than you.
  • Predators and perpetrators are superb slimy liars and con artists.

Wednesday’s Smart Shibboleth #15: Insidious Unethical Behaviors

WARNING, The DOJ calls these “predicate behaviors.” Less apparent, more insidious kinds of unethical behaviors that lead to crime. These behaviors are patterns prosecutors look for. Find even one of these behaviors in your vicinity, trouble is ahead. Two, get an attorney. Act promptly to eradicate (and report?) these situations.

  • Lax control: Careless enforcement, education about, and monitoring of ethical standards.
  • Lack of tough, appropriate, centralized compliance.
  • No one assigned responsibility for teaching, enforcing, and disciplining breaches of ethics.
  • Leadership that allows supervisors to overlook bad behavior.
  • Leadership that allows employees to explore methods and tactics outside established guidelines.
  • Emphasis on “doing whatever it takes” to achieve appropriate business and financial goals.
  • Managers and supervisors who minimize the importance of oversight and compliance.
  • Structuring incentives that compromise ethical behavior, the quality of products and services delivered, and shortcuts for questionable reasons.
  • Failure to confront managers who chronically misbehave or chronically overlook misbehavior.
  • Operating “on the edge,” always pushing for more than is appropriate.
  • Ignoring the signs of or failing to question rogue behavior.
  • Management tolerateing inappropriate behavior by individuals who are “critical to the organization’s mission.” Folks like super salespeople, the high achievers who are allowed to break the rules to maintain the altitude of their performance.
  • Belittling or humiliating those who suggest or seek ethical standards.
  • Dismissing or destroying the careers of employees who report bad or outright wrong behavior.
  • Demeaning the internal or external credibility of whistleblowers, those who report lapses in ethics.

*Source The Federal Sentencing Guidelines of 1991