What would you do if an association that represents you starts to behave in a way that you don’t agree with?
Do you stay with it?
Do you leave it?
Do you speak up?
What happens when you try to reach out to the leadership and they don’t respond?
Recently I had the pleasure of welcoming my friend Victorio Milian to my podcast. Some people refer to him as the most disruptive man in human resources. Why? Because he is passionate about taking a stance against an organization he feels is misrepresenting their code of ethics, values, and mission.
Victorio is the founder of a movement called #fixitSHRM. SHRM is the Society for Human Resource Management. Why does it need to be fixed? Well, that’s exactly what we talked about on the show. But we also discussed ethical leadership and how HR personnel can be change agents within the world of work and human resources.
Ethical leadership, much like HR, is contextual. In HR we like to say, “It depends.” There is no black and white situation where we can say there is a definitive answer one way or the other. With regards to ethical leadership, it means really thinking through the moral implications of a business decision.
So if you see something that doesn’t sit right with you or notice a leader whose moral compass is broken, how can you affect change?
Here is some advice from Victorio: “Do what you can. There’s a lot happening in the world, and if you try to think about it all and impact it all, you’re going to freeze. But everybody can do something and not everybody can do the same thing. I know for myself, speaking out and being consistent around how I speak out, what I say, who my audience is, and my way of trying to move the needle is important. We have to dig deep in terms of how we do better around that. And of course, that means really getting uncomfortable. Having the ability to push forward and tackle these issues, see them to their conclusion and recognize that there’s never going to be a definitive moment where we got that fixed right.”
The moral of the story: If something needs fixing, take action. Move the needle. Any amount of action counts.
If you’re interested in a conversation about ethical leadership and hearing about one man’s attempt to fix an organization he feels is misrepresenting HR, then sit back and listen to this episode of Let’s Fix Work.