Every year around this time, a week of my life is surrendered to Giving Voice to Values. I became a professor so I could teach this course. Mary Gentile’s curriculum had come out at almost exactly the same time as my book Wilful Blindness and it seemed a tremendous antidote. Every year I teach it, I learn more. And this year I’ve come to see that what it really calls for is narrative imagination. Even though that’s not what it looks like.

The curriculum was devised by Mary Gentile, an American academic who, on entering business school, had been surprised by the contradiction she found between the ‘can do’ attitude of executives and the regularity with which she heard CEOs and senior leaders saying that they couldn’t do, protesting that as much as they wanted to do the right thing, their hands were tied.

How could both mindsets co-exist? Can do—and can’t do? Working with the Aspen Institute she found that most MBA students expected to be forced to make business decisions that would contradict with their values. They knew this would be stressful, but most assumed that there would be no other choice beyond compliance—or exit. They took this as a fait accompli. It was to counter this passivity that she devised her course.

Gentile’s line of inquiry was informed by the so-called ‘Rescuers’’ in World War II. These were individuals whose strong opposition to fascism had compelled them to protect or save the vulnerable. They didn’t all share identical values, nor were they necessarily brave in other domains. What they had in common was that they had anticipated the danger—but didn’t stop there. Instead, they considered, and then shared out loud with respected others, specific plans to hide or help resisters. They didn’t vaguely imagine doing the right thing; they thought in detail about how, and with whom, they could be effective. Rehearsal had given them the courage needed for action. That rehearsal is the heart of the GVV curriculum, based on true case studies of values conflicts.

It's a tough course—to teach and to take. Why? Because it is both intellectually and emotionally challenging, requiring a broad cross-section of skills and an imaginative capacity that few education systems take as seriously as they should.

Thinking about others, not self. Students have to learn to think deeply about the context in which the conflict arises. In other words, be able to analyze others: what do they want, what are their values, why do they act as they do? What do they know that I don’t? What might make sense to them?

Ask questions. Meeting people where they are requires collecting facts and insights, the building blocks of alternative narratives. Many find this awkward, fearing to be nosey or intrusive. But asking people questions means they’re interesting. Implicitly, this is flattering. Open questions (who, what, where, why etc) give others the opportunity to demonstrate their mastery. The point of a dialogue isn’t what you say but the clues you can pick up from others.

Challenging orthodoxy. Analyzing the common assumptions which bolster difficult decisions means unpacking the workaday beliefs in business which are so common we don’t notice the moment when context renders them wrong, mad, bad or just stupid. Assumptions like: It’s efficient. Everyone does it. We have to make a profit ; there is no alternative. Everyone does it; being an outlier risks making us losers. It won’t really hurt anyone. It’s not my problem, I’m just doing what I’m told. What difference can I make? Business is riddled with truisms that people take for gospel but which context can render disastrous.

Daring. Taking a stand against some of the central orthodoxies of modern management isn’t simple. In fact, for many young people, doing so in front of an authority figure is terrifying. Even rehearsing it in class is stressful but it gets easier with practice. In my course, there is a lot of role play involved, developing the muscle memory of articulating what can feel dangerous, just because it’s not generic.

Powerlessness needn’t be an impediment. Articulating a personal perspective is important, but it’s only one part of the story. However eloquently you articulate your point of view, what really matters is where it intersects with the values and perspectives of others.

All of this work is required before the hardest part: being able to triangulate between your own values and those of the company, or the individual, whose decisions conflict with your own. Can you find common ground where hypocrisy doesn’t grow?

This goes far beyond empathy. It is fundamentally an imaginative process. Can I script the scene where I make the argument so that it is understood, not in my terms but according to the perspective of others? The script has to be subtle, not self-centred. It can’t be phoney but must draw a convincing picture of a better or at least equivalent outcome for both parties. Can we find a way to achieve the required end in a way that we can both live with it? Am I prepared to listen closely enough to find out if, actually, I’m wrong? Over the last few years, the commitment to an outcome in which competing values can be reconciled has become strikingly more difficult for my students; they have grown up surrounded by rigid, binary narratives that don’t invite alternatives.

Which is why imagination is so critical to the whole process. Can I take the same materials and draw a new picture? Can I resist the gravitational pull of demonizing the other? Once construed as a conflict, how do I find coherence? Many of my MBA students have 10, even 20 years of executive experience. This kind of creative thinking can feel like a new language. As my students tend to be very international and bilingual, that can be an advantage.

The first year I taught GVV was the first year of Covid lockdowns. So I turned the case studies into dramatized podcasts. At least that way, I thought, my students can get out of their rooms, go for a walk, and listen to the stories. As a former radio drama producer, I know that radio produces the best pictures—because they are in the listener’s head. The conflict emerges from the narrative; you have to listen hard to hear how and where values are expressed. Conflicts rarely announce themselves but creep stealthily into daily life; it is sometimes hard to notice them until it’s too late. So listening for them become is a good lesson in attention.

For one intense and wonderful afternoon, the students get the benefit of Susanne Schuler, the brilliant head of training at CEDR, the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution. Schuler has taught the fine art of mediation to family businesses, communities, companies and human rights organizations, from Finland to Mongolia, the USA and Rwanda. Without jargon, she walks our students through the smallest of conflicts to see just how many alternative scenarios might be realistic. It’s fun, even frequently revelatory. And the students start to see that, however junior their role, their creative capacity to imagine is a powerful source of influence.

I guess it’s in the nature of teaching that whatever you teach, you can’t imagine how the world could live without it. Economics, immunology, poetry, music, engineering, supply chains, history: I hope they’re all taught by passionate advocates. For myself, I don’t know how we survive without learning how to talk and listen to other people. To imagine that we might be wrong. That our choices could always be improved upon.

At a time when we struggle to understand one another, it’s easy to imagine that any challenge will exacerbate polarization, a nasty incorrect idea that spread fast and furiously. When too many feel that silence is the best or only option, nothing is anything more crucial to the future of young people heading into a world inundated by values conflicts. I’m reminded of Dan Pink’s wonderful work on regret, his profound insight that it is what we don’t do that most regret. This tallies perfectly with the many whistleblowers I’ve interviewed. These were individuals who, seeing organizations they loved make terrible choices, felt obliged to take a stand. Many surprised themselves with their own success. The more famous ones were pilloried and punished. But I’ve not met one who wished they had stayed silent.

To be the person you can be proud of requires rehearsal of a new script.

If You Want to Go Deeper

Mary Gentile’s basic textbook is a great gateway to the curriculum. Darden Business Publishing houses a vast repository of GVV case studies to call upon here, so it’s easy to match cases to audiences.

A Personal Note

P.S. People often ask me when I’ve given voice to my own values. Good challenge. My very earliest experience, age 12 I think, was when, as the pianist for our Junior High School graduation, I was asked to substitute a wonderful piece of Verdi for an anodyne piece so bland I can’t remember who wrote it. This seemed terribly important at the time; I was outraged, grief-stricken and deeply offended that my peers would troop into something so banal. My father listened to me and said: ‘You know Margaret, once you start playing, nobody can stop you….’

What a great lesson. I went back to practicing the Verdi.

For the Joy of It

Last week I had the joy of listening to Stile Antico singing Palestrina in Bath Abbey. It’s astonishing to hear these voices use the building as an instrument, playing its acoustic. The different textures were so distinct, you could almost touch them.