Since the beginning of the new millennium, it seems that at least once a week something appears in the news that another person or organization has been found to have lied about their credentials, the finances of their company, or committed a crime that resulted from some type of dishonest behavior. It makes you wonder why we do not see more examples of people stepping up and exposing the crimes or dishonest behavior while the acts are being committed and not waiting until after the behavior is discovered. But very quickly I remember why prevention does not happen!

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I. Why the need for “Straight Talk”?

Building an ethical corporate culture requires more than admonishing employees to do the right thing. Companies need to focus on the specific skills that create a positive and open work environment. From our experience, in most organizations it is poor communication that poses the greatest risk to integrity, while cultures in which employees feel free to raise issues issues tend to be ones that maintain higher levels of integrity. A lack of open communication in an organization can have serious consequences. Confusion and lack of awareness, employee isolation, a drop in productivity, a perceived lack of fairness or potential harassment issues, and fear of retaliation all can result when leaders and managers fail to take appropriate measures to promote transparency and openness

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Many of us work in organizations that require multiple points of communication

Successful relationships in complex organizations must begin with:

• Common understanding of goals
  
• Clear understanding of individual roles
  
• Commitment to accomplishment of objectives

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Watching revitalized sports franchises fight their way back to championship caliber (examples, Red Sox 2004 and Cubs 2016) reminds me of some of the most enjoyable work experiences I have had in my life. Those experiences centered on working in groups or on teams that were striving to achieve a common goal where the individual success was always second to the success of the team or organization. The focus on a common goal and approach is so critical to the success in team sports that you can almost feel the personal commitment each of the players have to support other members of the team even when it impacts their own personal ability to be the “star” on a world stage. The trust that exists between each of the group members is so strong that no one would ever question that a team member would not deliver what they had committed to do.

But then I asked myself why is it that so many teams and workgroups lose that ability to function as a high performing group? I then thought about teams that I had participated in that went from high performing to ones that stopped working together and could no longer trust the other team members to the point where it froze the ability and potential of that team. What was the one event or a number of small issues that changed the dynamics of those teams from high performing to not trusting others to accomplish the team goals?

As trust broke down between the members, the commitment to the team took a backseat to the success of the individual. There must have been an event or behavior change that caused the team to lose the high level of commitment to the team. Then it hit me that it had to be LIPOTAGE!

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Most of the time, we don’t get to choose who we work with every day. But our coworkers’ and our relationships are crucial to our day-to-day work. Not only can poor workplace relationships be real personal downers, they can also hinder productivity and bring down office morale.

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