As part of a larger culture development effort, we’ve worked with dozens of executive teams over the years to articulate or revise their core values. An almost universal core value is some variation of respect, integrity, or equality, or fairness.
Whether our espoused or aspirational values become the real or lived values to everyone inside an organization is all about perception. That’s especially true with equality or fairness. How does the individual or team feel they’re dealt with relative to how others are treated is the critical question.
So I might be perfectly fine with my current pay and benefits package and see it as fair compensation for the work I do. But if someone else is doing the same job and getting paid more my perception of fairness and equality will change. I am no longer OK with my compensation. I may even feel exploited and come to resent how I am being treated.
A very funny two and a half minute clip from Frans de Waal’s TED talk shows an experiment when Two Monkeys Were Paid Unequally. This humorously illustrates how commonly we decide on the fairness of how we’re treated by comparing how peers or others are dealt with.
We often judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions. But as the French writer, Antoine de Saint Exupery, once pointed out “the meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.” Most leaders strive to be fair and equal. We need to find ways to continually get feedback and understand how those we lead perceive how they’re treated relative to others.
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