Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Hi, everyone. You've got questions and we've got answers. Welcome to a very special Bella Asks episode of the Ethicast. Here at Ethisphere, we believe there is no competition in compliance, which is why we use this show as a platform to answer high level questions about business integrity that have been posed to us by members of the Business Ethics Leadership alliance, or bela. Bella is a global ethics and compliance community that provides exclusive access to helpful data, benchmarking events and other resources to advance your ENC program. It also provides a concierge service by which members can submit questions around best practices, and our internal experts will provide an answer, plus helpful resources with more information.
Many of these questions are particular to a specific company's needs, but many more of them speak to challenges or opportunities that face ENC professionals everywhere. Now, in a typical Bella Ask episode, we answer one such question as part of our ongoing mission to make the world a better place by advancing business integrity. But this is the 100th Bella Asks episode, so we've decided to blow things up a bit. We'll be answering two questions this episode, plus we'll have a special guest appearance from Bella executive director Kevin McCormick. But to get things started, I am delighted to welcome the star of Bella Asks back to the program, Bella chair Erica Salmon Byrne. Erica, as always, it is delight to see you again, but especially on this special episode.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yes, Bill, thank you so much for having me back. And thank you to all of those Bella members out there that sent us in enough questions that Bell and I could do 100 of these and then, you know, sort of turn the corner to the next hundred. It's. It's really exciting.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Well, the first question I have for you is a terrific question about new CEOs, and it reads, how can I best help a new CEO engage and help set the tone around ethics and ethical culture?
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So, Bill, this is a great question.
And it was one of those things where I had to go back into the archive a little bit and look at how many leadership related questions we've answered already on Bella Asks. So those of you out there who are listening to Bill and I, you know that we are often talking about questions that fit in with other questions and, and how many of this type of question we've answered. And so, you know, I went back and I looked at the archive of the last hundred and, you know, where have we answered other CEO questions as we were deciding, you know, what we were going to cover today, and it was like one plus one plus two plus one. But it's more than six, Bill. It's more than six.
But this question we had not yet answered. And so I was really happy that you suggested it as part of our 100th episode.
So you've got a new CEO, and we know this is happening for a lot of your organizations. We have seen a significant turnover in leadership teams across organizations. The leadership CEO turnover actually right now is up about 20% year over year, according to a lot of the statistics that are available out there. And so you are probably one of the people out there that is dealing with this situation. And if you are fortunate enough that you have a CEO that is interested in your perspective, first you should celebrate.
And then the second thing you should do is you should ask yourself, where are the places where I can have the most, get the most out of the CEO's interest in setting the appropriate tone from the top?
And some of this is going to depend on your CEO because you're going to have some CEOs that love talking in front of their, of the employee base, and you're going to have some CEOs that would rather write to the employee base and you're going to have some CEOs that would rather pre record a video that they get to watch over and over and analyze and cut it up and make it perfect. And, and you're going to have some CEOs that just want to go for a walk and have a coffee with someone and you're going to have some CEOs that are going to want to go sit down in the break room. Right? And so to a certain extent you have to take the old, like you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs kind of an approach to this.
And, and, and ask yourself as the cook, what are the things that this particular CEO is going to thrive? Right. Where are the places where I can set this person up for the greatest success?
That's going to be the thing that we really need to think through when, when you're approaching this topic, you should absolutely be looking for places where you can take advantage of the fact that people are going to want to hear what the new CEO has to say. You should absolutely be looking for places where you can help the new CEO thrive from a communications perspective. And so thinking about that triangle we talk about all the time, Bill of messenger, message modality, really kind of getting yourself to a place where you've identified the right modalities for this particular messenger and then you can think about the message. And don't just think about the period of time where the person is new. Right. What is the ongoing relationship that I can have this person have with the things that I need someone in that position to communicate. And the last thing I'll leave everybody with that I talk about a lot when it comes to leadership. Communications in particular is that particular combination that you can make of the how and the and the what. Right.
Very often members of leadership are tasked with talking about what is going to get done, what are our objectives, what are our goals, what are our rocks, what are our targets, what are our KPIs, what are our Kris, Whatever your however you, however you have structured it as a business, they spent a lot of time talking about the what.
Make sure you're also getting them to talk about the how because what you don't want is a disconnect between what the company is aiming at, how they're going to get there. So if you remember nothing else from what I just said, how and what coming out of one messenger using the modality that is best positioned for this particular CEO.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: Indeed.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Well, Erica, do you mind if I ask you a follow up question?
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Bill, longtime listeners of Bella asks no, I never mind a follow up question
[00:05:53] Speaker A: and I will always ask. Well, here it is.
I know that you speak to an awful lot of organizations, an awful lot of leadership, an awful lot of CEOs, and you know, you just offer some terrific best practices. But I am kind of curious, in your travels, are there any emerging travel trends or particularly effective approaches that you've observed out in the field?
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah, storytelling, Bill, is probably the number one thing. And it's not new, but it is extraordinarily effective. And so get your leader telling stories. What has he or she learned from other places that they have been? What, what are the things that they are taking with them from their prior experience into this experience? What is an ethical dilemma that they have faced in the past and how do they navigate it?
We're definitely seeing a lot of organizations lean into different communication modalities. So whether that is podcasting or short form video or other kind of ways of getting information from the leadership team into the hands of employees, take advantage of all those modalities. There's some great, different, interesting, experimental things that are being done out there. But at the end of the day, it's about storytelling. It's about giving your audience with their very limited attention span, something that they can hook the lesson you're trying to convey onto and that that is going to convert into a memory for them. So tell somebody a story and that, and that's really where this exercise that I recommended, Bill, of getting to understand, you know, what.
How is your new member of the leadership team. And we're talking about it in the context of CEOs, Bill, but it really applies. Whatever new leader you're working with, how are they going to be most comfortable? Right? Not everybody wants to be on video. Not everybody wants to be, you know, to podcast.
Some people would really rather write to employees, meet them where they are. Right. Maybe it's a. Maybe it's a. A short column, right? You've got a SharePoint site, your CEO wants to write a, you know, ask Bill column on a monthly basis where, you know, he tells a story about something that has happened in the business and what his response was and how he navigated it, something he sees in the news. Great. Meet him there, right?
However, there, however, that person is going to be comfortable carrying the water of the message you need them to carry. That's going to be the piece that. That really is going to matter. And then the last thing, you know, as I often do with these Bella asks, answers Bill, that I will mention, is make sure that you explain to them why.
Right? Make sure you explain to them why it matters that they are carrying both the how and the what in their brain at the same time.
Because the. The why of that is going to help them prioritize carrying both the how and the what message. It really is about that triangle, making sure that they understand that people are looking to them for clues of what's acceptable and not acceptable.
They're looking for differences between what you say and what you do. And the closer you can keep those things together, the easier it's going to be for people to follow your lead.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: Well, Erica, thank you so much for weighing in on this outstanding question from the Bella community. And. But before we continue, would you like to introduce our special guest for this episode?
[00:09:02] Speaker B: I would love to introduce our special guest for this episode, my colleague and friend, Kevin McCormack. Kevin, those of you who have been to the GES over the years, you know that Kevin and I are, you know, sort of joined at the hip when it comes to all things Bella. He spends his time as executive director of Bella, talking to our Bella members, soliciting some of these Bella questions. And we thought it was just incredibly fitting that for the hundredth, Bella asks that Kevin join us on the screen.
[00:09:32] Speaker C: Thank you so much, Erica. It's always a pleasure to connect with you with Bill, and this is fun to get a chance to do this before we take the stage at Global Ethics Summit again?
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Most certainly. Yeah.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Kevin, I don't know if you picked up the two clue references in Bill's and my prior conversation, but I'm going to see how many movie references I can fit into the rest of this conversation.
[00:09:52] Speaker C: I appreciate that you're speaking my love language. Thanks, Eric.
And first of all, I will say that, look, I know that in the messages being exchanged about this episode representing the hundredth ethicast, congratulations, Bill was positioning it as this super deluxe platinum edition episode, which is the standard, I always assume you and Erica have said anyway, with Bella Ask. And now I think it requires an asterisk to suggest, hey, but Kevin joined, which is probably giving my team and other colleagues some anxiety. But let's take it away.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Kevin, there's no worries for me whatsoever because I know when it comes to talking about Bella, for you, the action is the juice. So my first question to you is on Bella Asks. We really like to stress the concierge service as a key benefit for Bella members. So can you talk about how you have seen Bella members get value out of using the service?
[00:10:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
A few thoughts on this one in that, in the most simple terms, when we think about kind of that concierge level of service.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:48] Speaker C: It's about reaching out to your Bella engagement director.
Our engagement director, our team has nothing but the best interests of the Bella organizations in mind, and they want to support as that trusted advisor. Right. They want to help you solve problems. And they are just really good humans in general. And like any good human, they find joy in taking that concierge approach and responding to the requests and supporting the interests of our customers. And the types of requests that we watch for and respond to closely are more often, most often oriented around a few items.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:17] Speaker C: They're looking for insights and more context around our data set. What is our data saying? Can you point me to those benchmarks to solve for some of the challenges in front of me? What are the resources that Bella has access to? What are the new contributions from our Bella members? What are the new materials that Ethisphere has published to guide improvement and program maturity? And then three, a lot of requests, and sometimes these are the most fun peer introductions. I really would like to seek some insight from another company, another person that has the same level of remit. I do. Someone that is already addressing the problem that is in front of me.
And if it's more layered than any of the above, well, then, yeah, let's get on a call for more context and agree upon the next step. And I think we are often reminding our contacts at Bell companies that while true, we have that outstanding dedicated team of Bell engagement directors is the first point of contact because they are so knowledgeable and they are the best at connecting the dots internally to serving as kind of that hub. And everyone at Ethisphere is highly accessible yourself, Erica included.
There are so few barriers internally other than time. So it's a high collaboration going on behind the scenes to get that best guidance or recommendation to that Bell member.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Well, you had mentioned peer contacts before and at the head of the episode I mentioned that we like to say that there's no competition in compliance. And yeah, like I see a lot of the concierge requests come in and often they are all about connecting with other members to learn from them. So do you have any specific recommendations for Bella members on how to make the most of that, that request, that ask, that opportunity to connect directly with other with other members? I know people, they know they can do it. But are there any tricks to the trade of actually making that connection happening?
[00:12:54] Speaker C: Well, I'll come, I'll come back to some of the tricks of the trade when we're kind of away from those milestone events that we have a given time. And I would remiss if I didn't mention the Global Ethics Summit.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:04] Speaker C: Every Bella member has both an in person virtual access, a set of tickets through their membership to get to that summit, kind of. And then when you're there, it's the largest assembly of Bell in any given year and everyone is at that party.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:17] Speaker C: But not everyone is going to introduce themselves out of the blue. So we gladly take a concierge level of service with that too. You're looking for an introduction to be made while on site with the summit. Come to us, let's get you connected with the right folks. Attend this roundtable. Let's make some recommendations so you're connected with the right industry, the right type of profile of organization. So it's among our favorite things to do. And it's a small gesture that adds value so they can earn kind of, they can start establishing new connections. And kind of the exponential value that comes with a lot of these cases around connecting with peers next is always in between those moments. We've got a lot of Bella roundtables. So whether you're attending those in person or virtually, that is such a great way to start building out that network. Connect with other Bella members. Connect with our subject matter experts that are frequently involved sharing insights from our Data set, our culture team, our data and services team and our Bell Engagement directors themselves. And these are closed door conversations. They can provide some of the best platform for thorough exchange and new connections. And we always see that dialogue continuing outside the confines of that space too. So in the days or weeks that come because Bella members, they just really want to stay connected and continue to solve for those challenges together.
So those are two things I would always emphasize and I can certainly offer some, some suggestions on how that works. In the event that you're not attending a roundtable, you're not going to be at the Global Ethics Summit, except for virtually, even though that has its merit, a lot of ways that we can continue to connect parties.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Now, I'm sure there are Bella members with a ton of great insights to share, but they might be new to the community or they are part of a smaller organization or otherwise just might not feel like it's their place to share their expertise with the community.
What are your thoughts on that of
[00:15:02] Speaker C: a few new to the Bella community or not? There's always a ton of value, a ton of shared value, regardless of organizational profile. Right. And remember, we have seen a lot of transition from highly experienced ethics and compliance leaders finding that next opportunity at a new company and often not too long after that, after that transition period, they're reaching back out to us, say we need to reconnect with Bella or we have continued a dialogue with that about how Bella will support the work that they're doing in a new position at a new organization.
And in terms of organizational size, I think there are benefits to all profile. Right.
I recall a moment years ago that a chief compliance officer was working for a large multinational, but saying that they need to stop thinking like a 100 plus year old company and challenging them, challenging their team and their colleagues to think more data forward and more nimble. And some smaller companies are already thinking this way and where they might be challenged is having a view and preparing for look around the next corner in ways that larger companies have already done so and doing so at scale. So I think the inputs from any size of company are adding value to the Bella community. It's very diverse and also including across industries. This week, in fact, we had some direct dialogue with companies in the manufacturing sector about how they are addressing some training challenges for non office offline employees.
And this was at the request of a leader in the insurance sector who was thinking outside the box and looking for some peer insights. And these are kind of how we want to provide those recommendations on where they can likely receive the most value out of near peer connections, whether it's a different size organization or even a very different industry profile, because I think there's always something to learn.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Well, Kevin, thank you so much for stopping by. We sure appreciate you lending your insights to the episode.
[00:16:55] Speaker C: Thank you very much, Bill. Thank you, Erica. Hopefully I'm invited back for the we'll call it the 200th episode. I'll look forward to that.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Of course, we'll bring you back. Drop it the hat, you rock and roll. We'll have you.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: Great Heat checks. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Erica. Great to see you.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Indeed. Indeed.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Thanks, Kevin.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: All right, so how was that? Isn't Kevin great? Erica?
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Kevin's great. Kevin's great.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: He's just the best. He's just the best. Well, I have another question for you to bring a close the episode, and this is a speed up question and the question is what are best practices for non financial and financial recognition of employees who speak up, which is a key goal of our culture enhancement efforts? I am a sucker for any speak up question, but this is a really, really good one. So I'd love to hear what you have to say.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: It is a really good one, Bill, and it's a good one particularly because, you know, we are seeing, for example, the Department of Justice here in the United States just made its first payout to an antitrust whistleblower through under the whistleblower pilot program that the DOJ set up about a year ago, a little bit more than a year ago now. And so once again, as it was when the SEC set up the Dodd Frank whistleblower office, we are in this like sort of should we pay people for speaking up place. And my answer now is the same as it was then, which is don't try to compete with the government when it comes to writing checks to people.
It's a little bit of a fool's exercise. And instead my advice is to to ask yourself as an ethics and compliance team, in coordination with your leadership team and your HR team, who do we praise and what do we praise them for, Right? What are our existing channels for employees to be praised and what are the things that we could think through as an organization that we could add to those channels that would relate to the kinds of behaviors we're trying to incentivize. So let's say hypothetically speaking, you have a President's Award that you give out on a regular basis to employees. Is there a place that you could put some Speak up related behavior there?
Let's say that you have a practice of bringing employees up on stage at sales meetings. Can you think about employees who have raised risk, talked about a vendor request for a kickback, done some other ethics and compliance related activity over the course of the quarter that gets celebrated in that public forum, you know, here at, AT this year. For years now, we have said that the four levers you can pull on to influence your culture are who you hire, who you fire, who you praise and who you promote.
And this really is about praise, right? What are you praising? Who are you praising? What are you praising them for? How are you doing it Here at. At the Sphere, for example, we have something called the weekly high five where we high five an employee here at the company for really living our values. And so that is one way that we are trying to engender additional behavior that we highlight by using that kind of public forum. And it's not a monetary piece, it's a, it's a recognition piece. But we often find that it inspires other employees to say, okay, let me better understand what that person did that caused a coworker to praise them. Right? So that's the other piece I'll put in here too is look at places where you can do employee to employee pieces. Right? It's not just leadership team down to employees, but can you get colleagues praising each other? Can you get colleagues thanking each other?
Because at the end of the day, if you, you know, if you create that kind of culture where people are comfortable raising their hand, comfortable talking about what it is that they need, comfortable identifying places they might need help, those are going to be higher performing cultures. And so whatever you can do to think of speak up as more than just speaking up about ethics issues and instead speaking up generally. Right? Use your voice at work. Tell us what you need. You know, ask questions, get clarifying details, the the better. That's what all the psychological safety research tells us. So think about. Anyway, to make a long story short, Bill, thinking about it is too late. Thinking about where are those places where there is an existing channel of people signaling what's expected from each other and insert yourself right in there.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Yeah, well, Erica, that's about all the time we have. So thanks so much for your insights on both of our questions today. But much more importantly, thank you so, so much for your thought leadership, your stewardship and your partnership that has brought us to this 100th episode of Bella Asks. Thank you for everything.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Oh, Bill, no, thank you for giving the. Having the idea in the first place to do this as an Ethicast sub platform. And in particular, I think, for providing me with a way to be the mouthpiece for the Bella community. Because, you know, you and I don't get to do this if people don't ask us questions. And we have gotten so many wonderful questions coming in from the community of things that they are struggling with. And what you and I are fortunate enough to hear and see at GES is people coming up and saying thank you for taking that question on. It was really timely. I had one Bella member who was just getting ready to implement Test out back when we did our Bella Asks episode on Test out right there. These are pieces of information that we can drop in the lap of the community in a way that is additive and impactful, and that is not possible if the Bella community doesn't keep asking us questions. So, as I say and have said for 100 episodes now, and we'll say for the next hundred, if you're out there listening to Bill and I keep the questions coming, drop us a dm, send us an email, get me a carrier pigeon. I don't care how you get the question to me. Just keep the questions coming because it not only means that Bill and I can come back and answer them for you, but it means that somebody else out there gets the answer they need. And that is how we have the impact that we all want to have on the community as a whole.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Indeed. And if I can add a yes and to all that, just a huge thanks to everybody who submitted questions to us for these episodes. Thanks to everybody who submits questions to the concierge request. Every one of these questions is a small act of both courage and true dedication to your craft. Because you know, you're putting yourself out there, you're admitting that you don't know everything and you're looking for help to how to advance your, your E and C program, your culture in the right direction. And every question I see is an affirmation to me that the E and C community are just the best professionals out there. So I love seeing these questions. It's an honor to answer them. And just thank you to everybody for your participation in the show. It's been really, really awesome to see.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Here's the next 100, Bill.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Here's to the next hundred. Indeed. Now to learn more about Bella, visit ethisphere.com bella that's B E L A to request a guest access to the member resource hub and to speak with the Bell Engagement director. And if you have a question that you would like answered on this program, do contact the Bella Concierge Service and we'll get to work on that question for you right away.
This has been another Bella Asks episode of the Ethicast. Thank you all so very much for joining us. We hope you've enjoyed the show. If you haven't already, please like and subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. And if you have not already, Also followsphere on LinkedIn to learn more about how we help organizations strengthen and improve their ethics and compliance programs. Together, we can make the world a better place by advancing business integrity. That's all for now, but until next time, remember, strong ethics is good business. See you next time.
