Spirit Lake Consulting Forum

here's a suggestion, How about you widen  the scope of this ethics course and aim it  for Politicians and Congressman?  If you  want to attack a problem, I suggest you start with the cause.

Like Annmaria said, it has been our experience that the majority of people who attended our Leadership training, were there to learn how to change other people, not so much as to change themselves.  During our Leadership training, I heard variations of this phase many, many times;  “(Insert any tribal organization/employee’s name here) should be here they are the ones who need it”.  Our ethics training is very similar to our Leadership training therefore, to avoid the same reaction (other people need it) we are going to try something different; at the beginning of our ethics training we will have participants fill our a personal ethics inventory.  By doing so we hope to set the tone for the rest of the training which is, you are here to examine your own ethics as opposed to being here to examine some other person’s ethics.

What I am talking about is actually self-honesty.  According to the website; http://www.control-z.com/index.htmlz: An "honest questioner" is someone who sincerely attempts to ask honest questions, seek honest answers, who consciously and deliberately strives to be honest with oneself throughout the discovery process.  An honest questioner rigorously and conscientiously recognizes that he or she is a product of a specific milieu and culture and, as such, has been inculcated with a set of ideas, traits, biases, and core beliefs dynamically conjoined to his or her environment.

The more self-honesty a person has, the more ethical he/she is.  Total self-honesty is probably impossible as is total self-deception.  According to Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument.  Wikipedia goes on to say, it has been argued that humans are, without exception, highly susceptible to self-deception, as everyone has emotional attachments to beliefs, which in some cases may be irrational.

A couple of years ago I was invited to be the speaker at our high school graduation.  Now when a local person is invited to be a speaker at any our events (high school or college graduations for example) there is often this concern; he/she will use the opportunity to speak before a large crowd to further their political agenda, toot their own horn, or run down an individual, a group of individuals, or an organization.  Not wanting to follow that pattern, I decided to speak directly to the graduating seniors on self-honesty.  Here is an edited version of what I said:

Because it is a great honor to speak at this event, I tried to pick a topic that would not reflect my personal animosities, and I tried to stay away from a topic that would denigrate any one individual, or group of individuals.  Instead, I tried to pick a topic that will empower at least one individual, especially one of the young men and women graduating today, as he or she enters the adult world.

I am going to talk briefly about two closely related characteristics; self-responsibility, or responsibility to one’s self and self-honestly, the ability to recognize your shortcomings and do something about them.  Simply put, knowing the difference between right and wrong and putting that knowledge into practice.  While total self-honesty/self responsibility may not be possible I truly believe those individuals who work at practicing these two virtues are better students, better employers and employees, better parents, and generally more successful in their lives then those who do not.

Now a person, especially one of these young persons here today may ask this question, “What is self-responsibility/self honesty?”

A long time ago, a very wise person once gave me this bit of advice, next time you are feeling sorry for yourself because something is going wrong in your life try to trace what ever is going wrong back in your past and if you are honest with yourself, you will discover at some point in the past you could have done something back then that would have prevented it from happening today. He went on to say, if you do that every time something goes wrong in your life you will find that you could have prevented 90% of the bad things from happening to you.  However, recognizing that is not enough; you then have to take the responsibility to change your behavior that causes your misfortunes to begin with.

Now I realize there are some events that we have no control over: sickness, accidents, and the actions of others are three things I can think of that we don’t have control over.  What I am talking about are events that you do have some control over and the desire to do something about them.

Let me give you two obvious examples of self-responsibility/self-honesty: let’s say a student misses 10 days of school and is expelled from school and a worker who constantly misses work and is fired.  Their level of self-honest/self-responsibility will determine how they will respond to consequences of their actions.  The individual with little or no self-honesty/self-responsibility will blame the system, or someone else and make no changes to their behavior.  On the other hand, the student or worker who is honest will realize that he or she could have prevented the expulsion, or firing by simply getting up each morning and going to school, or reporting to work every day.  Self-responsibility will cause this person to modify his or her behavior to ensure it doesn’t happen again.  It’s as simple at that.

When you apply self-honesty/self-responsibility to all aspects of your life you will find out that you will argue less with your family members, fellow students and co-workers.  You will find there are fewer and fewer crises in your life; your bills will get paid on time, you won’t be late for appointments, you will remember important dates and most important, you will take better care of yourself.  Self-responsibility will also nip many crises in the bud; they won’t have a chance to grow and become a problem.  You will find out that you spend less time feeling sorry for yourself, instead you will enjoying yourself more, because you having taken steps to keep bad things from happening to you.  Finally, your new attitude will gain you the respect of your family, friends, and community.

I would also venture to say, the more individuals with self-responsibility in any given community the healthier that community is.  Absenteeism will decline in the schools and workplace.  There will be less conflict in the schools, and workplace due to policies and procedures being followed.  The community will become safer due to its law being followed.  In addition, all types of social ills will decline, child abuse, juvenilely delinquency, alcoholism, favoritism in school and workplace.  Less and less people will depend on services and those who need services will receive them based on need not on who they are related to.


Why do some individuals take responsibility for their actions and therefore correct the harmful one, other doesn’t?  Is it character, or lack of it?  It is habits learned and hard to break?  Those are questions only you as an individual can answer?  Strictly speaking, for myself, I try very hard to follow the advice given to me long ago.  Moreover, I admit there are times when I don’t and I usually end up paying dearly for it.  But, I truly believe that I would not be where I am today; I would not be alcohol and drug free, I would not have been capable of raising my sons and daughter as a single parent, I would not have returned to school and received three college degrees, I would not be part owner of a company and I would not be enjoying my life today, if I did not follow the that simple piece of advice that was given to me so many years ago.

In closing I would like to leave the graduating class of 2006 with this advice: In the upcoming months, as you plan your future, pick an individual who is four-five year older than you but who has their life together.  By that I mean, a young man, or woman who may be attending college on a regular basis, who gets up and goes to work every day, who is not into drugs or alcohol, who has their own car and is living on their own.  The reason say only four-five years older than you is because, you might find it hard to relate to an individuals who is several or more years older than you.  Older people have spent years getting where they are and you might find it frustrating if you don’t reach their level right away.  Instead, if you focus on a person a few years older, you will find that you can reach their level of success much quicker than you think.  When you identify an individual who you want to emulate, I am confident you will find he/she is the type who is not depending on any one but him or herself.  Do your best to emulate that individual and when you do, you will be pleasantly surprised to find your family, relatives and friends referring to you as a person who has taken responsibility for your life.  Thank you.

My point is, self-honesty is important to everyone, regardless of what his or her age may be.  People who are honest about their faults will eventually reach a point where they will not tolerate unethical behavior in others and they will speak up against it.  History has shown that all it takes is a handful of people speaking up to bring about positive change.