Does the ‘Golden Rule’ Still Hold Up in our Modern Workplace?

Summary: We can make our workplaces great by following the ‘Golden Rule’: Treat others as you would want them to treat you. However, some have reservations about its applicability in a workplace environment. Here I discuss what we can learn from these misgivings and how we can use this new understanding to help us interpret the rule as a principle that implicitly contains great breadth and depth for connecting with people at work.

“As you would have people do to you, do to them; and what you dislike to be done to you, don't do to them” (Kitab al-Kafi, vol. 2, p. 146)

The ‘Golden Rule’ is a timeless cross-cultural moral principle which denotes that you should treat others the same way you would like to be treated yourself. It is the most common ethical benchmark for human interactions. It is commonly used as a workplace standard for behaviour and is applied to individuals and teams alike.

Although it seems relatively simple to put into practice, it can become a real challenge when managers recognise employees as being ‘different’ from them. For some it becomes clear that the ‘Golden Rule’ has some potential limitations which I will assess and discuss next (Read more: The ‘Golden Rule’ for Managing People).

Approaching a Diverse Workforce

You are not the first person to challenge the logic of the ‘Golden Rule’. Many people feel that in our diverse modern workplace, applying the ‘Golden Rule’ is less than ideal. It is fair to say that it might be sensible to reject any maxim that is supposed to apply for all employees, in all business situations, in different geographical locations, and all the time.

Applying the ‘Golden Rule’ at work is not an easy task, it suggests that others would like to be treated the same way you would like to be treated, which is not necessarily accurate. The main concern is the core supposition that any two people (regardless of similarity) will want the same treatment. By assuming employees should be treated the way I want to be treated, it imposes my preferences and values on those around me.

“Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may be not be the same” (George Bernard Shaw)

Consider the following scenarios:

• Employees might not want you to treat them the same way you would like to be treated yourself.
• Employees might want you to treat them in a way that you would not like to be treated yourself.

How does one know how employees want to be treated? As a manager, the way you would like to be treated might not be to the liking of employees. Employees preferences may be different; if the manager’s values are not shared with employees, the way managers want to be treated will not be the way employees want to be treated. To start with, consider managers and colleagues of different ethnic background (i.e. culture, religion), education, professional discipline, age cohort, gender, sexual orientation, etc. All of them may have different preferences, so the manager needs to be very careful how he or she approaches a diverse workforce (Read more: The Most Effective Way to Measure 'Diversity & Inclusion').

Dealing with Different Management Styles

The application of the ‘Golden Rule’ of ‘do unto others’ can be extremely disengaging in the wrong manager’s hands. Great people managers seek out ways to help employees whether they ask or not. Nonetheless, a managers’ potential self-sufficient autonomy and indifference could go against the ‘Golden Rule’. Though a manager may prefer to conduct his work in isolation, without seeking much help from others, that does not excuse him/her from not helping employees who require more support and/or empathy.

Envisage a manager that is in favour of working extra time and weekends, or one that is not supportive or encourages micromanagement, does this mean their direct reports need to behave in the same way? Does the ‘Golden Rule’ suggests, that if you wish ill towards yourself, then you are also wishing ill towards someone else? What about those managers who are extremely competitive, does it mean everyone must be similarly competitive? Or if they like to be praised in public, does it mean everyone else must too? Whatever your moral standards and desires are, ask yourself, are these morally good for others? The answer is often ‘NO’ (Read more: Essential People Management Skills).

Considering the ‘Platinum Rule’

Some people even consider an updated version of the ‘Golden Rule’ to be the ‘Platinum Rule’ which states that:

“You should treat others the way they themselves would like to be treated”

It means that instead of assuming that other people want to be treated the same way you do, you should make sure to discover how people actually want to be treated, and then treat them that way.

The ‘Platinum Rule’ can be challenged for not being sensitive to differences of situation. What employees demand from employers they should be willing to grant in return? What if the way they want to be treated is not reasonable or realistic, e.g. employees want their salary tripled! The ‘Platinum Rule’ cannot be used to generate a moral command based on what employees want or desire from their employers.

Bearing in mind Different Business Situations

Imagine an employee, who is being fired for not fulfilling his duties, or even worse, for being found stealing, could appeal to the ‘Golden Rule’ by asking the employer for him not to be laid off, pointing out that the employer himself would not want anyone else to fire him from work, so he should not do so onto others… of course, this is absurd and unreasonable.

In this case, the ‘Golden Rule’ should be viewed as one of several principles that managers can use to guide their people decisions in the workplace. Specifically, in the example described above, the ‘Golden Rule’ would not be enough to prevent that employee from being fired, because most individuals and societies choose to place other laws, morals and ethical principles above the ‘Golden or Platinum Rules’, while still taking them into account. This means that they strive to implement the ‘Golden Rule’ whenever possible, as long as it doesn’t clash with the implementation of a more important concept.

“The ‘Golden Rule’ is a good standard which is further improved by doing unto others, wherever reasonable, as they want to be done by” (Karl Popper)

There needs to be a balance between situational employer-employee expectations and desires. These need to be fair, just and reasonable. All incompatible values and expectations need to be ironed out. Remember, you can’t please everyone, and you can’t make everyone like you!

Linking it to Human Nature

Other opponents of the rule manifest that people do naturally have concern and compassion for others around them, so explicit exhortations like the ‘Golden Rule’ aren’t needed in the workplace to produce this natural human concern and compassion for others, which are likely to be the main seed from which mature moral cognition grows.

These detractors argue that the rule is ordinary human conscience that is gradually learned as part of the painfully slow evolution of the species, and once grasped is never forgotten. They argue that human beings have evolved so that our brains release dopamine when we perform kind acts for others, so we are biologically hard-wired for good moral behaviour.

Regrettably humans are not so constituted as to care for others as much as themselves. In our current harsh and competitive work environments, we all know that this natural concern and compassion for others is sometimes overruled by potential corporate greed, the need to meet targets, generate profit... the modern human’s survival instinct!

In Defence of the ‘Golden Rule’

While it is important to take into consideration the issues previously described, these shouldn’t diminish the potential benefits of consciously applying the ‘Golden Rule’ at work. It revolves around one key underlying concept and intention, namely helping managers treat employees better.

The ‘Golden Rule’ means accepting that there are other ways of seeing things and interacting with people at the workplace. Trying to understand your team’s different cultural norms, expectations and habits shows them respect, which builds trust and strengthens long term relationships.

Caring for this aspect of managing people may mean familiarising yourself with their cultural habits and communication styles. It may also mean taking the time to find alternative ways of explaining what you mean. The ‘Golden Rule’ means being more inclusive by understanding that things do not always revolve around you and your ways.

However, it is unrealistic to assume that you could truly understand an individual’s wishes, needs, interests or preferences. It is the active encouragement of dialogue which highlights the utility of the concept. At the workplace, the ‘Golden Rule’ focuses on the necessity of building trust through one-to-one communications, asking exactly what someone else desires, mutual understanding, reciprocity (Read more: Communication Effectiveness).

Managers can overcome potential workplace communication barriers by investing time in meeting regularly with employees to appreciate, directly or indirectly, how each individual may react to different situations. For example, managers should take the time to find out which members of their team respond well to change, open feedback, internal competition, confrontation, public praise, teamwork, etc. The skill to be used here is empathy, and armed with a more insightful understanding of their subordinates’ expectations, a manager will be in a better position to apply the ‘Golden Rule’ (Read more: Creating a culture of ‘Respect and Trust’).

It is important to remember that the ‘Golden Rule’ is meant to be used as a beneficial rule of thumb, rather than as an absolute law. This means that you should strive to use the rule only as long as it doesn’t conflict with other more relevant guiding moral principles.

How to Implement the ‘Golden Rule’ at Work

Recognising and understanding it as a general rule of thumb helps us evaluate its impact on people management outcomes in a more useful way. The challenge is to be mindful of when and how you use such rule of thumb. Some ways for managers to implement the ‘Golden Rule’ involve the following actions:

• Make the most of the universal appeal of the ‘Golden Rule’ with employees by modelling actions that are based on this principle.
• Engage employees in group discussion about using the ‘Golden Rule’ with examples of both desirable and undesirable outcomes.
• Reward and recognise staff for the appropriate use of the ‘Golden Rule’ at work.
• For more complex people management issues, provide managers with alternative resources for problem solving and decision making, as a complement or substitute for the ‘Golden Rule’.
• Consider the ‘Platinum Rule’ - treat employees not necessarily the way that you yourself would want to be treated, but rather in the way that they want to be treated.
• Wait before taking a decision and ask yourself, if this is how this employee would like to be treated. If the answer is ‘yes’ then proceed, otherwise, modify your decision accordingly.
• Understand and avoid any potential ‘Egocentric Bias’, that tends to rely too heavily on your own perspective, making it difficult to see things from a viewpoint that is different than your own.
• Consider various debiasing techniques that you can use, such as slowing down your reasoning process or using a self-distancing perspective. This is the ability to take a step back and view yourself more objectively by deliberately focusing on and carefully thinking through the information that you are trying to process. This will allow you to reflect on your reasoning process and consider alternative viewpoints.
• Finally, concentrate on the main components of reciprocity in the Workplace: be friendly, be helpful, be courteous, listen to others, practice empathy, practice compassion, overcome prejudice, stop criticism, rise above retaliation, don’t try to control others.

People managers need to be mindful of the extent to which the application of the ‘Golden Rule’ may pose significant, potentially negative consequences when employees’ desires, preferences or wishes are unknown or not considered. People managers should engage in dialogue with other managers and employees to sharpen everyone’s sense of discernment about how the ‘Golden Rule’ informs decisions that arise from common but complex people management situations (Read more: Assessing the ‘Golden Rule’ at Work).

Some Final Thoughts…

There is probably no other moral principle that is more understood and used across cultures than the ‘Golden Rule’. Many people cherish it as a down-to-earth, one-sentence summary of morality.

The rule helps managers make sense of more complex and diverse work environments for the benefit of employees. It diffuses complicated workplace situations by having managers benchmark their own perspective about how they would like to be treated as the standard for how others would wish to be treated.

The positive effects of the ‘Golden Rule’ sustain its use: it helps managers connect with employees, increases understanding and tolerance for challenging employees’ behaviours, and inspires managers to become better and more inclusive individuals... don’t forget, ‘TRUST’ is a two-way street!

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of any other entity.