In a recent post, “Are Elite Retirement Advisors Born or Made?” I wrote about the gene “rs4950” and the brain wave patterns that elite retirement advisors are likely to have in common. I also mentioned that most elite advisors have probably devoted at least 10,000 hours to perfecting their craft. There’s one more item that elite advisors are likely to share in common: a defined framework for managing moral and ethical decision-making.
As a military pilot, I spent hundreds of hours in simulators and on training flights practicing emergency procedures, honing a defined decision-making framework. One thing we learned is that during a time of extreme duress, you cannot rise above the level to which you have been trained. In my case, I piloted three severely crippled helicopters back to safe landings. I credit my survival to the great instructors who made me practice and simulate a response to every conceivable emergency procedure.
The same holds true in the retirement industry. Though lives do not hang in the balance of your decisions, certainly the quality of life that participants will have in retirement is tied directly to your work. Having a defined decision-making framework that includes a system for managing moral and ethical choices is a critical success factor if you are going to be effective in this leadership role.
The best information I have seen on moral and ethical decision-making is Dan Ariely’s book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. Dan writes about how even honest people have the capacity to rationalize their participation in certain dishonest acts. They cheat up to the point at which they can still believe in their own virtue.
Whatever the circumstances, great leaders anticipate problems and have a framework for managing and responding to emergencies, particularly those of a moral or ethical nature. They practice and exercise their framework daily, for rarely does one receive advance notice that you are going to be faced with an ethical dilemma today. Rarer still is the person who is able to extract himself or herself from an ethical dilemma long enough to read up on their emergency procedures.
