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Veterans know how to lead. The lessons we learned in the military form the foundation for bigger successes in business, entrepreneurship and community.
Host John S Berry, CEO of Berry Law, served as an active-duty Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army, finishing his military career with two deployments and retiring as a Battalion Commander in the National Guard. Today, his veteran led team at Berry Law, helps their clients fight some of the most important battles of their lives. Leading successful teams in the courtroom, the boardroom, and beyond, veteran leadership drives the firm’s rapid growth and business excellence.
Whether building teams, synchronizing operations, or refining tactics, we share our experiences, good and bad, to help you survive, thrive and dominate.
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[00:00:02.10] - John S. Berry
Not everyone on your team understands their ethical obligations, their moral responsibilities, and the values that you expect them to bring to work every day. So what can you do about it?
[00:00:15.12] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today, we're going to talk about ethical decision making. Now, you can probably remember as a young leader in the military that you had to make decisions, and that most of the time You'd read the rules and then just follow your moral compass. Not everything was black and white, sometimes it was gray, and you, as a leader, had to make the decision. Now, recently, I was talking to a veteran who owned a business, and he was talking about how ethical his business was. I found that to be odd because as a lawyer, we have specific ethics that we must comply with. Those ethics generally come from a governing body. The model rules of professional conduct for us come from the American Bar Association. Yet each state has their own individual rules. Of course, federal courts and agencies can set their own practice rules. As lawyers, we have specific codified rules that we must follow. If we don't follow them, we can be disciplined.
[00:01:23.19] - John S. Berry
We can lose our license to practice law. When I started talking to this veteran about his ethical business, I said, What ethical code are you following? He's like, Well, we just set some guiding principles for our team and we follow them. I said, Well, how does your team know? It turned out what he really had was just some core values. The principles really didn't talk to how they would approach certain situations. And so while I think it sounded very lofty to say, We are an ethical organization. No one on his team knew what that meant. Now, look, I've heard from people say, We're an ethical business. We're ethical marketers. But they don't codify it for their team. They don't put it in writing. I can tell you that's a mistake because then everybody can come up with their own moral judgments and claim that those are ethics. Morals and ethics are not the same. Ethics are generally societal standards of right and wrong. Morals, on the other hand, are personal beliefs that guide individuals' behavior. When we talk about legal ethics, it's very clear these are standards, written standards, whereas, morals may be beliefs. And written Standards and beliefs are not the same thing.
[00:02:48.03] - John S. Berry
If you're going to tell your team that you are an ethical organization, then have written standards for what the expectations should be and how your team should behave. Look, moral behavior behaviors, those can evolve over time. What someone may think is moral today, they may think is immoral tomorrow. What may be immoral today, may be immoral tomorrow. That's okay. We are human beings, and as leaders, our job is to evolve in our thought process. Great politicians know this. They flip flop all the time, but they say, Well, I've thought about that. As I've grown and evolved, I have changed my position. Look, that's okay. Because as we grow, we should be becoming smarter, more sensitive to things, but also gain much more wisdom along the way. As we become more wise, our positions may change. I think of a lot of things I believed in my 20s that I no longer believe. And that's okay. That doesn't mean that my moral compass was broken then or that it's broken now. It just means that I have evolved. And think about it. The longevity of most great organizations comes from their ability to evolve. It's not the biggest or the strongest or the smartest.
[00:04:11.23] - John S. Berry
It's usually the most agile that survives, the most adaptable. We want to be able to adapt. Sometimes our moral beliefs are going to adapt. But those are different than our ethical standards. As you build those ethical standards for your organization, and first of all, if you're a lawyer, obviously, you want to probably take a look at the model rules and your state supreme court specific rules and other rules that govern your practice areas. But you can set ethical standards. Even if you're not an attorney, you can set ethical standards in your organization, But make sure they are codified and make sure they aren't values that might change over time because your personal values may change. If you are running the company based on your personal values, that may be a good thing until they evolve, and then you might have to relook those. But the point is this, you as the leader owe your organization clarity. So if you're going to say you're an ethical organization, codify those ethics. Let the team know what you mean. And also respect the morals of other people on your team. They may have different moral values than you.
[00:05:21.00] - John S. Berry
That doesn't mean they're not great people. It just means that they have different values. Now, one way to sync all of this is to create your company core values. I say between three or five, we're usually the most effective. When you have those core values, live by those core values. Everyone on the team should know the core values. I know ours because I talk about them in a way that it is logical and sequential. We start off with integrity. Now, I don't think, Oh, everybody has integrity for a core value. Well, yeah, integrity at the high school level, college level is, don't lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. Integrity is an honor code. But every time we become professionals, I learned this as an officer, When I got my first officer evaluation report, I was like, Okay, so it says it checks the box for integrity. Well, shouldn't everybody have integrity or not be in the military? As I became a field-grade officer, what I learned was, integrity is doing what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. I thought, Oh, that makes sense. And so we've incorporated integrity in our core values, but it's not the first one.
[00:06:23.08] - John S. Berry
Our first core value at Barry law is commitment. You have to commit to the team, commit to the mission, and commit to the client. Once you make that commitment, people will hold you accountable. So our second core value is accountability. Now, when you're accountable, it's like in football, if someone throws you the ball and you can touch the ball, you should catch the ball. Accountability is that extreme ownership ideology of if you can touch it, you can fix it. That's being accountable. It doesn't mean you should fix it, but you should make sure it gets fixed by you or someone else. Once you have commitment, then people are going to hold you accountable. Once they hold you accountable, they will expect integrity, our third core value. Integrity is doing what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it. Now, when you have commitment, accountability, and integrity, you will undoubtedly fail. You will get knocked down, you will get kicked to the ground. That's where our fourth core value comes warrior ethos. Warrior ethos is not about how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up, and you don't get back up alone.
[00:07:38.12] - John S. Berry
Warrior ethos is not Russell Crow in a loincloth in a Coliseum. No. Warrior ethos is that four-man stack going through the door. It's making sure that we finish together and warriors function as a team. Now, when you have commitment, accountability, integrity, and warrior ethos, you're a leader. That leads us to our fifth core value, leadership by example. Now, leadership by example is simple. Be the team member that you want on your team. Think about back to when you played high school sports, or maybe it was even in the classroom, but there was always a leader. There was that person that you could look to that was sitting on the bench when you were down by two or three touch downs or 10 points in a basketball game or a couple of goals in soccer. You looked to that person, you thought, This is the person that can get us through. This is the person we believe in. You want to be that person. Be the team member you want. That is leadership by example. Once again, that is the story of our core values. Commitment, accountability, integrity, warrior ethos, and leadership by example. I just told you how to tell the story.
[00:08:52.03] - John S. Berry
I'd encourage you to do that in your own organization, whether you're a for-profit organization, a nonprofit, it doesn't matter. You need to speak the same language. When people talk about being an ethical organization or having moral values, define those values. Define them for your team. This is where I failed as a leader. I assumed everybody had the same definition for the same values. It wasn't true. I would say, Well, we act with integrity around here. People said, Well, yeah, we don't lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. No, no, no. That's not the integrity I'm talking about. I'm talking about the integrity of people relying on you to get the job done, whether it's your coworkers, whether it's your family, whether it's your clients. You do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. When we're all clear on that definition, it becomes so much easier to say no to people, to say no to your boss. The reason why it becomes easier to say no to your boss is because the boss is, Okay, this person has integrity. If I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do when I say I'm going to do it, I can't say yes to everything.
[00:09:58.09] - John S. Berry
I'm going to have to say no to something things. As a leader, when someone tells me, Sir, I can't do that, or no, no is a complete sentence. I got it. You're played this phone. If you're a high performer and you tell me no or you can't do it, I got it. I understand. You're telling me no because you are in integrity. You do not want to fail and not do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. So of course, you could say no. I think that's part of being a leader is being able to say no, but also being able to accept it when a subordinate tells you no. No, this isn't the military. We don't all have to follow orders here, and we can only lead the willing in civilian organizations. We can't punish someone with UCMJ. We can't take a stripe. We can't court-martial anybody here. We can terminate them, but that doesn't boost morale. What boosts morale is when your team feels empowered to say no because they live by the ethics and the values that you as the leader have established. So go out and be a hero to your team.
[00:11:05.07] - John S. Berry
Set the ethical standards, set the values, set the core values, and live by them.
[00:11:17.04] - John S. Berry
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting veteran leadership in business, strengthening the veteran community, and getting veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching at Veteran Led on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments. We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Led.