What Do You Really Value? (4.1)

The Most Despicable Character

This exercise is a self-diagnostic. It reveals your values and attitudes, based on how you rank five characters in order of "despicability".

We use this story in the Conscious Business Programs to reveal people's diversity of values and moral reasoning. Although you can do this by yourself, to get the full benefit you'll need the help of three or four other people who watch the video.

Have each one of you describe your ranking (from 1 being the least despicable, to 5 being the most despicable). More important, have each person describe why he or she ranks each character the way he or she does. That is, what behavior does each one of you find most revealing, and how does this behavior define the character's moral standing.

Keep it light and respectful. You don't need to agree on a shared ranking, just understand one another. Notice how each one of you focuses on different behaviors, and evaluates these behaviors according to different standards.

Here's the story.

There's more to this story than meets the eye. In the next post, I'll present part 2 of the exercise.

Readers: Who's your most despicable character and why? Write a comment and let us know.

Fred Kofman, Ph.D. in Economics, is Vice President at Linkedin. This post is part 2.1. of Linkedin's Conscious Business Program. You can find the introduction and structure of this program here. To stay connected and get updates join our LinkedIn Group: Conscious Business Friends.

You can Follow Fred Kofman on LinkedIn here.