The Code of Honor

Blair Singer, in his book The ABCs of Building a Business Team That Wins describes what he calls “the code of honor” which must be implemented on any team, be it a family, a business team, or a community.  His philosophy is that “in the absence of rules, people make up their own.”  The problem is that we all make up rules that are different and then we’re playing by a different set of rules, which can be catastrophic.

The book is full of good advice on setting that code.  Here’s one of my favorites . . .

Creating a rule that says “Always be in a good mood” or “Never get angry” is not only unfair, it’s unrealistic.  Everyone has bad days.  Don’t you?

But what you can do is say, “Don’t take out your bad mood on other people.” It’s okay to have a lousy day and be in a crappy mood, but it’s not okay if you dump it on others.  That’s a reasonable rule that you can act on.

Forum admins do this in their terms of service or user agreement, but often never revisit it, and never refer to it when moderating.  Most other teams never get that code in writing.  This is vital.  Do it now.