Game of life demands fair play

Some people say sports are metaphors for life. I would argue sports are real life and they offer us some instructive lessons for ethics and workplace harmony.

We recently learned that, in December 2003, top baseball stars apparently admitted to a grand jury they used steroids. Steroids are dangerous and unhealthy. And they constitute cheating. Those ought to be sufficient reasons not to take them. However, it appears steroids allow you to hit a lot of home runs and put a lot of fans into Major League seats.

And there’s the hypocrisy. Who is really surprised about these steroid admissions? Shouldn’t it have been obvious to the players’ union and to baseball owners that when someone goes from 195 pounds and a size 17 neck to a muscular 240 pounds and a size 19 neck in 18 months that something isn’t right? Of course it should, and it did. Steroids and their effect on baseball players were a badly kept secret. Everybody continued to get rich, so there were winks all around until the mess blew up into a full-scale scandal.

I wonder when American business is going to stop winking and say, “Gee, we probably shouldn’t have paid $60- and $90-million-a-year compensation packages to our executives. That led to flabby inefficient businesses, which got whacked by overseas competitors.” In the same vein, I wonder when executives and American citizens are going to realize that sacrificing long-term investment in their franchises for short-term profits are going to leave American businesses unable to compete. The warning signs for American businesses should be as clear as a 45-pound weight gain.

In December, the University of California football team was dropped one place in the Bowl Championship Series standings and was denied a major bowl berth and millions of dollars of added revenue. California’s sin? Their coach, Jeff Tedford, decided at the end of the final game of the season to take a knee and tried not to run up the score. The coach obviously thought piling on would be wrong, yet coaches and journalists apparently punished the team for not scoring an “impressive victory.” Good sportsmanship has been ridiculed by the BCS voters and by an inherently flawed system.

The problems seem obvious, but they never get fixed for two reasons: The current system is incredibly profitable and “old-boy” relationships are more important than fairness and justice for the young college players. The same thing happens in our workplaces. Creativity and innovation for the sake of improved fairness are simply too much trouble and too risky to the bottom line. It is easier for leaders to stick their heads in the sand than it is to show the courage required to fix bad systems.

On Nov. 17, Ron Artest of the Indiana Pacers was struck by a drink cup and raged into the stands to beat up the wrong guy. Several other Pacers followed Artest into the stands and engaged in a disgraceful brawl.

I screamed at my television set that night when the ESPN commentators tried to justify the Pacers’ behavior. They told the TV audience the players had been disrespected and they had to retaliate. None of the four commentators ever said that if Artest had simply then turned his back on the crowd and moved toward the center of the basketball court the ugly brawl would never have occurred.

I get mail from workers who believe they have been wronged in the workplace. They want to fight back out of anger and hurt. They convince themselves that any bad behavior is justified because they were wronged. Retaliation is seldom justified. We have a justice system in America because we are a land of laws and we believe wrongdoers will eventually be found and punished.

That is a lesson that must be learned on playing fields as well as in our workplaces.

Tip for your search: When you’re chatting with friends about major sports controversies make a habit of exploring the situations for workplace lessons. Parallels are often easy to find and sometimes answers to tough situations are clearer when you view them in another setting such as sports.

Resource for your search: “Teach Yourself Ethics,” by Mel Thompson (McGraw-Hill, 2003)