To make it better, stop making it worse.

An upstream fix for conflicts within your organization is to revise your code of conduct.

If you frequently encounter interpersonal conflicts or disciplinary issues within your organization, adopting a thoughtful approach to updating your code of conduct can have a significant impact.

I’ve seen many staff/employee handbooks and codes of conduct that are not just a trainwreck in themselves, they also propagate more trainwrecks within the organization.

To be clear, by 'code of conduct,' I mean the behavior expectations, specifically focused on personal behavior and interpersonal relationships. I’m not talking about your organization's bylaws or articles of incorporation, nor your operational policy and procedure. I mean the parts of your organization’s foundational documents that outline how you want people to behave and treat one another.

Your organization can have an amazing mission or deliver exceptionally creative results, but these can be undercut by the hypocrisy of shaming, blaming, and being too slow to support a healthy interpersonal and organizational culture. Your behavior expectations can set the tone for your organizational culture or undermine it.

Let’s do a quick assessment of problems you might find in your code of conduct. Note that it could be called a code of ethics, code of community, behavior expectations, or something else.

Here are some signs your code of conduct is part of the problem:

• You can’t find it or don’t have one.

• Disorganization - behavior expectations are mixed in with other policies and procedures in a nonsensical way.

• Unclear - it’s hard to understand what it means - some of this is language choice (did lawyer-bot 5000 write it?), and some is hyper-specificity that makes it irrelevant.

• Only procedures and no expectations.

• Only rules and no principles.

• The process for changing or updating it is mysterious (or has been abused for being too fast and untrustworthy, or too slow, which is also untrustworthy).

• The content sounds like it is talking to children and feels belittling or patronizing: “No sleeping on the job.”

• The content is shame-based: “Don’t be a dick.”

• “Enforcement” is based on surveillance or fear of punishment and/or traditional power-over, command-and-control systems.

Here are some steps to make it better (and stop making it worse):

• Start with your organizational values and mission, and use those to inform every part of your behavior expectations. (Can’t find those or they’re irrelevant or trash…. Uh-oh! Fix that first!)

• Tune up your update process - make it collaborative, inclusive, and efficient.

• Reorganize and call it what it is - I personally don’t think “code of conduct” sets the right tone.

• Rebuild it with more principles than rules. You don’t need to tell people how to behave. Instead, give them values-aligned principles to guide their actions.

• Build it with an easier accountability practice in mind, based on power-with processes. This will fuel engagement and buy-in.

I’ve seen these types of changes build an aligned set of expectations that don’t feel hypocritical and end up being easier to manage because they are a set-up for shared accountability (instead of one person or a committee/department in charge of making everyone comply).

A revised set of behavior expectations creates a foundation for organizations to thrive based on clarity and psychological safety. Adding power-with accountability processes to psychologically safe behavior expectations fosters psychologically strong organizations comprised of dedicated, thriving individuals.

P.S. - Do you want experienced eyes and feedback on your current behavior expectations or some help making your power-with shared accountability vision a reality? Drop a line!