Everyone has one

A moral compass is not a rulebook. It is not compliance. It is not following the code of conduct because HR requires it. It is who you are when nobody is watching.

Every person has a moral compass. You were born with it. Life shaped it. The people around you influenced it. But at some point it became yours and it goes everywhere with you. To work. To home. To the difficult conversation you would rather avoid. To the decision that nobody will ever check.

Most people think their work behaviour is separate from their personal behaviour. It is not. You cannot leave who you are at the door when you walk into the office. You bring all of yourself, the good and the parts that still need work.

If you are short-tempered at home you will be short-tempered at work. If you are dishonest in small things privately you will be dishonest in small things professionally. If you curse constantly at home it will cost you enormous effort to communicate with respect at work. And that effort will show. People will feel the gap between who you are and who you are trying to appear to be. The gap is exhausting. And it is visible.

The leaders people follow without being asked, the ones who build real loyalty, real trust, real teams, are almost always people who understood this a long time ago. Not because they had a perfect character. Because they stopped pretending the gap did not exist and started closing it.

Key Takeaway: Your moral compass is not a work tool. It is who you are. It goes everywhere with you. The gap between who you are at home and who you are at work is not invisible. The people around you feel it every day. The only way to close it is to work on the person, not the performance.

You cannot leave who you are at the door. You bring all of yourself every time.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 1: The Individual · Philosophy 1: Use Your Moral Compass · Section: Everyone has one

MarvinPro | November 2025

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Close the gap

The solution is not to try harder at work. The solution is to become a better person.

This is not a work project. It is a life project. It is the most important investment you will ever make as a leader, because once you close the gap, once who you are at home and who you are at work become the same person, leadership stops being something you perform and starts being something you simply are.

You stop trying to communicate with respect and start being respectful. You stop trying to be honest and start being honest. You stop managing your behaviour and start living your values.

This is not idealism. It is practical. The leader who has closed this gap does not need to prepare how to behave in difficult situations. They already know. The compass points and they follow it. The decision is made before the pressure arrives, not under it.

Closing the gap is also the only sustainable leadership approach available. Performing values under pressure requires constant effort and eventually fails. Living values under pressure requires no effort because the values are already there. The leader who performs runs out of energy. The leader who lives it never needs to.

Key Takeaway: Closing the gap between who you are at home and who you are at work is not a performance improvement. It is a life improvement. The leader who has closed this gap leads from values rather than from performance. The difference is visible to everyone around them, in every interaction, under every kind of pressure.

The professional version of you is just the personal version of you, visible to more people.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 1: The Individual · Philosophy 1: Use Your Moral Compass · Section: Close the gap

MarvinPro | November 2025

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What it costs and what it gives you

Using your moral compass will cost you sometimes.

It will cost you the easier decision. The faster result. The comfortable silence when you should have spoken. The approval of someone whose approval you wanted but whose behaviour you could not endorse. The promotion that went to the person who was willing to cut the corner you were not.

These moments are never convenient. They rarely come with clear instructions. The pressure to compromise is almost always dressed up as something reasonable, efficiency, pragmatism, the greater good. Your compass is the thing that cuts through the noise.

Ask yourself one question before any significant decision. If everyone affected by this could see exactly how and why I made it, would I be comfortable? If yes, proceed. If no, stop. Your compass is telling you something worth hearing.

What the compass gives you in return for these costs is something no strategy can manufacture. Trust. Not the trust that comes from a good process or a clear contract. The trust that comes from people knowing, not believing, knowing, that you will always choose what is right over what is convenient. That you will not sacrifice them for a number. That you will tell them the difficult truth when an easy silence would be simpler. That who you are today is who you will be tomorrow.

This kind of trust is also the reason people follow certain leaders from one company to another. Not because of the title. Not because of the salary. Because of who that person is. The compass builds something that no restructure, no competitor and no difficult stakeholder can easily dismantle.

Key Takeaway: The moral compass has a cost and a return. The cost is the easier decision, the comfortable silence, the approval that required compromise. The return is trust that cannot be manufactured, replicated or bought. It accumulates over time, in small decisions and large ones, and compounds into the kind of reputation that outlasts every role and every organisation.

Trust built on character cannot be manufactured. It is built decision by decision by people who use their compass consistently.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 1: The Individual · Philosophy 1: Use Your Moral Compass · Section: What it costs and what it gives you

MarvinPro | November 2025

marvinpro.com

Lead from every level

The moral compass does not only apply to the decisions you make about your own behaviour. It applies to every level of the organisation you are responsible for.

When you manage people who manage people, your compass extends downward through every layer. The team leader whose team is suffering under a manager you cannot see directly is still your responsibility. The agent whose bonus was incorrectly withheld is still your responsibility. The customer whose situation fell into a gap in the policy is still your responsibility.

This is what good leadership from above looks like in practice. Have regular conversations with the people one level below your direct reports. Not to go around your direct reports but to take the temperature independently. A simple conversation with a team leader surfaces problems that never appear in a report.

Watch the data differently. KPIs measure output. Attrition rates, sick leave patterns, the tenure of people who are leaving tell a different story. When experienced people start leaving a team that was previously stable, something is wrong. Find out what before the next person hands in their notice.

Be present occasionally. Not to micromanage. To see. There is no substitute for walking into a room and feeling its energy. One visit changes what you know more than a hundred video calls.

A manager who hits every target by controlling, pressuring and diminishing their team is not a good manager. They are a liability that has not yet appeared on the balance sheet.

And when someone has to leave, do not close the door when the meeting ends. Ask yourself one question first: where would this person actually excel? Review their situation with them. Be honest about what went wrong, not to hurt them but to help them avoid the same situation again. Think about who in your network might be the right connection. Make the introduction. Your job as a leader does not end with the decision to let them go. It includes helping them find where they belong.

Key Takeaway: The moral compass applies at every level of the organisation, not just at your own. Leading with integrity means taking responsibility for what happens below you, not just what happens in front of you. The leader who leads from every level builds something that does not depend on their presence to function.

Your team does not follow your instructions. They copy your behaviour.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 1: The Individual · Philosophy 1: Use Your Moral Compass · Section:  Lead from every level

MarvinPro | November 2025

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A real example

In a customer-facing operational environment, a leader regularly received escalations involving customers in difficult personal situations requesting support they may not have been entitled to receive. The support in question was expensive. Approving every request without scrutiny would have cost the organisation significant money. Denying every borderline request would have cost the organisation customers who were already in a vulnerable moment and would remember how they were treated.

There was no policy that covered every scenario. The decision had to be made case by case, using judgment that was simultaneously commercially responsible and humanly decent. The leader made each decision by asking the same question the compass always asks. If everyone could see exactly how and why I made this decision, would I be comfortable? The answer pointed toward the right outcome more reliably than any policy document could have.

In the same organisation, the leader consistently advocated for team members to receive bonuses when exceptions applied. Not because it was required. Because it was right. The agents who hit their targets under difficult conditions, with workarounds and process gaps and situations the standard criteria had not anticipated, deserved the recognition the standard criteria were failing to give them. The advocacy required effort. It created friction. It was done anyway.

The return on both of these compass decisions was not immediate and was not financial. It was the kind of loyalty that follows a leader from one organisation to another. Team members who had experienced that advocacy, who had seen decisions made in their favour when they could easily have been made against them, chose to work for that leader again when the opportunity arose. Going through the proper process. Choosing, when they had a choice.

That is what the compass builds. Not a number. Not a metric. A reputation that travels, that compounds and that produces outcomes no performance management framework ever could.

The compass does not make the easy decision easier. It makes the right decision clearer.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 1: The Individual · Philosophy 1: Use Your Moral Compass · A real example

MarvinPro | November 2025

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Use Your Moral Compass

Know who you are before you walk into the room. Close the gap between who you are at home and who you are at work. Use your compass in small moments and large ones, when it is easy and when it costs you something.

Make the decisions that would survive full visibility. Advocate for the people below you when the standard criteria fail them. Lead from every level, not just the one directly in front of you. Help people find where they belong, even after the hardest conversations.

The compass will cost you things. The easier decision. The comfortable silence. The approval of people whose approval required compromise. Pay those costs without resentment. The return compounds invisibly, in trust, in loyalty, in the kind of reputation that outlasts every role and every organisation.

Be what you want them to become.

The compass is not a policy. It is who you are. Use it.

Think Simple · Leadership · Here is How to Think · Vol 1: The Individual · Philosophy 1: Use Your Moral Compass · Chapter Outcome

MarvinPro | November 2025

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