Live Q&As

YES! to everything you wrote -- and wrote well -- with the possible exception of your glee that Mr. Lopez turned his former employers down when offered a chance to return to work. Of course, he is within his rights to stop working for them, but there may be a missed opportunity in making that choice.

I appreciate that Loez says he wants to return to school and move on with his life, but given that the company reconsidered their original position, true leadership in this case might hinge on being willing to accpet that people can learn from past mistakes and need the ongoing participation of those who showed them the path to positive growth.

The extent to which we hang in with other people and other institutions, even when they have made a mistake, is also a leadership trait we often lack.  Ironically, the inability to do so is directly related to the "black or white" approach to leadership which you so wisely decry.

Penalize the swimmer?  After the fact?  Although you are correct about his behaving irresponsibly,  keep the following in mind:

1. Lopez would also be responsible for endangering his charges had he left the area.  Those good people decided to swim there on the assumption that they were swimming in a guarded area.  What amount of money would have made it okay if one of them had been injured or killed while Lopez was off saving the first guy?

2.  Lopez made sure that his area was covered BEFORE he left his post.  That's the key here -- while he may have broken a company rule, he never seems to have endangered anyone.

The company's failure here was in failing to make a distinction between policy and safety.  That happens so often in our culture and it's what is disturbing about the case, especially in this case.  After all, they are called life guards, not policy guards!

I know of no such code, and I even did some checking for one!  But in truth, profession-specific codes are sub-sections of larger human codes, ones which relate to the special expertise of the profession.  They reflect the larger concerns and so what could be more important than the notion that all life is sacred and deserves to be saved.  Yeah, I know, we are still fighting about when that life begins, but I think in this case we can all agree about the swimmer in question.

Let's be clear though, had he not been able to secure alternative coverage before departing his section, he too would have violated the reasonable expectations of those who thought that they were swimming in a protected area.  I am not saying that it would be wrong to leave under such circumstances, but it's not so simple either -- ask anyone (think combat commanders, police and fire fighters, among others) who has had to endanger someone in order to save someone else, especially someone who has behaved badly.  It's not so easy to do, even when you know you are doing the right thing.

I appreciate your sophisticated approach to the ethical challenge here, especially as it mirrors a point I have been making!  Were it clear that there was another guard capable of helping, or had Lopez not secured back up coverage, you would be largely correct.  But it seems that there was not and he did, so you are incorrect.

You are almost certainly correct that the company made it's offer to re-hire Mr. Lopez based on public sentiment, not careful reflection.  In fact, based on some of what company rep.s said, it appears the original policy stems from there desire to protect themselves from potential legal problems.  Not exactly the most elevated way to approach one's obbligation to protect public safety, wouldn't you agree?

Well, with your last sentence, I thought we would find ourselves more in agreement, but no.  The company's position may be legally defensible, but it is hardly legitimate, unless you want to nurture the litigouness you earlier (and rightly) criticized.

The only way to break the cycle of insane litigation is to put human deceny before legal correctness in life, loby for policies that stop rewarding those who bring the suits, and pro-actively warn potential free-riders, punishing them when they do go for a free ride.  By all accounts though, as you admit, the death penalty would have been a "bit much" in this case.

About 1,500 feet.  He was close enough to see that someone was in real trouble but not close enough to determine whether or not a call to 911 would be enough of a response.  Given that he made sure his offical charges were protected, there is no question that Lopez did the right thing.

Actually, thank you, for realizing that context, previous expectations, specific skill set possessed by the person in question, etc. are all critical factors in reaching a wise and ethical decision.  That's the real lesson in this case.

When it comes to life and death, while responses are often black and white in their implementation i.e. go or don't go, shoot or don't shoot, etc.  the thinking by which we reach that decision needs to be especially nuanced because the decision is so important.  I even understand that in the heat of the moment, those decisionsoften  need to be almost reflexive, but the training need not be and neither should the policies be.  Again, that is where the company failed -- they invoked a rule w/o asking what that rule is meant to achieve and how to honor that goal w/o losing the opportunity to save a life.

The conflict between competing demands and the fact that we regualry don't know how things will turn out, is not just a feature of this case, but that's most of life.  Perhaps it would be better to think of it not as "damned if you do and damned if you don't" but as blessed if you do and blessed if you don't, and then ask yourself which blessings you want in your life.

Can't say about what they always have, but in this case, there was a back up guard on scene.  Of course, one coulda lways argue that if there were two on duty, it was because that is a better form of guarding and so by leaving, Lopez ended up "short changing" those he was paid to guard. 

While that might be true in general, this was not a general situation!  This was an emergency in which a life was at stake, his experise was needed, there was at least some back up coverage, and so he did exactly the right thing.

Well, if you are "guilty" of being cynical, we can be guilty together because I think your assessment of the company's response is spot on.  In fact, it appears that this was always about a policy designed to protect the company from law suits, not about keeping safe those who wear swim suits!

Where we differ is on the value of his going back to work.  Sure, the company would look good, but so what?  They would look good for having done the right thing by hiring Lopez back.  I know, there intent in doing so would not have been pure, but perhaps we should focus less on punishing bad intent, and more on rewarding good action.  Ultimately, there is good reason to believe that repeatedly doing the right action, actually leads one to healthier intent.

Is that a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing?  Whatever your response, you are correct about my interest in prefering good answers to easy answers, and when it comes to ethics, the two are rarely identical, or if they are, there is little about which to write/speak, so I don't bother.

We agree that Mr. Lopez should have saved the swimmer, but if we leave it at that, we lose the opportunity to see how we can apply the approach we support to the rest of our lives and to the world in which we live.  In this case, that means seeing the problems that arise when policies get too disconnected from the larger values they are meant to embody, and the value of seeing more things as conflicts between competing goods than conflicts between good and bad.  Yes, the latter exists, but not as much as we are too often lead to believe.

Consider yourself so colored, and your analogy to the Holocaust is simply foolish.  Don't get me wrong, I appreciate hyperbole as much as the next guy, but you have got to be kidding!

However, as long as you mentioned it, let's take you seriously for a moment.  The proper analogy here would be to someone who protected Jews while puting there own children at risk of death for their having done so.  Do I applaud them?  There are not enough words to express how amazingly heroic such people were.  On the other hand, can any of us be so sure that we would put our own children in that position, and if we did and they died, would we really be okay, simply knowing that we did "the right thing"?

I am curious, have you ever put others in harm's way in order to achieve a desired goal?  No matter how great the goal, there is nothing simple about it.

To clarify: NO, under know circumstances is this man duty-bound to return to his old job.  I just wanted to make the point that had he done so, it could have been a powerful leadership lesson.  But at the end of the day, he is a guy who did a good thing, and now let's hope, as you suggest, that life returns to normal for him.