It’s not always easy to speak up, even when we know it’s the right thing to do. The ability to effectively question and respectfully challenge is at the core of our capability to maintain high standards of integrity. Lockheed Martin’s annual ethics awareness training, Voicing our Values, is inspired by the work of Mary C. Gentile and her book, Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right. Our training provides a forum for employees to see the roadblocks they can face in mustering the courage to address issues, and to explore how they might handle similar circumstances.

Lockheed Martin always achieves 100% participation in live leader-led ethics awareness training. Annual training begins with our CEO training the executive leadership team. Those leaders then train their respective teams and this cascade continues until all employees have participated in a training session facilitated by their manager.

The heart of the training are video-based scenarios addressing the kinds of issues employees face every day. The professional actors who star in our video scenarios have become quite familiar to Lockheed Martin employees. Here’s the introduction to a recent training program.

During the training, participants gather in small groups to view several video scenarios, which reflect real situations that have occurred, or might occur at Lockheed Martin. Participants discuss the cases and talk about how to apply the Voicing Our Values techniques - Ask Questions, Obtain Data, Talk to Others, Reframe the Issue,  and how to Report Violations.

Lockheed Martin has never shied away from talking about tough issues.  In recent training, participants viewed and discussed topics such as sexual harassment and opioid use in the workplace and how to speak up in those difficult situations. 

After viewing the first part of each case video, the employee participants discuss how effective the characters were at voicing their values. The case then concludes with an executive wrap-up at the end.