Catherine Boerner (cboerner@boernerconsultingllc.com) is President of Boerner Consulting LLC located in New Berlin, WI.
The members of the compliance department need to support each other and, when necessary, coach each other, and grow together in what I like to refer to as the “circle of trust.” I know many of you are probably thinking about the Byrnes Family Circle of Trust from the movie Meet the Parents. I have found trust to be the key to an effective compliance department. The use of humor while, at times, venting to each other as you work through the challenging issues and stress is often necessary to promote job satisfaction. Compliance is a stressful job.
The culture of compliance is the ability of the compliance department to support, assist, and partner with operational leaders to find answers to regulatory questions and promote compliance. These partnerships first need to start within the compliance department itself before they can extend to operational leaders throughout the organization.
Unfortunately, it can take time to establish a circle of trust in the compliance department, as consistent behavior needs to be proven and established. This means that hiring decisions for compliance department positions carry a greater sense of weight to ensure an effective compliance program is created and maintained over time. Trust influences interactions when things get tough.
In writing this piece, I ran across an article called Your Circle of Trust From An Emotional Intelligence Perspective by William G. DeFoore, PhD.[1] It is interesting to see how he explains the successful creation of a circle of trust, which involves four elements of emotional intelligence:
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“It all begins with self-awareness. Your success, your health, and the quality of your relationships all hinge on the depth and accuracy of your self-awareness. And self-awareness is essential to self-trust, which is essential to trust in others.
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“Self-awareness is almost useless, however, without self-management.”
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“Next comes social awareness, which absolutely requires self-awareness and self-management. Your view of others—your social awareness—is actually seen through the filter of your self-awareness and your ability to manage yourself.
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“And finally, your relationship management skills, or your ability to create and maintain lasting, fulfilling relationships, totally depends on your self-awareness, self-management and social awareness.”
Keep emotional intelligence in mind as you build your compliance department and create a circle of trust.