No Values

A group of Chick-fil-A owner/operators were a part of a Christian marketplace professionals’ group in Northwest Arkansas. They were sponsoring an annual luncheon for the broader business community and asked me to be the keynote speaker at the event.

 After asking them what they would like for me to speak on, they said that I could choose any topic related to leadership. At Lifeshape we had been sending teams of Chick-fil-A people all over the world speaking on the principles of servant leadership embodied in the acronym SERVE. The last “E” stood for “Embody the Values,” and that was my topic.  

 I was talking about the fact that everyone has values. Some people have good values, and some people don’t. To illustrate this, I told the following story: a Chicago newspaper published a political cartoon that pictured Rahm Emmanuel, the mayor of Chicago, and Louis Farrakhan standing next to each other, and the mayor was pointing at a Chick-fil-A cow. In the cartoon the mayor said, “We don’t want any of their values.“

 A friend of mine who lives in Chicago called the mayor’s office, and he asked them, “What are the values of the mayor’s office of Chicago?“ The mayor’s office representative replied, “The mayor’s office of Chicago has no values.”

 In my speech to the luncheon group, I went on to say the fact that the mayor’s office said they have no values actually is a value.

 After the luncheon was concluded, I was standing around with some of my Chick-fil-A friends, and we were innocently chatting. I noticed a young man who was outside the circle but intently listening to our conversation. My friends were joking about the response from the mayor’s office representative, and the young man made his way into our circle and said he was with an online news service. He chatted informally with some of my friends, and I did not think anything else about him—until the next day.

 Chick-fil-A communications contacted me the next day with a story headlined “Chick-fil-A Executive Says Chicago Mayor Has No Values.”  I learned that this young reporter from the luncheon had a one-man shop in northwestern Arkansas, but as one knows, anything on the web can go viral—and this article did.

 Regardless of the fact that the reporter fabricated a statement from my story, I was in trouble with Chick-fil-A communications. They did not spank my hand or wash my mouth out with soap. They just made me go back to school.

 Foundation staff had been trained to avoid talking about controversial subjects, but I really did not think that I was out of line—besides, that political cartoon was a great illustration to accompany the point that I was trying to make.

 My reprimand included going back to “school” for a day of sensitivity training by the PR consultants. But I still enjoy telling that story because it so beautifully illustrates that everyone has values.