Good day Team, The coach’s challenge of the week is to consider the tension that leaders experience when making decisions between following their inner compass and bowing to outside pressures. It is reasonable to question how successful a business leader can be who always follows his inner compass. How many CEOs would lose […]
Good day, team.
This past week, I’ve been thinking about what happens when an event at work causes us to question our own integrity. This week’s challenge is about these kinds of dilemmas — when we are faced with the difficult choice of protecting our integrity or doing what seems right for our career.
Here’s a good example:
One of my clients was part of an executive team in a company. He reported to the CEO along with five other people, each representing one of the core functions in the organization — finance, technology, marketing, sales and operations. He had been in his role for about two years when he began to understand that the CEO was lying. He first experienced this when he flew from Chicago to New York for an important customer meeting. The CEO had asked him to attend the meeting and gave him detailed instructions about what results the company hoped to achieve through the discussions. When my client asked if the CEO would also attend, she said, “Of course, we’ll both be there. This is too important of a deal for me not to attend. But we will position ourselves better if you lead the discussion and do the negotiating. I’ll be there to support you, and our customers will see that by my being there, this deal is our top priority.”
My client prepared diligently, and when he boarded the plane, he felt confident that the meeting would go well. The next day, he settled into a chair in the reception area at his customer’s offices. His boss wasn’t there yet, and he hadn’t heard from her. He began to scroll through e-mail on his phone and found an early morning message from her. He was shocked to read that his boss would not be attending the meeting. Something had come up that prevented her from making the trip, but she didn’t say what it was. She wished him luck and asked that he call her as soon as the meeting was over to let her know how it had gone.
His heart rate increased and his throat tightened as he saw his customers coming down the hallway to greet him. What had happened? How could she miss this important meeting with their top customer? How would he explain her absence? He didn’t want to lie, but he thought he’d better come up with a pretty good excuse. And what did she expect from him? Was he supposed to shoulder this one all on his own?
The customer’s first question was, “Where’s your boss this morning?” My client felt his face redden and replied, “She had a family emergency come up at the last minute.” As he looked his most important customer in the eye, he could tell this guy knew he was lying. But he could do nothing about it. He had to play his role the best he could, even if he had to lie and compromise his own integrity.
After the meeting, his boss didn’t answer when he called to tell her how it had gone, so he left a message. Later that day, he received an email from her saying how pleased she was with his efforts and that she had every confidence the deal would turn out the way they hoped. She also said she was sorry she couldn’t be there but staying in the home office had been important for her to do. They could talk more when he returned to the office.
Two days later, after other meetings in New York, my client boarded his flight back to Chicago, still depressed by what had happened. He still couldn’t resolve the nagging feeling he had about lying to his customer. How would the customer be able to trust him going forward? Why did his boss put him in that position? He couldn’t say, “She blew off the meeting.” Should he have said something else? But anything short of “family emergency,” would have implied that this meeting was not her top priority. My client tried to rationalize his actions by saying to himself, “My customer isn’t stupid, he knows that anyone put in my shoes would have done the same thing. What difference did it really make anyway?”
As he settled into his seat, much to his surprise, he saw his boss board the plane and sit down in first class. Not only had she lied about not being able to attend the meeting, but she was actually in New York all along! Anger replaced shock, and for the rest of the trip, my client seethed. He felt betrayed and duped. Underneath the anger was fear. What did this mean? Why was she doing this to him? Was she planning to put him in a position to fail so she could fire him? What would this mean for his family? His son was a year away from going to Stanford. How could he afford to send him there without a job?
As he walked through the terminal after deplaning, my client kept his head down. He didn’t want to see her for fear that he would completely lose it and express his anger toward her.
After a sleepless night, my client arrived at his office the following morning caught in a quandary. Should he confront his boss, tell her he saw her on the airplane and ask for an explanation? Should he avoid the conversation all together? He knew what was politically correct, but what was he going to do about his anger, frustration, sense of betrayal and desire to tell the truth?
Later that morning, when he met with his boss to review his trip, he could not stay quiet. His desire to clear the air, tell the truth and ask her for an explanation became too great.
As their meeting began to wind down, he finally asked “Can you level with me here? I saw you on the flight back to Chicago yesterday, which means you were actually in New York. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you attend the meeting? What’s going on?” One eyebrow raised slightly, as his boss remarked, “Oh, I didn’t get a chance to tell you. I had to make a quick turnaround trip to New York to talk with some of our analysts.” There was a slight possibility that she was telling him the truth, but his intuition knew she was lying. He understood in that moment that she was now just piling lies on top of lies and that trying to get to the truth would be a waste of time.
As he left her office, he thought, “Whatever trust I had in this woman is gone. I better watch my back from now on.”
To make matters worse, weeks later, in the quarterly meeting with their board of directors, his boss described the trip to negotiate the deal with their best customer in New York as if she actually had attended. She took credit for the work he had done as though she had negotiated the deal herself. He watched in a state of complete disbelief and resentment when she didn’t even mentioned all the work he had done. He got no credit. Just when he thought he couldn’t bare the lies any longer, during the break, the chairman approached him and asked in a low voice, “Tell me Dave, how did the meeting in New York really go?” Although my client was encouraged by the chairman’s obvious acknowledgement of his role in the deal, he was now being challenged to speak the truth about what really happened and, in doing so, reveal his boss’ lack of integrity.
These things happen to all of us from time to time as we try to navigate our way through our daily jobs. Whether we are part of an executive team or a part-time clerk working in an accounting office, we all see things that make us question whether something is being done right and if the people we work with are telling the truth. How should we handle these situations? Do we just play our roles as best as we can, even if it means we have to lie or cheat to cover for our bosses, team members or directors? My example may not seem like a big deal, but for my client, the inner turmoil it created was torture. He was placed on the razor’s edge between being true to himself and doing the right thing versus doing what he thought he had to do to keep his job and not confront his boss’ lack of integrity. As a result, he no longer trusted his boss and spent the rest of his time at the company in fear and trepidation about his career. Eventually, he left.
In his new job, my client often encounters similar situations but not to the degree he did in his previous position. He was careful when selecting his new job and asked about his potential new boss’ personal values. He got feedback from people who worked at the company and asked, “Does he have integrity and how does it show up?” His new job is not perfect, but it’s better.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, learn to tell the truth in a way that it can be received. I often help my clients reframe their messages. If I say to someone, “You lied to me, why did you do that?” I know I won’t get a good response. It may be true and direct, but generally, this approach can make the other person feel backed into a corner. It’s more likely to bring out defensiveness. On the other hand, when I say, “Tell me what happened here,” I’ll usually have a better chance of hearing the truth from the other person because I’m not being so confrontational.
Another approach can be to find a time after the challenging incident has occurred to sit down with the person you’re dealing with and bring up the subject of integrity. Ask how he or she balances his or her own integrity with the actions of others that are not in line with that integrity. It may seem manipulative, but if you ask in total sincerity with the hope of understanding what’s really important to the other person, it may result in a better overall picture of that person, and ultimately, it can only help in your on-going interactions.
Each of us has to come to some resolution within ourselves about our actions. In the case of my client, when the chairman asked him what really happened in New York, he said, “The good news, Bill, is that we closed the deal. I’m happy we can continue to do business with these folks under our new contract. It will really raise our revenue numbers for the year.” He actually answered the question and by-passed the implied question. The chairman smiled and shook my client’s hand. “Good deal!” he responded, and walked away.
Have a good week!
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
© Copyright 2012 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.
Good day, team.
This week’s challenge is about integrity. What does it mean to be a person who has integrity? In my mind, it’s when our external actions match our internal values — what we do and how we behave reflect what’s most important to us. The following is a description of what I mean and the basis for this week’s challenge.
As we’ve all seen, the real estate market in the past few years has challenged anyone who owns property. Because of the rapid decline in property values, many people have had to sell their homes for much less than what they purchased them for. In many cases, people have just walked away from their mortgages simply because they couldn’t sell and didn’t have the money to continue to pay the mortgage. Foreclosures and short sales are a daily occurrence.
A friend of mine bought his first home about six months before he got married. He had a good job with lots of career potential. The house was small, but it was in an excellent neighborhood where they were pretty sure property values would increase over time. My friend’s wife became pregnant shortly after they married. In thinking about the birth, they decided to move closer to his family so that everyone would get to know and enjoy the first grandchild, and his company was willing to transfer him to another position in his home town. The move was a strong indication of his core values. Family was important to him and taking a lesser job just to get back to family was a good demonstration of his integrity.
However, the real estate market had begun to decline and their house had some problems. They couldn’t sell it, so they decided to keep it as a rental property to cover the mortgage and purchase another house in his hometown to live in. Now my friend had the stress of paying two mortgages, plus taxes and all the maintenance expenses that come with owning a home.
The stress continued over the next four years, during which my friend and his wife had another child. My friend’s job situation was pretty stagnant, which was not helping. He decided to take a job with another company in his hometown. He did well in this position, and the company offered him a better job in another city. My friend and his wife had to consider moving the family across the country away from his family. By now, the children had solid relationships with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and extended family. Much of what he hoped his children would experience with his family had occurred. So he decided to take the new job and move his family. I saw this as another display of his integrity. He let his family know that the first move was for family. The next move, when one occurred, would be about career. With a growing family, he had to think about his career progression to be able to provide for them.
The move meant selling the house in his hometown, which was no small feat. The real estate market was at it’s worst. For many months, he had to travel back and forth across the country each week to see his family while he worked at his new job. Eventually the house sold, and they bought a new home in the new city. During this time, he still owned the original house, which was rented by various people over the years, some good and some not so good.
Now comes the true test of integrity. The current renters have decided they want to buy the original house, but at a much lower price than my friend’s mortgage. My friend will have to spend much of his savings to make the deal go through. He could have let the house go a long time ago and been out from underneath that mortgage and responsibility. But, he would have had a hard time living with himself if he had done this. As long as he could manage to pay the two mortgages, he continued to do so. Now, he’s dealing with the dilemma of finally selling the house and spending his savings to cover a short sale or just letting it go into foreclosure.
I know him well enough to know that he will do what allows him to stay in alignment with his inner values and ethics. His situation reminds me of how our personal integrity is tested throughout our lives and how important it is for us to pay attention when this happens. It’s the dilemma of doing what we know is right versus what’s easiest or taking the short cut out of an obligation. Sometimes, we don’t have many choices, and we have to do the only thing we can do. But, when we do have the choice, siding with our inner guide is as important as anything we can do in our lives. Most regrets are born from experiences where we didn’t follow our intuition; our heart and head told us what was right and we did something else instead.
This week, look at your actions and see if they’re in alignment with your inner values. Do you walk your talk? If you say something is important, do you express that in your actions and behaviors? Are you stuck in a situation where you’ve been asked to do something that goes against what you think is right? If you say your family is important to you, does the way you live your life reflect that? Are you willing to say no to someone if they ask you to do something that goes against your true nature? How do you stay in integrity in your life?
As Ovid, the ancient Roman poet and author wrote;
“No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.”
Have a good week!
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
© Copyright 2011 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search Inc., all rights reserved.