A Conundrum of Conscience

But what if the boss is an embarrassment?

Several years ago, at the end of a session I lead on The REACTION Dashboard as a tool for organizational health for leaders from a couple dozen charities, two people waited quietly until everyone else had asked their questions before taking me aside for a more private conversation.

“We love the work we do and the people we work with” they shared, “but our founder has become obsessed with raising his own profile and engaging in politics in ways that we just can’t stand”. They went on to describe how discouraging it was to see the work they’d spent their lives building becoming tarnished by the polarizing reputation and exposed scandals of their CEO.

(And in case you’re guessing, I’m not going to identify the organization, CEO, or political affiliation; and I honestly can’t remember the names of the leaders who were sharing their concerns. There are plenty of examples to choose from.)

They felt that their personal integrity was being compromised by being associated with a leader who seemed to have abandoned the core values of the organization in pursuit of something they couldn’t support. But they still believed that the actual work they were involved in was good and impacting vulnerable people in significant ways.

It was a real problem.

I don’t recall my exact advice that day. I encouraged them to carefully consider not only their convictions, but also the likely long term trajectory of the founder and the organization. Was it going to get better? Was their any chance of positive change?

We talked about whether going to the board would be beneficial (probably not in this case) and whether other staff were feeling the same or they were in a minority (very divided). I also encouraged them to consider the practical implications of speaking up or stepping away.

No leader is perfect and no organization is free from compromise. We all have to consider how flexible to be when it comes to our convictions. And there’s pretty much always a gap between the ideals of organizational values and how things actually happen in reality.

It’s easy to look at someone else and think there’s an obvious right answer. But the costs of taking a stand aren’t the same for everyone. And my role is really to help people figure out their own best path forward, not the one I think they should take.

They have to consider their own off-ramps.

I don’t know what those leaders decided to do. They didn’t follow up with me afterwards. But I hope they were able to reconcile the tensions they were feeling or at least to find a way to live within the tension.

I hope that for the many leaders I know who are facing similar tensions today