Lunch with a friend yesterday. Mentioned that it was interesting to observe the behaviours of some, when the tide goes out. He shared a personal experience of a public sector manager behaving unethically and probably illegally. Using power and position to disadvantage my friend. No doubt he rationalised it by thinking of the current economic situation.
It made me think of the character aspect of leadership. Some things illuminate character. Adversity for instance. It seems that many leaders stand out in times of adversity. Is it because they find their character? Is it because they have the opportunity to exercise their character? Is it that the character of others is exposed through negative behaviour (… and they stand out)?
Someone once said that you can judge a society by how it cares for it’s most vulnerable members. Ditto leaders. Judge leaders by how they behave towards others more vulnerable. When the times are tough. Anyone can look good on a rising tide, when things are going well. But for some, low tide is a different story.
Character boils down to behaviour. Having the courage of your convictions and treating others as you would be happy for them to treat you.
I believe that we all have a responsibility to robustly confront poor behavior by:
- naming the specific behaviour
- articulating the impact of that behaviour
- telling the person how we feel about it.
Letting people get away with poor behaviour, only accepts and encourages it.
I think this is a fascinating snippet of a story revealing far more than a naughty manager who is unethical and illegal.
First, this is a situation in which the story telling nature of the circumstances is revealed. What I mean by this is that the facts have been relayed to you by your contact, and even to casual observer, they are revealed to be not so much facts, as a heavily edited relaying of the events. First of all, edited by your contact, and secondly, somewhat edited by yourself to make sure that no identifying details are revealed. Us bloggers have to be very careful of this.
So the situation has been doubly edited.
Secondly the narration highlights one side of the story, in other words, what you have heard from one participant. From what you have said I would agree that this is a plausible interpretation of the events of the story.
At the same time, I can’t help wondering what the other protagonist would say about the situation. Potentially the story could be quite different from their point of view. I think you said that the naughty manager was the boss of your contact. In which case we know that they will have access to information that your contact does not have.
As an actor, no doubt you will some times be called on to play the conflicted villain. Could the other person be in such a position?
The other thing I notice about the story is that your contact is telling people (such as yourself) about the situation. Are the people being told in a position to do something about it? No doubt they are not.
And this is very understandable. The politics of the organisation are such that it would be extremely risky to raise this issue with those who could potentially deal with this unethical and potentially illegal behaviour. Whistle blowers seldom gain personal benefit from the action of blowing the whistle, in fact their careers can be ended by such situations.
So I think this case study reveals a very complex set of dynamics in which power, politics, ethics, ideology, inclusion, exclusion and more are in play.
It goes far beyond simple judgements about the behaviour of the naughty manager or your colleague (or even you as the blogger) as simply “good” or “bad.” There is no objective point of view here.
You must be fun to go to the movies with!
Take your points though. There are always two sides to any story, but a story that carefully balances everyone’s point of view and deals only with the facts may not be that interesting.
I was simply relaying an experience and expressing the relevance for me. I hope my message was to take care with our own behaviours and confront poor behaviours in others.
I may have been too righteous!
Bernie,
I agree that you can learn a lot about someone when times are bad – everyone can smile when things are going their way, but how they handle adversity is a true test of character.
I spend a lot of time with athletes and watching sport. The people I admire are the ones who can be gracious in defeat and magnanimous in victory, acknowledge and credit the opposition, learn from their mistakes and not criticise the ref.
Cheers
Kate
Hi Kate, in Human Synergistics language that would be called the Achievement style as opposed to the Competitive style.