When No One Challenges the Lie
This week in my blog “Scapegoats and Exes,” I talk about what happens when a former employee becomes the company’s convenient explanation for everything that went wrong. You leave the organization, and suddenly the story changes. People repeat things that are untrue. Your behavior gets rewritten. The people you expected to speak up stay quiet.
The lie hurts. But often, what hurts most is that no one challenges it. You may find yourself asking, Why didn’t anyone call me? Why would they say that? What happened to all those values and principles printed on the walls?
The answer is difficult, but clarifying: the lie tells you far more about them than it does about you. It reveals what they are willing to protect, tolerate, and sacrifice when the truth becomes inconvenient.
That brings us to this week’s reflection - Values are tested when doing the right thing costs us something.
Most organizations can name their values/principles. Integrity. Respect. Trust. The words may be printed in employee handbooks, shared in books promoting culture, displayed on office walls, or repeated during town halls. But when pressure arrives, what happens?
Do leaders tell the truth when the truth is uncomfortable?
Do they defend a person who has been treated unfairly?
Do they act with integrity when falsehoods are spread about someone not in the room?
Do they hold a high performer accountable for harmful behavior?
Do they protect an employee’s dignity when doing so might upset someone powerful?
That is where values become real. Anyone can talk about integrity when everything is going well. The real question is whether we will practice integrity when it threatens our comfort, our reputation, or our bottom line.
Deeds over words. Actions over rhetoric.
Here is a question I return to often: Would we accept this treatment if the employee were our precious son or daughter? Would we spread an unverified story about them? Would we let someone damage their name without checking the facts? Would we dismiss their concerns because speaking up made the room uncomfortable?
Most of us would not.
Human-first leadership asks us to carry that same care into the workplace. Every employee is someone’s precious son or daughter: someone loved, trusted, and sent into the world with hopes for a safe and meaningful life.
Lead with courage. Tell the truth with care. Protect the person who cannot protect themselves in the room. That is how principles become real.
Coach Ha-Keem
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