The Non-Negotiable Leadership Trait That Will Set You Apart
Today, I'm sharing bonus content from Chapter 6 of Humane Leadership: a personal story of integrity under pressure, plus four reflection questions to start conversations about advocacy with your team.
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Ever been thrown under the bus in a metaphorical corporate sense? Has a manager or superior dishonored you and your role in the company as “expendable” and left you questioning your worth? Or maybe you've been pressured to compromise your ethics to please a customer?
I have such a story.
The contract job required me to fly to Montreal for a day and screen top sales reps in the region on behalf of district managers of Fortune 500 pharmaceutical giants, who also flew in for these high-stakes interviews. Typically, for these events, I was hired to do the gate-keeping dirty work, which included a thorough screening of pre-selected resumes (usually 25-30 lucky candidates picked from a stack of nearly 1000) and a quick interview of those who were brave enough to show up. I played rough and followed the rules set by the client, which meant that if anyone did not show up with a “brag book” to showcase their accomplishments and sales rankings, I was to send them home.
There were other dirty tricks of the trade in the pre-DEI era of the late 1990s and early 2000s. I had to ensure that only the prettiest, shiniest pharmaceutical job candidates made it inside the private conference room for a coveted interview with a manager, typically a white male, clean-cut, and looking like they jumped off the cover of GQ. Eventually, only 10 of the 25 or so candidates would make it into the back room.
In Big Pharma back in the day, as important as physical appearance was, looks alone didn’t cut it. You had to have the brains to pull off a 3.7 GPA with a biological sciences major and cut your teeth in an outside sales position schlepping business machines and pounding the pavement for two years. Oh, and it helped if you walked on water to boot.
My plane touched down in Montreal on a red eye from Los Angeles, where I lived at the time. This gig was typical: five grueling hours of high-volume interviewing for the day, then turn around, hop on the first flight out and come home that same evening.
This time, there was an unexpected glitch. The flight booked by the admin person at the career conferences firm that contracted me arrived at the wrong time. I touched down two hours after my expected arrival to coordinate interviews and screen candidates. On top of that, the airport-to-hotel taxi ride was nightmarishly long as we crawled through the Montreal highway system. District Managers of the client company—known for being distinguished, high-achieving status-seekers in the glamorous Pharma industry—had been on their own for nearly three hours. They were not happy campers, having done what they were paying my handlers (and me) to do for them.
This pharmaceutical giant, one of the top five worldwide, was an important, large account for a small career services firm trying to grow its brand in the on-demand recruiting industry. In a phone call to explain my late arrival to my handler, I sensed some desperate maneuvering going on behind the scenes as I wrapped up the event.
Back at the company’s HQ in Los Angeles, a story about my late flight was being fabricated. My handler called me while I was still in the hotel conference room to inform me that I needed to be the messenger of a blatant lie to protect the account and save them from being fired by the client. They didn’t want them to know that they had blown the delivery of a key conference by botching flight arrangements. After a few seconds of lucidity, reality set in: I was being set up to be the sacrificial lamb. “The client doesn’t need to know the truth of what happened because if they did, it would cost us this account. So, we need to give them our version of the story,” said my handler.
As I wrapped up the day, I had to decide whether or not I would do what my superiors asked me to do. Should this violation of my personal integrity – being asked to deliver a corporate lie – be something I could accept and live with? Should I take one for the team? Thinking a bit broader, my next thought was, “Do I want to represent this company in future contract assignments?”
Before the final debrief of the day with the pharma client, I made the decision. I called my handler back, got put on speakerphone with the executive team listening in, and told them that I couldn’t lie to the client. “There has to be a better, more honest solution to this problem,” I suggested to deaf ears.
Awkward silence.
After I hung up, I knew I had just defied the status quo of a leadership team whose values clashed with mine. The Montreal gig was the last contract-recruiting event I ever did for them. No calls, no e-mails, no thank yous. Less than a year later, I learned that the company folded.
Operating with integrity consistently over time may be the hardest and most challenging leadership principle to achieve. We have reached an age where people at the top are willing to lie and cheat to suppress the truth and cover up realities that challenge the prevailing status quo.
What are we to do as Humane Leaders?
Your Integrity Action Plan
To start on the road to leadership integrity, the journey begins with a question for self-reflection: Am I truly a person of integrity and moral authority? If you’re unsure, how can you self-assess to ensure you are one?