Based on reputable research, no doubt leaders could do more to warrant our trust. BP’s CEO Tony Hayward admitted the criticism of the oil spill and subsequent inability to stop the damage was ‘entirely fair.’ Ok, it was an event, a mishap. Let’s look at an ordinary, reoccurring issue in the news lately, CEO pay.
Who is culpable, for instance, for extraordinarily high CEO wages? Considerable finger wagging has been going on in the press at CEOs about this. It isn’t the CEO who sets his or her own salary; it is the board of directors. Yet boards of directors were invisible to the press in these stories. Often our assumptions may lead us to conclusions that malign others without full consideration for the facts. This disturbs me greatly but I know I have done it, too. Why is that?
Walking with a friend, I mentioned a situation that was just this kind of wrongful maligning, and she asked me, “How long does it take to find a witch?” She was referencing the days in Europe from 1480 to 1700 when legally sanctioned and official witchcraft trials resulted in from 40,000 to 100,000 executions. It was decided someone was a witch, and that person was immediately burned at the stake. Perhaps it is popular to not trust CEOs because the media are on a CEO witch-hunt.
While we’ve moved beyond flagrantly burning people at the stake, we still do character assassinations every day in the form of judgment and gossip. Some of this finger wagging and witch-hunting and broad-brush painting is projection — making someone else responsible for what we, ourselves, don’t want to be responsible. So I ask myself, is my promise about business leaders leading with integrity and love and listening for people’s greatness about convincing leaders to be that? Or is there some culpability in how I, and others listen for a leader to be great?
I believe there’s a pandemic malaise that creates its own dissonance and a noise within which leaders are trying to lead. The expectation that leaders should be responsible for all wrongs is abdication of personal responsibility, and in the United States anyway (where I live), it is a serious problem.
I would like for EVERY individual in an organization, be it government, non-profit or for-profit, to SEEK OUT and TAKE UP their part in building successful entity, using the energy they spend criticizing leadership and putting it into taking personal responsibility to own their own accountability for results.
For more on this topic you can request on this website, www.accountabilitypays.com, the larger thesis from which this excerpt was taken.







