#428 Leading by Example and Facing Public Scrutiny - Article written by Niels Brabandt
Leading by Example and Facing Public Scrutiny
Article written by Niels Brabandt
As a leader, you are a role model.
While many managers verbally acknowledge that they are aware of this, employees and staff are often surprised by how frequently and, above all, how blatantly this role model function is not fulfilled. If, on top of that, dealing with public criticism is handled in an amateurish manner, then it is time to discuss the issue.
How can you raise awareness regarding this aspect among your managers?
Cases
Current cases already demonstrate that there is still considerable work to be done in this area. The CEO of the tech company Astronomer, Andy Byron, was shown on the so-called "Kiss Cam" at a Coldplay concert. This camera usually shows couples kissing. Unfortunately, however, the person he was holding in his arms was another manager from the company. The reaction of both to turn away and duck out triggered a debate that led to an investigation. Byron has since resigned. In the English-speaking world of work, in particular, relationships within the workforce must be reported to prevent unfair promotions or advantages. Byron's statement, in which he did not express himself positively about being shown in public, was also not well received.
Donald Trump did no better. The Wall Street Journal published an article mentioning Trump in connection with the Epstein case. Trump is now suing both Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal for $10 billion. This action made the article even more widely known than it already was.
In another case, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, was summoned to appear before the United States Senate due to concerns about the company's tax practices. He complied with the subpoena, explained the practices, and the case quickly disappeared from the press.
Three cases, three approaches. In the first case, the aim was to become invisible, but the opposite happened. In the second case, the press was aggressively sued, which drew even more attention to the case. In the third case, factual arguments were presented, and the case quickly disappeared from public discussion.
When a case receives more attention than it previously had or would have had as a result of one's actions, this is called the "Streisand effect". Barbra Streisand sued a photographer for taking aerial photographs of the celebrity's villa and publishing them, which was completely legal. It is no secret that wealthy individuals often reside in lavish villas in stunning locations. Other celebrities were not interested in the publication. Streisand sued, and the case garnered widespread media attention for weeks, revealing Streisand's place of residence to the public.
For more details and aspects of these cases, refer to this week's videocast and podcast, available at the links below.
Handling
If you are in the public eye, you have to act in these cases. If you are not a person of public interest, you are under no obligation to make a public statement.
However, Byron's response, in which he blamed the "kiss cam" rather than reflecting on his actions, is a disastrous behaviour. Suing the press immediately, however justified it may be in some cases, also achieves the opposite of the desired effect. Address the issue, remain objective, and address any obvious misconduct, taking immediate action to remedy it. If the behaviour is controversial, initiate a comprehensive investigation, cooperate with public authorities and ensure transparency. If you have nothing to reproach yourself for, it is perfectly sufficient to communicate this accordingly.
It is better to refrain from assigning blame, even if it seems necessary. The press always has the first say over the published narrative. This aspect is a power that numerous publishing houses have handled negligently, grossly negligently or even deliberately incorrectly in the past. Seeking a correction, which is usually given little attention in publications, reaches far fewer people than blame, false claims and legal disputes. The narrative must be served, however unfair this may be, subjectively and factually.
Implementation
The presumption of innocence applies to everyone, regardless of their reputation, popularity or personal relationships. Every person has a guaranteed right to the presumption of innocence. Those who do not uphold this principle are not part of the democratic spectrum. Furthermore, you have the right to be heard. Prejudgment or judgment without hearing and comment is generally neither to be taken seriously nor of any legal relevance.
If you sit on a commission that has to reach a verdict, always bear in mind that the burden of proof lies with you. Guilt must be proven. Innocence does not have to be proven, but must always be assumed first.
If you follow the steps outlined here, you will achieve a better result and better treatment. Even if there is no guarantee of success, you will consistently achieve the best result within the given possibilities.
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More on this topic in this week's podcast: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.
Podcast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
You probably know that as a leader, you should be an example to other people. That is pretty obvious. And the question is, why are so many CEOs not the example that you wish them to be? And Paul, do you think didn't just recently we have. Yeah, exactly. We just recently had cases of that. When you want to lead by example, many questions arise where people think, how did you get the job?
How can you behave that way? How can you think you get away with this? And. And why do you make everything worse by your reaction? Especially in the recent past, you saw people who first faced public scrutiny and you think that's bad. And by their reaction everything became worse. And now we have to talk about how do you lead by example, but also how do you face public scrutiny?
But all of that is something where people say, but often this public scrutiny happens for no reason or for the wrong reason. Agreed, agreed. Fully agree. But you still have to take a position, you still have to deal with it. And that's why we are going to talk about leading by example and facing public scrutiny. I'm going to quote a number of articles and magazines here, very important here.
It's fair use. That's the disclaimer here if you're now watching on YouTube. Thank you very much for joining. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you will of course not read the disclaimer here that people on YouTube can see. Right now. Everything I quote here is fully protected by the law. I have to quote because I need to have the proof for what I claim here.
When we come to leading by example, you probably heard of a couple of cases and the very first case is Coldplay. And people say, yeah, the music's bad, but is it already criminal offence? And some people say, yeah, it is. That's not. That's not what I mean. It is not about Coldplay's music. Their. Their music is my taste either.
But they are tremendously successful, as you can see globally. However, Coldplay music got into the news for something very different. There is something which is called the Kiss Cam, at concerts, especially in the English speaking world, is quite comm. Suddenly the camera puts two or three people, usually two people, into the spotlight. Often they take three or four. So you see the surrounding reactions as well. But you have two people in the spotlight and then people see how people usually kiss.
It's quite romantic. Sometimes you see on the Internet that someone proposed. So it's a bit staged, obviously, but still very nice. It is very important that this Kiss Cam is something fun Something which is around for decades now. No one thinks about it. However, at a Coldplay concert, suddenly you saw two people where one person just was diving out of the picture. That was the man in this case.
And the woman turned away. But due to the fact that other people filmed this and uploaded it and said, isn't that a bit weird, this reaction? Some people said, yeah, and the man is a tech CEO and the woman is the HR leader of that company. And obviously we just saw an affair that shouldn't go to public. And this is what happened. The tech boss of Astronomer, the tech CEO, the CEO of this tech company is now suspended because there's an investigation going on. So he tried to dive away.
Didn't work too well. We see it had the opposite effect. But some people don't dive away. Some people have a very different take on that. And one example recently is the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal you probably saw is getting sued. They published an article about Donald Trump and the Epstein cases.
And Donald Trump and the Epstein case is a long going. He wanted to declassify the Epstein papers. Then he didn't. Then suddenly Elon Musk said, yeah, because he's in it. And it went back and forth and back and forth. And now the Wall Street Journal published an article about Donald Trump and the Epstein case. And the Epstein case will now be made public. And Donald Trump is suing for. Buckle up. $10 billion.
$10 billion sues Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion. Let's see how this is going to end. However, there are also. So now we had two reactions. One person trying to dive away and disappear, the other person, completely different approach, going aggressively straightforward. And the third aspect concerns Apple. Quite a while ago, Apple was accused of not dealing with taxes too well.
And then they subpoenaed Tim Cook to the Senate in the US and what Tim Cook did, he just showed up and defended what Apple did with taxation. He said, we're all within the boundaries of the law.
Everything we do is legal. So you're the lawmakers here, so give us other laws and we will adapt accordingly. So here we see completely different approaches to handling. Approach number one is diving away, trying to disappear. That didn't go too well in this case. The second option is to sue someone. And we see that didn't go too well either, because you see, now it's all over the place.
And the third one is Apple just pretty much talking on the matter. And that, I think, worked pretty well because when I told you that Tim Cook had to show up at the centre regarding taxation, many of you will not even remember. The question now is how to handle it properly. Because there is one aspect you want to prevent and the aspect you want to prevent from happening is the so called Streisand effect. The Streisand effect refers to Barbara Streisand. There was a photographer who took pictures from a helicopter and he uploaded these pictures and said, these are the villas where the rich people live. And of course some people like when their pictures out there and show off a bit.
And some people don't like it that much because they say it's privacy. I don't want that people know where I live. However, Barbara Streisand took legal action against the photographer. And the reaction, the consequence of that was suddenly everyone was interested. Where does Barbra Streisand live? And the picture that was downloaded before about 40 times. Because when someone says, look, rich people living in a villa, here's the uploaded picture.
The usual reaction of people is, okay, what's for dinner? Because when you tell people that very rich people live in very big mansions in beautiful places, not really news, is it? However, when suddenly someone takes legal action, so the rich person goes against the little one person photography company, then you have a story and that is what press is waiting for. The Streisand effect means you make everything worse by blowing it up due to legal proceedings, due to talking about it. And that's for example, something which also happened to Donald Trump. Now when of course you say Wall Street Journal publishes about Epstein and Donald Trump is in there, that's big. However, being sued for 10 billion is the even bigger news here, together with the Epstein files right now or the articles about the Epstein files and Donald Trump.
So when it comes to handling, the first thing you want to prevent is the Streisand effect. You do not want it to blow up just because of your actions make everything worse. And by the way, when we look into cases here, Apple handling things silently work pretty well. Wall Street Journal getting sued, not great. Also, usually journalists don't like you more when you sue them. And the third case, or the first one I mentioned here, the Coldplay case, diving away, trying to disappear, didn't work too well either, but not because they dived away. The worst case here was the statement the CEO made.
The CEO said, yeah, it is not what people expect from him. It is not the person he wants to be. So he sort of admits a bit there. And then he said that he's not feeling great about being pulled in the public in that way. Okay, look, when you have certain positions, being in the public eye is part of the job. When you, for example, let's say you work as a general admin person in a company and you post a bit on social media and suddenly your boss turns up and says during last weekend you had a massive party, right? Well you were pretty drunk, right?
Your answer could be none of your business. Goodbye. And that's perfectly fine. When you are not in a position that you are perceived in the public eye, when you do not have the influence and the power, and especially when you work with, without taxpayers money, it's all your private business. No one has the right to approach you with anything. Absolutely no one. However, when you have a position where you receive public funding, any kind of subsidies, when you are in politics, when you work off taxpayers money or any of the ones combined, then of course people have a right that you undergo public scrutiny.
You cannot on the one hand say I want to be a tech leader, I want to be a CEO of a tech company and next moment you say I don't like it to be seen in public. That is not possible. Then you can't be a CEO. As soon as you have certain jobs, you know it has an impact. And by the way that's one of the reasons why you get these very high salaries. It is part of your private life being more limited than others. When let's say from Shark Tank, the investment show that you probably know.
When Mark Cuban goes into any bar, mobile phones immediately get pulled out and people take pictures if you like it or not and they will comment on every oh look, Mark Cuban had three beer, maybe an alcohol problem and by the way he didn't. That's just made up, just an example. You have no private life outside your own four wall and the very, very limited amount of privacy that the law grants you. When you as the tech CEO go to an international concert where people travel to from all over the world, 50,000 people around you, or even more at a Coldplay concert, a massively well known band, and you get picked by the camera, you have to expect, especially as you consent, when you go to a concert, it says there's filming going on and you consent to the film. At many concerts there's an area where they say if you do not want to be filmed, please stand in this area because we do not film there. So you have the right. But when you say I go into public, then you are in public.
And by the way, when you did something wrong and you admit it probably do not point to someone else saying, I'm not happy that you pointed out my wrongdoing, I just wanted to get away with it. That's the message that came across. And now there is an investigation going on and let's see how this ends. When you want to handle it properly, number one is address. And when you are not someone who is in any kind of public position, the addressing can simply be, let me in peace, none of your business, it's a private matter. Perfectly fine. The more public you are, the more public you have to address these matters because it is important that you show something happens, act on the matter.
Let's say you have an app and you developed an app, you're a company of six people and your app blows up, goes viral and, and your app is nothing else. And you get shoes and you get shoes much cheaper. And when someone says, could you make a statement on xyz, you can say, look, we're a very small business selling shoes. No, I don't. When someone says, look, we found out that you only get these shoes because you actually get them untaxed from the other end of the world with a massive carbon footprint, they are transported around the world where you then also dodge import taxes. And after that we found out that everything done there, where it's produced child labour, could you make a statement on that? Then you have to make a statement, statement because you had a global impact way out of your zone of, this is my small business, you had a global impact with what you do.
And then of course you. Then of course, then of course you need to act accordingly. And acting accordingly means when you have a global impact, you will be seen in the public eye. And by the way, some people now say, oh, but sometimes it really goes for the wrong reason. And yes, sometimes it does. Yes, sometimes it does. Because there's always the point of, should I blame the publication?
When you are published by certain newspapers where you think, basically Iraq, basically yellow press, they are not sticking to the facts, it's basically propaganda, or this piece is known for not telling the truth, then you can blame them. And it usually doesn't end very well when someone goes viral for all the wrong reasons. So, for example, someone is funny on the Internet, they get shared by certain publications because they know this brings us clicks on our website, on our social media presence and this brings in money. When more people are on our site, we can sell ads for higher money and for more money. Well, someone becomes a joke on the Internet, their life probably falls apart and you just make Money off it. And it's even legal to do that. Yes, this is all for the wrong reason.
I fully agree. However, having an aggressive go against someone ensuing them hardly ever is the right pick. Except when you are very, very safe on the right side and there's a setting where people don't really care anymore about the whole matter and you can just clear up things in silence that you have everything done right. When you blame, usually people look at you and say, not a great look, I think you're guilty. And of course you might now say, this is not backed by democracy, the democratic principles. Say something else. I don't have to prove I'm innocent.
It's vice versa. Yes, and I agree. I can tell you as an LGBTQIA community person and also as a formerly professional football referee, meaning soccer, for our American listeners, I had wild accusations of wrong decisions as a referee from absolutely incompetent so called journalists, which basically were people who belong to one of the teams and just writing articles on the Internet with a massive outreach and suddenly your inbox gets flooded and your social media, you get all the yelling of it, or people accuse you of something you've never done because they simply think this is a good story. Brings you a couple of clicks. Yes, you have to ride the wave through it because as soon as you have an aggressive go, they have the right of the narrative. Let's say you sue them and you win and probably you win that they have to correct everything. What happens is they will put the correction out there on page 128 where no one's watching.
And before that they published 193 articles about next level of court, next level of court drama and court. Oh my God, is it going wrong again?
It went wrong here. I think we are right here. So they have, they have the right of the narrative. And that is when journalists with low ethical standards appear and they are extremely dangerous. And unfortunately, quite a number of journalists have very low ethical standards.
Not all of them. Free press is extremely important, I can tell you as a self employed entrepreneur and part of the LGBTQIA community, I am relying on free press. Every far right wing rack is rioting against trans people and the LGBTQIA community, making up the wildest things of oaths or all woke today. And now we have children who want to be a kitten and we have suddenly cat toilets in classroom. All of that was published, all of that was published by newspapers and nothing of that is true. And as a self employed entrepreneur, everything which is far left wing says, oh, they are all not there. They're basically just employing people to exploit them and they take money off their work and they make money based on other people's work.
That's all not so. You are yelled at basically from all sides, and especially when people accuse you of absolute nothing, nothing substantial, but they publish that there is something. Having an aggressive go against them usually makes things worse. And I can understand when people now say, this cannot be the way to go. I fully agree. However, and by the way, I was way more angry about this when I was younger and today I have a certain calm moment and say, look, they just try to speak down on you. They say, you are the worst referee, you ruined the whole season.
They do not get promoted because of you. And in four weeks, no one speaks about that anymore. Or probably in three months. Anything in between tomorrow and the end of the year, usually within a year, everything's forgotten. When someone asks you, what about last season? Remember xyz?
Most people say, no, I don't. No, I don't. So this blaming doesn't work well, the question now is, how do you implement in your organisation a system which is fair because some people now said, why is Astronomer giving an investigation to the tech CEO we saw on the Kiss Cam that something's going on, they have to chuck them out because there is a rule in place that you cannot have personal relationships within leadership teams or you at least have to address it. Because of course investors want to know, did you promote that person because he or she is the most competent person, they are the most competent person, that person is the best pick. Or is it just lining your own pocket because you're basically the same household already? As soon as you implement, number one is the assumption of innocence. Anyone who does not apply the assumption of innocence is not part of the democratic spectrum and needs to be dealt with accordingly.
Respect at this point is optional. Then the assumption of innocence applies to absolutely anyone. Unless you have the absolute proof where you say, assumption of innocence was given and here's the proof that they are guilty. When you say, I went into the room, saw the person with a gun shooting, took a picture of the whole thing, have a video, including the smoking gun in his hand at the end, here's the proof, then of course you can say, assumption was applied and proven guilty. When you. And this is perfectly fine here, you may or may not like it because of course, immediately the mob yells, oh, we have to chuck out that CEO, get rid of him. No, there will be an investigation and then he can make his point and she can make her point.
And then there will be employees being asked and then they look at everything around that and then they say we come to a verdict here. However, when you have a verdict, there's one very important aspect here. Before the verdict is made, anyone has a right to state their point. And when you say oh no, it is so crystal clear we are not going to talk to them because they are lying anyway. That is not relevant. You may or may not like what you heard, but people have the right to make their point. When you, for example, and this was Axel Springer, a German publishing house, they did the following.
There was one of their journalists being accused of unacceptable behaviour, including harassment, sexual advances being made with no consent, etc. Etc. They got an external law firm and there was a huge investigation. At the end of the investigation they said we released the chief editor from, from their contract. That of course was a bit of a cheap exit because when someone's guilty, you fire them on the spot. However, when you say release from the contract, it usually means you get full pay, but you don't have to work anymore. And of course then people rightfully say that is cowardish, basically coward behaviour.
You are spineless. However, from that publishing house, many people didn't expect anything else. So you have a right to state your point. I can tell you from my own experience that sometimes people do not stick to this. I give you a very simple example. Once a British so called speaking association approached me and said there was an investigation against you, meaning me. What happened was another person from that association made a Facebook post with esoteric nonsense in it.
And when someone in the leadership space puts out esoteric nonsense about energy and how energy is transferred to people, all of that zero scientific backing. I gave it hard criticism, factual hard criticism, that what that person claimed was straightforward wrong. Because as soon as people from a high level make wrong statements, they do not only harm themselves and their reputation, they harm the whole industry, they harm the profession and they harm the whole industry. Because people do not say, oh, this is just one bad person. This is where people say, oh, this is how professional consultants are like. They are all clueless, you see, we don't need them. Suddenly I received this email saying a complaint was made against me and the result is I get a warning.
And of course I said I have the right to make my point. And they said no, no, it's concluded, thank you. So I got a very well known former barrister in place who helped me on the matter. Legal, professional and fast forward. No, not Even fast forward 30 days later, 30, not months, 30 days later, I received an unreserved apology from the CEO of that association in the name of the whole board. I still have the email. And then the case was thrown out of the window because it was plain nonsense.
When someone says, here's my point and I can prove it's wrong by scientific evidence, that is A freedom of speech, B right to my opinion, in this case, not even opinion, just facts, and C science. When you say gravity doesn't exist and someone says here's the proof, you cannot be offended by hearing the truth by factual backing and scientific evidence. So you have a right to state your point. When you get to the conclusion, the burden of proof is always with you. So when you say the burden of proof is with you, you have to make the effort in the first place. And by the way, the conclusion always has to be in relation to the offence. The more the offence is bad, the worse the offence, the worse the consequence has to be.
It is extremely important that there is a relation between the offence and the consequences. For example, when you are a CEO and you tell people, oh, you cannot just have relationships here without telling us. But then you do exactly that. That of course is a loss of your social legitimation. And then people will say, oh, here we go again. One rule for us and one rule for them. And that is how you lose your credibility. It is extremely important that you, from the very beginning make the point that the burden of proof is with you and the conclusion will be based on everything you found out and you can prove by facts, because people have the right to see the facts.
You cannot just tell them, you have to leave. But we don't tell you why that is not possible. And as soon as you take the points we have here into account and when you follow that system, we saw very different approaches here from aggressively suing someone like the Wall Street Journal immediately. Streisand, effectively you Coldplay, you try to dive way immediately people wonder what's going on there. If they probably had just smiled and waved, nothing had happened at all. However, their diving away didn't go down too well. And then blaming others afterwards didn't go down too well either.
Apple sitting down saying, no, we didn't do that, it's all fine. Yeah. And then things moved on because it became a rather non interesting case. Of course, you always have a temporary damage to your brand because people say, oh, Apple is subpoena to the Senate. Maybe they are tax dodgers. That's not great for my investment. Maybe I just pull out my stocks here.
However, as soon as you prove them wrong and you simply move on and don't blame the Senate or the press, people will move on to the next matter. And as soon as you do what we had here, everything will turn out better. You lead by example and even when you face public scrutiny, you know what to do. And I wish you all the best doing so in real world. Practise in your business and in your organisation. And when you say H, I like to have a couple of questions here. Feel free to do so.
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