What to Do When Your Boss Asks You to Compromise Your Ethics

Employees being asked to act immorally by their boss have become far too common. The dilemma is—what to do? And how to do you weigh the price that whistleblowers usually have to pay such as lack of advancement, alienation and even reprisal? Daniel Victor in the New York Times’ Smarter Living column explored this question recently and based on my research forFrom Bully to Bull’s-Eye: Move Your Organization Out of the Line of Fire, I disagree with some of the advice he offers.

I agree with Victor that employees should first make sure that they didn’t misunderstand their supervisor’s request. There are times when things are poorly stated and it’s imperative that this isn’t misinterpreted. But let’s say that the request was crystal clear—what do you do next?

 First, determine if this request restricted to just this manager in this department, or is it something being enacted throughout the organization? Second, forego human resources, which in my experience is usually part of the problem, and send an anonymous note to the audit committee of the Board of Directors apprising them of an ethics issue and request an investigation. In your note indicate that if there is no response within a set limit of time you will seek external recourse with legal representation, the media, or both.

Under no circumstances would I recommend following Victor’s advice to expose the situation internally—this could be fraught with danger. Had the employees who went from victim to villain at Wells Fargo exposed the scandal in the manner I advocate, their story would have had a far happier ending.

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When it Comes to Doing Right By Your Coworker, Forget HR

What does it mean to be a bystander in a toxic workplace? Sometimes it means being forced to decide between doing what you know is right and protecting your job. In this excellent installment of The Ethicist in the New York Times Magazine, Kwame Anthony Appiah discusses the quandary of an office worker who knows a young coworker was unjustly fired. The advice given is very sound and reflects the situation that many people face at work. In a perfect world, the correspondent should have been able to go to human resources with her problem. However, as I discuss in From Bully to Bull’s-Eye: Move Your Organization Out of the Line of Fire, in toxic cultures human resources is part of the problem, rather than being part of the solution—which is what makes Appiah’s advice in the column so on target.

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How to Leave a Toxic Legacy

Bully bosses are notorious for being short-sighted—most can see no further than their immediate objective. Given how they manipulate and torture people, it might come as a surprise that many want to be liked—even loved. For a perfect example of this look no further than Donald Trump. In spite of his toxic tweets and abusive statements, he often displays the demeanor of a small child who is aching for adoration.

Ada Brunstein explores a similar type of boss in her recent New York Times essay, “In a Law Office, Coping With a Boss’s Toxic Trail.” In it, she discusses the daily abuse she and other young, female paralegals received from the estate attorney who employed them. The lawyer, whom she calls “Mr. S,” couldn’t understand why his employees disliked him and never stayed long. It couldn’t be the blatant disregard for his staff, his incessant smoking in the office, his temper tantrums or name calling, could it? In fact, his inability to retain staff ultimately hurt his business and did nothing for his legacy.

Leaders should ask themselves how they would like to be remembered. Their behavior reflects directly on how employees feel and why they feel that way and any issues on the boss’s part that impacts the workplace negatively needs to be addressed immediately. Leadership is no place for people who don’t understand—or care—how feelings drive organizational behavior.

Andrew Faas is the author of

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Suicide at Uber: Is this Tantamount to Murder or Manslaughter?

Before he went to work for Uber, Joseph Thomas was described as “the smartest guy in the room,” a hard-driving and ambitious engineer with a warm heart who gave up a job at Apple to work for Uber. But according to the San Francisco Chronicle, after he started working at the ride-share company, he began to change.

His family told reporter Carolyn Said that he began to struggle for the first time. He was working long hours under acute stress and frightened he’d lose his job. Then the panic attacks began, along with constant anxiety and lack of mental focus. Visits to a psychiatrist didn’t help, nor did pleas that he quit Uber. His wife reported that his personality changed and he kept insisting that he couldn’t do anything right. Thomas was one of the less than 1 percent of African-American managers at the company and given previous reports of bullying and harassment, it is very likely that racism played a role in his decline.

In August 2016 Joseph Thomas took his own life. He left behind a wife and two young sons who are being denied a worker’s compensation claim because he had only worked for the company for five months. His wife is looking to hold Uber accountable for Joseph’s mental decline. “If you put a hard-driving person on unrealistic tasks, it puts them in failure mode. It makes them burn themselves out; like driving a Lamborghini in first gear,” Thomas’ father told the Chronicle.

I’ve written a lot about suicide brought on by bullying at work, and given the 120,000 annual deaths attributable to workplace stress according to a joint study at Harvard Business School, it’s not a surprise that not enough is being done to address the cause of this terrible epidemic. I devoted an entire section of my book, From Bully to Bull’s-Eye: Move Your Organization Out of the Line of Fire to preventing this sort of tragedy. The Faas Foundation has been working to address the issue of mental health in the workplace with Mental Health America with the same goal.

It is eminently clear that the toxic workplace culture at Uber is having a horrendous impact on its people. In February I wrote about how a former female employee of Uber was driven out by sexual harassment that human resources did nothing to stop. It’s gotten so bad that two of the company’s original investors penned an open letter to the board about the egregious culture of the place.

If it is found that the toxic environment was the main factor in Thomas’ suicide, Uber must be held accountable for what is tantamount to murder—or at least manslaughter.  

Photo credit: Contract Magazine

Why Suicides in the Workplace are Increasing

A report last week in Canada about a suicide at an IBM office was a sobering reminder of the recent rise in people who take their own lives at work. While little is known about the tragedy in Markham, Ontario, even one workplace suicide is too many.

We don’t do nearly enough to prevent adult bullying in the workplace—which I believe is even more common than school bullying,  given that as many as 120,000 deaths per year are attributable to workplace stress. I’ve written extensively on this subject in my posts and in my book, From Bully to Bull’s-Eye: Move Your Organization Out of the Line of Fire. This is an issue that needs to be brought into the light of day so that treatment and prevention can be discussed, but far too often the stigma surrounding such a death makes such conversation impossible.

Whatever has encouraged the suicide numbers to rise in the workplace, it’s an issue that requires all of us to step out of our role as bystander or witness and become activists for our colleagues. When I was a senior executive, I personally intervened several times when a person was in dire need of help. Ignoring the signs because of your personal discomfort won’t make the problem go away. Think of it like a potential heart attack—if a friend was having chest pains, you would get them to an emergency room because to fail to do so could have deadly consequences. It’s the same with someone who may be thinking about taking their own life. Two excellent resources to reach out to for help are:

·       National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800.273.8255

·       The Trevor Project Lifeline: 866.488.7386

It’s important to understand how bullying plays into rates of depression and suicide. When people are going through trauma, especially when it’s in a setting where distress is viewed as weakness, they are cut off from the support they need to cope. This is why the Faas Foundation is working with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence to ascertain how people feel at work and how the tools of emotional intelligence can prevent such tragedies. Unfortunately, when I discuss this with members of the business community they are often skeptical. They don’t yet realize how feelings drive organizational behavior—but I believe this will be the key to a psychologically healthy, safe and fair workplace for everyone.

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How NOT to Fix Workplace Culture

In February I wrote about the reports of sexual harassment at Uber and how CEO Travis Kalanick had created a culture that promoted this sort of behavior. However, I was enthused to hear that high-profile board member Arianna Huffington was stepping in and vowed to make sure that Uber would no longer be at the mercy of “brilliant jerks.”

Sadly, my rejoicing was premature. Huffington told CNN today that she and the head of human resources at Uber had spoken to hundreds of women at the company and they had found only “a few bad apples” but “this is not a systemic problem,” she said.

This is an amazingly shortsighted. Employees who work for bullies are highly unlikely to confide anything in the HR department, which is generally seen as being on the side of management. Nor are they likely to confide in a celebrity whose chief goal is damage control. An independent investigative team should have been called in that could guarantee anonymity for the people with whom they spoke. It’s already been shown that HR failed the young woman who reported her experiences on her personal blog, which went viral.

The fact that Huffington reported all of this on national television brings home how self-serving this report was. Even if, as Huffington indicated, Kalanick has “evolved,” and Uber does hire a chief operating officer to help Kalanick run the company, it is naïve to assume that this would do anything to change behavior is ingrained in the workplace culture.

It is perhaps ironic that this report dropped the day after the sitting president of the United States was proven to be a liar. I would imagine that the employees of Uber are like the rest of America—they have no idea who in power they can trust.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Chatham-Kent Health Alliance: A Scathing Report

An investigation was commissioned by Ontario's Minister of Health and Long-Term Care "to examine and report on issues related to the governance and management" of the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance (CKHA). The investigators' report exposed a top heavy management team led by a bully CEO, governed by a negligent and neutered board of directors and a rat’s nest of toxicity. 

As the Faas Foundation is one of CKHA's top donors, we are very concerned on how this disturbing report will negatively affect CKHA's ability to attract and retain health care professionals and donors. This report could also affect the community, in terms of attracting employers and jobs to the area, because health care is a major factor in decisions to locate.

Over the last decade, I have met many CKHA employees and must emphasize that were it not for their passion, dedication and professionalism; patient care would have been severely compromised. 

These people worked under horrible conditions: "The CKHA organizational culture has been frequently described by both hospital and medical staff to be one of fear, intimidation, distrust and an unsafe environment in which to voice their opinions without retaliation. A hierarchical and centralized decision-making management style that also lacked in transparency was also frequently described."

My intelligence is that that the CEO and his cronies on management and the board are feverishly working on a public response to discredit the report. The public and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term care should not get sucked in by this. I can attest to the investigators’ findings, as I have witnessed the CEO in action and have spoken with many employees. Additionally, I was interviewed by a consultant commissioned by the CEO, where I clearly voiced my concerns about the climate, which were consistent with the report’s findings. The report by the consultant who interviewed me made zero mention of the critical comments expressed by myself and others he interviewed, and based on my experience, his report was typical of the 'snake oil salesmen' who tell the CEOs what they want to hear in order to gain additional assignments.

Based on my extensive research and as an expert in organizational culture and dynamics, the situation at CKHA is unfortunately more common than not. 

Thankfully, a Ministry-appointed Supervisor will be selected "to restore robust governance and administrative/clinical leadership to ensure sustainable and appropriate oversight of patient care and financial management." 

To the citizens of Chatham Kent - do not lose faith in what I consider to be a wonderful institution with incredible people who have managed to provide superior patient care under very trying circumstances. Please embrace them and continue to support them - with new management and governance, your investment will pay huge dividends.

To employees everywhere, if you are working in an environment similar to that of CKHA, make your voice heard in a safe way - citing this case study.