on financial obligations, or taken other measures to save cost in exchange for protecting their organizations and the majority of their people, turning down a large contract with guaranteed revenue – thereby potentially putting some of our people, their livelihood, and their families at risk – seemed irresponsible, if not downright unethical.
Simultaneously, the client organizations and their leaders who sought support from us, some of whom we were meeting for the first time, were also in new waters. Every organization we encountered was grappling with often unprecedented leadership dilemmas about right and wrong, good and bad, survival and destruction, wellness and illness, diversity and similarity, speed and deliberateness, short-term and long-term needs, even life and death. And few of them had the luxury of time to seek a wide range of perspectives; they wanted perspective, support, coaching, and thought partnership from trusted advisors, which we are, and they needed these supports urgently.
We were clear about the belief that our work delivers meaningful impact and helps leaders and organizations to shape a desirable future; we'd found a way to balance it with the belief that we did not want to cause further harm to our community members or to the world, and we backed that up by not supporting the manufacture and sale of weapons of war. We held the unshakable belief that accepting an organization as our client makes us responsible to be of service to them; our role is to provide them with experiences and support to ensure intentional design of the leadership styles, interpersonal dynamics, and cultures that enable successful achievement of strategy. Although we hadn't thought of it quite so dramatically in the hardy years prior to COVID, we also held the fervent belief that our ability to sustain our firm, to meet our financial obligations, and to employ our people without compromise to their livelihood, their families, and their health care, was good for them, good for the world, and good for business. Now that these criticalities were no longer guaranteed in the ways that we had naively assumed, it was incumbent upon us as leaders to consider the conflict anew.
At first glance, this apparent dilemma sounds like a textbook display of an oft-levied accusation against private-sector organizations and leaders: The moment that financial performance is challenged, values go out the window. But scratching the surface only slightly reveals that this paradigm is not, in fact, present in the most stereotypical way – and almost never is.
The real conflict is between competing dimensions of personal morality, ethical context, and the role responsibilities of the leader – all of which exist in service of good.
So, is it right to turn away revenue that might protect employment, compensation, and benefits during a period of macroeconomic uncertainty and high unemployment? What if completing activities to earn that revenue runs counter to the psychological contract explicitly agreed with the moral view of the organization’s employees? On the other hand, what if engaging in these activities furthers the organization's ethical position – about helping leaders of all kinds to make good judgments and to use their drive and influencing skill to shape the future?
In her book How to Wow: Proven Strategies for Selling Your [Brilliant] Self in Any Situation, author Frances Cole Jones asks herself and her readers, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be friends?”2 It's a straightforward question that begs deeper exploration: What matters most? Intellectual integrity or real relationships? Holding on to our ideas or holding on to other people?
The answer, of course, is both. People and principles are inextricably linked, and it is nonetheless often impossible to make everyday decisions that attend to both with equal passion.
Over and again, leaders are called upon to make complex decisions quickly in ways that fulfill the responsibilities of our roles, that are in line with the ethical expectations of our sociocultural context, and that match our personal morality. The most difficult decisions cannot be made objectively, no matter how many analytics we complete. But understanding the sources of our views, examining rather than blindly accepting our feelings and obligations across stakeholder audiences, and knowing the pressures and incentives of the contexts in which we operate can enable us to make tough calls successfully.
That doesn't mean that there won't be trade-offs and that everyone will be happy with our choices.
Ultimately, I signed the contract, and we took the organization in question into our portfolio as a client. You might stop reading now, convinced that my team and I sold out, that we made an immoral choice to prioritize profit over people, to place our shareholders' interests above our ostensible values. I've considered that possibility plenty of times – both before making the call and since. But the simple action of scribbling my name on a tablet screen belied the hours of self-reflection, team discussion, open debate, process consideration, research, and values clarification that went into making this difficult decision. Confronted with an array of options and a seemingly endless mix of opinions, I am confident that we made the right choice for our firm and our people. We didn't avoid the apparent conflict between our roles as leaders, our personal codes of morality, and the ethical context in which we operate, even (especially) where those dimensions were misaligned. We indulged the challenge, clarified how we would choose, explored the factors driving us toward and away from each potential outcome, and made a difficult decision with insight, empathy, and integrity.
Making Difficult Decisions
How many decisions do you make each day?
What's the toughest decision you've had to make?
Why was it so hard?
How did you ultimately make the call?
Did you get it right?
How do you know?
Our most difficult choices rarely challenge us because we lack information. They're not solved by aggregating data or reviewing spreadsheets or even by using artificial intelligence.
Our most difficult decisions challenge us because they dig at some raw aspect of our humanity: what we believe in our hearts about right and wrong; our hopes and fears about how others will respond to us; and our desire to be good people and to leave legacies that reflect who we believe ourselves to be. They challenge us because they require us to confront conflicts between what we think and what we do, between our view of ourselves as inherently good and choices that mean that not everyone will experience us as good. They require us to recognize that there are few absolutes and lots of nuances. And they require us to recognize that, as the heroes of our own life narratives, we are sometimes the villains in others' life narratives.
By its very nature, leadership – that is, creating the conditions for change in service of generating shared value and meaning – is inherently interpersonal. It requires bringing people together to envision and enable a future that is somehow different from today. Leaders prompt personal and communal growth and development; generate emotional soothing and comfort; inspire new perspectives and ways of being; engender individual, collective, and community wellness, health, and wealth; and help us to know and understand who we are and why we are here.
And because leadership is interpersonal, how we lead today affects real people's real lives right now – and may have consequences for years and even generations to come.
There is a lot for leaders to learn about the sources of and context for our choices, and there is a lot that all of us can learn from other leaders to inform how we make the most difficult decisions of our lives.
Leadership is about tough choices, and making tough choices shows leadership.
We must ask ourselves, then, what kind of leadership we want to show. What kind of leaders – and people – do we want to be? And how does thoughtful,
