Perhaps nothing can make us more cynical than a leader who talks incessantly about integrity and ethical values but then engages in unethical conduct, encourages others to do so either explicitly or implicitly, rewards only bottom-line results, and fails to discipline misconduct. This leader is strong on the communication aspect of moral management but clearly isn’t an ethical person— doesn’t ‘‘walk the talk.’’ It’s a ‘‘do as I say, not as I do’’ approach. Al Dunlap made no pretense about ethics. All that mattered was the bottom line, and he didn’t pretend to be a nice guy. But hypocritical leadership is all about ethical pretense. The problem is that by putting the spotlight on integrity, the leader raises expectations and awareness of ethical issues. At the same time, employees realize that they can’t trust anything the leader says. That leads to cynicism, and employees are likely to disregard ethical standards themselves if they see the leader doing so.
Jim Bakker remains the best public example of
hypocritical leadership. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bakker built Praise
the Lord ministry into one of the
world’s biggest religious broadcasting empires. At its peak, Bakker’s
television ministry reached more than 10 million homes and had 2,000 employees.
Bakker, along with his wife, Tammy Faye, claimed to be doing ‘‘the Lord’s
work’’ as he raked in millions of dollars, convincing the faithful to purchase
a limited number of lifetime memberships in two hotels he claimed would be
built at the PTL’s Heritage USA Christian theme park. The problem was that the
25,000 lifetime memberships in the Heritage Grand Hotel morphed into 66,683
memberships. And, instead of the limited 30,000 memberships at the proposed Heritage Towers , PTL sold 68,755 memberships. You
do the math. It would be impossible to provide promised services to this many
people. On top of that, the second hotel was never completed. The funds donated
for these projects were being tapped to support PTL operating expenses,
including huge salaries and bonuses for the Bakkers and other top PTL
officials. When questioned at times about PTL’s finances, Bakker referred to
the organization’s annual audits conducted by big auditing firms such as
Deloitte and Laventhol. Unfortunately, PTL filed for bankruptcy in 1987, three
months after Bakker resigned in disgrace. The IRS revoked PTL’s tax-exempt
status, and in 1989 Bakker was convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges. He
spent eight years in prison.30
A more recent example of hypocritical leadership is
Lord John Browne, formerly the CEO of BP. Under Browne’s leadership, the
company launched a $200 million ‘‘Beyond Petroleum’’ campaign to promote its
image as a highly socially responsible company that would deliver performance
without trading off worker safety or environmental concerns. But when BP’s Texas City plant exploded and two big oil spills occurred in Alaska , regulators and employees
cited cost cutting on safety and negligence in pipeline corrosion prevention as
causes. It seemed that the Beyond Petroleum campaign was more about words than
action. Greenpeace awarded Browne the ‘‘Best Impression of an
Environmentalist’’ award in 2005, and the CEO was finally asked to resign in
2007 after a scandal in his personal life surfaced. The lesson is pretty clear.
If leaders are going to talk ethics and social responsibility they had better ‘‘walk the talk’’ or risk
cynicism or worse.
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