Who’s Fooling Whom?

The first day of April is celebrated in many different countries as a time when people play practical jokes and hoaxes on each other. Perhaps you have been the perpetrator or recipient of such mischief over the years. Hopefully the only damage done was a bruised ego or a gentle reminder not to take yourself too seriously.

Being fooled in the workplace is more likely to have some lasting impact. Leadership is dependent on integrity and if one’s words and actions can’t be trusted it is easy to see why performance and relationships will suffer. It only takes one incident where the truth is compromised to affect a leader’s credibility. If no apology is forthcoming, or the leader simply ignores their culpability, then trust is damaged and followers learn not to be fooled a second time.

I’ve never understood why leaders seem so foolish as to believe their own versions of the truth without testing what others might see first? Why would a leader risk taking action if they knew that others on the team have contributions to make? Wouldn’t it be smarter for leaders to admit that they don’t know everything?

One reason this fool’s approach still works is because too many leaders have surrounded themselves with persons who are only too willing to defend every idea or decision made. Perhaps they are trying to protect their own self-interest through this behavior but in so doing are unwitting accomplices to the foolishness that results. Leaders often fail to tell the truth when the situation demands it, like a need for layoffs or when morale takes a turn for the worse.

The fools who call themselves leaders today might take to heart this advice from former President Ronald Reagan, “The character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined by...the little choices of years past — by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation, whispering the lie that ‘it really doesn’t matter.’” Who in the workplace gets to challenge your version of the truth? Are you willing to give them credit for their great ideas? Your answer to these questions may also apply to the basic query of this post. Who’s really fooling whom? I hope you’re not surprised by the answer.