Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving. ~James E. Faust
It seems that the news w
as inundated with accusations of lying last week; and those being accused are in leadership positions. The first is Brian Williams. The Business Insider reported the following on February 13.
Brian Williams has quickly plummeted to a low point in his career.
Williams, who anchored “NBC Nightly News” until he received a six-month suspension last week, went from being the 23rd-most-trusted person in America a little over a week ago to falling to the 835th spot.
Some NBC insiders have speculated that Williams will not be able to come back from the scandal that has engulfed him since he admitted to embellishing a story from his coverage of the Iraq invasion in 2003.
Williams recounted the story several times over the past 12 years, exaggerating his role in the incident over time. Most recently, he said he was traveling in a helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, but after a veteran involved in the event questioned his story, Williams admitted he was actually riding in another helicopter that was about 30 minutes behind the one that was hit.
NBC launched an internal investigation, and since then other possible exaggerations have surfaced.
And right here at home in Chicago, the Jackie Robinson West little league team who won the National Championship was stripped of their title because of accusations that the adults recruited team members outside of their district in order to enhance their team. It is still unclear to me if the adults did this intentionally or inadvertently, but the fact does remain that some of their players were not residents within the district.
Why do we lie? Especially why do those in leadership positions who have both a great deal of influence and a great deal to lose (i.e., Brian Williams and little league coaches)? Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic wrote about why we lie on January 2, 2015 (prior to either of these announcements) in HBR:
It boils down to the shifting sands of the self and trying to look good both to ourselves and others, experts say.
“It’s tied in with self-esteem,” says University Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman. “We find that as soon as people feel that their self-esteem is threatened, they immediately begin to lie at higher levels.”
People are so engaged in managing how others perceive them that they are often unable to separate truth from fiction in their own minds, Feldman’s research shows.
These recent incidents should give all leaders reason to pause and ask, how engaged am I in managing how others perceive me? Am I unable to separate fact from fiction?