Every month, another leader creates an onslaught of media coverage for being dishonest. Have we lost sight of the importance of leaders with integrity? Why do failed leaders get so much more attention than those who are doing things the right way?
Take, for example, George Santos, whose deceitfulness and fraudulence led to his public lambasting. Santos is just the latest in a long line of leaders for whom integrity has little to no meaning, including Frank’s Charlie Javice, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani, McDonald’s former CEO Steve Easterbrook, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Rife with bravado, New York Congressman Santos campaigned on being the “full embodiment of the American dream.” The only problem was that many of his personal claims—including tentpoles punctuating his education, ethnicity, and work experience—were fallacious. On January 9, Santos was accused of violating campaign finance laws in a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission.
In Santos’s recent interview on Fox News, Tulsi Gabbard asked him, “What does integrity mean to you?” After he skirted the question, she reminded Santos that integrity means “telling the truth.” Santos has since admitted the lies he told during his campaign but has repeatedly refused to take accountability for his actions, referring to them as merely “embellishments” of his resume.
Integrity is not the absence of lying. To solve problems, we need all the information, no matter how painful. As CEO, I often emphasized to my employees that no one will get fired for making a mistake, as we all make mistakes, but you will get fired for covering them up. Only after we agree on the truth can we gather people together to develop solutions to problems.
Integrity requires the willingness to speak up, even when the truth paints you in a bad light. History has continually shown that a lack of integrity can lead to dire consequences. Not infrequently, entire organizations get caught up in their inability to admit the truth, as the Roman Catholic Church and Boy Scouts of America did in the sexual abuse scandals that cost them billions in legal settlements.
For a business example, look at Boeing and the crashes of two 737 MAX aircraft that killed 346 people—a topic covered in two Harvard Business School case studies I wrote. On October 29, 2018, Lion Air 610 from Jakarta, Indonesia, crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff. All 189 passengers and crew aboard were killed.
Investigations revealed that a design flaw in the aircraft’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) contributed to the crash. In its November press release, which the NTSB later flagged for omitting pivotal facts, Boeing said that its customers “have our assurance that the 737 MAX is as safe as any airplane that has ever flown the skies.”
Just five months later, another 737 MAX—Ethiopian Airlines 302—crashed, killing 157 passengers and crew. Again, investigators cited MCAS as the cause. Still, Boeing did not ground the 737 MAX, forcing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to do so. FAA took 20 months and numerous changes before the 737 MAX was approved for flights again. In September 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Boeing with making materially misleading public statements following the crashes, saying: "Boeing ... put profits over people by misleading investors about the safety of the 737 MAX.”
The Santos and Boeing cases are not unique. Consider these recent examples:
- According to JPMorgan’s lawsuit against Frank founder Charlie Javice, the nation’s largest bank had been “conned” after it acquired her company for $175 million. “To cash in, Javice decided to lie,” JPMorgan’s suit said.
- FTX under Sam Bankman-Fried used investor funds to bet on cryptocurrencies, losing millions of dollars. Bankman-Fried is under federal indictment.
- Tesla’s Elon Musk is facing trial for deceptively driving up the price of Tesla stock by falsely claiming to have the “funding secured” to take his company private.
- Theranos under Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani made false claims about the safety of its single-drop blood test. They have been found guilty and sentenced to prison sentences of 11 and 13 years, respectively.
- Former McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook agreed to pay a $400,000 fine and accept a five-year ban on serving on public company boards on January 9 for making misleading statements to the SEC about his sexual relationships with employees.
- On January 18, Meta under Mark Zuckerberg was fined $414 million for violating European Union privacy laws.
These leaders seemed to believe they could con the public with their ideas, mistruths, and false narratives. Eventually, the truth caught up with them.
Telling the truth requires transparency, something prevaricators are reluctant to embrace. Yet without knowing the truth, leaders can never reach sound solutions to problems. Even worse, lying or stretching the truth creates a lack of trust between people that makes it nearly impossible to work together. Integrity is woven into each—without it, you can’t have transparency, trust, or solutions.
Having a healthy society requires leaders with integrity so that all participants can agree on the truth. That is why it is so essential to choose leaders for their integrity and hold them to a high standard.
Bill George is the former chairman & CEO of Medtronic and currently a senior fellow at Harvard Business School. He's the author of True North, The Emerging Leader Edition.
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