One of the most important, and visible, aspects to leadership is answering the question of guilt and innocence. As a manager/leader, we are often placed into a position to adjudicate situations where we must determine what these factors are. The way we handle this issue, can have significant influence, and impact, on other peoples lives. This impact can be in ways that we often never consider. The separation between a good leader/manager, and a great one often comes down to the perception of others on how they carry out this determination and how it is used. This often requires the leader/manager to look impassionately at the situation; remove all, or most of the emotion. This is not an easy task, but it is very important to acknowledge its existence, at the very least. The question then becomes of you as a leader, do you practice this skill? Removing emotion in the decision making processes is not as easy as you think it is. How did we accomplish this objective? One way is to look at how we gather the information regarding the situation. This can give insight as to how to look at the situation dispassionately. For instance, did you gather the information first hand, do the “investigation” yourself, or did we have someone else do it? Some situations hit “very close to home” to us, this means that we will have emotions deeply embedded into them, just because of the issue. There is nothing wrong with this, but we need to recognize this fact, so that we can compensate for it correctly. For example, did you consider how our own emotions play into your evaluation of the “evidence”? Consider the O.J. Simpson murder case. In many people, just the mentioning of the situation create strong feelings. Do we consider how these feelings can impact our interpretation of the facts in the case? If you think they do not have an impact, I would suggest that you need to reevaluate that concept. If we have strong emotions regard a specific situation of concern, we need to acknowledge this, and be sensitive to how that may affect our decision making process. If we consider this, others will acknowledge this, and will respect our decisions much better. This brings a greater credibility to you as a leader/manager. Another aspect to be considered, in regards to how facts are obtained, is it this was completed by someone other than yourself. Why is this important? Consider their own emotional basis with the situation. Better yet, were these basis even disclosed to you? Would you assume that the person gathering this information already consider this factor? Did this consideration ever cross your mind?
So why are we asking these questions, why is this important as a leader/manager? Let us look at a very recent event, one that sparked emotions by almost every person in this country. On July 9, 2018, Federal Appellate Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the United States Supreme Court. This is one of the most important appointments in the country. The Supreme Court makes decisions that affect every person in the country. This appointment is very significant as it brings up so many consideration, many, most of us do not even think about. In this particular nomination something occurred that created such a public out cry, that it brought forth emotions to almost every person in the country. These strong emotions created a basis in every person’s opinion, that many would not even consider how it affected their decision making process.
To see the depth of this impact, in this situation, we need to first understand how the process works. The Constitution of the United States, Article II lays out how a Supreme Court Justice will be appointed. The President will nominated an individual and than the Senate will give “Advice and Consent”.* This is part of the checks and balances to our form of government. The idea is that no one person has “complete” power over everything in the country. This is an extremely interesting process, since the Constitution clearly states that their is a clear separation between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches. This is to allow each branch to be independent of the other, yet not to gain complete control. To place this in context, one person does the nominating, and 100 people “approve” them. The nice thing about this process is that it only takes a majority of the votes to approve the nomination, one more than half of those casting a vote. As a leader, how hard is it to get five people on the same page and in agreement on a none emotional subject, let a lone 51 on a highly emotional subject, provided that all of them vote.
So here lays a significant leadership issue, just in the process. When you add the emotional part to this equation, you open even more doors for presupposition to play a part in the decision making process. So as a leader/manager, how do we learn to look st situations objectively? There are many techniques that help to training you to master this skill. One way is to look at facts and not the context. What does this mean? Well let us look at this situation, and not to take any side, but demonstrate a way to to discover guilt or innocents, with a more objective approach.
In almost ever situation that you will be involved with, there will be one common factor, someone was hurt in some form. What should be on your mind the most, is how do you show compassion for this harm, yet not create a presupposition towards anyone else involved in this situation? Think about this for a moment, an individual is raped; this act alone stirs strong emotions with anyone. How do you limit these emotions and not allow them to influence judgement towards the “accused” person? The best way is to collect the facts, in a dispassionate manner. What does this mean? It starts with the 5 W’s; who, what, when, where, and why. We should all remember this from our primary or secondary school education. As information is gathered and analyzed, the reliability of this information must be considered. A study by Stanley and Benjamin ** demonstrates that the more often a person recalls a list of facts, the more inconstant it becomes. This is a technique used by law enforcement, repetitive questioning, to “identify inconsistency”. When in reality, it just places the brain on overload, and causes all the information to become cluttered, and unreliable. Let us also take into account the time factor. One of the earliest researchers in memory retention, Ebbinghaus, discovered that 50% of our memory of an event is lost after the first hour. *** In law enforcement and prehospital care, there is a saying regarding facts; if it is not written down, it did not happen. There is a reason for this, accuracy and reliability. The problem is, especially at the time, we may not know what is truly important, related to the situation. This is why some things are left out of reports during an investigation; the old adage hindsight is always 20/20 is very true. Remember what you know today, is not what you knew last week; therefore judging decisions made, which did not have this information, is unfair and unreasonable.
As a leader/manager it is extremely difficult to adjudicate a person’s guilt or innocence, but never the less it is part of the job. Using objective facts is the best way to accomplish this, but that is not an easy skill to learn. This is why we have to stay true to certain philosophical concepts. In our legal system, all persons are presumed innocence, it is up to the government to prove the guilt. This is the same in our civil liability system as well. The accused is innocence until the accuser proves their facts. This may be an easy task, with regards to some situations that do not spark such high emotions. It is especially challenging in cases where the facts come down to “he says, she says”; no credible collaboration of facts. Yet in today’s society, situations like this occur more and more frequent.
Things like the “Me Too” movement have sparked deep and high emotions on all sides of the discussion. It comes down to how any individual is being treated, not just women. Although typically it is a man that has acted in some unethical and unprofessional way, there are also women that have as well. It is these deep seeded emotions on the subject that creates the issue. These emotions also lie deep in many other situations as well. Acknowledging them and how they affect our objective decision making process, is what set an individual apart as a great leader/manager.
So how do we accomplish this objectivity? It comes down to the credibility of the facts. During an investigation, this aspect is often overlooked. So what makes a fact creditable or not? An accuser brings forth an accusation of wrong doing. How soon after the incident did this come to light? For example, a situation that is being reported the day after it occurred, can obtain much more accurate information, than one that is reported years after the event. If the incident occurred yesterday, finding witness, and obtaining their facts are much easier. If it occurred years prior, this task could be daunting at the least. This also posses the concern regarding accuracy of recalled memories. In this situation, collaboration is of more importance. Then the question must be asked, is the information obtained about the incident, similar. A witness to a situation will have a similar recollection as the accuser. If not,then the question needs to be asked, why not?
This is not a course on how to perform an investigation, there is not enough time here for that, but this is a primer for you to start thinking along these lines. More and more we are seeing peoples lives destroyed by unsubstantiated accusations. As a leader/manager yo have an obligation to consider all facts objectively. What you do will impact others to a deeper point than you would normally consider.
People like Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas have had their lives tainted for ever. What about those that you lead, will you impact their lives in a manner like this for ever, with a lower standard then that of a criminal? The thought here is this, if someone did something wrong, it needs to be rectified, but the question must also be considered, why is the accusation being brought forward now? No one in the world today has a 100% pure reason for bringing information forward; they will always gain something. This may be nothing more than recognition, but they will gain something from it. This means that looking at “he said, she said” situations need to be scrutinized much closer. Put yourself in that person’s place; you believe yourself to be innocent of the accusation, would you like to believe that others are treating you fairly as well?
* U.S. Const. art. 2 § 2, cl. 2
** That’s not what you said the first time: A theoretical account of the relationship between consistency and accuracy of recall; Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2016; 1: 14
*** Ebbinghaus H. Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. Teachers College, Columbia University; New York: 1885.