Bill Michael's Leadership Reflections

The resignation of Bill Michael of the UK’s KPMG today does not come as a complete surprise. While I have no first-hand knowledge of what went on at KPMG, and apart from the obvious lessons about culture, I am wondering if it may be possible to distil some deeper leadership lessons from this. First - what we do know is that he told the staff in a town hall meeting to stop complaining and moaning about working too hard in the pandemic – suggesting that he is probably not high on the empath scale. Secondly, he appears to criticise the efficacy of unconscious bias training, and in so doing, he puts into question the relevance of unconscious bias in the professional world. He has since apologised for both those remarks. Third, a quick search on KPMG UK reveals that two staff members quit two years ago and went public calling out the culture of working through the night as a "badge of pride”.

It is tempting to see Michael’s departure as a man out of touch with contemporary values and practices. Of course he had to go. Although I do not share Michael’s values as reported in the town hall, I tend to see this as an opportunity to learn something deeper about leadership, rather than the inevitable lesson in contemporary values-based leadership. But let us not forget that the reason we know about this was that people were able to speak up through an anonymous chat during the town hall. Contemporary transparency norms creates freedom that was not possible 20 years ago. But that freedom has enormous consequences for executive leadership. 

My first curiosity is whether a CEO should respond or react to a “moan and complain” script. Although it seems negative, collective moaning and complaining is a well-established method of bonding. It joins departments, organisations and even societies together. (Shall we complain about the weather?) If recognised as such, the job of the CEO is not so much to stamp it out, nor to provide empathy. What might be needed in that moment is what we call containment – holding the emotions of other people including frustrations, fears, anger and resentments. The capacity for containment during this pandemic is differentiating the great leaders from the average ones. 

My second curiosity is why an experienced CEO would react so impulsively, so publicly. Michael probably has lots of his own frustrations. CEO roles are challenging and overwhelming. They are likely to develop a range of coping mechanisms, which includes denigration, displacement, denial and projection from time to time. Perhaps his real frustration with unconscious bias training was about the norm of political correctness. If true, he is not alone. We know there are many other people who would agree with him. But why does this CEO choose this moment in this context to express his contempt for social norms. If we were looking for a positive in this, we might describe it as authentic behaviour, as well as vulnerable and courageous – isn’t he showing us his true values? The fact that I completely disagree with his values does not deny his openness and transparency. But for me the real issue here is one of role. This is where the authenticity movement has got it wrong. Do we really want leaders who show too much of themselves, making them so vulnerable to undesirable consequences? Ironically, I suspect that Michael was not working from the "be authentic and vulnerable" playbook intentionally. He was probably just unloading his own anger and frustration. That’s OK, in a safe place, with people you trust. He's human. CEOs need to do that. But the consequences of doing so at a Town Hall, where feedback comments are anonymous, will ricochet all over the place, creating such chaos that the system has to act. Michael is not alone is his failure to understand the limits of such openness from an executive role. Rather than working on knowing the difference between me the person, and me in the executive in role, role and person became fused as one. The authenticity literature has not helped us to understand these subtleties in executive roles.  

My third curiosity would be the way group projections maintain and sustain cultural norms. The resignation of the two staff members 2 years ago was perhaps an attempt to change organisational and societal norms. By resigning so publicly I presume they sent a strong message to their former bosses, (who apparently dismissed the remarks). I wonder if KPMG has ever had a conversation about the dynamics of authority in its culture. It appears that people moan and complain about working hard, but these so called “victims”, as Michael described them, take up that role as a way of expressing their powerlessness. When the powerful tell the powerless to stop being a victim, it usually leads them to maintaining their victimhood (role theory). But more importantly, it can also be very self-serving for the powerful, because by projecting victimhood onto the victims, they remind themselves that they are not victims. They remind themselves that they are successful go-getters, and that’s why they are powerful. This is called splitting and projection – a little known leadership phenomenon, but every senior executive should be aware of it. 

We all know we can't change a culture by fixing a surface level problem or removing the leader. Whoever replaces Michael will have similar issues to content with, as do all CEOs. It requires deep self-examination as to what leaders get up to without realising it. We will probably never know how Bill Michael will explain his resignation to himself, but I would suggest that his learning will not be complete until he, like all leaders, looks into himself. For a while, he may even feel that he himself is a victim of political correctness gone mad. And of course, he will find people who agree with that narrative. But I do hope he and others can let go of that narrative and allow himself to see what might and could be learnt from this experience. It was not inevitable that he resigned today. Perhaps if he had been more mindful in the moment, the inevitable might never have happened. Once again, change begins with me.