Forgiving Our Dark Side

On Saturday I listened to BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Bottom Line’ hosted by Evan Davis.  The topic was ‘leading in a crisis’ and one of the guests was Michael Woodford, ex-President of Olympus, who shortly after taking on his new role, exposed a major fraud at the company and was sacked for his efforts.

Following his appointment as President of the company, a contact tipped him off about a possible fraud involving the purchase for over $1bn, of 3 small, obscure companies, which themselves had virtually no turnover.  As he pursued the story, and was beginning to get close to the source of the problem, he was suddenly called into a meeting with the Chairman, Kiku Kawa, his mentor and the man responsible for his appointment.   As he entered the Board room, Kawa was sitting on one side of the table with a great platter of luxury sushi in front of him; opposite, in front of Woodford’s seat, was a ‘manky’ tuna sandwich, unadorned and just slapped on a plate.  The message, Woodford reflected, was that he was the ‘tuna sandwich’ of the food chain.

Undeterred, he continued to ask questions relating to the fraud trying to resolve the issue in private, but, on failing to achieve anything, his investigations culminated in him presenting his evidence to the board and asking for the resignation of the Chairman.  An extraordinary board meeting was called, and instead of acknowledging the case against Kawa, they fired Woodford.

The share price subsequently fell $7bn, 82% of the value of the company was lost and yet the institutional shareholders did nothing about the fraud or about Kawasan who continued as Chairman.  When asked what he had learned as a result of the affair, Woodford concluded:

“Most people don’t care a dot about anyone else but themselves and their nuclear families and that surprised me…after I was fired, people ran with the pack, with the new order and that still haunts me today.  Some of those colleagues in America, the UK and Germany had held my babies in their arms, they’d gone on holiday with me and there was no text message, they didn’t have to say anything, just “how are you”.  And that has left me feeling rather jaundiced about human nature’

When the other guests on the show demurred, claiming that this was an unnecessarily grim view of human nature, Woodford retorted, that most people are never tested and that none of us know how we will react until we are put to the test.  When put to the test his corporate ‘friends’ treated him as ‘persona non grata’ which, for Woodford, was “very hard to describe, it’s a horrible thing to go through”.

At this point it would be appropriate to talk about forgiveness.  But, something complex and profound happened to Woodford as a result of his experience.  He doesn’t have to forgive just one person who wronged him – that would be relatively easy.  He has to forgive ‘humanity’.  He has seen through the veneer of human nature – he has seen our dark side – the instinct to self-protect and to sacrifice the ‘other’ in our own self interest.  As a result of his experience he has lost his innocence; his view of human nature has changed and he has become cynical, upset and, I suspect, angry.   

I have written about similar cases to Woodfords in my book about leadership blind spots and I feel I understand a little about where he is coming from.  As Evan Davis and his guests pointed out, people behave differently when things go wrong and when they are under pressure.  None of us know how we would respond if a friend is sacked and we are made to feel that contacting him or her would endanger our own careers and jobs.  All of us have a dark side and none of us know exactly when or where that dark side will emerge. 

So rather than suggest Woodford ‘forgive’ those who wronged him, I feel that we need to learn to forgive humanity and to forgive ourselves.  The best way of doing that is to confront our dark side, to acknowledge that the instinct to protect ourselves and to sacrifice the other is deeply embedded in our psyches and to hope that when we are tested we will not be found wanting.  And when the reality of humankind’s cruelty, selfishness, greed and ruthlessness all gets unbearable, a period of silent reflection, in retreat from the world, contemplating some of the beauty we have been gifted might help to soften the pain:

The peace of wild things by Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.