It’s hard to let the whole Penn State nightmare sink in. It’s almost too painful to think that over many years, lives were destroyed because an organization thought it more important to build the reputation of a college football program. As someone who studies the role of leadership in all aspects of life, I see failure here at an epic proportion.
But if you think the story is only about Penn State, you’ve missed the lesson.
The most important lesson that comes out of the Freeh Report is recognizing the variables that allowed it to happen, and that those variables exist today in many places. Joe Paterno didn’t start his career intending to create a safe haven for a pedophile. My guess is that his goal at the start of his career was to create a great university football program. He built his reputation on the importance of team – even taking pride in the fact that player names didn’t appear on jerseys because it was the team that mattered. His players had the highest graduation rate, and America touted him as a role model. It all sounded good, didn’t it? But somewhere along the way, Penn State football became so important that even a group of janitors didn’t think they should report an incident about a kid getting sexually abused.
It’s all about culture.
One of the most powerful tools that leaders seek to create is a strong culture. A set of norms, behaviors, values and beliefs that drive an organization – with a common language, a shared goal, and causes for celebration and reward. Supplementing an organization’s written policies, strong cultures prescribe unwritten rules of how to act, how not to act, and when it’s appropriate to challenge and question. There is a high level of trust, because behavior is predictable. Leaders are admired, respected and sometimes even revered.
It can be great to work in a place with a strong culture. It’s easy to feel a sense of belonging, and in many cases, it feels like a family. But those who have experienced them realize that strong cultures hold both a positive and negative side. Anyone who has ever joined an organization with a strong culture has heard phrases like, “That’s not how we do it here”, and “We operate like a family”. Both of these phrases indicate an atmosphere of familiarity and belongingness…and both contain a dangerous dark side. Inferred in comments such as these is a sense of exclusion and risk in rocking the boat. In fact, among the myriads of published articles about what happened at Penn State is a telling story of how one outsider, Vicky Triponey, was received. The more leadership is entrenched in an organization, the greater the likelihood of finding organizational blinders that are opaque if not impenetrable.
The key to success is retaining the positive aspects of a strong culture without allowing the negative side to take over. How can leadership create a sense of team and belonging without getting so insulated that the organization becomes reluctant or even afraid to deliver bad news? The answer lies in maintaining “space” to allow for objectivity and honesty, and frankly, not letting people get too comfortable.
In addition to individual responsibility for maintaining this balance, best organizations recognize that institutional leadership is needed to keep personalities in check. In addition to those who have responsibilities for the day-to-day operations, it’s essential for those who have governance and oversight (including administration and boards of directors and trustees) to understand not only what results are being achieved, but also how it is happening. This takes time and attention that might seem unnecessary when things appear to be in order, but in the case of Penn State, a closer look into the aspects of the football program culture by someone in an oversight capacity would have set off alarm bells that might have prevented some of the tragedies.
Here are some “red flags” that organizations should consider on a regular basis to diminish the negative aspects of a strong culture:
- What’s the tenure of our leadership team? Have they all “grown up” together?
- When’s the last time someone new (from the outside) joined? How were they received?
- Are decisions always made by the same handful of people despite what the organizational chart dictates?
- Does any one person’s opinion always weigh more heavily than others?
- How do we get bad news? How are whistleblowers treated?
- What are our follow up procedures for complaints that are filed? How do we "close the loop"?
- How do lower parts of the organization behave around leadership? Are people comfortable speaking their minds or do they seem only interested to please?
- Is there an individual leader who acts as though they should be “left alone” to handle problems and considers others who get involved to be meddlers?
- If key leadership were to leave, what would change?
In a letter he wrote to Bishop Mandell Creighteon in 1887, John Acton stated famously, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” It is a statement that many others have paraphrased, but few ever internalize. In the quest for power, men and women throughout history have demonstrated an inability to keep priorities clear, and the Penn State story is just another textbook case study.
In the aftermath of this nightmare, every organization, be it a school, church, company or club, should be asking itself the question, “Could this possibly happen here?” This wasn’t a story about a football team, a coach, or even a university. This was a story about a blatant lack of leadership to preserve a culture of entitlement for those on the inside. If we pick apart contributing factors, the value sets and behaviors might be more familiar than we care to admit.
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