The Risks of Venting on Your Employees

(Bill Michael, formerly UK Chairman of accounting firm KPMG)

Frustration is understandable. Anger too. Yet maybe it’s not so wise to air out your grievances on employees, especially when it comes across as out of touch, selfish and caveman-like.

Bill Michael paid a hard price for his transgressions.

The now-former UK chairman of accounting firm KPMG resigned (I suspect after a conversation with corporate counsel), after reportedly telling his staff in a meeting that they should “stop complaining about the pandemic.” Feeling on a roll and invincible, he added that there was "no such thing as unconscious bias."

Such leadership communication, of course, doesn’t stay in-house much anymore. Michael had to know that he wasn’t bulletproof to getting exposed.

CNN Business reporters Chris Liakos and Will Godley reported on it in their article collaboration, "KPMG's UK boss resigns after telling staff not to 'sit there and moan' about the pandemic.”

“In a video of the meeting published by the Daily Mail,” the reporters wrote, “Bill Michael can be seen telling employees they ‘are in a very lucky sector,’ and ‘can't play the role of victim unless you're sick, and I hope you're not sick... And if you're not, take control of your life, don't sit there and moan about it, quite frankly.”

Of unconscious bias, he pulled no punches, saying "there's no such thing as unconscious bias" and that the idea is "complete and utter crap.”

Regardless of whether we believe something, if other people experience it and do believe it, deciding to tell them that it is “crap,” is akin to throwing a live grenade at them. It’s not going to be received well.

A leader can think such things but it is smarter to gather oneself and then present oneself in a more poised, compassionate manner. Michael needed some executive communications assistance for this conversation, instead of freestyling his way through his negative state of mind, when people expect much more character.

This was a day that he decided to have a meltdown and impale his name, reputation and career well-being.

While I am certain he is still doing quite well financially, I would also confidently speculate that he is experiencing a high-level of stress and ruminating over what happened and “what now?”

Lesson: if you feel triggered, implement some reliable, healthy stress management techniques such as doing breathing exercises, reframe your thinking and consider alternative, gentler, assertive approaches instead of deciding to “Speak when you're angry and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.”

Next Lesson: if you want to vent as a leader, maybe first bounce your planned comments off of someone you trust who will definitely give you unfiltered feedback, no matter how rough it might be. Run it through a second person too. We don’t always have strong self-awareness of our emotional temperature and crazy urges.

Make sure these people, valuable lookouts for you, feel psychological safety to give it to you straight.

Next: consider the risks — all of them — of what you want to communicate and think hard about if you’re willing to pay the price of reputation damage, relationship damage and potential painful career consequences.

What else could you do that would greatly minimize or eliminate risk and still allow you to communicate what you believe is important?