Survival Guide: What to Do When You See Something Wrong

In this episode, I'll show you what people who hear a concern are really protecting, how they protect it, what our understanding of personality-related behaviour adds, or doesn't, and to the same perspectives in three high-profile corporate failures, and what changes them. I'm Nick Kecker. I'm an organisational psychologist.

I spent more than 25 years in and around the boardrooms of all kinds of different businesses, large and small. This is what the research actually says. And, First, what are we talking about? Researchers call raising a concern with somebody who could act on it, voice. When the concern is about wrongdoing, it's called whistleblowing.

Most of it never makes the news or even reaches a newspaper. It's typically just an email, like hers. The word retaliation can also mislead people, because it suggests a dismissal. Everybody tends to notice a dismissal, so it's rarely the first form of retaliation, or the most common. Let's look at her eight months again.

In a survey of 1,167 public sector employees who had been mistreated at work, retaliation after they spoke up targeted either their work or their standing with colleagues, which one depended on their own power and on the power of the person they had spoken up about. The pre-meeting and the appraisal are the work.

The rerouted questions are the standing. A third form is the one people often miss, questioning the psychological state of the person giving voice to the concern. In interviews with whistleblowers, researchers found organisations portraying the person who had spoken out as mentally unstable and reliable, which undermined the concern without ever answering it.

The European Whistleblowing Directive lists medical referrals among the forms of retaliation that Member States must prohibit. So, four forms. Against a person's work. Against a person's standing. Against a person. And last and least often, formal action. Each step has its own innocent explanation, which is why the person it happens to is often the last to see the pattern of retaliation.

Before going on, here are four things this is not, because a pattern like this is easy to misinterpret. It's not proof that every concern is right or justified. Some people raise concerns in good faith, but they misread the situation. The research I found doesn't say how often concerns turned out to be unfounded, and I'm not going to suggest otherwise.

It's not proof that every cool email is retaliation. Some are. Some are just a busy colleague having a bad week. What matters is the pattern of behaviour, not a single incident. It's not a personality test. Later I'll talk about the big five and the darker personality traits as commentary on what those traits typically predict.

None of it is intended to characterise anybody you know. A forceful boss isn't necessarily displaying dark traits. And it says nothing about what the director is, or about the person who spoke up. A concern raised isn't a finding, and the person concerned is owed the same fairness as the person raising the concern.

If, by the end of this episode, you aren't encouraged to reflect on the circumstances behind these situations, I've failed. Because How bad are the outcomes, usually? The truthful answer is that the best-known numbers come from the very worst of cases. A survey of 35 whistleblowers in Australia found that every single one of them suffered negative consequences for their disclosure.

A Dutch study of 27 whistleblowers found the mental health impacts on those giving voice to their concerns were closer to those of cancer patients when compared with matched control subjects. Those findings are real, but people recruited through a support group are people who needed support. The worst cases tell you how bad it can get, not how often it does.

Cast the net wider and the picture is patchy. Across 1168 American whistleblowers, long-term income fell by about 8.6% with no evidence of social costs. That's a real price for speaking up, but also a long way from being ruinous. What decides the outcome? A study of 6,470 military personnel looked at what happened when people reported harassment.

Reporting it formally didn't improve their outcomes and sometimes made them much worse. The damage traced to what followed, the remedy offered, the minimising retaliation, and whether the procedure itself felt fair. A pooling of 26 samples, more than 18,000 people, found that the situation, not the person who spoke up, better predicted retaliation.

If the situation is a determining factor, then the explanation lies with the people who create the situation. That is where the rest of this episode goes, and why it's interesting from a psychological perspective. That's why People first protect the group's good name, and the evidence here runs the opposite way of what people might assume.

In three experiments, Australians read identical criticism of Australia. They were less defensive when it came from a fellow Australian than when criticism came from a foreigner, because they assumed the insider meant the criticism constructively and was better positioned to make it. Insiders get the better hearing until they look disloyal.

In three experiments on disloyalty, members of one group who defected to a rival group were judged more harshly than outsiders who did the same. To date, nobody has tested either of these effects on whistleblowers directly. The second thing is the manager's competence. Staff whose input challenged how things were done got lower performance ratings, and in an experiment, challengers were seen as less loyal.

When managers' confidence in their own ability was low, they asked for less input and rated the people who spoke up less favourably. Across five studies, managers backed the same input less when it was raised in front of others. So the question to ask yourself before you speak out is less about whether the person will agree, and more about how secure they'll feel when they hear what you have to say.

Hasta The third thing is a story people tell themselves about being good. Most of us believe we and our colleagues are decent people. Wrongdoing so close to home doesn't sit well with that. Psychologists call the reasoning process that switches off our usual moral checks and balances moral disengagement, relabeling what happened as something milder or seeing the person harmed as having brought it on themselves and being in some way deserving.

A measure of it predicts unethical conduct at work. A theoretical paper proposed it as one route to retaliatory behaviour and that's untested theory. The fourth turns from the message to the motive. We explain other people's behaviour by the character more than by the circumstances and the same input is judged more favourably when the person speaking out seems well-intentioned.

So the conversation moves from what she reported to why she reported it. It rarely moves back. The fifth is the way things are done. In two experiments people were more willing to shut out the colleague who reported a theft than the one who committed it. In a survey of whistleblowers bullying by colleagues followed bullying from superiors.

That's her director's two managers. They watched him stop inviting her and they followed suit. Nobody told them to. Nobody needed to. No. Before the sixth thing, the question everybody asks, is this about personality? Here it is as commentary on typical tendencies, not as a specific behavioural profile.

Starting with the people who speak out. In two Norwegian surveys, people who had blown the whistle were more extroverted and less agreeable than those who had not, although the effect sizes were small. Less agreeable, not saintlier. Low agreeableness usually means less concern for keeping the peace, making someone more likely to say unwelcome things, and to say them in a way that grates.

That's inferred from the trait, not a specific finding about whistleblowers. Across 26 samples, personal characteristics predicted what people said they would do, far more than what they actually did. Now for the leaders. Across 245 samples, Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy were each linked to harmful behaviour at work.

And those leaders that were more narcissistic tended to ask for less input. Psychologists describe this process as trait activation. A trait-related behaviour shows itself where the situation activates the trait. For example, an extrovert doesn't display extroverted behaviour if they're alone in an empty room.

Similarly, leader Machiavellianism was associated with abusive supervision only when rules were weak. In this case, the rules determine the situation. No study I could find measured the personality profiles of leaders who retaliated against those who spoke out about bad behaviour. This is an inference only.

The sixth is control and it amplifies as the stakes grow Under threat, people and organisations narrow what they attend to concentrate control in fewer hands and fall back on familiar responses That's an established theory, not one tested specifically on whistleblowing The public record shows the same behavioural patterns at scale These are records of what organisations did and they say nothing about what anybody in them is like At Tenron in 2001, a vice president warned the chairman about the accounting in an anonymous letter Then met him to discuss it Only two days later, outside council answered an in-house question about the risks of dismissing an employee who had raised accounting concerns They advised giving her the transfer she had asked for The first question was legal At Tenron in 2014, a junior employee emailed the founder about quality control The president's reply, as reported, belittled his grasp of the science and lawyers followed, accusing him of disclosing trade secrets What happened at Tenron afterwards and the circumstances became as infamous as the key players involved At Wirecard in 2019, after the Financial Times reported suspected fraud Germany's financial regulator banned new short positions and filed criminal complaints against short sellers and the two journalists which prosecutors later dropped In June of 2020, Wirecard disclosed that 1.9 billion euros could not be confirmed These are three famous corporate failures Chosen because they collapsed due to the lack of response to a whistleblower They all show what happens when nothing stops bad behaviour Not how often it happens If you're facing this situation, here's what you can do and how well each move is supported.

If you're about to raise a concern, start with loyalty. Frame it as a problem the group has and their way through it in the group's own terms. Insiders are heard best when they seem constructive and attached, and input always lands better when a speaker offers a solution. Carefully choose who hears it first and raise it privately where that's safe with somebody who can act on it.

Where it's about your own manager, go to the next level, or to the process specifically built for that and say why. If you copy in somebody outside the team, ask yourself how that will be read to the people on the inside. Research shows that going outside the group is the move most likely to tip a listener from being sympathetic to being something else.

Keep the message about the behaviour, with facts and data, not about your opinion of what the person is. A concern of what somebody did can be answered. A concern about what somebody is invites a difference of opinion, and the more senior person usually wins it. How criticism is received is well evidenced.

Whether it protects somebody reporting misconduct isn't. How do you The next move has no evidence base and I'm calling it out. Don't go it alone if you can avoid it. Get some trusted support. Agree with a colleague in advance that they will back up what you raise. Colleagues who understood why somebody spoke up bullied them less.

But no one has tested whether having an ally protects you and leads to more positive outcomes. Keep a dated record and contemporaneous notes from the day you first raise your concern. Meetings you're no longer invited to. Work routines that suddenly change. The tone of performance review. One cool exchange proves nothing.

A sequence over several weeks is what retaliation looks like from the inside. That's judgement from practice. Something I've experienced and seen myself. Watch for the turn to motive. If the conversation moves from what you reported to why you reported it, bring it back to the facts. A question about your health may be well intentioned, so record it as you would anything else, that change following your call out, and always with the date it occurred.

And don't trade the concern for confidentiality that isolates you. If you're asked to keep it to yourself, ask who will be told and what you'll be told in return. In her case, nobody else knew she had voiced her concern because she agreed to keep it confidential and the request isolated the one and only person who spoke out.

If need If you're the one who hears the concerns, first take notice of what you're protecting. Your company's or team's reputation, your own judgement, your sense that this is a decent place, or your control of something with high stakes. Naming it doesn't remove it, but it does make it less likely to write the reply.

That's experience from practice. Then answer the concern before you consider the person. Decide who looks at the substance, who watches how the person who raised it is treated, and make sure they're different people. Ask yourself if you could justify every change in how they've been treated since they spoke out.

The European directive presumes that a detriment after a report is retaliation, unless the employer can show otherwise. That's a useful test to apply at any level. Close the loop, even when you can't say much. 28 hospital doctors followed over 4 months, often got no reply to their concerns, and most stop raising concerns altogether.

Tone matters too. In two online experiments, a manager who agreed to act on an idea, but did so angrily, left people feeling less safe to speak up again. Psychologists call this effect, psychological safety. Here's how her case could have been done differently. Her director's manager rings her the same afternoon, asks what outcome she wants, and tells her that if the director needs to know who raised it, she will hear from him first. names And if you run the organisation, design the policies and procedures to ensure the response to somebody giving voice to a concern doesn't depend on whoever hears the concern first.

Start by reading your numbers the right way up. Across nearly 2 million internal reports at more than 1,000 listed American companies, firms that received more reports face fewer and smaller fines and lawsuits. That's an association, not proof of a cause, but a quiet hotline isn't good news. Make the rules clear and enforce them.

Machiavellian leadership is associated with abusive behaviour only where rules are weak. Recognise that the rules are a strong lever, and they're within your control in a way that a leader's innate personality profile isn't. And watch the board. In a survey of outside directors at firms that were performing poorly, directors underestimated how many colleagues shared the same doubts, and so kept that doubt to themselves.

So, from practice, four design choices. A process route for concerns that doesn't run through the person whose judgement they question. Investigators who don't manage the person who spoke out. Somebody at board level asks to argue the concerns case. And track what happens to people after they speak out, as rigorous corporate governance best practice, rather than a routine HR matter.

大家 who For people who haven't seen my previous videos, here are some of the limitations of this kind of research. It can't tell you who's telling the truth in your situation, or what kind of people are involved, on either side. It's built from group research data. Behavioural patterns across thousands of people don't reliably describe the person sat at the next desk, or the chief executive in the news.

What it does give you is a way to look at the situation. The group's good name, the manager's competence, the story about being good, the turn to motive, and the questioning about your personal circumstances. And the uncomfortable part. Ordinary people protecting ordinary things turn a question about the organisation into a question about the person, and the organisation decides whether to let them.

In the next episode, the performance review itself. Why what it says can often tell you more about the manager who wrote it than it does about you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank The written version of this episode is on my website, with every citation and limitation included, the three case studies mentioned, and the four things I can't answer.

The link to the article is in the description below, and on the screen now. If you found this episode interesting and helpful, please like and subscribe to my channel. Without your support, my content won't reach other people who may also be interested, and you won't hear about future content. Each episode takes a pattern of behaviour that people get wrong at work.

And in the comments, tell me about the last time somebody in your team raised a concern. What happened? Did it turn out positively? I'm Nick Kecker. Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time, but in the meantime, observe and act differently. Thank you. Thank you. Thank