Exploitation of power is alluring yet risk of career ruin high

The lure of opportunity and riches and having greater access to it can be irresistible, especially to people in power. Oftentimes, leaders can prosper without detection, yet if (when) exposed, it usually becomes calamity.

Such self-inflicted destruction has happened to now former Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh.

A question to be asked is - did she know what she was doing was both unethical and high risk to her reputation and career?

We can assume she had to know yet that’s an untested assumption. While it’s plausible thinking that she knew and decided to do it anyway, she may have also had a glaring blind spot.

Did Mayor Pugh consider alternative decisions to pursue financial gain through the sale of her creative work (children’s book)? What were those choices she declined? Why did she decide against them?

What made impulse control weak?

What was her risk management plan for her personal beliefs about what she was doing and her dangerous actions?

The next “Mayor Pugh” will soon be exposed, whether in the news or not, on a national stage or local one. A lot of similarities will be found in the sub-standard thinking and decision making Pugh exhibited. People are slow learners, you’ll find, and that is a driving force in the crises they are speeding towards, are in now or have endured.

There, however, is always a point where we can learn and protect ourselves before that point of no return.

Pugh will be able to rebuild her reputation yet it will take difficult, painful, work she will prefer to avoid and likely will. Reputation repair, rehab or rebuild is not a place any of us want to be. It can prove highly effective yet doesn’t come without anguish.