The news anchor, Brian Williams, was suspended from the NBC nightly news last week because of a story he told in speeches, not something he said on the air.
Wiliams said that in 2004 as the Iraq war was just starting, he was in a group of helicopters under fire, and that his had been hit. While his helicopter was indeed fired at, it was another helicopter in the group that was hit. Williams “improved” the story and probably drew in his audience in the way he told it. In today’s Washington Post , the article about Williams was titled “Storytelling ability connected Brian Williams with viewers but also led to his downfall”. Ha! There it is again!- our greatest strengths, when overused, are the source of our downfall.
It turns out that Williams was known to exaggerate to tell a great story when he was the subject of an interview, but he was careful and precise in his reporting about others. The Washington Post reported on a couple of other stories Williams told about reporting from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy where the facts did not check out precisely. My favorite storytelling friends all exaggerate or “borrow” facts to make the story better. They don’t change the point of the story, they just take the “facts” up a notch. If they had an editor, she would have made them tone it down or find another example. It appears that no one fact checked Brian Williams.
Where does this show up in your life? Where do you overuse a strength, or get casual about its application? Do you find that your team doesn’t challenge you when you are on a roll, because you are the boss, or an influential leader? Or, maybe they are just stepping back and letting you experience the results of your own hubris. You may not get caught, but if you do, it could be as damaging to your career as this was for Williams. Without some checks and balances, we will all go over the line at some point. Who can you appoint to watch your back- and your mouth?