Tlhogi Ngwato | Why Silence Is NOT Golden - 5 Sins Leaders Make

Steinhoff's former Chief Executive Markus Jooste appears in parliament to face a panel investigating an accounting scandal that rocked the retailer in Cape Town, South Africa, 5 September 2018. Reuters/Mike Hutchings/File Photo

Sugar coating

Often, in business advisory we want read the room a little too much and end up sugar coating what we shouldn’t be. Using euphemisms like, “PR crises or governance lapses.” But they are more fundamental than that. These are leadership failures, and they tend to follow the same pattern. Real, very public ways.

The best way to discuss the leadership sins that playout so often in our corporate lives is through a series of cases that we have all watched unfold, and all we could as the public was gasp. But what were the people in the room doing? Are they aware and are we so far gone that not a single person in these rooms saw it fit and necessary to caution or act against?

Here are the five sins leaders keep committing and the cost of each.

1. The denial of accountability

When the South African retail giant Steinhoff collapsed under an accounting scandal, the leadership response was telling. CEO Markus Jooste resigned and all but disappeared. The board downplayed its role. No public ownership. No credible turnaround narrative. Just silence and lawsuits. The absence of accountability creates a vacuum gets filled with distrust, speculation. Importantly, more than $12bn in shareholder value was wiped out after Steinhoff’s accounting fraud was exposed. South Africa’s Government Employees Pension Fund alone lost R20bn, hurting teachers, police officers, and public sector workers who had no say in the decisions but bore the consequences.

Behind the numbers were real people. Pensioners whose savings were suddenly uncertain. Employees who lost jobs as subsidiaries downsized or shut down. Communities hollowed out by the ripple effects. And Markus Jooste? could be on island somewhere under the name Frank Black. Eventually, the workers and retirees struggling to make ends meet.

The lesson: Trust doesn't collapse when something goes wrong. It collapses when no one owns the outcome.

2. Charisma over governance

Sugar giant Tongaat's former CEO Peter Staude was seen as a high-performing visionary. But his version of performance was propped up by accounting irregularities that overstated profits and asset values. Staude, overstated profits by up to R4.5bn, while his board cheered its CEO on instead of asking the tough questions. The fallout was catastrophic. The company posted a R1bn annual operating loss, was fined and sued, and eventually entered business rescue. Leaving shareholders with nothing and workers with pink slips. The board failed to intervene or challenge his narrative until the damage was done. When leadership becomes synonymous with a single personality, bad news gets buried and oversight goes soft.

Lesson: Governance isn’t about box-ticking. It’s about protecting an organisation from the blind spots of its most powerful players.

3. Strategic opacity

The recent controversy surrounding President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline didn’t explode because of the condition itself. It exploded because of a cover-up. For months, the administration insisted everything was fine. Even as concerns about the President’s cognitive decline grew louder. His inner circle maintained a public narrative that “everything is fine” even as evidence mounted to the contrary. By the time the truth emerged through leaks, visible missteps, and inconsistent briefings trust had already eroded. Not just in the president, but in the people around him. Now that the cover-up has untravelled, the institutional cost is profound.

• Public confidence in leadership has eroded
• Voters feel misled, fuelling polarisation and apathy
• Staffers are facing congressional subpoenas and reputational damage
• The media, having missed the story, is now scrambling to restore credibility

Corporates do this too: issuing vague statements, hiding behind audits, and saying “the matter is under investigation” instead of facing facts. While we don’t know if anyone has lost a job, trust in the highest office in the U.S. is damaged. And once that slips the ability to lead internally or globally weakens. Enter the problem.

Lesson: Invisibility and spin don’t delay a crisis. They compound it.

4. Overpromising and underdelivering

From Eskom’s shifting timelines on ending load-shedding to public-private mega projects that never break ground, leaders have learned to speak in stretch goals that rarely materialise. Over time, this approach doesn’t inspire confidence it destroys it. Internally, teams disengage because they know the targets aren’t real. Externally, stakeholders stop listening.

The stark reality in the March 2024 records: 

• Net loss after tax: R55bn
• Net loss before tax: R25.5bn
• Gross debt: around R424–440bn; debt servicing ~R72bn annually 
• Municipal arrears: R74.4 billion in 2023, now R95 billion. With R110bnprojected by March 2025
• Load-shedding impact: 329 days of outages 

The human cost you ask.

• Small businesses: 44% severely affected; 40% lost 20%+ in revenue; 1 in 5 likely to cut staff
• Students left without lighting for study
• Clinics struggle to refrigerate vaccines (80% affected) 

This is what systemic leadership failure looks like: not one headline-making moment, but a slow erosion of hope, capacity, and economic dignity.

Lesson: Credibility compounds the same way mistrust does. And once it’s lost, press releases won’t bring it back.

5. Neglecting culture until its rotten 

Cultural corruption isn’t visible until it blows up. This is seen as talent leaves, performance tanks, or corruption emerges. Think Eskom’s $122m corruption settlements, or whistleblowers punished, and internal safeguards ignored. Leadership teams often treat culture like a second-tier issue, something to workshop later. But when silence is rewarded, whistleblowers are punished, and toxic behaviour is tolerated, trust erodes from the inside out.

Lesson: Leaders don't just shape strategy. They shape norms. And norms determine how resilient a company is under pressure.

Leadership is trust infrastructure

These sins don’t belong to one company, one government, or one geography. They’re everywhere and they’re predictable. Trust isn’t a comms problem. It’s a leadership one. When executives dodge responsibility, spin the facts, or ignore culture, they don’t just weaken their organisations, they break the systems they lead. The boardroom, the cabinet, the Exco. They become theatre, not leadership.

If leaders want trust, they need to earn it in the moments that matter. Not with statements. With decisions. Until that changes, we’re not in a leadership crisis.
We’re in a leadership vacuum.