Fail Up

by Tavis Smiley

  This incident was the first encounter that I, a kid from the small town of Kokomo, Indiana, had with what many of us on campus perceived as racism and prejudice. As a sophomore and the highest-ranking Black person in student government, I was often quoted in the media denouncing what had happened to Denver.

  The case took its legal route but, in the process, Bloomington Mayor Tomilea Allison assembled a blue-ribbon commission, the Bloomington Community Progress Council. The group was charged with developing an agenda that would advance the city socially, culturally, and economically. It also recommended community outreach efforts that might, hopefully, prevent another high-profile incident like the one that robbed Denver Smith of his life.

  Our initial introduction—me, as an angry advocate for police accountability, and Mayor Allison, as the city’s top official and defender of all things city-related—was somewhat antagonistic. Still, she took a liking to me and gave me the opportunity to intern for her.

  The biggest part of my job was to serve as the mayor’s liaison to the prestigious community progress council. Imagine the opportunity: There I was—a 20-year-old pre-law/public policy major with a small office in the mayor’s suite. Not only was I studying it at school, I was also helping to shape public policy every day.

  It was beyond cool.

  Mayor Allison trusted me implicitly, so much so that I was allowed to fill out my own time card. To this day, if you asked what motivated me to start padding my time sheet, I don’t know that I can offer an honest answer. It began almost imperceptibly. If I worked six hours, I’d put down eight. If I worked eight, I’d put down ten.

  I justified my actions by rationalizing that I wasn’t really doing anything that bad. They only paid me minimum wage—a meager amount for the huge investment of my time and energy on the mayor’s project. Besides, I needed the extra cash. I was the first person on either my mother or father’s side of the family to ever go to college. The debate team and trying to keep my grades up dominated my busy schedule. I could not let the lack of money jeopardize my success. Survival was the excuse I leaned on to blot everything my parents and my church had taught me about honesty and trust.

  The trust the mayor had in me was not shared by other members of her staff. One day, I was told to report to the office of the deputy mayor, a no-nonsense man who wasn’t exactly enthralled with the mayor’s choice for community liaison.

  The deputy mayor laid out undeniable evidence that proved I had been cheating on my time sheets. I was busted. He immediately checked off the procedure he’d recommend to the mayor—notify the police, have me arrested, fire me, and publicly humiliate me for my actions.

  What?! Until that moment, I had never connected padding a few hours here and there with the police, being arrested, or going to jail! At first I was just humiliated. I had betrayed everything I had learned in life about “truth, truth, and more truth.” But the more the deputy mayor talked, the quicker my humiliation escalated to fear of going to jail.

  I dreaded with all my heart meeting with Mayor Allison the following day. The solemn look in her eyes alone reduced me to Jell-O®.

  “Tavis, you have disappointed me. I never expected this from you,” the mayor said. She never expected me to be a “fabricator, a cheater, a thief.” Without hesitating for a response, she added that I wasn’t just a “thief,” I was the “worst kind of thief” because I stole “the people’s money.”

  In my meeting with the deputy mayor, there was humiliation but no emotion. I didn’t shed a tear. Mayor Allison had me at “disappointed,” but when she hit me with the cold hard fact that I had stolen from taxpayers, that I had violated the people’s trust … well, as my grandfather used to say, “I gave up all kinda water.”

  Admonish but Affirm

  Mayor Allison, who is white, could have chosen a path taken by so many people of authority with little tolerance for wayward Black youth. She could have had me locked up and forever locked out of a promising career. Instead, she did something most people in her position probably never would have considered. She looked across her desk at a sniffling, broken, and humiliated Black college student and decided to affirm his value.

  “Tavis, when I first met you and saw how you articulated and expressed yourself and organized students, I had such high hopes for you,” the mayor began. “No,” she stopped herself, “let me rephrase that. I don’t want to say ‘had.’ I have high hopes for you. I know how successful you can be—and I’m not just talking about what you have to offer Black people. You have so much to offer the American people.”

  Wow! Talk about a teachable moment. Here I am thinking I’m on the verge of being arrested, and this woman not only reprimands me but takes the time to affirm me as well.

  Fast-forward some 25 years and the mayor’s lesson stays with me. When it’s necessary to enforce a serious course correction among my employees, I try to affirm them as well. Over and over again, starting with Mayor Allison, I’ve been reminded that you can correct and even reprimand somebody, but, at the same time, you can also affirm that person. If you are in a position of power, you can also offer a second chance. This simple but powerful act gives the accused a chance to not only learn from the transgression, but it also provides the incentive to never risk losing that respected person’s trust again. At least it did for me.

  Ignoring the advice of her deputy, Mayor Allison laid out, in specific detail, how I would rectify my situation. She expected me to go over all my time sheets and give her the best estimate of what I stole from the taxpayers.

  “I’m trusting that you’re going to do it with every bit of honesty you have in your body,” she said. “And when we figure it out, we’re going to calculate what it is in hours, and you’re going to work off those hours. You’re going to give this time back to the city. In essence, by the end of the day, you will not have stolen from the city.”

  And that’s exactly what I did—calculated those hours to the minute and worked all of them off—and then some. When I paid back the money, there was no patting me on the back. Mayor Allison simply acknowledged that I had lived up to her expectations.

  And that was more than good enough for me.

  After she described how I would pay the city back, the mayor added a final caveat:

  “Tavis, I think you’re going to learn a lesson from this.”

  She was more than right. I learned a life lesson I’ll never forget.

  A Culture of Cheaters

  Today’s headlines are filled with news of cheaters: Former investment adviser Bernard “Bernie” Madoff, sentenced to 150 years in prison for bilking investors out of billions through a massive Ponzi scheme; the collective black eye Major League Baseball received after numerous media reports exposed the extent of performance-enhancing steroid use; city officials in Bell, a small southern California town, arrested and charged with misappropriating more than $5 million in city money for their personal use.

  One of the reasons I’m such a stickler for accountability is because I know what it means to violate the public trust. Although I list theft of taxpayer money among the most egregious offenses, I recognize the common denominator among ripping off voters, stealing from investors, and using steroids—they are all acts of betrayal. Just as I had disappointed Mayor Allison and the citizens of Bloomington, these individuals betrayed dozens, hundreds, even thousands who trusted and respected them.

  These examples are but a few high-profile cases of cheating. Society is filled with so many other more pedestrian examples: executives who fudge their educational credentials or work records on résumés just to appear more experienced and successful; students who plagiarize work from the Internet for better grades; employees who play computer games or chat online or on cell phones while on the company’s dime.

  We rationalize these acts, tell ourselves it’s a temporary means to an end, or it’s really no big deal. In actuality, it is. Be it padding our résumés or time sheets, using company computers for personal reasons, or stea
ling pens or paper towels from work, it reinforces a culture of disrespect and destroys the meaning of personal integrity.

  I remember a Slate.com article I read in 2002 about a whole slew of executives caught that year lying about their educational achievements. These men represented companies like Bausch & Lomb, Veritas Software, and Salomon Smith Barney. According to William Baker, a contributor for the CBS Interactive Business Network, “Stretching in résumés—fiddling with dates of employment to hide long layoffs; inflating the magnitude of your job responsibilities—is prevalent. A common figure thrown about in studies and by human resources professionals is that 40 percent of résumés are not exactly on the level.”

  What does all this mean? Well, it means “the little white lies”—the fudging and skimming and skirting of responsibilities—are now part of our work culture. It means there are thousands, maybe millions, of workers and executives out there paralyzed with fear, afraid their secrets—large or small—will be exposed or their careers will be ruined. It means we live in a society dominated by cheaters.

  My career started on the inside of the body politic working as a public servant. Now, I’m on the outside but still working for the public—with public TV and radio programs. In college, I learned to regard the public’s trust and its money seriously. In media, it’s the same; nothing is more valuable or sacred than the public trust. Whether I’m on TV or radio, delivering a speech, or conducting an interview—integrity is as important to me now as it was when Mayor Allison taught me that tough-love lesson in integrity years ago. From that day forward, I vowed never to disregard, misuse, or violate the public’s trust.

  Likewise, wherever you work, whatever you do, remember: Integrity and trust are so terribly important—not only for your company, but for you, your family, and our society as well.

  Accept Responsibility,

  Make Amends, and Recover

  Because of one stupid, desperate act, everything had exploded in the young college student’s world. Keisha didn’t know if she’d be heading back to school to start her junior year or not. Her mother and father were going through a bitter divorce. The thought of depleting more of her mother’s scarce resources troubled her deeply. She had secured a summer job at a clothing store but hadn’t earned nearly enough to survive another semester.

  One day, when no one was looking, she stole a few hundred dollars from the store’s cash register. As it turns out, someone was looking. The police were called. The honors student who had never committed a crime in her life was arrested. Although her mother made sure the store was reimbursed, she feared charges would be filed against her daughter.

  Keisha’s mother was an acquaintance of mine. She had read my memoir and recalled my experience with Mayor Allison.

  “You were a college student around the same age when you almost lost your way,” she said. The failure had taken a heavy toll on both mother and child. “Will you please talk to her, Tavis?”

  When Keisha and I met, I saw a female version of my younger self. Her shame was palpable. At first, she had trouble even looking me in the eyes. She didn’t need me to chastise her. Everybody in her circle had already done that.

  She needed clear-eyed support, direction, and affirmation as well.

  I sat with Keisha and explained that I’d heard lots of good things about her academic achievement and potential. Then I shared my failure and what I had to do to truly learn my lesson. I explained why saying I’m sorry isn’t enough. What I had learned from the mayor was that my betrayal of trust not only required an apology; it also required making amends. Sorry is a convenient word, but making amends means admitting that you were wrong and making a change. There was a price to pay for failing to maintain her integrity, I said, but hopefully she had learned that a failure or falling down is irreversible only when we fail to take responsibility for our actions and correct our behavior.

  Let’s compare the stories of New York Congressman Charles Rangel, former House Majority leader Tom DeLay, and Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick. The 11 counts the House Ethics Committee issued against Rangel in 2010 charging him with violating its rules were pretty damning. Rangel protested, saying that his actions didn’t rise to the level of House censure, which is the strongest punishment short of outright expulsion. Considering some of the personal misdeeds of Members of Congress within the past 20 years, Rep. Rangel makes a valid point. Although his lawyers insisted that he had not intentionally violated any laws and had not misused his office for personal financial gain, the legendary Congressman is now recorded in history as someone who was censured after violating House ethics, and whose detractors judged him as someone who never accepted full responsibility for his actions.

  Tom DeLay faces a similar designation. In January 2011, the once-bulletproof Texan was sentenced to three years in prison for illegally plotting to channel corporate contributions to Texas legislative candidates. Even after his sentencing, DeLay maintained his innocence based on the defense that he was simply doing what “everybody was doing” and that he was the victim of political persecution. The responsibilitydodging DeLay has vowed to appeal the verdict.

  Michael Vick, on the other hand, claimed his crime and seems to be on an admirable road to redemption. In July 2007, his football career with the Atlanta Falcons came to a screeching halt. After he was indicted for running a dog-fighting operation, Vick was suspended by the NFL without pay and lost all his well-paying endorsement deals. Months before his sentencing, Vick went before the media and apologized to the NFL, the Atlanta Falcons, and his fans for “using bad judgment and making bad decisions.

  “I will redeem myself. I have to.”

  An article in the December 27, 2010, edition of The Christian Science Monitor discussed Vick’s “rehabilitation both as a person and a football player” and his “fairy tale year“ in football after serving 18 months in federal prison. According to the article, Vick credits his sentencing and time in prison with making him a better player:

  “Arguably the best running quarterback in the history of the NFL, Vick has now added patience and better passing to his repertoire, making him a complete pro quarterback for the first time in his career.”

  It’s important to note that someone with power gave Vick a second chance. As the newspaper article pointed out, there was “only tepid interest among NFL teams” when Vick was released. He was signed by the Eagles in 2009 as a backup starting quarterback. When Kevin Kolb was named the Eagles’s starting quarterback, Vick did not complain and showed unequivocal support for the young player. When Kolb was injured early in the 2010 season, Vick got the chance to show what he could do. According to the article, “His performances have turned the Eagles from a team scrapping to make the playoffs into a legitimate threat to reach the Super Bowl.”

  Although Vick and the Eagles didn’t make it to the Super Bowl in 2011, as I was writing this chapter, it was reported that Vick had been named starting quarterback for the NFL Pro Bowl game in Honolulu. His resurgence would have never been as widely celebrated had he not had the courage to admit his misdeeds and the integrity to work toward redemption.

  When You Fall Prey to Human Failing

  What I tried to share with Keisha was the value of integrity. Staying on an honorable path means that you work to identify the temptations and weaknesses and always strive to “catch yourself” before they lead you into difficult situations. I wanted her to understand that, if she does fall prey to human failings, it is so important to take personal responsibility, acknowledge the error, accept the punishment, and make amends to rectify the mistake. You can’t fail up if you cast yourself as a victim or try to rationalize your behavior with a myriad of excuses.

  I asked Keisha to vow to herself that she would not let a thoughtless act turn into a definition of her character. I reminded her of her innate worth and assured her that if she employed the moral compass that her mother had instilled in her and remained true to her values, she would indeed overcome this failure to be
all that she really was.

  Thanks to a lesson learned from a powerful woman and the blessing of a second chance, I was able to confidently leave Keisha with an empowering message:

  “While there’s nothing honorable about trying to get ahead in life by cheating, there’s almost nothing in life from which you cannot recover,” especially if you have help.

  This part applies to those who encounter someone like a young Tavis, a Keisha, or a Michael Vick. When you discipline, it isn’t necessary to destroy. You have the power to reprimand, affirm, and allow individuals to redeem themselves. I believe in redemption and resurrection in both the spiritual and the philosophical senses. Although I’m not much for third, fourth, or fifth chances, I have embraced the value of extending the second chance.

  Shortly before writing this chapter, I had to call an emergency meeting with three employees who had made some very bad decisions that cost the company serious money. Frankly, I laid it on the line. If it happened again, I said, they’d all lose their jobs. But in that same conversation, I made sure that they knew that I valued them, trusted them implicitly, and appreciated everything they had done to help grow our enterprise. Because of that affirming second chance, the employees doubled their efforts to show me that my decision not to fire them was the best decision I could have ever made.

  Remember, when Mayor Allison gave me the opportunity to pay back all the money I owed the city, she said, “Tavis, I think you’re going to learn a lesson from this.”

  She was right. I learned that cheaters never win. I also learned that some cheaters deserve a second chance. Sometimes redemptive second chances allow you to fail up.

  CHAPTER 3

  DON’T DO ME

  NO FAVORS