CEO Johnny C. Taylor Jr. built a career teaching leaders how to prevent exactly what just happened on his watch: an $11.5 million federal jury verdict against the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) for racial discrimination and retaliation. For years, Taylor positioned himself and SHRM as the authority on fairness, compliance, and how to avoid lawsuits of this kind. The outcome of this case damns the organization’s honor and repossesses its credibility.
How does a seasoned executive known for his mastery of the rulebook miss the risks inside his own house? The principal lesson for other men in positions of responsibility is to have an unmistakable and uncompromising values north star, and unimpeachable integrity evident in measures like anonymous audits and C-suite bonuses.
SHRM’s history of controversies, including prior complaints, suggests Taylor ignored brewing internal tensions and dissatisfaction. And because of the community’s historical experience with disadvantage, a Black CEO ought to take pains to ensure that the values synonymous with fair and just practices are modeled and threaded throughout enterprise governance mechanisms. This is to highlight the moral obligation of ensuring that no harm occurs under one’s leadership, and not an attempt to place additional burden on Black leaders.
When Expertise Becomes a Liability
One reason Taylor’s downfall will resonate with male executives is because men enjoy societal praise for confidence and decisive leadership, which can shape how they perceive danger signals and their appetite for risk. Research points to overconfidence as a key factor for expertise unwittingly becoming a liability. The social rewards for sure-footedness that men enjoy can amplify unchecked certainty, and lead to flawed decisions despite the presence of deep knowledge. The rewards for boldness can backfire because it discourages men from worrying about their leadership effectiveness, making them blind to risk. This leaves room for missteps, like Taylor delegating without oversight, or mishandling investigations.
Taylor’s case captures this dynamic. His confidence in the HR systems he championed appeared to naturally blind him to their failures in the organization and even as SHRM marketed itself as the global authority on best practices, when an employee alleged discrimination the internal investigation was mismanaged. This correlates with the tendency for leaders to assume the system is sound because they built it, and leaves room for risk to very likely go undetected.
The Disconnect Men in Power Can Miss
Studies reveal that men overestimate their judgment as a result of “honest overconfidence,” and can assume systems are working as designed, without rigorous testing. This mirrors Johnny Taylor’s HR mastery at SHRM, which allowed him to delegate an investigation to a minimally trained individual. His unchecked faith in internal processes may have inured him to hazards, like the risks of retaliation. In addition, the fear of appearing weak is a byproduct of men’s socially rewarded decisiveness and it can make systemic flaws persist in organizations until exposed by a crisis like the verdict.
For Taylor:
- Removing “equity” from SHRM’s DEI framework was a signal about priorities.
- Inviting anti-DEI activist Robby Starbuck to speak at SHRM’s conference signaled alignment with a cultural pivot many HR professionals found alarming.
- Public comments calling staff “entitled” and “sloppy,” signaled impatience rather than a call for accountability.
- And strict attendance policies outlined in a “conservative” dress-code memo signaled rigidity over responsiveness.
None of these elements caused the lawsuit. But together, they shaped an internal environment where employees perceived escalating distance between SHRM’s public claims and its internal practices, a pattern that the jury found credible.
When culture and conduct diverge, employees notice before leaders do. And in Taylor’s case, he discovered this the hard way: in court.
A Verdict with Relevance Far Beyond SHRM
Taylor and SHRM’s downfall is a warning. A man who represented the playbook on fairness lost the game not because he didn’t know the rules, but because he stopped checking whether he was still following them. Every male executive should heed this to limit the fallout from high-functioning corporate risk blinders.
Image:
The White House from Washington, DC on Flickr
The post The Man Who Sold the Playbook on Fairness and Lost the Game in an $11.5M Verdict appeared first on The Good Men Project.