COURAGE AND COMPLICITY
Trust is the foundational value that underpins all others.
Trust is the foundational value that underpins all others. It matters disproportionately, across every industry. But nowhere more so than at the South African Reserve Bank, where ethics and ethical leadership are the invisible infrastructure that keep the country’s financial system stable, credible, and intact.
In 2023, SARB made the conscious decision to put ethics centre stage at its annual leadership conference, not as a value statement, but to underscore its strategic imperative.
The brief was clear: no lectures or soft-ball platitudes.
Give us something that provokes deep reflection and authentic conversation.
With 180 of SARB’s most senior leaders in the room, TPA Managing Director Natalie Maroun delivered a high-stakes LeaderShift session designed to provoke, embed, and elevate what it means to be an ethical leader.
​
​
And how easily silence can become complicity.
We chose for this session the fascinating story of Tour de France legend, Lance Armstrong – a cautionary tale of ambition, deception, complicity, and, ultimately, self-betrayal.
This wasn’t a story about cycling. It was a story about character. About ambition, greed, a conspiracy of silence, and the slippery slope of turning a blind eye. The Armstrong lie – one of the biggest scandals in professional sport – endured for a decade not because people didn’t know, but because too many chose to look the other way.
As Natalie pointed out:
“THERE ARE COUNTLESS LANCE ARMSTRONGS IN OUR COUNTRY, IN OUR ORGANISATIONS, IN OUR TEAMS. AND EVERY TIME WE CHOOSE SILENCE OVER ACCOUNTABILITY – WE ENABLE THEM.”
WHAT CHANGED?
This LeadersShift agitated for discomfort by asking the hard questions – about accountability, courage, and compliance.
Ultimately, leaders were invited to reframe ethics not as an abstraction, but as the sum of our daily behaviours, choices and conversations.
What landed was ownership:
Leaders left with a sharper sense of what it means to lead ethically in a system where public trust is non-negotiable – and a deeper understanding that ethical leadership is not just what we say and do. It is equally that which we walk past, and what we choose to ignore.