Who am I when the stakes are low?

A senior manager in my office used to be sweet to all of us. Warm, patient, easy to talk to. Recently, I watched her speak to a new trainee in a way I couldn’t believe. “You’re unfit for business. You don’t even know how to use Excel. You don’t even know this, you don’t even know that.”

The trainee shivered.

I kept wondering how one person can have two faces. Is she actually kind, and this was a bad day? Or was the sweetness the act all along?

Then I noticed what was different. With us, she has something to lose. If she shouts at a team member, the harmony of the group breaks, and people talk. With a trainee who has no power and no voice, nothing happens. The cost is close to zero.

That made me think: maybe how we behave when the stakes are low is closer to who we really are. When there are consequences, we manage ourselves. When there are none, we show what’s underneath.

Maybe the real test of character isn’t how we behave when it’s costly to behave badly. It’s whether we choose to be kind when it would cost us nothing to be cruel.