5 days ago
Coldplay controversy: How the behaviour of leaders trickles down
Pareek leads Conduct, a global legal-tech platform for addressing workplace sexual misconduct, and Ungender, a specialist advisory on the POSH Law. With over two decades of expertise, she helps organisations worldwide build technology-driven, transparent systems that uphold safety, equity, and institutional accountability. LESS ... MORE
The absence of disclosure and restraint policies in companies is a legal and cultural liability
A fleeting moment at a Coldplay concert, projected on a stadium screen, has since pulled an entire organisation into public scrutiny. The CEO and Chief People Officer (CPO) of a tech company appeared in an embrace, unexpected and unguarded. The footage circulated widely. The CEO stepped down. The CPO was placed on leave. The institution responded, but the questions that emerged won't be resolved by formal exits alone.
In my work advising organisations on workplace safety and institutional integrity, I've seen how culture is shaped less by what leaders say, and more by what they let stand unquestioned. It's not the bold failures that destabilise trust, it's the quiet, tolerated ones.
The discomfort here isn't about the existence of a personal relationship. It's about the roles involved, and the silence that surrounded them. When a CEO and CPO are in an undisclosed association, the impact goes beyond appearances. The CPO is not simply another leader: they sit at the helm of grievance systems, compliance functions, and cultural tone. When that proximity goes unexamined, it undermines the very idea of internal accountability.
Organisations like to imagine that incidents like this are anomalies. But power rarely moves in isolation. If boundaries at the top are porous, they often reflect what's been long normalised beneath. If one case surfaces, others likely remain submerged. That's not cynicism, it's pattern recognition. And ignoring that pattern is what keeps companies reactive, not prepared.
I've sat across employees who knew something felt off, but could not find language for it. Who adjusted themselves daily, not because they were told to, but because they had learned what it meant to stay on the right side of an unspoken hierarchy. The emotional labour of navigating such proximity, watching it influence access, tone, decisions, rarely finds its way into policy discussions. But it lives in culture, in lowered trust, and in the silent resignation of those who choose not to challenge it.
If the other individual involved in this case had been a business head, or someone unrelated to internal oversight, the impact might still have been serious, but not structurally compromising. The fact that this relationship involved the CPO makes the breach systemic. It renders HR's neutrality open to suspicion, and with it, the legitimacy of every internal resolution taken during that period.
This also reflects the unique and often gendered burden placed on HR leaders, particularly women. In many companies, the CPO is expected to carry culture, resolve conflict, manage risk, and remain emotionally available, often while moving in lockstep with executive leadership. When the lines blur, the professional is judged through a personal lens. Yet rarely do we ask: who built the conditions for that erosion?
Companies must stop treating these moments as communications challenges and start recognising them as compliance failures. In the absence of formal restraint policies, governing romantic or close associations between individuals in hierarchically linked roles, organisations are leaving themselves exposed to enormous liability. What appears consensual today can, under scrutiny or hindsight, fall squarely within the definition of sexual harassment, especially when a power imbalance is involved. Without policy safeguards, this is not just a cultural oversight, it's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Culture audits alone are insufficient, especially when commissioned by those at the centre of concern. Organisations must decentralise the guardianship of ethics. Oversight cannot be the privilege of a few. Disclosure mechanisms, third party reviews, and independent board-led action must be the norm, not crisis, time improvisations.
HR, in particular, must be protected as a function, not politically, but structurally. It cannot enforce boundaries if it is not allowed to hold them internally. Organisations must make space for HR to act independently, not just in appearance, but in design.
And while we speak of formal responses, we must also speak of memory. These incidents often leave no trace once they exit the news cycle. But inside the organisation, the memory stays, with those who bore its weight quietly. When we move on without repair, we don't just abandon them, we teach them that ethics are optional if influence is high enough.
This incident, though now fading from headlines, should continue to provoke inquiry. Not because of who was involved, but because of what it revealed about how easily institutional safeguards can be made irrelevant by the people meant to uphold them.
And this must come with a hope. A hope that the lessons drawn from this moment become case studies in transparency, not manuals in discretion. Yes, there were personal failings, and those belong to the individuals and their private lives. But in the workplace, the consequences of concealed influence are never private. They become precedent. They shape how others learn to navigate power. And they leave behind a culture where trust becomes a risk, not a foundation.
Culture is not what we write. It is what we permit. And what we permit at the top is what we eventually teach everyone else to live with.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.
