Episode 309 - Beyond the headlines, workplace scandals reveal deeper lessons about governance, disclosure, and accountability. In this episode, I share strategies for overcoming missteps and rebuilding your professional brand.

Renata Bernarde (00:00)
Today I am pretending to coach Andy and Kristin from Astronomer to unpack what happens when personal relationships and executive power collide at work. I will use three recent cases that are very similar to anchor the lessons of crisis management. In July 2025, Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and his head of HR Kristin Cabot were filmed in an intimate moment

at a big stadium on a big screen doing a Cold play show everybody saw that you know what I’m talking about. Astronomer placed them on leave and then accepted Byron’s resignation on July 19 followed days later by Cabot’s resignation. So let’s unpack this and also talk about Nestle and another business here in Australia that had very similar issues with their very different outcomes and I hope that you will enjoy this

different episode of the Job Hunting Podcast.

Okay, so before we begin, can I just make a quick reminder that I am in fact a coach. The number of people that listen to my podcast and then send me a message on LinkedIn or Instagram or reply to the newsletter and say, do you know somebody that could help me? And I’m like, I can help you. Don’t I do enough self promotion? Apparently not. So apologies for the self promotion, but yes, I am a career coach.

I am an executive coach and I have a range of services that make my coaching very accessible to lots of different people and budgets all over the world. So if you see something that costs $31 and see something that costs $400 on my website, don’t think that the $31 is crap. It’s all designed for you, my ideal podcast listener, people that are experienced, that are professionals, that are…

white collar workers, working behind a desk, working for large corporate small businesses, government or nonprofit world. So if that’s you, yes, I can help you go to my website. There’s a link in the show notes.

Okay, so I told you about Astronomer and you probably saw that everywhere anyway. What some people did not notice was that Nestle also recently dismissed their CEO for failing to disclose a romantic relationship also with the head of HR and they appointed Nintering to replace him very quickly. Two weeks later the chair of Nestle brought forward his own departure and named

a new successor to replace him on the board. This really showed that something big went on at Nestle for them to replace both the CEO and the chair. Then later the same month of September 2025 here in Australia, we had again that same situation. Super Retail Group, which is a big company here behind several brands like Super Cheap Auto and Rebel.

Terminated their CEO after receiving information, new information showing his prior disclosures about a relationship, an alleged relationship with their former chief of HR were not satisfactory. So he had disclosed it, but it wasn’t satisfactory. So now the CFO was named Interim CEO. If you don’t know what Interim means, watch the recent episode I did with Donna Burr.

I think it’s 307. We talk about Interim executive management and these are the sort of situations where Interim executives flourish. They step in and they support sometimes from in-house as is the case here with the CFO being appointed as interim and sometimes they just bring an external person. you know, this is a bit of an off topic but related to a recent episode. I decided to just tap on that for a minute there.

Okay, not only did the CEO leave, the company said that their incentives would lapse, right? So you’re not going to earn your bonuses, you’re not going to get your shares, you’re gone. And as fun as they are in terms of corporate gossip, they are not just gossip. They are lessons in governance for us. And they are not just lessons about

relationships at work. They are lessons about crisis management at work and what really works and what doesn’t work when things like this happen. They show how power, proximity, policy and disclosure can shape these outcomes far more than the original relationship itself and what can happen when things get out of hand with lack of leadership, with loose culture, with policies that

are not enforced or don’t even exist. So why don’t we start by talking about what actually went wrong? This is not about morality, this is not about relationships, this is about corporate lines of reporting and the issues of fairness, right? So what went wrong? There three thorough lines that appear again and again. And in fact, when the first

case happen, Astronomer I was interviewed on TV. I will put a link below to that interview if you want to watch it. And then I thought about doing an episode about it and it felt like I was hopping on a bandwagon and some people said, yes, you should definitely do a podcast episode about this and everybody will listen. And then I thought, you know what? No, you know, let’s give them a break. Sometimes I…

You know, I love PR, marketing and self-promotion as you probably just noticed, but sometimes I think people deserve a break. But then the fact that it happened again and again with Nestle being such a much bigger company than Astronomer and then in Australia where I am super cheap auto, it’s all over the news here. I’m like, okay, this is the universe telling me we need to talk about this on the podcast. So I can see three. ⁓

Thru lines appear again and again. First, the first line, power and proximity. So relationships that include a reporting line, right, or HR involvement, or even worse, both, they create this built-in conflict of interest and perceptions of unfairness. So in the case of Nestle, the disclosure failure was framed as a breach

that justified the dismissal. second thing that I think is very common and it has happened in these three situations is timing and transparency. Boards will act quickly once they know the facts, right? So in both Nestle and Super Retail, leadership changes were announced immediately.

and effectively immediately along with the Interim appointments and the consequences to incentive and pay. Now these consequences and appointments and the decisions they take will vary, but they cannot afford not to make quick decisions because otherwise they will lose money in the stock market. Okay, so this makes a huge difference in the stock market once things get out of hand.

And the third ⁓ line of thought about these situations is policy and policy maturity. I’m wondering here how mature the policies are at Nestle, sorry, at Astronomer compared to Nestle, Nestle being a much more iconic cemented company. it’s…

structure is so old and it’s probably more bureaucratic. Astronomer is more of an up and coming, you know, wouldn’t say it’s a startup, it’s fully fledged, but you know, it’s innovative and new and it’s still forming in terms of its policy maturity. So companies have tightened rules on intimate relationships. Most of the time they will have rules about this. Just last year in 2024, BP required disclosure of

any workplace intimacy and mandated backdated disclosures from senior leaders for the prior three years. That policy shift at BP is a best practice approach and it’s a useful reference point for any board reviewing its code of conduct. And if you’re listening to this and thinking, but what about me? What does that have to do with me? That sort of

This is something that you may want to do if you work for a small to medium-sized organization and they don’t have any policies. It’s time for you to think, should I disclose this? And I think thinking about the BP situation as a best practice policy can give you a guideline of what you may need to do if you get yourself in this situation in the future. OK, so let’s imagine I am

coaching Andy and Kristin and I will sort of share with you what I would ask them and what we would discuss in a private coaching conversation. And if you ask me, Renata, have you been in a situation like this before? No, not exactly, but I have had clients that have had to deal with reputation crisis and, you know, severe damage to their personal brand.

that we had to overcome either while they were still in the job or most challenging even when they were job searching. And I really love working with clients in that situation.

because I think it’s so hard for them and I love to help and to support people that go through those situations. There is a great book that I am looking at right now that I recommend if you ⁓ want to start thinking about how to deal with crisis in your career. It’s called Firing Back. ⁓ I will put a link below. It’s published by Harvard Business Review.

And it’s a great, great book. It’s a bit old now, but still lots of interesting business cases there. And since I read that book when I was doing my research for my thesis many years ago, I still go back to it time and time again as a source of support for my coaching. And there’s quite a few others that I’m looking at as well as I think about it that have helped me. And they are more adaptations from public relations.

⁓ books and research that I think serve well when I’m working with leaders. Okay, so let’s do this role-playing and I will focus on decisions and wordings that you can adapt.

What I would ask them, would ask, walk me through what happened and do this in plain language. I don’t want fancy language. I don’t want jargons. You know, sometimes people hide, you know, ⁓ behind, you know, so fancy words. No, talk to me as if I was a five year old and tell me what happened. What did you disclose about what happened to whom?

Did you disclose and when? What does the policy in your organization say about relationships with direct reports on HR or about X, whatever the issue is that is a complication for a client, right? Who might be harmed or fear retaliation?

Okay, so this is really putting on that, asking my client to put on the hat of empathy and be in other person’s shoes because usually when we have an issue, we tend to think about us and think about, know, we’re not, you know, poor me, look at my situation, right? And the fact is that in a working environment, this will be.

also impacting other people and if it’s not impacting them yet, it may impact them once they find out. So who might feel harmed or fear retaliation? Even if they’re not harmed, who could feel that? know, sometimes it’s that ⁓ mindset that we need to tap into. Okay, then I would tap into four circles of risk. One.

Conflict of interest to confidentiality 3 perceived favoritism and four impact on team morale we would need to brainstorm workshop and Identify all of these issues for all of these four risks, right? And then we need to go and do immediate actions the lower hanging fruit of each of those again conflict of interest

confidentiality, perceived favoritism and impact on the team morale. Workshop everything that you can think of under each of these headings and then find what needs to be done now, immediately. So removing the conflict today, stepping out of decisions that right now that touch on each other’s pay,

each other’s promotion or performance and agree to cooperate with an independent review. Okay? This is where things are out of your hand, even if you are a CEO. Right? So that preserving that is really important. The evidence that you are going to step out of your leadership role and allow that independent review is really important.

and you need to stop any outreach that looks like pressure or minimization of the issue. Okay, so this is really important and very hard to do for somebody who has maybe for years been in a leadership position and understands and uses very well the power of persuasion. So.

It’s a tough call for everybody, but it needs to be done.

⁓ Accountability statements. So we need for willful or preventable issues, what we know is that the research supports full responsibility paired with corrective actions rather than explanations. And when I say research, I’m looking at public relations research, crisis management research. So we need to full responsibility, right? Like, yes.

this has happened, it’s my responsibility and these are the actions to correct it. I am so surprised that at this day and age there are still people that fight against this number one rule of public relations for both businesses and individuals. And I guess what happens is…

It’s a natural instinct to protect yourself and to explain yourself and to fight against it. Right. But what research shows, I’m going to repeat that, is that taking full responsibility and pairing it with corrective action rather than trying to explain is really important. I’ll give you an example. ⁓ Just yesterday there was a TikTok

and Instagram video that went really ⁓ viral here in Australia about a woman, a doctor trying to breast pump, you know, just I don’t know what the word is, but I should have done more research about this. So she was pumping milk in a business lounge at the Virgin Airlines.

lounge in one of the airports here in Australia. I believe it was Brisbane. I could be wrong. She was so angry. I mean, that woman was so angry. So she was doing this under her business shirt. There was no other place for her to do it. She did ask if there was a place for them for her to do it. There wasn’t except for the bathroom, which it’s gross. You don’t want to do that. If you’re a mother, you know.

You don’t want to put milk in a toilet. And yes, what did Virgin Australia do after everything went sour with the people ⁓ in the lounge? They apologized and they quickly implemented corrective actions. So the CEO was in the news apologizing and explaining what they were going to do next.

Even if there were some sort of explanation, some sort of reasoning behind what happened on the day with that woman, the best thing to do is to take full responsibility. Right. There’s just no going back from this situation these days, especially with social media, and especially because the law is with the woman. And she, you know, quoted

the actual law that exists since the 80s that allows her to do what she was doing in public. Anyway, you get the picture, right? So if something happens to you, take full responsibility and implement corrective actions quickly. Here’s, you know, a draft language that Andy could have used. ⁓ I don’t know if you know this, but there were lots of fake

statements that were assigned to Andy and he actually never wrote anything or said anything, but this is another fake statement from me. I did not meet the disclosure standard set by the policy. I accept the consequences effective immediately. I will remove myself from decisions where there is a conflict and cooperate fully with an independent review.

I am sorry for the impact that this has had on our people and our customers. Here is how oversight will work from you now and then go on and explain what the oversight will be. Okay? The other thing that we need to think about when there’s a big crisis like this is sequencing the communication. So the order matters. And this is something I touched on when I was interviewed on TV about this.

So first it’s the board and the or the business owner or both, right? So you have to first address them. They need to be, they will always be on call for a crisis like this. Then it’s your executive team and direct reports. And then is external stakeholders who must know, right? And what happened at Astronomer is kind of off the charts because

Everything happened in reverse, apparently. We don’t know. Maybe the board knew, maybe the executive team knew. What we get from the whole situation is that nobody knew. But that’s just an assumption. So what we know for sure based on how Nestle did it, it’s

probably they follow this exact protocol. Right. And again, it shows the maturity of the organization and also the maturity of the CEO and the executive team. Right. So first the board and the owner, then the executive team, then the external stakeholders and then a short public note, if appropriate. And that’s what Nestle did. A tiny, the tiniest little note. I don’t know when they released it.

You know, if they followed PR protocol, they probably released it on a Friday afternoon, so nobody paid attention.

And not a lot of people know. If you’re just listening and not watching me on YouTube, I sometimes sip some water. So that’s why I interrupt myself and you can hear me drinking. OK, ⁓ so. So keep everything factual and brief as Nestle has done. If I find the release, the press release about this, I will put a link in the episode show notes. No blame, no self pity.

no justifications, never, especially with the public notice. Evidence shows that apologies that name the harm state the rule that was broken and specify the fix are more credible and effective. And if now you start listening to how the Virgin CEO addressed the issue, how Nestle addressed the issue, you will start noticing that there is a recipe that they are following.

and that recipe is the holy grail and you can follow that as well if something happens to you okay ⁓

So the guardrails you commit to once we start implementing ⁓ actions to resolve the situation is the separation of reporting lines. This is really the first thing that needs to be done. Training on conflict and retaliation. Also really important for the public and the

and the internal stakeholders and your employees to know that, OK, we screwed up. We need to to have the training done now. ⁓ Updates on what what changed and what’s going on. So schedule those updates ahead of time so we will update you ⁓ in a week’s time, in two weeks time and in a month’s time. So so people know when to expect news and it’s not just.

You know, news that’s, you know, appears out of nowhere for them. We don’t want surprises from this point onwards. No surprises. These are concrete signals that stakeholders are moving from anger to reassessment. And this is really important, right? You need to start getting people on board. They will be shocked. They will be angry. They will be upset. They will start sort of brainstorming all the things that

could have happened or happened without their knowledge, if there was, let’s say, in this case, ⁓ a long-term affair between a CEO and a head of HR, you need to start providing them with scheduled updates and ⁓ helping them change from anger to ⁓ reassessment and resolution.

So this is super important. So what you can do after a misstep. And this is advice that I want to give to any professional who has made a decision that was wrong, right? That was immoral, amoral, unethical in the eyes of the organization, in your eyes, right? And you want to come back from it. So, ⁓ when you may think,

does this happen often? Yes, it does. Sometimes people get fired and they reach out to me and they say, look, this wasn’t a restructure I was actually underperforming or I did this and it was wrong and I know this or whatever it is that you did that is now causing a crisis of conscience or a crisis of reputation for you. You can come back from wherever you are.

build your career up again. So diagnose whatever violation you felt happened. And what we know again from research is that there are two types of violations, right? There’s violations of integrity and there are competency violations. And again, you know, some people get fired because they are deemed incompetent for the role or they did something that just showed that they did not have the right.

skills or the light level of skills for the jobs that they were doing. And knowing that there are these two types of violations, integrity and competency is important, right? I’ll give you an example of somebody that has really recovered from integrity violation and that’s Rich Roll.

You may know him from his podcasts on health and mindset and mindfulness. He’s such a wonderful podcaster. I love listening to Rich and he is very open. If you go back to listen to some of his original episodes or earlier episodes, he will talk a lot about the fact that he was, he is an alcoholic, that he was drunk at work many times, that, you know, that he was a high performing alcoholic, but

There was definitely integrity violations there when he was in the corporate world. So that is a good example of somebody that was able to overcome that and not hide it away. In fact, use that as a foundation to grow as a different ⁓ professional and an individual that we now all trust.

So knowing this really matters and addressing it really matters. If people think you broke a rule that you knew about, accountability comes first. If they think that you lacked the skill, then remediation and proof of learning have more weight, right? So as a career coach, working with clients in all different types of situations, this is the sort of thing that we need to think about. ⁓

And it sometimes shows in the, not sometimes, always, it will show in the way that you’re performing in your interviews, how comfortable you are with what happened when you left the organization. And this is again, something that you have to be open with your coach, whoever you’re working with, so that you can address these issues and overcome them to be at your best during an interview. ⁓

process and a selection process. So these are the sort of questions that I would ask clients when they come to me with problems like this. What rule or expectation do people believe you violated? Okay, who bears the harm and what would repair look like to them? What will you measure to show the problem will not reoccur?

What will you measure? How will you do this? How you will upskill or reskill to show the problem will not reoccur? This is sometimes important just for you and your peace of mind. Sometimes it’s important to showcase that during your recruitment process or as you engage with your workplace. And then again, this is an important discussion to have with ⁓ mentors and coaches.

What should I disclose and what should I keep to myself? And it’s very hard for me to give advice about this on a podcast. I’m just sort of educating you on the things you need to think about and discuss with your closed ones. Okay, and then if you are in a situation where you feel you’ve done something wrong, you have to write an apology that lands, an apology that feels like an apology.

acknowledge the facts without any spin, name the harm, accept responsibility, state the specific things that you will do to fix it, verifications, so set accountability measures, including external oversight if needed, and deliver it to the right audiences in the right order that I mentioned before.

Apologies that don’t feel like an apology never work. They never work. Don’t try that and test it out with a coach, with a mentor, with somebody that will give you an honest, honest review of what you’ve drafted as an apology.

The next thing is to remove conflicts quickly. If a relationship creates a conflict under policy, remove the conflict, not the policy. Sometimes if you’re in a position of leadership, you might want to change things in order to have it your way. No, no, it’s the conflict that goes, not the policy. Change reporting lines, reassign decisions, step back from your role, avoid performative gestures.

and aim for structural changes that a reasonable person would recognize as sufficient. Boards and regulators respond to structure, not performances. The BP example shows where policy is heading and that’s why I mentioned it right at the start. If you need a guiding light on this, that’s probably where it is at the moment.

The fourth thing I want to talk about about this in sort of the rebuilding process is build a six month repair plan. Six months repair plans with independent oversight, measurable outcomes is the golden rule of overcoming PR crisis. That plan will do more for a reputation than any slogan that you create, any quick fixes that you try to do. So week one should be

Truth-finding, legal counsel, stopping the harm, all those immediate actions, And drafting that accountability statement. Weeks two and six, two to six, it’s more the slow burn of completing remedial actions like training, begin mentoring, ethics work with a credible provider, publish a short update on what changed.

And then months two to six is to seek visible competence wins in a project type environment. So rebuilding your references, this approach that you will start rebuilding your, as an individual, rebuilding your confidence in ways that…

It really depends, like for somebody like Andrew and Andy, it would be media appearances, conferences, a podcast interview, right? So you need to start building your competencies back again in projects that feel safe, right? That’s what I’m trying to sort of the word is like, okay, who can I go to? Where can I, which stage can I step into where I know

I will be somewhat well received and I can tell my story and not sugarcoat it or address it and then move on to my expertise, whatever topic we need to discuss. And I think this is really important. And so many people have done this well. It’s worth checking ⁓ individuals that sometimes have taken decades to do it, but have done it really well. And one person that comes to mind and I…

and I wrote down the link to the article is Monica Lewinsky. Okay. Well, that woman took years to find that ring-fenced project or projects where she started building her ⁓ confidence back again. She’s great at Twitter. She’s great at writing. She now has a podcast. She was interviewed on podcasts. So she slowly started building her competency back again. ⁓

And then reset your personal brand without theatrics. The thing about Monica Lewinsky that I really love about her is her sense of humor. Right. So there’s no theatrics, there this she can laugh at herself. She can laugh at that situation. she, you know, can she’s in on the joke. You know, I think it’s wow. You know, the amount of therapy that woman.

did in order to get to that point is commendable, right? It’s not something that I think a lot of people would be able to do, but gosh, she’s good at it. So if you can see how she has overcome ⁓ her reputational issues and wow, you know, I think she’s great, you know, in how she did it and such a good example. So.

How do you reset your personal brand? It’s not with just one public note. It’s not just with one interview. In the case of Monica Lewinsky, she has done lots of little things that over time show the consistency of her personality, of her credentials, of her ability to feel confident and be confident in front of cameras and so forth.

Let the actions accumulate, right? So if you’re not a public persona like Monica Lewinsky or Rich Roll, what does that mean to you? You know, it’s how you show up at work, it’s how you present yourself at interviews, it’s how you connect with your network. Focus on private references who can speak to your conduct in the months after the event. So you will need those advocates and champions to support you.

and share only when there is proof of change that others can verify, right? It’s not when you feel ready and it’s when everything else, let’s say in the organization, other people involved are also resolved, okay? Because I don’t want you to sort of speed up the process for everybody. Everybody needs to be on the same page as you when you’re resetting your personal brand.

and then prepare for the job search. So target organizations that value your domain of expertise, your original domain of expertise, that have rigorous governance so that you’re not sort of going into an organization that seems even more loose than the one that you were before. Be ready to explain the misstep in three to four sentences and…

followed by the way that you’ve remediated the situation and use recent referees who observed you to conduct the highest of scrutiny tests. Right? So the references need to really be the ones that know you well during that time. Gosh, it’s a lot, isn’t it? The language that you can borrow, you know, things that you can say to a board or a business owner. Okay.

This is what you could say. I failed to disclose a relationship that created a conflict. I accept the decision. Here are the actions taken and agreed oversight.

To your team, you can say, you deserve fairness and clarity. Here’s how decisions will be separated and overseen while I take a step back. And here’s what you can say to a recruiter. Here’s what happened in 2025, the policy I breached, the remediation I completed, and the outcome since. Okay?

Did you enjoy this episode? I wrote everything down at the last minute and I hope that you have enjoyed this. I would love to hear from you. It’s definitely not the typical episode for the job hunting podcast, but I think that there are lessons here that could serve you now or in the future. I think that ⁓ it’s…

you know, crisis is something that is unavoidable ⁓ in different formats. I think it’s avoidable, the integrity ones, but sometimes we lack the skills to deal with situations in front of us. So I think that the astronomer story is a human moment that became a governance event. And, you know, it’s such an interesting business case for us to ⁓ investigate.

The Nestle one and the Super Retail one, which is here in Australia, shows how boards prioritize disclosure and act quickly to resolve conflicts and take swift action. So if you are navigating missteps now or in the future, remember that accountability plus those structural fixes is the path to rebuild the trust in you.

and facts come first, then repair, then results. I’m wishing you all the best of luck. Remember that yes, I am a coach if you have forgotten. And if you need my help, I am here to help you ⁓ and you can find my details in the episode show notes. Ciao for now. I’ll see you next time.