It’s usually a prescient sign that it’s not going to be a great meeting when two women walk into your office and one is trembling while the other is on the verge of tears.

Such was the scene early in my career when I was an HR manager for a large organization. Both women were there to see me because they’d reached a breaking point. They were victims of sexual harassment by a senior leader to whom they reported, having endured a pattern of unwanted advances that they could no longer tolerate. Fear brought them into my office, but hope is what kept them there. They were depending on the values that our company espoused to be the catalyst that would get them out of an untenable situation.

After a lengthy meeting, it was clear that these women might not be the only targets of a leader who believed he was above the law. I discovered that other women in his department had similar complaints, but were concerned that in coming forward their jobs or reputations would be on the line. As I investigated further, it was evident that this leader’s poor behavior was not a new phenomenon. He’d been behaving this way for years, but it had escalated in intensity and flagrancy over the previous 18 months, following his promotion to sector vice president.

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