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The Oprah interview took an interesting turn when Lance Armstrong and Oprah began discussing Armstrong\u2019s LIVESTRONG foundation. That and his obvious love for his children may be the only things in his life that brought Lance Armstrong\u2019s tenuous hold on reality to real attachments and meaning. Paradoxically, his \u201cmost humbling moment\u201d was being asked by his own foundation in November last year to step down. The doping helped create Lance Armstrong, the cancer surviving legend, which in turn became his springboard to establishing LIVESTRONG. To date the Foundation has raised $500M. Was this one of the rationalisations for what Armstrong continued to do and lie about? If not for the doping, if not for the wins, how could he have raised so much money for cancer research? The rationalisation that the end justifies the means coupled with big payoffs are the classic breeding ground and perpetuators of bad behaviour. <\/span> The narcissist doesn\u2019t often care if they hurt people and those who give negative feedback or contradict a story are so often treated with contempt. Watching him, I\u2019m not sure Lance yet holds much remorse for those \u201ccrimes\u201d but I did believe his shattered look and the seeming difficulty with which he spoke of his son who had kept defending him when his father\u2019s actions had been indefensible. This is not just a sporting story or even the story of the inglorious fall of a sporting legend. It is also a story that heralds a serious warning. Be wary of high greed, fame, self-obsession and the justification of bad behaviour because \u201cWhy not? Everybody does it\u201d or \u201cWhy not? Everybody wins\u201d. We are in the long tail of a global financial crisis which has its origins in the same chilling combination of Gordon Gecko context and weak character we have seen in Lance Armstrong, fallen hero. Well, if you\u2019re like me, you\u2019ve watched both parts of the Lance Armstrong special (OK, I admit it, a couple of times each). I\u2019ve met people like him, a small number and mostly in corporate; fiercely competitive, astronomically high on self-belief, selfish and self-absorbed in their focus about what needs to happen to ensure their success. In the wake of … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,5,71,48,43,50,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-emotional-intelligence","category-goal-focus","category-mental-toughness","category-misconduct","category-moments-of-truth","category-vulture-cultures","no-post-thumbnail"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t
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After years of lying to cover up lying, when might a confessor typically confess? There are three common conditions. Firstly, the death bed confession is not a myth. Having nothing to lose and\/or the desire for a clean conscience before one meets their maker are powerful motivators. Secondly, people can confess because they feel a rapport with the person who receives the confession. Armstrong had been interviewed by Oprah before and he liked her and (I\u2019m sure) the gently managed legitimacy and protection her show could afford him. But because all the pundits said she\u2019d be soft, she had to make sure she wasn\u2019t. And thirdly, when else do people tend to confess? When evidence of wrongdoing is so overwhelming, the lies actually start to sound ridiculous. I believe it was for this reason, that Armstrong did not appeal the USADA finding. <\/span>
While on the subject of USADA, how fascinating to observe the workings of an organisation that had a whole professional sport to salvage? There would have been no guilty conscience in scapegoating he who was found to be as guilty as sin and whom appeared to lie about it over and over. This was the supreme rationale for what Armstrong himself referred to as a \u201cdeath sentence\u201d. If there was ever a point to be made, it was now. If there was ever a message to be sent, this was the perfect storm. The decision to lynch Lance Armstrong followed the same logic as the decision by President Obama to take on the National Rifle Association in the wake of the tragic Sandy Hook massacre. These occurrences were not pretexts. They were the \u201cburning platforms\u201d for change. For those who remember Top Gun, someone had to \u201ctake the shot\u201d because \u201cit doesn\u2019t get to look any better than that.\u201d<\/span><\/span>
The so-called fraud triangle has at its three apexes need\/greed, opportunity and perceived likelihood of getting caught. Lance Armstrong the competitor was desperate to win. He knew no other way. This was his \u201cneed\/greed\u201d. Those who allegedly jumped on the bandwagon, sourced and administered his drugs and basked in his reflected glory provided his \u201copportunity\u201d. And until the mid-2000\u2019s given that EPO had been previously undetectable, the chance of him getting caught was small. Indeed his arrogance and self-confessed invincibility probably led him to believe he wouldn\u2019t get caught and he said as much when he told Oprah he rued his comeback as he would probably otherwise have \u201cgotten away with it.\u201d Now I do believe he was telling the truth in that moment! <\/span>
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