Summary: What happens when a respected professional challenges a powerful leader and finds herself at the center of controversy? Psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee’s story raises important questions about professional responsibility, ethical boundaries, and the courage to speak up when silence seems safer.
The question that won’t go away. I watch the news and wonder why so many intelligent people remain silent when they see behavior in powerful leaders that concerns them. Is it fear? Loyalty? Or have we simply become accustomed to looking the other way?
I often wonder who will speak up. And that includes me! Here is some more information about a psychiatrist whose story deserves a closer look. Her name is Dr. Bandy X. Lee, and whether you agree or disagree with her conclusions about President Donald Trump, her experience offers a fascinating lesson about leadership, professional ethics, and the consequences of challenging authority.
Meet the Psychiatrist Who Challenged the Silence
Dr. Lee is a forensic psychiatrist whose professional work has focused on violence prevention. In 2017, she edited The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, bringing together 27 mental health professionals who expressed concerns about the president’s behavior and the risks they believed it presented. Her argument was controversial. She maintained that identifying potential public danger was different from diagnosing a person whom she had never examined.
Other psychiatrists strongly disagreed, arguing that offering professional opinions about a public figure without an examination violated important ethical standards. This disagreement became central to her public story. It also raises a question every leader should consider: When does professional responsibility require speaking up, and when does it require restraint?
The Invisible Rules About Authority
After decades of working with executives, family businesses, and leadership teams, I have observed something that continues to fascinate me. It is the core of much of my professional work: Our first organization is the family.
Long before we enter a boardroom, we learn unwritten rules about authority. Who gets to speak? Who must remain quiet? What happens when someone disagrees with the person in charge? In some families, questioning authority is encouraged. In others, it is considered disloyal.
Those lessons don’t disappear when we receive impressive degrees, acquire prestigious titles, or become leaders ourselves. Consider the employee who recognizes a serious problem but says nothing because the CEO dislikes disagreement. Or the executive who sees a colleague behaving inappropriately but worries about losing a promotion.
Often, it’s a family business member who knows something is wrong but fears disrupting the family. The question is not simply whether someone has courage. It is whether they can recognize the patterns that influence their choices.
When the Truth-Teller Becomes the Problem
Dr. Lee’s professional experience took another controversial turn when her relationship with Yale ended. She argued that her public comments about prominent figures had contributed to the loss of her position. The circumstances became the subject of legal conflict. Her experience illustrates a familiar organizational dilemma. Sometimes, when someone raises an uncomfortable concern, attention shifts away from the concern itself and toward the person raising it. Yet there is another side to this dilemma.
Speaking up does not automatically make someone correct. Professional expertise carries responsibilities, including recognizing the limits of what can be known. Courage without accountability is reckless, and accountability without courage can become silence. Strong leadership requires both.
The Difference Between a Trigger and a GLIMMER
This is where my work on the GLIMMERS Effect™ becomes relevant. When authority is questioned, people often experience a trigger. Leaders may feel threatened. Employees feel frightened. Professionals often feel compelled to defend a deeply held belief. And then familiar patterns emerge.
Pleasers stay quiet to preserve approval while avoiders hope the controversy will disappear. Rebels challenge authority, sometimes before considering the consequences. Often persecutors and bullies attack the messenger. And the Super-Achiever may become so invested in being right that listening becomes difficult. None of these responses necessarily produces the best outcome.
Instead of immediately defending, attacking, or retreating, we can ask: What am I reacting to? Even deeper, what do I actually know? Then we can think about: What assumptions am I making? And especially: What responsibility do I have to others? That pause can become a GLIMMER, a moment of awareness that makes a better choice possible.
Leadership Is Not About Always Being Right
I want to make an important distinction. We do not need to agree with Dr. Lee’s assessments of Donald Trump to learn from the controversy surrounding her work. Her critics raise legitimate questions about professional boundaries. Also, her supporters raise legitimate questions about the responsibilities of experts who believe they see a public danger. Both questions deserve serious consideration.
What interests me most is how quickly disagreement can become personal, particularly when political power is involved. The same thing happens in organizations every day. People stop examining ideas and start defending identities. Curiosity disappears. Listening becomes selective. And the possibility of learning from one another grows smaller. That is when leadership suffers.
What Will Future Leaders Learn From Us?
We are living through a period when trust in institutions, expertise, and leadership is being tested. The next generation is watching. They are learning how adults handle disagreement, and observing whether people in authority welcome difficult questions or punish those who ask them. They are discovering whether courage means making the loudest accusation or having the discipline to seek evidence, acknowledge uncertainty, and speak with integrity.
Dr. Lee’s story invites us to consider all these possibilities. Perhaps the most important lesson is not about one psychiatrist or one president. It is about the kind of organizations and communities we are creating. Are we teaching people to think independently? Can we disagree without destroying relationships?
Is it possible to hold powerful people accountable while holding ourselves to the same standards? And can we recognize when our own old patterns are getting in the way?
The GLIMMER to Remember
Speaking up takes courage. Listening takes courage, too. And knowing the difference between conviction and certainty takes wisdom. The future of leadership depends on developing all three.
To your success,
Dr. Sylvia Lafair
P.S. Leadership is not simply about having power. It is about understanding what we do with it, and what happens to others when we use it. I would love to hear your thoughts. Email me at sylvia@ceoptions.com.
