Now Andrew was genuinely interested in Charlie’s advice, and he felt no reason to hide it.

“Okay. What’s temptation number four?”

“It’s the temptation to—”

Charlie was interrupted by the sound of one of the connecting doors opening. Andrew spun around in his seat to see who it was.

Standing in the door was a tall man wearing a suit and hat. He addressed Charlie politely.

“Excuse me. Are you coming back? It’s been quite a while.”

Charlie slapped himself on the forehead. “Oh, my. I have been gone quite a while haven’t I? I’m so sorry.”

Andrew was very confused.

The Tall Man spoke again. “I thought you might have left.”

Charlie seemed almost hurt. “Oh no. I wouldn’t do that. It’s just that I started having such an interesting conversation with Andy here that I lost track of the time.”

Charlie seemed perplexed by the dilemma on his hands. Then something occurred to him.

“Andy, why don’t you come join us? No sense in me running back and forth keeping everyone waiting.”

Before Andrew could respond, the Tall Man said, “Hey Charlie, the heat in here is better than the other car.”

“Yes, I know, it’s the best on the train.”

The Tall Man turned back toward the door to leave. Charlie and Andrew followed him.

Andrew was just about to stop and ask Charlie what was going on, but something told him he wasn’t supposed to ask. Somehow, the situation was just too preposterous for a simple question like Where are we going? or Who is this guy? Andrew decided that he would find out in due time.

Charlie let Andrew walk ahead of him, which offered Andrew a chance to check out the Tall Man from ten feet behind as they traveled the length of seven train cars.

His suit was in good condition but seemed out of style to Andrew. His shoes, although new, reminded Andrew of something he had once dragged out of his grandfather’s closet.

The Tall Man entered the seventh car and stopped. Andrew heard voices inside, so he hesitated.

“Go ahead,” Charlie encouraged him. “They won’t bite.”

“They?” Andrew replied. But that’s all he could get out before Charlie nudged him into the next car.

Immediately he noticed that there were two other men in the car, in addition to the Tall Man. Both were in their late forties or early fifties. They were sitting in the middle section of the train, facing one another, involved in an animated conversation. One was bald. The other wore a stylish, double-breasted suit with pinstripes.

The Tall Man asked for their attention. “Excuse me, gentlemen. This is Andy.” He turned to Andrew. “It’s Andy, right?”

Andrew nodded.

Charlie chimed in. “Andy is the CEO of Trinity Systems, the technology company. He and I lost track of time.”

Neither of the men seemed at all surprised to see Andrew, and like Charlie they didn’t react to his title.

The Stylish Man spoke first. “How far did you guys get, Charlie?”

Andrew was confused, and began to feel a sense of nervousness—almost panic. What’s going on here? he thought, suddenly wondering if this were some sort of scam or setup.

Charlie looked at Andrew, frowning in thought. “How far did we get?” But before Andrew could even grasp the point of the question, Charlie remembered. “Oh, yes. We were just starting temptation number four.”

The three men acknowledged temptation number four with nods and ahhs and smiles.

The Tall Man spoke. “Number four is my big challenge.”

Andrew began to feel he was in the midst of an episode of The Twilight Zone. And then suddenly his concern about the strange situation faded a little as he again became curious about the next temptation.

“What is temptation number four?”

He directed the question at the Tall Man, who looked toward Charlie as if to ask permission. Charlie smiled and nodded, so the Tall Man spoke.

“Have a seat, and I’ll explain it to you.”

Charlie, Andrew, and the Tall Man sat down.

Taking off his hat, the Tall Man spoke. “Temptation four is the desire for harmony.”

Without knowing why, Andrew suddenly felt comfortable with these men. “I don’t understand. What does harmony have to do with clarity and good decisions?”

The Bald Man spoke for the first time. “From the perspective of a person who doesn’t have a problem with temptation number four”—the others laughed—“let me explain.”

All attention shifted toward the Bald Man.

“Answer a question for me, Andy. What is the opposite of harmony?”

Andrew thought for a moment. “I don’t know; discord?”

“Discord. Disagreement. Conflict. Any of those will do. The point is, it’s natural for human beings to want harmony.” He paused. “But harmony is like cancer to good decision making.”

Andrew seemed lost, so the Bald Man continued.

“You see, the only way to come to a good decision quickly is to suck all of the honest opinions out of people efficiently. There are two ways to do that.”

The Bald Man held up a finger to show that he was explaining the first way. “One, you can put nice processes in place to massage opinions out of people—focus groups, brainstorming sessions, democratic voting.” He held up a second finger. “Or two, you can do it in a messy way.”

The Tall Man jumped in. “Messy means using conflict. But not bad conflict. We’re talking about productive ideological conflict. From the outside, they look the same, but they’re very different.”

Andrew was starting to grasp their point, but something troubled him. “But isn’t that the same as temptation two?”

The others looked confused, so Andrew explained himself. “Temptation number two is the one where you want to be popular with people instead—”

The Stylish Man interrupted. “Instead of holding them accountable. Yes, we know about temptation number two.”

“Right, I guess you do. Anyway, isn’t wanting to be popular pretty much the same thing as wanting harmony?”

The Bald Man seemed to understand Andrew now. “I see where you’re confused. Temptation two is about not wanting to be rejected, as a person. It’s about judging yourself by what other people think of you.”

The Stylish Man spoke next. “You’re confusing the fear of being unpopular with the fear of your group being in conflict with one another.”

“But—”

Before Andrew could even begin the sentence, Charlie interrupted him. “No, we’re not splitting hairs here, Andy. There is a big difference.”

The Tall Man explained. “For instance, I don’t have a problem holding people accountable for things, as long as we all agree what those things are. But sometimes I have a hard time deciding what to hold them accountable for, because we make decisions that don’t feel right.”

Andrew turned to Charlie. “You said your father almost always made good decisions.”

“That’s right. Because he almost never made a decision without having the full benefit of everyone’s ideas.”

The Tall Man became excited. “Right. And that’s where I fall down. I don’t like it when people challenge one another. I try to steer them away from passionate, heated conversations because I’m afraid that someone is going to come out of it getting hurt, or looking bad.”

“I don’t have that problem.” The Bald Man’s comment brought out laughter in his colleagues.

“Why is that?” Andrew asked.

“I don’t know. I suppose it has something to do with the way I was raised. My brothers and I fought and argued about things all the time, and ten minutes later everything was fine. I guess I learned that there was never any permanent damage.”

The Stylish Man added: “Me too. I’ve never had a problem with allowing people to get into it during meetings. In fact, if no one gets a little pushed out of shape during a meeting, I feel like we probably didn’t put all our issues on the table.”

Andrew persisted. “I still think that if you have a problem with temptation two, you’ll struggle with temptation four.”

The Stylish Man responded. “That’s sometimes the case. But take me, for example. I love conflict. I can jump up and down on a table, and my people don’t hesitate to get in my face about things whenever they feel the need. So we get real clear about what we need to do and about what we’re accountable for. It’s right out there in front of us.”

The Tall Man and the Bald Man began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Andrew wondered out loud.

The Stylish Man explained. “They’re laughing at one of my weaknesses. You see, I sometimes give in to temptation number two; I let people off the hook.”

“How so?”

“Well, when one of my people comes to me and tells me that they couldn’t meet a deliverable or finish a project on time, I always ask them why. And I’ll be damned if most of the time they don’t have a pretty good reason.” He pauses. “And so I let them off every once in a while.”

The Bald Man and the Tall Man objected in unison: “Every once in a while?”

“Alright, alright. I do it way too much. I guess for all of my ranting and raving, I’m pretty soft about things. Too much empathy or something. In fact, I do the same thing with my kids. I’ll holler at them and we’ll have some pretty passionate discussions, if you know what I mean.”

They laughed.

“But then I can’t bring myself to actually punish them.”

Andrew was beginning to like the Stylish Man. “That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me.”

Suddenly the Stylish Man became adamant. “It’s a horrible thing. Horrible.”

Andrew was shocked, but he let the Stylish Man continue.

“I lose credibility with people. I seem inconsistent and unfair to them. The next time I need someone to actually deliver on something, they’re not sure how serious I am about it. And the funny thing is, do you know why I have this problem?” He paused. “Because I want them to like me.”

Andrew asked, “Does it work?”

“You mean, ‘Do they like me?’ I guess so, but they don’t respect me as much as they would if I were consistent. And without respect. . . .” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Andrew was already nodding.

The Tall Man completed the lesson. “But my problem isn’t that I need to be popular. It’s just that I don’t feel completely right about holding people accountable, because even though I made a clear decision about what they’re accountable for, I know in my heart that they haven’t really bought into it. And you know why?”

Andrew shook his head.

“Because I don’t let them air their opinions enough. I stifle their arguments before they have a chance to get clear on things. I just don’t like conflict.”

Andrew added, “And so your decisions aren’t based on all the information that your people have to offer.”

They all nodded. Andrew was beginning to grasp it all, though he still seemed a little confused, overwhelmed.

Charlie decided to challenge his pupil. “Why don’t you give it a shot, Andy?”

“Give what a shot?”

“The temptations. See if you can remember the first four.”

Andrew looked around at the four strangers. Before he accepted Charlie’s challenge, he asked the unthinkable question: “Who are you guys?”

The Bald Man answered. “We’re like you. We’re people who’ve faced these same temptations. But we’re not here to talk about us.”

Charlie agreed. “That’s right, Andy. See if you can remember the temptations.”

Andrew looked into his reflection in the window as if he were trying to decide whether he could do it. “Alright, let’s see. The first temptation—the one I struggle with the most, as far as I can tell—is the temptation to focus on my career and my status above my focus on the company’s results. That makes me complacent and unfocused, and causes results to slip.”

Andrew noticed that the four men were nodding at him, except it seemed that they were not so much acknowledging his correct response as confirming his tendency for temptation number one. He shrugged it off and went on with his quiz.

“Okay, even if I were able to overcome temptation number one, I might still get unspectacular results if I give in to temptation number two.”

Charlie prompted: “Which is?”

“The need to be liked and popular with my staff, at the expense of holding them accountable. That’s your problem, right?” He motioned toward the Stylish Man, who nodded.

“And even when we are not overly concerned about being liked by our people, we fail to hold them accountable because—wait a minute,” he paused for a few seconds, “because we don’t feel like it’s fair to hold them accountable. And that has something to do with temptation number three, which I can’t quite remember.”

The Bald Man helped him out: “Decisions.”

“Right. Clarity. We don’t feel it’s fair because we don’t like to decide things without perfect information. We let things hang there ambiguously, without making clear and timely decisions, because we don’t want to be wrong. So we wait, and we wait, and in the meantime, someone has to take the blame for things being—”

The Stylish Man finished the sentence: “Unspectacular.”

Andrew smiled. “Right. And so someone might get embarrassed or demoted or fired, even though no one had the guts to tell them what was expected of them. But even when they do have the guts to make things clear, sometimes they fail to make good decisions and achieve buy-in around their clarity because of temptation number four: the desire for harmony.”

The Tall Man raised his hand to claim this particular temptation.

Andrew acknowledged him with a smile and went on. “They’re afraid to entertain conflict, to put their ideas on the line where they might get challenged. So they don’t benefit from the various opinions and ideas of their people. And I suppose that is the root cause of all the confusion, the fear of, what did you call it, productive ideological conflict?”

Charlie smiled and nodded his approval. “Yes. But that is not the root of all this. The root is the fifth temptation.”

Just as he finished the sentence, the train began to slow. At once, Charlie, the Bald Man, the Stylish Man, and the Tall Man looked at their watches, stood, and began to collect their belongings. The Stylish Man had an antique briefcase that must have cost a fortune, Andrew thought.

And then it dawned on him: they’re not going to tell me temptation number five.