#98 - Credit fraud!

18 Feb 26

Most organisations have clear rules about financial fraud. Far fewer recognise, or challenge, credit fraud.

Credit fraud occurs when a leader systematically claims ownership of work they did not do, while suppressing the visibility, contribution, or advancement of the people who actually delivered it. It is rarely labelled as such, yet its impact is just as damaging: trust collapses, talent disengages, and organisational capability is quietly drained.

This behaviour often survives because it produces short-term results and disguises itself as 'strong leadership'. In reality, it is a leadership risk that corrodes performance from the inside out.

What?

Credit fraud in leadership follows a recognisable pattern.

The leader:

• Presents team achievements as personal accomplishments,

• Rewrites 'we' into 'I' at senior tables,

• Acts as the sole gateway between the team and recognition,

• Minimises or withholds exposure that might threaten their position.

Meanwhile, the team:

• Delivers value without attribution,

• Learns that visibility carries risk,

• Stops offering ideas beyond what is required,

• Either disengages or quietly exits.

On paper, the function may still perform. But performance is being funded by unacknowledged labour and sustained through fear rather than commitment.

This is not poor communication. It is systematic misappropriation of credit.

Why?

Credit fraud persists for the same reason financial fraud once did:
because no one was looking for it.

It thrives when:

• Outputs are measured, but behaviours are not,

• Senior leaders see results, not the human cost behind them,

• Feedback from below is diluted or discouraged,

• Attrition is explained away rather than examined.

Often, the behaviour is rooted in insecurity; a belief that recognition is finite and must be hoarded. In other cases, it is learned behaviour, reinforced by systems that reward visibility over contribution.

The organisation makes an unspoken trade:

Delivery today in exchange for capability tomorrow.

And the bill always arrives later.

How?

Credit fraud is not solved with platitudes about teamwork. It requires explicit leadership accountability.

Effective responses include:

• Defining credit-sharing as a leadership obligation, not a courtesy,

• Evaluating leaders on how they develop and amplify others,

• Making upward and peer feedback safe and credible,

• Intervening early when suppression patterns appear.

At an individual level, the reset is clear but confronting:

• Leadership is not accumulation of recognition,

• Authority is not validated by invisibility beneath it,

• Impact is measured by what others can do without you.

Leaders who cannot tolerate shared credit are signalling fragility not strength.

In Summary

Credit fraud is leadership malpractice that hides behind results.

A leader who consistently takes what they did not earn may look effective in the short term, but they are quietly bankrupting trust, engagement, and future capability.

Strong organisations do not allow credit to be laundered upwards.
They treat the fair attribution of effort as a governance issue, not a personality quirk.

Because when leadership steals credit, it doesn’t just demoralise teams, it distorts reality at the top.

And decisions made on distorted reality rarely end well!

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