Dr. Kevin Sansberry II speaks to executives, boards, and conference audiences about the patterns that let harm continue inside organizations, and what leaders can do once those patterns have a name.
Every harmful pattern at work survives on a story. Nobody decides to let harm continue. They tell themselves something that makes it feel acceptable: that it was just high standards, that the process was followed, that someone would have said something.
Drawing on his doctoral research into how people conceal who they are under abusive supervision, Dr. Sansberry shows audiences the Masks organizations wear, why decent people wear them, and the specific move that takes each one off.
Eleven Masks, sorted into four covers, give leaders words for patterns they have seen but never named.
A simple test any leader can apply to the explanations they hear in their own meetings.
Where change starts for each cover, grounded in records the organization already keeps.
The TEDx talk introduced the research. The keynote carries it into the organization, with the full Masquerade framework.
Each cover is a different way an organization makes harm acceptable. Audiences learn to place what they hear on the grid, and what breaks each cover. The eleven Masks are revealed in the session.
Admits it happened, then changes what it means.
Makes the harm disappear from view.
A quality of people or of the organization
“This is just what high standards look like.”
“Everyone gets the same chance here.”
A process, a system, or an absence
“It went through the proper channels.”
“If anything was wrong, someone would have said so.”
Built on the Organizational Harm Taxonomy™, the Institute’s classification of the behaviors through which organizations harm people.
Bring it to your eventEvery engagement is shaped to the audience in the room: the sector, the level of leadership, and what the organization is ready to hear.
The Masquerade framework for a broad audience: memorable, research-grounded, and built to give every attendee language they can use the next day.
A hands-on session built around the phrase sort. Leadership teams practice recognizing the covers in the language of their own workplace, then set a first step.
A closed-door conversation on how harm shows up in an organization’s systems and responses, and on what oversight looks like once it has a name.
Teams work through a deck of statements drawn from everyday working life, the kind of lines said in meetings, hallways, and people’s own heads. The task sounds simple: decide what each statement is really doing.
Not every card is a Mask. Some describe healthy practice, and telling the difference is the skill leaders take home.
The Organizational Archetypes, from The Inner Circle to The Fortress: how to recognize the pattern your organization runs on, why it persists, and where change starts.
What happens to teams when results excuse conduct, and how to hold top performers to the same standard without losing the business.
Research on CEO narcissism and what boards and senior teams can do when one leader’s moods set the terms for everyone else.
How complaint and investigation systems drift toward containment, and how to redesign them so people who report harm are heard.
Dr. Kevin Sansberry II is an organizational behavior scholar and the founder of the Sansberry Organizational Harm Institute™. His dissertation, The Masks We Wear in the Workplace Masquerade, examined how people conceal their identity under abusive supervision, and became the basis for his TEDxUCincinnati talk of the same name.
For more than fifteen years he has designed and delivered leadership education for corporate, nonprofit, public-sector, and professional sports organizations. He teaches executive leadership cohorts at the University of Missouri–Kansas City’s Bloch School and served as Vice President of People, Values, and Culture at StriveTogether.
He is the creator of the Organizational Harm Taxonomy™ and hosts The Toxic Leadership Podcast, ranked fourth among U.S. nonprofit podcasts. He brings the same research to every room and shapes it to the sector and the leaders in front of him.
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