Keep in mind these things:
1. Fully understood, respectful leadership means respect for everyone, not just the person I happen to be talking to right now. Aggressively pushing Jerry to be more honest in the future was, in part, how I demonstrated my respect for the Travel Deals Team and for Sonia. They were not in the room to defend themselves, but Jerry had disrespected them, so I needed to defend the importance of their work.
2. Some managers adopt a passive-aggressive style where they pretend there has been no conflict, even when there has been conflict. This passive-aggressive style does tremendous damage to an organization. Where there has been some kind of conflict, you need to address it directly. The commenter is suggesting that I should simply assume that Jerry was operating in good faith, even though I had some evidence that he was not. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a necessary legal standard to protect us from the overwhelming power of the government, but among private citizens if you assume someone is innocent and operating in good faith when you have evidence that they are not, then you are simply a sucker who is going to be easily manipulated by bad faith actors. Keep in mind, I spoke to Jerry in good faith during our first conversation, it was only in our final conversation that I assumed he had been operating in bad faith.
3. I encourage a democratic culture, but that means the people on my teams have to be honest with each other. No one doubted that Jerry was a talented engineer, but if he made changes secretly, or if he secretly ignored directions from the Travel Deals Team, then he was undermining our democratic process.
4. If you value a democratic process, then you must enforce compliance to that process. Failure to enforce compliance is not democratic or empowering or generous or liberal or kind or intelligent. A failure to defend your process is simply idiocy or cowardice. If you think your process is a bad one, then you have an obligation to change it, but once you’ve got a process that you think is a good one, then you need to enforce compliance to it, or you have no process, merely anarchy, and your company will not survive.
5. There is a time and a place for healthy debate regarding all of our decisions. Jerry was free to meet with people and make his opinions known. Of the people who report to me, no one has ever been punished for making a strong case for their ideas, even if their ideas disagree with what the majority of the team favors. But all such conversations have to be done in compliance with the overall process, and that process means that once a decision is made, we all stick with it. In other words, if you want to run a business in a democratic fashion, you need a strong dose of "democratic centralism." By contrast, anarchism is the enemy of group decisions.
6. Jerry's motivation was implied when he said “I don’t like the idea of showing deals for Bermuda when someone searches for Caribbean.” This suggests that his ego was so great that he was willing to defy the clear intent of the Travel Deals Team, while also ignoring the feedback he was getting from Sonia. He was using his control of the code to impose his will on the situation, in defiance of all of the other stakeholders at the company. This cannot be tolerated or ignored, it has to be confronted. And, again, this is not a court of law, a manager in this situation should not wait till they have overwhelming evidence, they should demand a confrontation as soon as their instincts tell them that something is a bit off or suspicious. I gave Jerry multiple chances to reassure me he respected the decisions being made by others, but he did not give me any such assurance till, at the very end, I forced it out of him.