Answer to: My superiors want me to pretend in front of my subordinates that I support a company policy I disagree with. How do I handle this instruction?

The best way to handle diverging opinions is to "Disagree and Commit". No company decision is ever going to please everyone, so the people who don't like it still need to get on with the program. It's perfectly OK and healthy to voice your concerns and disagreement during the decision making process, but once the call is made, it's time to move on. How do I handle this without blatantly lying to my team members' faces? At this point you need to push back on HR and management. Asking is someone to lie is absolutely not OK. You can say something like: While I disagree with the policy and I'm not aligned with the reasoning, I'm happy to implement as best as I can if that is what the company has decided to do. However, I can and will not openly misrepresent facts to my people. We need to come up with a messaging strategy that allows me to maintain my professional and ethical integrity and that does not contain factual inaccuracies. At this point you can make a message suggestion based on what you are comfortable saying while leaving out any blame. Perhaps: "Starting Jan 1st, everyone is required to be in the office twice a week. I know this is controversial, but it's the new policy and we will comply and get on with it". I'm sure there will be questions, but you should also ask HR to come up with an FAQ script or website. That's best practice anyway, otherwise you end up with a dozen different answers to the same questions. If you want to strengthen your case, you can elicit a few of the other level 3/4 managers that feel the same way. A single concern is easy to dismiss but a broader uprising in the ranks is something that HR is afraid of. If HR or senior management keeps pressuring you to "sell" the policy in a way that requires you to lie, you have a hard decision to make. For me, that would be a trigger to start looking for a new job. Asking someone to lie is unethical and if they are unethical on this occasion, chances are they will be unethical to you and others in the future. That's not a good long-term outlook.