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?

New policies are invented for a reason: to reduce costs, improve quality, increase customer satisfaction, deliver faster, retain good employees, etc etc. You don't make it clear in your question what your issue is with this policy. It will fail to achieve those aims? It will introduce negatives that outweigh those aims? The company doesn't need to achieve those aims? There are different policies that would achieve those aims with less negatives? It's important that you understand the purpose of the policy (eg to reduce costs) and exactly why you oppose it (we don't need to reduce costs, it won't reduce costs, there are better ways to reduce costs) before speaking to your people. Once you understand that, your instructions are, sticking with the example of reducing costs, to tell people "I want you to follow this new policy, which is being introduced to reduce costs" and not to include "even though I don't think we need to reduce them at all" or "even though I think it will fail to do so" or "even though many better options exist to reduce costs." Just give the high-level reasoning behind the policy. Passive tense ("is being introduced to") will do a lot of work for you. Saying things like "I know this is foolish but management insists on it" will help no-one. You don't need to provide a zillion details of why this is the best policy ever. You also don't need to say you fought it, you tried, "sorry team I didn't want this but we're stuck with it" or the like. While it feels like lying to omit these sentences, they make things worse. If you truly feel "Fair enough, their prerogative" then you have to walk that walk. Folks with more experience and possibly more information than you believe that policy A will achieve aim B, and that aim B is worth achieving. That is the message you are being asked to deliver. When people tell you "but it won't reduce costs!" or "but our costs don't need to be reduced!" or "wouldn't it be better to do this other thing instead?" you don't need to either agree or disagree with them. You can say something as simple as "this is the new policy and I am asking you to follow it."