Collaborative Workplace Cultures are Humanistic Workplace Cultures

 I had the pleasure of speaking with Harit Nagpal the other day. He will be my guest on the Sept 22nd Lunch and Learn I host through the International Humanistic Management Association.  I am very excited to have him on as he's one of those wonderful people who just - gets it.

You can register for this free event here: http://humanisticmanagement.international/activities/events/

CEO Culture & Flattening an Organization: 

Harit is the CEO of Tata Play which is a major satellite TV provider in India. For those of you who are in the west - it's like DirectTV. 

The topic of his talk has to do with the CEO culture he has created at Tata Play.  CEO stands for Collaborate, Experiment and Own.  Meaning he wants everyone to collaborate, experiment to solve problems and take ownership of their work.  To do this he had to flatten the company a bit. 

If you want to learn more about flat management - I interviewed Doug Kirkpatrick about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mME6hEIz0AI

Bullying/Ragging Doesn't Survive in a Collaborative Culture

We also discussed how the collaborative culture he has created helps keep bullies out of the organization. In a truly collaborative workplace, anyone who comes in with what Harit calls "outside poison" doesn't do well. In fact, they never make it out of their initiation period. A group that collaborates well, bullies just can't figure out how to control - because the group rejects control organically.

Join us on Sept 22nd to learn more and to learn directly from Harit.  What I want to talk about in this post is what my conversation with him brought up for me. 

This is How Work Should Be

1st: I would love to work for Harit. I don't actually want to work for anyone in any office. But if I did, I'd be asking Harit to hire me. 

2nd: It brought up a lot of stuff from an old job I had. Both because my department was flat managed and depending on collaboration and because of how people not in our department who were used to command and control structures (say - former military) had trouble dealing with and collaborating with our department.

The Benefits of a Truly Collaborative Culture

1 – Collaboration creates solutions which leads to amazing growth 

The 1/2 billion dollar tower company I worked at? The reason we got that big was collaboration. The acquisition department switched to a flat management structure. Each department within acquisition was autonomous and had authority to kill deals. We went from doing 2 acquisitions a month to about 8 a week once we put the communication systems in place for everyone to share their input in a central location. 

We did not hoard information. We shared it openly. This is the only way to make sure people can collaborate and do their jobs effectively.  If there was a problem that couldn't be solved because it was outside the ability of our teams to fix (ie: it was something the buyer needed to fix), we sent it back to the buyers to negotiate a fix and then started working on it again.

Again - radical full collaboration with no top down control moved us from 1 acquisition every other week to 8 a week! That is explosive growth! 

2 – You don’t know what you don’t know.

Planning for anything and not including people who have to do the actual work and who know the most about implementation is a mistake. It will lead to failure. Because - you don't know what you don't know. You aren't an expert in everything. No one is. Successful people LISTEN to the experts. They trust the people they hire to give them truthful honest advice so that any problem that arises can a) be planned for and b) fixed. 

It is for this reason I have trouble understanding why certain leaders are anti-union. Don't they want to know what they don't know? Don't they want to collaborate with their employees and benefit from the expertise of their employees? It just blows my mind anytime anyone takes an adversarial position against their own employees.  We can't all be working on the same team if you leadership treats their employees like the enemy.

Let me tell you a story about the 1/2 billion tower company I used to work for. The guy in charge of billing and account servicing was former military. He did not understand collaboration at all. His was a command and control managed department. They were horribly horribly horrible inefficient. At some point our acquisition department was so far ahead in our work we were asked to help contact customers to renew their leases and get them signed up for the new fees. We were blasting through them and our tenants were thanking us because - finally after over a year of asking to renew - someone wrote up the new contract for them. We had a fraction of his staff and were able to complete so much more work than his team. 

He was furious. You would think renewing leases - which was his departments job - would be a good thing and he would want to learn how we were able to do so much with so few people. Instead of asking for help and asking us how to improve his department's activities (which was struggling because people were being rewarded for being appearing to be too busy to actually do any real work - which is an illness I've seen in many badly managed teams), he instead tried to keep me out of leadership decision making activities entirely. At one point he initiated a change management process for his team which failed totally because he didn't know what he didn't know about behavior management and refused to ask me - which was stupid because I'm an expert in creating personal and organizational change. I could have and would have gladly helped him design a roll out that would have worked and helped his team be more effective, but - he REALLY didn't want to collaborate. He wanted to lead and be seen as a leader- so he failed. 

He failed because he wanted to be a boss. And a managers role is a support function. What does your team need to do the job? Don't know, find out, get it for them. This came up for me because Harit shares this same management philosophy. 

Finally, 

3– Collaborative teams Don’t tolerate bullying. 

They are immunized from it. You bring in someone with poison from the outside, and they will flunk out. Why? Because when people have ownership, and authority and the only way they will do anything for you is if you ask them to collaborate and treat them with dignity, then anyone who doesn't treat people with dignity fails to be effective. In fact, a team that works through collaboration will discuss the problems and the rudeness of the bully and basically band together to deny them power. It's a stunning thing to see when it happens.

Harit was talking about this. For leaders in massive organizations it can be really hard to make sure that lower level managers aren't bullying staff. Especially when staff is in an economically disadvantaged situation to begin with. The poorer your staff, the more they stay silent when something illegal or unethical happens. They can't afford to speak up.

If you want teams to feel safe enough to out a bully or someone with some other unethical poison in them, you have to make sure whistleblower's jobs are safe and that they have the ability to go directly to the highest level of the organization.  And you REALLY want them to.  If a manager is doing something unethical or asking staff to do something unethical, it's going to not only cost you money, but put a poison in that team and that poison can spread if you are not aware of it.  

Collaborative teams that are secure in their jobs - will stand together to kick out a bully or other poisonous individual. Collaborative flat teams feel comfortable reporting ethical problems to the ethics committee knowing the ethics committee will take their report seriously and deal with it. They also feel comfortable going to the CEO directly. Because a collaborative environment doesn't place one individual above another. It's collaboration built on dignity and ownership. 

Learn More

If you are reading this before Sept 22nd 2023 - join the lunch and learn with Harit - http://humanisticmanagement.international/activities/events/

If you are reading this afterwards - the video of our session will be posted here - http://humanisticmanagement.international/humanistic-management-professionals/

 And if you want to take one of my humanistic leadership courses - https://humanistlearning.com/programsoffered/

Managing conflict in the workplace before it turns toxic

I am the founder of Humanist Learning Systems. I teach how to stop bullying and harassment in the workplace using behavioral science and a focus on dignity and compassion.

What needs to be done? 

First – understand that is totally ok to disagree in the workplace. What isn’t ok – is to turn a disagreement into a conflict.  Disagreements are things you discuss and work through to get to a good solution to whatever the problem is. Conflict is when you decide to not like the person you disagree with and instead of solving the problem, you fight them. Conflict is actually an irrational and emotional response to what should be – just – normal problem solving 101.  People who routinely respond to disagreement by turning into a conflict – either need to be taught collaborative problem solving so they don’t jump to conflict, or they need to be let go so that the people capable of rational collaborative problem solving – can get on with it!

Who needs to handle it? 

The managers do. If a conflict arises in a work team, there are a few things that could be happening. It’s up to the manager/leader to figure out what is going on and help redirect the team out of conflict into collaborative problem solving. IF that is even possible. Because – sometimes it’s not possible.  So – what are the things that could be going on?  Welll.

1. You could have a disagreement and the people don’t have the skills or a tie breaker to make a decision so the team can move forward. In which case- make a decision and help the team move forward.
2. You could have a personality that is sensitive and through past experience assumes disagreements are conflicts and so enter fight mode instead of collaborative problem solving mode.  In which case the manager can help coach them into collaborative problem solving.
3. You could have a bullying masquerading as conflict. In which case, you need to figure that out – and get rid of the bully. Bullying is NOT conflict. It’s not a fight. Bullying is bullying. It is one person harassing another person – for no good reason. They might rationalize doing this as – they are in a conflict as if that makes inappropriate harmful behavior ok  - which it doesn’t. Harassment/bullying serves no legitimate purpose.  How can you tell if it is conflict or bullying? By redirecting people into collaborative problem solving.  People who can move into collaborative problem solving are capable of it. Bullies – usually can’t – because the problem isn’t a disagreement. It’s that one is harassing the other because they can. Just – don’t allow the behavior and the person who is doing it – needs to be let go if they continue.

What issues commonly trigger conflict that lead to bullying, intimidation, harassment, etc.

This question is framed wrong.  Conflict isn’t bullying and doesn’t lead to bullying. Bullies excuse their behavior by saying – they are in a conflict – as if that justifies their behavior. It doesn’t. People in conflict – can be talked down into collaborative problem solving. If someone is a bully and they are using conflict to hide what they are doing – then nothing actually triggers this to become bullying/intimidation/harassment. It already is bullying/intimidation/harassment and it’s inappropriate in the workplace.  Heck – it’s inappropriate to turn a disagreement into a conflict. Bullying and rationalizing it as a conflict – is just – really horridly not ok.   Can bullying/harassment/intimidation escalate?  Of course it can. And it will. That escalation is one of the ways managers can know – this isn’t a conflict. It’s bullying. Because – normal people – when they have a disagreement and start to move into conflict – can easily be redirected to collaborative problem solving if they have support for that. People who bully, will bully more and escalate. It’s literally predicted to occur in bullying/harassment situations.

How does conflict impact a workplace? 

All businesses are in the business of solving problems. The better you solve problems, the more successful you will be. This is just common sense. What conflict does and – what bullying does – is it prevents problem solving from happening. Instead of a team deciding on the best course of action, teams decide based on who is the most popular or – who is the louded or who dominates meetings. Our goal – should be good collaborative problem solving. Period. Anything that gets in the way of that – or replaces good problem solving with a popularity contest – is going to hurt your business. It’s also going to cause good people – who are really good at collaboration – to leave. And that will also harm your workplace – because all that will be left  - are the bullies.

With retaliation being the biggest fear (and stats showing how common it is) is it worth speaking up?

It may or may not be.  I don’t recommend it unless you have allies above or parallel to the person who is doing the bullying. And notice – we are now talking about bullying – because – conflicts aren’t actually a problem. Because disagreements aren’t a problem. Inappropriate behavior – ie: bullying/harassment is – inappropriate. So – here’s the problem. A bully bullies because it works. They get rewarded for doing it. Basically – they are creating in groups and out groups and by bullying – they can ostracize someone into an outgroup – which gives them power over the group and over problem solving and decision making within the group. When a behavior – that has been rewarded, stops being rewarded, that behavior will escalate as the person tries to get their reward back. In bullying situations – this is experienced as – retaliation. It’s predicted to occur. How bad it will get depends on how long the behavior has been happening and whether the person is doing it adaptively or pathologically as well as how naturally aggressive they are. This is why – unless you have allies above and parallel to the individual you are in “conflict’ with – it’s not a good idea to take this on because – you won’t win and all that will happen is – more bullying/harassment etc. Just – find a new job if you can.  If, however, there are allies, then – taking this on is worth it. It’s hard. It’s emotionally draining. But you will be doing your company a favor by dealing with this and changing the culture for the better. But again – unless you have support and the company will support you through this – no – it’s not worth it because – you won’t succeed. I don’t like giving people bad news, but I do believe in being honest.

What should the typical course of action look like when a workplace is already toxic? 

Let’s start with behavioral psychology 101.  Specifically, operant conditioning – extinguishing a behavior.  Extinguishing a new behavior is pretty easy to do – you just don’t reward it or negatively respond to it and it never gets established. Prevention is preferable. Once a behavior is established – it’s exponentially harder to eliminate. This is especially true with humans – because we are free range animals. If one human does not give someone a reward – they will work harder to get it or go get it from another person.  Regardless – the protocol is the same. What has to happen to get a new behavior to not establish is the same thing that has to happen to get an established behavior to stop. So – if a workplace is already toxic – you enact a behavioral conditioning techniques – to extinguish the unwanted behavior.  And you do this by targeting the unwanted behavior and making it not work anymore. Then, you keep doing that until the behavior extinguishes. Which is the simplified way of explaining what needs to happen. In reality – what this looks like  is – you eliminate the reward for the unwanted behavior. You train up new behaviors. You go through a change process, and reward the collaborative problem solving and just keep at it.  What normally happens is that almost everyone – likes the changes and are happy with the new way of doing thing. Usually one person – just won’t get with the program. Either encourage them to leave or fire them. Takes about 1 ½ years if done right.  And yes – I’ve done this. I was hired in to do this at a nonprofit. We had toxic volunteer staff relationships. Volunteers thought their job was to spy on staff. Staff didn’t want to deal with volunteers who were spying on them. We reset the relationships. Retrained the volunteers. Assigned them staff partners and fostered collaborative relationships. 9 of our 10 volunteers LOVED it. Staff loved it too once their trust levels went up. One volunteer – the toxic one, just refused. She fought, spread rumors about me. Tried to get me fired and eventually – we fired her. And then she spread some more rumors about me and fought some more. She was gone in 6 months and her influence over the organization was over in 1 year. From their – we could build up the program. In 3 years we went from 10 volunteers with toxic relationships to 200 volunteers donating 20,000 hours of time a year and helping every department within our organization. That’s the equivalent of 10 full time employees.  They key – resetting towards collaboration and not tolerating conflict – not by fighting about conflict, just – keep redirecting to collaboration. The only reason I succeeded – or rather – stayed and kept at it – was because upper management supported me and begged me to keep at it. Had I not had that support, things would not have changed.

What about when it's on the verge of turning toxic? 

Redirect to collaboration. Things will only turn toxic if someone isn’t capable of collaboration.  You can use the same behavioral approach. Remove the reward for the unwanted behavior – conflict. And reward collaboration. Actively. Be aware that the individual in question – might already be wielding a lot of power and likely has been doing these behaviors successfully before they got to you. If that’s the case – then removing the reward will cause them to escalate and fight. Just keep focusing and rewarding the behavior you want – collaboration and don’t allow the person engaging in “conflict”/bullying behavior to succeed.



Hope this helps. Again – I train on this approach and have both individual course and a conflict bundle - https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/ 

What is workplace harassment?

And more importantly - how do we make it stop?

Harassment is defined by law in most states as a pattern of behavior that upsets or harasses the target that serves no legitimate purpose.  It’s this last bit that is most important. Does the behavior serve a legitimate purpose or not?  If the only purpose of the behavior – is to upset or annoy someone, it’s harassment.

Workplace harassment is harassment by colleagues or managers. Again – the key to understanding it is whether or not it serves a legitimate purpose. Annoying someone is not a legitimate purpose. 

How can harassment negatively affect the workplace environment?

Harassment in the workplace is a form of bullying.  Bullying is done to gain advantage.  Basically – it helps to understand the dynamic as the creation of in groups and out groups. Humans are tribal animals. We want to belong to a group. If someone shows they have the power to say who is in or out of a group, they wield a lot of power.  The reason this is a problem in the workplace is that – harassment creates in groups and out groups. People in the outgroup are prevented from getting their work done because they are denied support and resources from their colleagues. No company hires people to not get their work done, obviously. Harassment in a workplace, prevents work from being done. Unfortunately, it’s usually the person who is having their work sabotaged that is let go while the person doing the sabotaging is kept. So the cycle tends to repeat itself. 

Additionally, because bullying and harassment can and do cause mental health problems and because it’s illegal, it can also create legal liabilities. But the main reason to stop it is because of it’s negative impact on work flow. All work is problem solving. All employees should be engaged in that problem solving – ideally – collaboratively. When bullying/harassment is present in a work environment – the problem solving process is distorted and that has negative cascading impacts on workflow as people begin to hoard information or withhold it to protect themselves.

How to prevent workplace harassment 

First is to decide to not tolerate it anymore.  So many companies and managers just view it as a normal but unfortunate part of the work environment so – they tolerate it.  Decide to not tolerate it.

Second: Educate yourself on how exactly to get unwanted behaviors, like bullying and harassment to stop. This requires behavioral training.  The short version of this is – you have to be very strategic in what behaviors are rewarded and which aren’t.   It’s a good idea to review workplace policies to ensure they help eliminate harassment.  Most policies treat harassment as an interpersonal problem and try to mediate it. It’s not a conflict. Instead, companies should be looking to document a pattern of behavior and encourage individuals reporting and being accused – to document interactions so that you can see whether there is indeed – a pattern of behavior that serves no legitimate purpose.   If you do see that – eliminate the person engaging in that behavior. Don’t allow someone engaging in inappropriate behavior to claim their inappropriate behavior was justified by some conflict. It’s not.

Basically – the only way to see it happening, is to look for the patterns and to ask questions and keep an open mind. Just don’t treat it as a one off problem. If it’s happening, it’s a pattern. And the behavior will escalate if they get caught – this is called retaliation. It’s predicted to occur when you are using a behavioral model to understand what is happening, so -  ask for ongoing documentation to capture that – if it happens. If it’s just a conflict, asking people to document things – will help them behave more professionally. It’s only people who are used to getting away with harassing others that will escalate.  

The idea is to switch from using a conflict mediation model and move yourself to a behavioral elimination model instead.

What should companies do when they get a report of workplace retaliation?

Take it seriously and work to educate the person reporting problems, to document everything.  Evidence of retaliation is evidence of harassment. It’s pretty much tells you what you need to know about who is the problem.  Often, what happens is – when someone starts reporting harassment, and they report retaliation, they are seen as troublemakers who are filing too many reports.  Instead, you should welcome those reports because – harassment – is a pattern of behavior and to show that pattern, you need the documentation of ongoing problematic behavior.  A single instance of harassment, may seem insignificant, but when you see the pattern of everything that’s going on – that’s when it comes into focus.

Let me know if you have any questions.  I teach how to stop this using a behavioral science approach over at Humanist Learning Systems: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

Can play be used to counter dominance tendencies in the workplace?

Can play be used to counter dominance tendencies in the workplace?  This was the question my friend, Jessica Coleman asked me as she shared a link about the role of play in creating egalitarian societies.

The article is by Peter Gray at Psychology today and it is about how "play counters the tendency to dominate, in humans and in other mammals." - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201908/the-play-theory-hunter-gatherer-egalitarianism

What followed was a four way conversation about this between myself, Jessica Coleman (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-coleman-1406353/), Sherri Sutton (https://www.positiveimpactforce.com/),  Kae Bender (http://everydayediting.com/).

And yes, people do actually discuss humanistic leadership and practical - how do we do it questions. Everyone gave me permission to share the conversation here.   I encourage you to read the article - and let us know what you think in the comments. Keep the conversation going.

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My response to the article:

What a cool article!  I have no doubt the thesis would prove true as it's social conditioning.  And you do have to actively work to be egalitarian. It's not easy as we ALL have dominating tendencies.  Very interesting. 

I guess the question is - how do we introduce more cooperative play. More intentionally. 

This is the area where educators who come up with play activities - do so well. My friend Sherri Sutton does this well.   I am ccing her so she can read the article. 

It may also explain why people who go to boarding school - get boarding school syndrome. Where cooperative play is almost non-existent.  
Interesting. 

I want to play with this idea!!

Kae's response: 

 So THAT's why making it about winning and losing makes it feel like the game isn't fun any more.

I started out thinking, so what’s Play? (I’d have liked him to include more concrete examples.) And initially I thought of the Save the Whales game we play with Sage, where we all work together to save more whales. Okay, cooperative play. And Kornered where we each encourage the others to find the solution for their piece. Also cooperative. But then I thought: Monopoly, where it isn’t fun when you have a competitive person, especially one who cheats (I’m thinking Victoria when we were kids) and gloats when you lose. And then I thought, Victoria doesn’t really like to play games, not like Heather does. I’m thinking Yahtzee, where we all root for each other to get a great score, so that it isn’t about winning and losing but rather mastering those dice!  And why we still play Boggle with you even though you come up with a zillion more words than we ever see — because we can admire your mastery and we keep striving to do better ourselves. And puzzles, where each piece anyone places gets us all closer to seeing the whole picture.

Which made me think of school and other things (like Toastmasters and even team sports) which COULD be about focusing on mastery and simply encouraging each other to become more capable and giving each other helpful hints and support but where often the pleasure of learning and growing instead becomes a competition by some to be on top. (Again, I think of Victoria crowing about her IQ being better than mine (when I don’t even know what mine is!) and always pushing to be right in every argument and refusing to just let it go — perhaps that’s why she became a lawyer whereas I like to share my knowledge and expertise with anyone interested and so became a yoga teacher.)

And THEN I thought about hearing about the Australian term "Trimming the Tall Poppy" which I’m told meant they ridiculed and belittled people who were excelling at some learning — which seems exactly the wrong thing to do, so I wondered about the Hunter-Gatherers "putting down someone’s budding attempts to dominate" by "making fun of the person’s excessive pride, or they may tease him about thinking he’s such a 'big man.'" After some reflection, I decided those were different: "Trimming the Tall Poppy" was meant to limit a person’s growth, to keep them from excelling, whereas the deprecation of group dominance was intended to foster others’ ability to grow by making sure everyone had a chance equally to participate.

Which made me wonder why girls are usually more cooperative and boys so often domineering — and it IS a societal thing. Because girls are taught to nurture and help (playing dolls — or ponies!) as well as being (wrongly!) disciplined by adults for being assertive ("pushy!") whereas "boys will be boys" aren’t (rightly) disciplined by the adults for using strength to get what they want or talking more loudly to dominate the conversation (which isn’t tolerated from girls!). You see it in politics today — the women candidates are castigated for the very behaviors that are simply accepted in men, and the interruption factor in debates (I’m thinking Trump v Clinton) lets the man simply roll over the rules as well as etiquette or even civility without any negative repercussions. THAT certainly sets an example for those watching…and the tone for the ensuing administration....

Which of course then makes me think of how societal standards also have enabled discrimination, letting those who can claim membership in a categorically "superior" group put down for no obvious or actual reason the demeaned group — and perpetuate that claim even in the face of a frankly opposite reality (yes, I’m talking white supremacists and the patriarchy), with the help of socially accepted standards — like the vocabulary of White and Black as well as those "universal" male pronouns.... I could go on, but I digress.


So, Jen, I imagine that introducing more cooperative play, whether with kids or adults, would necessitate establishing standards of play that reward working together for a common accomplishment. I suppose, too, that there would need to be some recognition at the beginning that some people have more innate (or already-developed) talent in the assigned developmental task but that everyone has the ability to improve their current skill level, and to establish that the improvement of each and all is more important than the topmost excellence of any one person. To that end, there would need to be reward of a mastery level only for the group as a whole, with special attention to those groups that demonstrate consistent mutual interaction in the pursuit of the accomplishment to encourage all members' helping behaviors to support and nurture the others in the group who are not initially naturally grasping the content or progressing in the development toward mastery of the content or skill. And as a final task of the game, perhaps have the group when it has achieved mastery, teach the game to a new group….

I wonder, too, Jessica, if those escape room experiences might be a model for another type of cooperative play?

My response to Kae:

Kae – wow.  I had been thinking of this in terms of – work play if that makes sense. And how the teams I’ve been on in a work environment – the work felt like play – because it was cooperative. 

But your notes here – wow.  It is why I hated chess.  My brother was super competitive, and it was never fun.  He never attempted to teach me the game.   We are watching an anime about a shogi player in Japan (their version of chess), and he is asked to teach the little girls in a house he eats at shogi  - and he is horrible at it. And part of the problem is – for him – it’s about winning. His friend gives the girls a comic book about it – and is sharing his love of the game – and they love it in turn.

The conditioning of women and men in our society through play and what is acceptable play – I think you are spot on correct about. Wow.  Lots to think about.

Sherri's response:

This is such great reading – I look forward to the blog post Jen puts together!! I’m really fascinated by the different points presented here and the ideas I would never have thought of on my own.

I use play in learning to allow for unlearning. Adult learners have the need to feel the learning is relevant and builds on their experience or expertise in some way and they display these same characteristics in learning by wanting to ‘know everything’ already when they enter a learning opportunity. We don’t do any activities that require competition unless the outcome increases cooperation, like the XY game. I try to get the adult learners to have an individual shift first and then cooperate, though I do try to make that individual shift positive. Growth in learning comes from being able to shift your perspective and develop curiosity. Once an adult learner is curious they begin to work cooperatively to explore opportunity. That’s been my experience. If I try to tell someone how they behave or how they will behave, I am met with resistance because a lot of times we don’t have the self-awareness to realize we’ll behave in a certain way, so we create a safe opportunity through play to allow you to experience your response. Play in learning environments allows the learner to let their guard down and suspend judgment. Art works great because they can say, “I’m not good at art anyway, so I don’t care.” It’s always about the process used in making the art, never the actual end product and most learners are willing to be curious in that space because they have so little training in that area.

I’m wondering about the overall effects of the tribe with the loss of using their voice. One thing I’ve discovered in business is that some people are really good leaders, they have vision, they are not afraid to go outside of their comfort zone and they give people confidence. Others feel more comfortable in having someone lay out a plan and tell them what to do. I do agree that part of it is conditioning, but part of it is how we are wired. I remember being in play groups with my children when they were 18 months and watching the personalities shining through in the little ones. I studied the Holacracy model used at Zappos and I realized that in my organization, some of the employees really thrived better with leaders. The leaders were more like coaches, and they did not belittle each other to hold the voices down, but used their strengths to help them become better. I’m curious as to why the tribes don’t organize in a strengths-based way and work together to maximize everyone’s talents in a way they feel valued instead of lowering the bar and not allowing perceived dominance. It seems that new ideas, thinking outside of the box or trying to go against the grain could all be considered dominant traits.

The challenge: 

 How can we use play in learning to help create cultural changes to less dominance and more egalitarian in the workplace. I really like Sherri's idea of leaders as coaches - helping everyone be better.  What about you?

I would add that the reason this conversation happened is that all of us view each other as collaborators and not competitors.

Let's abandon the term - Micro-Aggression.

There is no such thing as a micro-aggression.

You may accidentally be unaware of the history of oppression of people, so you don’t know how terms are used to denigrate and oppress people.

But let’s be real. Most people who use terms to denigrate and dehumanize people and marginalize people – know exactly what they are doing when they use those terms.  They are just trying to rationalize why denigrating, dehumanizing and marginalizing someone – isn’t a bad thing or that good people should side with them because “they could be next” duh duh duh – play scary music here.

Bullying/harassment is a pattern of behavior. If someone is repeatedly engaging in “micro-aggression,” they are doing it – intentionally so that they have plausible deniability about what they are doing and what they are doing is bullying/harassing people – and there is nothing “micro” about it.

I think one of the things that exacerbates this is that if we say – someone is engaging in harassment (whether sexual, racial or whatever based harassment) we ask for an example. ONE example. Out of the pattern of behavior – we want to see the one incident that will explain what’s happening. And the one thing out of context – may not seem like a big deal – unless you see the pattern of behavior and can put it into context.

For Example

I once had a young girl take my online bullying course https://bullyvaccineproject.com/toolkitoverview/ . When she finally got the courage to document what was happening to her – she listed over 40 instances in one day. Little things throughout the day – like him kicking her chair, or saying something. Her list – included death threats by the way.

Now – if you had gone to the teacher – and she did – and said – this kid is kicking my chair – the teacher would say – tell him to stop. Which the girl would do and it would not stop. It would probably get worse.

We need to understand that when someone tells us about something that seems like a micro-aggression – and it’s upset them – that it isn’t a “micro-aggression” – it’s part of a pattern of harassment that needs to stop and there isn't anything micro about it.

Because seriously – almost everyone is capable of dealing with 1 off micro-aggressions. When we reach out for help – it’s because we are dealing with a long term pattern of behavior that may be manifesting as hundreds of little annoying things – that are done- for no other reason than to annoy the target.

So let’s abandon the term “micro-aggression” and call it what it is – an incident in a pattern of behavior that needs to stop!

Learn more:

I have a wide variety of online programs over at: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

You can also view several of the programs free at amazon prime: https://amzn.to/2RixU3p

How to deal with an unethical co-worker

I teach Humanistic Management and how to stop bullying using behavioral techniques. Ethics is a huge part of what it is I do and teach and I approach unethical behavior using both my own ethics as a humanist and behaviorally. I was recently asked some questions about how to deal with an unethical coworker.  Here are my answers.

1.       What are the signs that someone you are working with are unethical? 

If they lie about anything, they are unethical. If they steal, they are unethical. If they spread rumors about other people, they are unethical.  If they bully, they are unethical. If they don’t take responsibility for their actions, they are unethical. And, in all cases, they are also unprofessional.

2.       If you have to deal with someone in your office who you feel is unethical, how can you stay unaffected? 

The key is to not take it personally and to take preventative steps to protect yourself.  This is a trust but verify approach.  If you have a verbal agreement on some work that needs to be done (who is doing what), follow up that conversation with an email to ensure you have a document verifying the conversation took place and what was agreed to.  Yes, it is a hassle. But it is necessary to ensure that you aren’t blamed for their incompetence and game playing.

3.       Tips to get your job done and remain untainted by an unethical co-worker?

The problem is that any unethical behavior that is tolerated encourages others to be unethical too. So to stay untainted can be hard. First – you do have to have a strong internal moral compass. If something is wrong and you know it is wrong, then you need to not tolerate the behavior. If you are a boss – do something about it. If you are a worker and the unethical person is your boss, you may need to find another job. In the meantime, don’t break any laws just because your boss asks you to and make sure to document everything that is happening so you can not only CYA but also, perhaps, help internal affairs or whatever group oversees compliance issues or legal enforcement, have what they need to take corrective action.  In other words, keep your head down, but document what needs to be documented so you can be a whistle blower.

4.       Should you turn in an unethical co-worker? why? why not?

I say yes, but with caveats. Turning in a co-worker comes at a cost. The ethical thing to do is to turn in unethical people. The company will be better off without them. However, in reality, doing so can cost you your job and, if the person you turned in isn’t immediately fired, they will most likely retaliate. This is especially true if they are your boss. This is why before you take action, you should start documenting things so that an investigator will have what they need to pursue action AND you have a strategy in place to either exit or have allies who will protect you WHEN you report. Get everything in order before you take action. This will give you the best chance of success and put you in  a position to weather the storm you are about to unleash.

FYI – I have online courses on how to deal with harassment, bullying & retaliation – which is part of the unethical behavior dynamic.