Category: Facilitation

Bullying in the workplace

QUESTION:  “What about Bullying in the workplace?”

ANSWER: My fear is you experience it, given what you’ve shared previously.

It is critical we work with HR to interrupt every instance of bullying immediately and get support for employees who feel bullied. AND, if it’s more than one person, then you want to be looking at the climate and culture. You can explore a number of things as you work with HR to collect recent data from surveys. You can also do a new survey and ask more about work climate, such as:

• Zero to ten, how much do you feel you belong?
• How often do you experience dynamics that have you feel you don’t belong, you’re not valued?
•  How often do you see or experience, not hear about, but observe or experience, dynamics which you might call bullying?

Now, organizations early on in MCOD, they’re probably not going to allow those kinds of questions, so you just might be able to do satisfaction questions,

• How comfortable you feel
• Would you recommend this organization to others?” (this one might get your leaders’ attention.)
• What are some examples where you felt included and what are some examples you’ve observed or experienced where you felt excluded?

If further along on organizational inclusion, you might try some focus groups sponsored through The Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. If you don’t have someone/group like that, if you don’t have a senior leader for diversity, then HR. Talk to them and say, “I’m seeing a pattern, that people are reporting bullying and I couldn’t find a bullying policy. Could you help me find it?”

All right. I’m kind of doing that tongue and cheek, but there might be a policy. And if so, and then your question can be, “How can we get this policy out more so people know that we stand against this kind of behavior and, if it happens, you’re the resources to go to.” So, you may want to start there, creating some safety.

The problem is, some people describe HR as Swiss cheese that has holes in it, and – so, you need to find out if there are external places people can go to in confidence. You may want to pop online and see what kind of workshops are out there. The Southern Poverty Law Center has anti-bullying work designed for K12 audiences. My guess is on Google you can find some workshops for adult audiences and workplaces.

It may be useful to have some training about,

• Here’s our policy
• This is what bullying looks like
• Exploring what the impact is if we do and say things that cross the line of bullying
• Why we have zero tolerance bullying
• What-can-you-do-if you feel you’ve experienced bullying?

So, the same way I teach about “microaggressions,” you can develop general bullying workshops. And to be honest, people might come for that topic when they won’t come to a diversity workshop, so it might be an interesting strategy to infuse diversity and inclusion work into trainings.

The word bullying has been used as a weapon by some folks, in my experience. Now, my data is, I coach a lot of leaders, so it’s their stories that when they have held employees accountable for under-performance, they are accused of bullying. And so, I would just proactively have the conversation about, “what’s bullying?” and “what we do when folks are accused of bullying?” so that is not assumed they are, but there is some conversation/investigation.

White practitioner accountability

Question: How do you hold yourself and other solo white practitioners accountable to black and brown social justice workers?

Answer: I had the incredible honor to co-found the Social Justice Training Institute twenty years ago with some dear colleagues of color. A couple of times each year, we hold SJTI and so I get to be in deeply authentic, engaging spaces where we’re doing dismantling racism work. As a white facilitator, I often get developmental feedback from the faculty and participants that help guide me in my work. I also talk openly in staff meetings about what I am feeling and thinking, what I am planning to do next and ask for the feedback from colleagues of color in case they want me to do something different.

I also hold myself accountable as I co-facilitate across race throughout the year. I have called to check in with colleagues of color as well as white peers to get feedback, talk through tough moments, and get vulnerable and visible with others.

Another idea is to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with a group of colleagues of color. Some white facilitators were designing white affinity weekend workshops for staff, faculty, and students at colleges and they intentionally partnered with facilitators of color who had already been leading similar workshops with for people who identify as multiracial, biracial, indigenous, or mono-racial, people of color. Without expecting or demanding, the white facilitators asked if their colleagues of color would be open to some occasional conversations where they discussed the ideas for the white affinity spaces and gave feedback. In return, the white facilitators offered to be useful in any way and ended up helping do some of the administrative details for the weekends for people of color.

This is about establishing an accountability process, not asking people of color to teach us.

There may be other ways to acknowledge the energy and investment of people of color who participate in an accountability process, including: sharing materials and resources or offering to facilitate trainings at their organizations pro-bono.

You can also intentionally set-up accountability systems with whites who have demonstrated greater competence than you currently have.

Conversations with supervisors going wrong

QUESTION: “I’ve seen conversations with supervisors in the room result in the person raising issues getting in trouble for having an opinion. How might you advise us in this situation?”

ANSWER: That’s another indicator that either that unit or the whole organization is low on the MCOD model.  So, if you’re early in organizational change, you may want to be talking to HR, , employee relations – any of those type of folks about, “I’m about to do this training, how can we work together so that if people do share about current dynamics, they will not face retaliation”.

While you’re having those conversations, also ask/clarify, what are the resources in the organization/local community where you can send people who might have need for more conversation; especially confidential conversation.  I may think I am doing a foundational equity &inclusion training talking about social justice in organizations. But often people come with real situations that are either harassment, or close to harassment dynamics with another co-worker or supervisor that clearly crosses the line and a supervisor is not addressing it. What are the resources that you can recommend, put in my handout, so that people have another place to turn.

So, make sure you personally know, and then proactively ask HR and top leaders, “What do I do if someone says, I was at a workshop, and then my supervisor called me in and confronted me for sharing our dirty laundry and I think that’s impacted my career here.”

I don’t have easy answers because these dynamics happen in every organization that I’ve been in. I have found the further along the organization is in the MCOD model, the less tolerance for harassment & retaliation fr people speaking their truth to power.

Sometimes a participant shares their perspective and the situation is more complex. In these cases, it may be useful to have follow-up conversations to help disentangle difficult situations that get talked about in the headline in a workshop. So, that could be something else you anticipate and discuss in advance with HR and top leaders.

If you have a training organization development arm of HR, I might suggest further conversations such as, “What are the resources that if I hear or someone says, ‘my unit could use some third-party intervention’, do you come in and do that?”

You can also ask:

• Can you give me some names of resources or places for me to send them?
• Does the organization have a plan/strategy for mediation and restorative work?

If I’d thought this way thirty years ago it would have helped me be much more confident when I was doing these trainings in an organization or as a consultant, but these are the kind of questions I now know to ask beforehand.

Take a deep breath. I’m still holding on to this retaliation thing, it just pisses me off because it’s often white leader to folks of color, or male leaders to female identified person, heterosexual leaders to LGB & transgender folk leaders.

So, if you’re concerned this is happening in your organization you may want to have pre-conversations with your leader and other leaders to say,

• “How can we create an environment where people can learn, get a sense of belonging, talk honestly about what dynamics are happening so that we can think about how to intervene and not face retaliation?”
• “What is our process if an employee feels they’ve been retaliated against for speaking up in a session?” And ask the leaders beforehand so the ones that are close to doing it, they may not do it as much, but most organizations probably don’t have a clear practice and policy. So, at least have the conversation and ask, “Do we want to have this be a policy?”

Comment in the Chat: “I’m actually leaving a job because of retaliation. There are no laws to protect us.” Take a deep breath because there’s probably fewer laws and practices in these last two years since November 2016. AND, I believe all the training that so many thousands of people have been doing in the last fifteen, thirty, fifty years has gotten our country to the place where we can have an election like yesterday and, we still have a very long way to go.

I believe the training and awareness building we do is critical, even more so through this conversation.  And it’s just one piece of a huge puzzle to have true organizational change where we attract, retain, develop, and promote top talent across the full breadth of differences who demonstrate the breadth of cultural competencies needed in our organizations.

How to deal with power dynamics

QUESTION: “How do you deal with power dynamics in the room – when the bosses hold people’s livelihoods in their power and the bosses are the ones in need of serious work?”

ANSWER: I am still trying to figure out how to deal with hierarchy. I was working with an organization and they had me facilitate several different trainings: one for the very top leaders, one for supervisors, and then individual contributors. And individual contributors’ feedback from some was, “How come the supervisors aren’t in the room, that’s who we need to be talking with.”

This organization felt that having supervisors/leaders in the room would actually have the individual contributors not speaking up because of retaliation, you hold my livelihood in your hand. That’s an indication that on the MCOD/Multicultural Organizational Mode, such organizations are probably in the Club or Compliance Stages.

I prefer to have everyone in the room because I want relationships to be built.  I want the senior leaders speaking up, being vulnerable, and modeling skills they want employees to learn in the session

A couple of quick thoughts.

1. If there are going to be different levels in the room, when I’m doing my welcome, I acknowledge it and I ask, “So who’s got their supervisor in the room, who has two and three levels of leadership in the room”? And then I say, “I’d like everyone to leave their titles at the door, but I’m not naive enough to know that that’s what’s going to happen, but here’s my expectation. If you supervise at all, if you have any leadership role, I’m expecting you to be some of the first people to get vulnerable and honest and tell stories that may feel scary to tell because I expect you to help set the tone here.”
2. RELATED QUESTION/COMMENT IN CHAT: “I find that leaders and supervisors rarely share anything”. So, sometimes I get to meet with the senior leaders beforehand, usually if I’m doing ongoing work with an organization. But if you’re not or if you’re an internal trainer, I’d suggest you meet with the senior leaders whomever they are. And ask, “So, you’re going to be in the workshop – what do you think your role could be that will help create the container for authentic dialogue, engagement, relationship-building, deeper understanding? What role do you think you can play?”

And if one says, “Oh, we’ll just sit quietly so that we don’t say things that then make it so people won’t talk.” Really? And I’d say, “What do people think?” If they can come to it themselves, they might be more willing to do it. I would then say,

“Well, here’s what my experience is. I actually need you all to show up very early, vulnerable, and honest, even scared, because that’s probably what you’re feeling right now. Scared you’re going to say something that will cross the line, you’ll say something out of bias and then employees will confront you or leave believing you are biased. I’m going to create the learning container for trust and openness and emphasize how we are creating a learning organization where we are all learning together, and people may say things that they were taught and that’s why we’re here to help each other learn.” But, if you stay silent as leaders, people are going to think this training is just to check the box.

1. So, meet with leaders beforehand, and then, you may want to identify two or three senior leaders (supervisors and above) and even the very top leaders that you talked to beforehand.  I connect with them before the session and urge them, “I really need you – in this first activity where people talk about a time they were marginalized, I need you to talk about your own life experience.  If that’s not feasible, then I need you to talk about the power of hearing six other people talk about marginalized identities and how, as a senior leader you’re appreciating the stories you’re learning.  Express how it helps you recognize times when you felt marginalized even if it’s few and far between. So, I need you to either tell stories or talk about the impact honestly, vulnerably of hearing people tell stories.”

Another thing I’ll say at this point is I’m finding training is a critical part of organizational change. It’s necessary, but not sufficient. And so, even if all you have is an invitation to do training, I would be thinking long term systemic change and how could this one training help move the needle in the organization, so a couple of quick ideas.

E.G. Say, “I’ll do the training.  And to make it most effective, I want to meet with the supervisors beforehand, and then talk about how they can follow up one-on-one with everyone who goes to the training. I’ll give them five questions to ask, but I want them to commit to doing follow up conversations with everyone that went to the training in their area. And one of the questions is going to be, “How can we take some of these activities and bring them into our team meetings?” Because if you keep doing one-off trainings, we’re going to keep spinning the same dynamics.

One way to have supervisors in the room participate is knowing that they’re expected to have these conversations afterwards even if only a few of their team attends with them. ~ they’re expected to have the conversations about socialization or microaggressions and “how do we respond” and “what could you do if”.

Now, I worked with an organization that said they were going to do required follow-up conversations in staff meetings and we talked about how to do it. Unfortunately, 3 months later, they still hadn’t follow-through.

So, what that says to me is, I might need to have a clearer conversation and ask them what they are going to do next week, what are you going to do in three weeks and have them create a plan. Or say, “I know it wasn’t a part of what we negotiated, but if you want to send me a plan and a draft on what you’re going to send out to supervisors, I’ll be glad to glance at and give you my edits.”

So, that’s more work for me, but at this part of my life I want systems to change and I’m finding people just get caught up in the day-to-day. So, if you can learn from that and think, “How can this training be a part of dismantling oppression, how do you get the supervisors and the line of supervision involved?” I believe we can better support that process.