I’ve never met anyone who says, “Oh, yeah, what I really want to do is to work in a 1984 style where everybody’s marching in a lockstep kind of work environment.”
I think we intend to honor other people’s individuality, and we expect our own individuality to be honored. So what is it that makes us start demanding conformity?
Watch the video below for a synopsis of Radical Respect.
Let me tell you a story. I decided that I had to write Radical Respect shortly after Radical Candor came out because of some feedback that I got about Radical Candor. If you write a book about feedback, you’re bound to get a lot of it. And indeed I did.
Hands down the best feedback I got came from the CEO of a company where I was doing a talk. I was really excited to work with her because she had been a colleague of mine for the better part of a decade, and a person I like and respect enormously, and she’s one of too few Black women, CEOs in tech, or, frankly, any other sector.
When I finished giving the Radical Candor talk to her team, she pulled me aside and she said, “Kim, I’m really excited to roll out Radical Candor. I think it’s going to help me build the kind of innovative culture I want. But I got to tell you it’s much harder for me to roll it out than it is for you.”
She went on to explain to me that as soon as she would offer anyone, even the most compassionate, gentle criticism, they would call her an angry Black woman, and I knew this was true as soon as she said it to me, and I knew how unfair it was because she’s one of the most reasonable people I’ve ever worked with and as soon as she said this to me, I had four realizations at the same time.
1. I Had Failed to be an Upstander
The first realization was that I had not been the kind of colleague I imagined myself to be. I had failed to be an upstander. I had failed even to notice the extent to which she had to show up unfailingly cheerful and pleasant in every meeting we had ever been in together, even though I knew she had what to be ticked off about from time to time, as we all do at work.
But she was not allowed to express how she really felt, and that must have taken a terrible toll on her, and I failed to intervene in any way, shape, or form. I instead, I was sort of a silent bystander or an oblivious bystander. And that’s not who I imagined myself to be.
2. I Had Been In Denial
The second thing that I realized was that not only had I been in denial about the kinds of things that were happening to her as a Black woman in the workplace, I had also been in denial about the kinds of things that were happening to me as a white woman in the workplace kind of hard for the author of a book called Radical Candor, to admit that I but I had been pretending that a whole host of things were not happening that were in fact happening.
And I think the reason why I did that was that I never wanted to think of myself as a victim. And so, therefore, when I was when I was experiencing disrespectful attitudes or behaviors. I didn’t choose a response. Instead, I just pretended it wasn’t happening.
3. I Didn’t Want to Think of Myself as a Culprit
The third thing that I realized, and, by the way, these are roles that we all play from time to time. So the third thing that I realized was that as much as I didn’t want to think of myself as a victim, even less did I want to think of myself as a culprit.
So I was most deeply in denial about the times when I was the person who caused harm, and because I was pretending that I had done nothing wrong, I couldn’t possibly acknowledge what I had done wrong or make amends for it.
4. By Ignoring It, I Was Allowing It to Happen
And then the fourth thing that I realized was that as a leader, by pretending that these kinds of disrespectful attitudes and behaviors were not happening on my team, when, in fact, they were, I was failing to prevent them from getting in the way of our ability to do the best work of our lives and to enjoy working together, to work together better.
It’s 2024, not 1984. Help me create workplace cultures that optimize for collaboration rather than coercion and value individuality over conformity.
Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I’ll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected.