Across my whole career I haven’t witnessed bullying or harassment first-hand, but what I have seen occasionally (rarely, luckily) is discrimination. The amazing Jessy Wu deployed a CTA, so I want to share some of my experiences in the hope that I can inspire some reflection.

I’ve seen bad behaviour at big and small businesses I’ve worked in. It often stems from the small ways that people are allowed to get away with stuff.

Exclusion by conversational dominance

My first example of this: in my own team meetings I had 2 males who often cut off our one (foreign) female when she was speaking. They had no idea they were doing it, because they usually did it when they were excited or she said something insightful that led the conversation down a new path. They’d take her idea, make it their own and run with it. They meant no disrespect for her; they were oblivious. They were exercising male privilege. She had excellent manners and conversation skills, and was respectful… and suffered for her excellence.

As the manager, it took me a little while to even recognise the pattern. After I did, I had to repeatedly interrupt their interruptions, and hand the “mic” back to her. In private I coached all 3 of these team members on how to work together better. For the males it was to stop fucking interrupting when she spoke, and and to ask her opinion — which they never did! For her it was to tip the scales back and re-take the mic from them without my intervention. I tried to step back from playing an active role, and foster an environment of mutual respect that was not dependent on my intervention (or someone with positional power). I had to actively encourage her empowerment, but I needed to do it in a way that wasn’t dependent on me long-term.

This sort of behaviour is so pervasive, as it’s often disguised by excitement.

Exclusion by disparate affection

My other example comes from a large corporation. There was a senior sales manager who was super friendly, and would sometimes loudly and excitedly chest bump, hug and high five the males in the middle of the office, then go for the kiss on the cheek for females in a far more subdued manner. Everyone accepted this behaviour: he was just being friendly right? I mean, it wouldn’t be appropriate to chest bump, hug and high five the women, right? Can you picture the HR violations?

The problem I saw in this picture was that because he wanted to “behave well”, he showed FAR FAR FAR more enthusiasm for males than females. The mechanism to express his excitement and enthusiasm was literally only available to males. What do you think this did to the workplace? I can tell you this: the women I discussed this with didn’t fucking like it. They never got to be the most important person in the room and get that special recognition he gave his “mates”. They didn’t want it from him, but they didn’t want to be left out.

Lesson of the day: beware people using excitement to assert dominance.

Cross-posted to LinkedIn.