Organizations also thought that it was just the occasional case: Annoying, complicated, tricky to deal with, you do not want to know.

After #metoo, organizations and women had to realize, that sexual harassment is endemic. It happens all the time, to everyone and it is systemic especially for cultures that are

• male dominated,
• hyper competitive, and
• forgiving when it comes to bad behavior.

In a nutshell, corporate cultures that are characterized by fear and where ethical problems are swept under the carpet of organizational silence.

Exactly that kind of culture a good management of ethics and compliance wants to avoid at all costs!

Consequently, my thesis here is:  

Companies that have a system in place that effectively deals with sexual harassment, will also significantly improve their integrity culture.

This is why compliance managers need to get the topic out of the taboo zone and deal with it proactively.

Let me explain why:

If companies want to create a robust culture of integrity where speaking up on ethical challenges is save and worthwhile, they need to take care of organizational justice.

Only if I have the impression that my company deals fairly with its coworkers, I will have the psychological safety to speak up on sensitive issues. Sexual harassment is an extremely unfair behavior that keeps women small and deprives them of a work environment where they are treated as equals.

A company that tolerates sexual harassment or that does not deal with it in a decisive way, jeopardizes the perception of fairness and organizational justice and thus also drives ethical issues in general into the underground.

If a company does not take care of safeguarding its employees from being harassed, all talk about ethics and compliance becomes less credible.

Find out more about the challenges and best-practice of building a comprehensive framework for the prevention of sexual harassment within your ethics and compliance management in my next blog post.

Der Beitrag Sexual harassment and Compliance Management: A fatal affair erschien zuerst auf Dr. Bettina Palazzo.

Teens must find out who they are and what they want to do with their life. Therefore, they strive for autonomy. Yes, this is their job and mission as teenagers. Only by becoming an autonomous person separate from your parents, you become an adult. If teens would stay obedient and compliant, they would stay in child-mode.  They must find out by themselves how to make good decisions. This is extremely tough for parents, because you want so badly to spare your kids from making stupid or even harmful choices (e.g. smoking, drinking, drugs and worst).

Furthermore, it is part of the teenage mission to push limits and challenge their parents’ worldview, because their world is different than that of their parents. Without this intergenerational dissent we all would still be stuck in the conformity of the 50ies.

Finally, teenagers live in a different time zone than their parents. The parents care for the long-term success and happiness of their kids. They know that you must put in the work to succeed. Teenagers live in the present of preferably instant gratification. Why stay home and study for an exam, if you might miss the fun a great night-out or gaming with your friends? If you work in compliance all these dynamics of potential conflict and resistance should already sound surprisingly familiar:

It is all about autonomy, short-term wins, different values and agendas!

A bit like parents, compliance needs to tell the people in their company what to do and what not to do and this can re-create very easily the rebellious teenager mode. 

How to avoid the rebellious teenager mode? Use Irritation or Agitation?

To get your people’s cooperation you can, of course, use “irritation” – that means annoying them with control processes, external incentives, or sanctions. This can be effective, but only works on a short-term basis and is most of the time not sustainable. It takes a lot of energy and needs constant reinforcement. Like with teens pushing your agenda on your people will most likely create resentment instead of voluntary engagement. Yes, there need to be sanctions for violations, but never forget that people resist taking responsibility when they feel threatened. Consequently, you should never overdo that dimension of compliance.

The alternative is using “agitation” – that means trying to win people’s voluntary commitment by explaining WHY compliance is important to them and making it part of their agenda. The magic formular is: Make it about them and be very curious of their context and mindset.

This means that you need to do your research and find out what could motivate them to engage for compliance.  

The magic question is: What is going on for them?

How can you do that? You need to understand that compliance can easily be perceived as an annoying limitation that threatens people’s autonomy and their desire for win deals (aka short-term gratification). In addition, employees and managers in today’s hyperconnected world have a lot on their plate and compliance is usually not the top concern on their agenda. Like teenagers they want to defend their autonomy, push limits, take risks and are much more focused on making their numbers in the next quarter than on the long-term success and reputation of the company.

Let me walk you through an example: Let’s say your completion rate for the compliance elearning is down and you need to get it up again.

You could irritate people to do their eLearning by writing them frequent reminder emails and shut off their computer if they miss the deadline for the second time.

Would that increase training completion? Probably?

But would it also increase your people’s buy-in and learning? Most likely not!!

It is an open secret in the compliance community that people find smart workarounds like letting interns do the training for them or circulating the list of right quiz answers, so everybody can complete the training faster and without thinking.

Do not take the bait and assume positive intentions!

Here the first crucial step is not getting triggered and judging people. Do not tell yourself a negative story like “Nobody cares about compliance here!” You can always tell yourself a better story that also might be true like “Maybe our training is no longer up to date?”.

Then get very curious (not furious) and find out what is going on for them:

• Is your training useful and relevant to your different target groups?
• Are they overwhelmed with too many other eLearning programs they must do?
• Are their superiors giving the good example or are they also ditching the training?
• And most importantly: Do people understand WHY doing their training is important for them and the company?

Do not hesitate to go out there and talk to people to find out. Only based on this information, you have a much better chance to solve the problem and use agitation instead of irritation.

Maybe you can use frequent micro-learnings that are customized to your different target groups. If you are overwhelming people with long training sessions that are not relevant for them, it is no surprise that they do not see the value of it for them.

You could find better ways to coordinate the time slots for your eLearning with all the other training obligations, so that people are not pressured to do all their different trainings at the same time.

You should find ways to convince your leaders that they need to be role models of training completion. The research is clear on this: leaders that are seen as ethical role models have happier and more productive team members that stay with the company longer.

If it is not their own agenda, they will not do it!

The overall aim is that training completion should become part of their own agenda – not yours. How can that be done? The best way is to tap into your people’s values and give them a convincing WHY. Saying that compliance is important to avoid legal trouble will hardly ever win your people’s hearts and minds. Saying that compliance is important to show what kind of company we want to be is much more powerful.

With this approach you are leveraging the internal forces of human motivation. Science tells us again and again that this is the better way to get commitment than working with incentives or sanctions.

So go out there and work on the relationship because rules without relationship almost automatically create rebellion.

Bonus: it is so much more fun than being the corporate nagger!

Der Beitrag Things I learned for compliance by parenting teenagers erschien zuerst auf Dr. Bettina Palazzo.

Most people realize that communication is essential if you want to get the buy-in of your people for your Ethics & Compliance, not so many have a winning compliance communication strategy.

This knowing-doing gap can be explained by 3 misconceptions:

1. We already communicate enough on Ethics & Compliance!

Interesting, tell me more?

You have a Code of Conduct? – Check!

You have a Compliance section on your website and the internet? – Check!

You run frequent Compliance live and online trainings? – Check!

You write emails with updates on policies and regulatory updates? – Check?

Spoiler alert! This is not enough! Communication science tells us that people forget 90% of what we communicate to them!

90%!

The golden rule of successful communication is therefore:

When you have repeated your core messages ad nauseam, it only starts to enter your audiences minds!

Consequently, you need a plan to consistently communicate on your compliance activities by using a variety of different channels.

Video, Teams channels, newsletters, events, quizzes, infographics, stories, interviews…

The possibilities are endless!

In creating this content use these powerful guidelines from the book „Contagious“ by Noah Berger:

„People who care, share!“

You have to create positive emotions around a topic, if you want that people talk about compliance.

„Top of mind, tip of tongue!„

You need to create positive triggers that let people experience compliance in a positive way – as often as possible.

„Built so show – built to grow!„

People imitate the behavior of their leaders. But if your leaders do not show their commitment to compliance in a way that is publicly observable, this is virtually impossible. So you need to get your leaders to showcase their acts for compliance e.g. with interviews of your top corporate influencers.

„News you can use!“

People share information they find interesting and useful. Preferably about ways how to save time and money!

2. Push instead of pull

Yes, I know you have all those regulations to bring across to your people.

And you are probably aware of one of the eternal laws of communication:

The more you push, the more resistance you will get.

With all that pressure from regulators it is understandable that compliance professionals can easily forget to consider the situation and the real-life challenges of their people.

Yes, it takes more time to go out an talk to your traget groups about the specific (and easy to understand!) requirements of a law and how they think they could best implement it or what their challenges in their everyday work are. But in the end this is how you create more pull than push.

The mantra to always keep in mind is

If I cannot make something important interesting, it is my fault!

If you turn around your approach from pushing as much information as possible towards your target groups into pulling in their interest, because you show them how you can help to successfully navigate the ethical and legal pitfalls of their jobs, you job will become so much easier and you will finally get the appreciation you deserve.

3. Doing it alone

When I talk to compliance professionals they often tell me „Yes, we need to communicate more, but we do not have the time!“ or „We do not have the budget!“

The thing is, nobody said you should do it all by yourself.

I do not mean the budget-sensitive help of a communication agency. I have seen time and again, that communication agencies are just not the right provider for compliance communication. Compliance is complex stuff and you need to be on a high level of insider knowledge about it, if you want to communicate on it in a way that is both engaging and serious.

The better solution is involving your internal partners like your communication department. Compliance has topics and the expertise – communications has the creativity, the tools, and the ressources. Of course, you need to sell them this cooperation in a convincing way.

You can also involve other departments like HR that have related topics to communicate like you.

In our modern world of hyper-connectivity it is essential to develop good communication skills and habits. If you want it or not, also when working in compliance, you need to learn how to win peoples voluntary cooperation (= selling and influencing).

One effective and fun way to do this, is participating in my new and exciting online program the „Compliance Influencer“. The big advantage there is that you get access to all of the super practical tools of modern communication in a way that is already tailored to the needs of compliance.

And, you get the support and inspiration of a group of peers.

Join me on this path to becoming a Compliance Influencer!

Der Beitrag The 3 biggest Mistakes in Compliance Communication erschien zuerst auf Dr. Bettina Palazzo.

Wie viele Menschen während des ersten Lockdowns, habe auch ich meinen Computer ausgemistet…

Und dabei fand ich dieses Interview mit mir und dem Deutschlandfunk von 2005 zum Thema Gender Pay Gap – also den berühmten +/- 20%, die Frauen im Durchschnitt in Deutschland weniger verdienen als Männer (Und immerhin auch noch 5% weniger, wenn sie den gleichen Job machen wie ein Mann).

Ich war dann aber doch schockiert, als ich mir das jetzt 2021 (16 Jahre später!! 16 Jahre!!!) noch mal anhörte und feststellen musst, dass ich haargenau das selbe Interview heute wieder geben könnte. Ok, es gab vielleicht ein paar Prozentpunkt Unterschied. Ich will das noch nicht mal genau überprüften. Ich finde es absolut lächerlich, bei diesem Thema 1-2 Prozent Fortschritt als Erfolg zu feiern. Im Gegenteil, es ist eine Schande!

Der Aufhänger für dieses Interview war eine damalige Studie der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung zum Gender Pay Gap, die u.a. zu der Erkenntnis kam, dass die Gerechtigkeitslücke aufgrund der schwachen Konjunktur wieder grösser wurde. Auch diese alte Dynamik – „Frauen als Manövriermasse“ des Arbeitsmarktes – sehen wir heute wieder in den Auswirkungen der Coronakrise.

Und täglich grüsst das Gender-Pay-Gap-Murmeltier!

Meine Hoffnung derzeit ist, dass die Coronakrise ein allgemeiner Weckruf für alle (Männer und Frauen) sein wird, die sich die Situation schön reden wollen. „Time is up“ – wie bei der #me too Bewegung ist die Geduld der Frauen für Diskriminierung bei der Bezahlung am Ende. Die Isländerinnen haben es auch geschafft. Und zwar nicht mit Gedult und lieben Worten, sondern mit Streiks, die dazu führten, wirkungsvolle Gesetze durchzusetzen.

Denn so viel is sonnenklar: knallharte Gesetze müssen her, wenn wir jemals aus dieser beschämenden Situation herauskommen wollen. Damit so ein Gesetz auch mehr als ein Feigenblatt wird, sind zwei Dinge zentral:

1. Die Beweislast muss umgekehrt werden: Unternehmen müssen nachweisen, dass sie fair bezahlen, nicht die Frauen. (Das neue deutsche Gesetz für Lohntransparenz geht hier leider noch nicht weit genug.)
2. Unternehmen, die nicht mitmachen, müssen mit spürbaren Sanktionen rechnen.

Ja, Ja, ich höre die Aufschreie: „Das verursacht zu viel Bürokratie und Kosten für Unternehmen!“

Dazu habe ich zwei Gegenargumente:

1. Twist it to test it! Stellen Sie sich einfach mal vor, Männer bekämen 20% weniger Gehalt als Frauen. Würde da irgendjemand das langweilige Totschlagargument von der Last der Bürokratie oder den Kosten durch die Dorfstrasse jagen. Wohl kaum!
2. Ja, ein Unternehmen für Gender Equality fit zu machen, ist nicht so einfach und kostet Geld. Der Return-on-Investment in Form von motivierter weiblicher Brainpower wird das jedoch sehr schnell wett machen.

Der Beitrag Gender Pay Gap: 16 Jahre hektischer Stillstand erschien zuerst auf Dr. Bettina Palazzo.

Just because it is a combination of two already in themselves extraordinarily complex topics.

Both can look back to at least two thousand years of history and rivers of ink that have flown in writing about them.

Ethics:

• How should be act?
• What is a good life?
• How should be live together?

Those are big questions and every generation is faced with new challenges on how to answer them.

Leadership:

• How can we justify that one person has the power to lead others?
• Is it really necessary to have a leader? Who should be the leader?
• How do you become a leader? How do you lead?

Power is the keyword that links both topics! With power comes responsibility. But also, the potential for abuse.

Consequently, leadership is an inherently ethical activity.

This is one of the reasons why everybody wants ethical leadership.

Nobody would openly say that leadership does not have to be ethical. This is remarkable, because whenever I say that I work in business ethics, the default reaction is “Oh, that is an impossible combination!”, “Does that really exist?”.

But what exactly is ethical leadership?

What are the standards and criteria that make somebody an ethical leader.

Are ethical leaders these grandiose fearless heroes and heroines that do amazing deeds?

Does he or she have to be immaculate in their ethical behavior or can they be imperfect?

Who is coming to your mind if you think of ethical leaders?

When I ask my business students if they ever met an ethical leader or what persons come to their mind if they think ethical leader, they often mention their mothers and fathers, Mandela, Gandhi, Mother Teresa …they never mention business leaders. Never!

My guess is that it is because our image of the qualities of successful leaders in business often contradicts ethics.

Just think of some powerful business people: Jack Welch? Steve Jobs? Elon Musk? Sheryl Sandberg? Inspiring leaders, yes, but more or less doubtful for their ethics.

How about you? Who are your ethical role models in business?

Not so easy, right? And still most leaders think they are ethical, while often their followers would not agree.

There are many complex reasons for this, let me just explore 3 of them:

1. We all think of ourselves as good persons and if somebody questions this, we immediately become upset and defensive. The fancy term for this is “moral identity threat”. That is one of the reasons why usually, people in power do not get critical feedback on their ethics, because their followers understand very well that this would jeopardize the relationship. But guess what, not receiving tough feedback is bad for your ethical consciousness and learning, because nobody is ethically perfect. In ethics we all are constant work in progress.
   
2. The second ethics buster is over-confidence: Leaders must be confident. Otherwise, they would not be leaders. Imagine Martin Luther King saying: “I might have this dream, no idea of it will work and if we will get there…” Not very convincing! Would you follow him? Probably not. The downside of confidence is that it can very easily switch into over-confidence and consequently into ethical over-confidence. Being ethically overconfident means that you do not ask yourself the critical questions that you should be asking yourself. This bias often comes with the superiority bias, the human tendency to think that we are more ethical than the others. You know this if you ever lived with roommates: We always are convinced that we clean up more than the other person…
   
3. The third ethical leadership buster is:  The power high. As a leader your brain gets literally drunk with power… and this leads to (Keltner, The Power Paradox, 2016)

• Empathy deficits,

• Self-serving impulsivity,

• Incivility and disrespect,

• Narratives of exceptionalism and a sense of entitlement.

We see, leaders are up against important obstacles for being ethical. You need an extraordinarily strong commitment and relentless self-reflection to work against these tendencies if you want to avoid becoming an unethical leader without noticing it. Because this usually is not something that happens overnight – it is a slippery slope. As you climb up the corporate ladder, your jokes might seem to become funnier. But that is, of course, not because you become a funnier person as you reach more powerful positions.

Therefore, beyond the resistance against the described three ethics challenges of leadership, I would like to go one step further and explore what leaders can proactively do if they want to become and stay ethical leaders.

Here my inspiration comes from Aristotle who thought that we are all born with a certain moral sense. But then it is like a muscle that you need to train to strengthen it.

Please, let me take you to my ethics gym and I will show you three exercises that will make you ethically competent and work your ethics muscle:

1. You will need to anticipate and prepare for ethical challenges in cold blood. Many professions and industries have their specific and predictable ethical challenges: data privacy for telecommunication, corruption risk in construction, money laundry in banking. Trying to resolve these tough dilemmas in the heat of the moment is a recipe for epic ethical fails.
   
2. The basis of all ethical leadership is appreciation of others. If your followers feel truly appreciated, they will stand by you a long way. So be interested in your team members, ask them questions, say thank you, catch them when they are doing good work and acknowledge their contribution, show them that you trust their judgment. Based on appreciation, you can go to the next step and listen to people so they know that when they speak up on ethics it will be safe and worthwhile. This is the magic antidote against the moral dangers of power.
   
3. And third ethics gym exercise is having a moral hero. This is important for the emotional support of your role as an ethical leader. Having a personal moral role model can help built our moral imagination and spark your motivation. Here we can find inspiration e.g. in Charley Chaplin: He was not only wildly successful, but he was also a dissident, who was never afraid to talk truth to power, who was critical and insightful about the dark side of progress and capitalism and at the same time he was always full of compassion and humor.

These three exercises are not rocket science, the secret is – like at the gym – consistency!

You cannot say “Hey, today I will do my 5 minutes of ethical leadership with my team!”.

Ethical leadership is a full-time job, because as a leader you are under constant observation and your followers see everything.

It is like with your kids: It is useless to tell them to not be on their smart phones all the time, if you are on your smart phone all the time.

Der Beitrag Ethical leadership – why it is hard and what helps erschien zuerst auf Dr. Bettina Palazzo.

And still, if values are managed in the right way, they can influence our behavior and guide our decisions.

Values can define the “name of the game” that the men and women in a company play.

An insightful experiment

A team of psychology professors demonstrated this in an experiment (Liberman et al. 2004):

They let a group of people play an economic game in which they had the choice to either cooperate with their partner and both gain money or not cooperate and having the chance to gain all of the money for themselves, while the other loses.

There were two setups:

• in set-up 1 the participants were told that the name of the game was “The Community Game”
• in the second set-up the game was called “The Wallstreet Game”.

Now I let you guess: 

• Do you think that more participants cooperated when the name of the game was “The Wallstreet Game”?
• Or did more people cooperate, when the name of the game was “The Community game”?

Too easy, right? In fact, 70% of participants playing the Community Game cooperated, but only 30% of the players of the Wall Street Game. This is an impressive effect! Maybe they could gain more money in the Wall Street Game, you might ask. No, they could not. The monetary rewards were exactly the same in both set-ups.

Values are powerful

We see, already a simple language choice can direct people in different normative directions. Also companies communicate with their choice of words what kind of values should guide their coworkers behavior and decisions. Of course, in the real world of organizations words and language alone will not make the difference.

The words that are written in your value statement must reflect the reality and they must be linked to organizational design and performance standards.

You cannot declare that your company cherishes collaboration, open communication and teamwork, when in reality, your corporate culture is driven by fierce internal competition, politics and monetary incentives only. (see more on my blogpost https://bettinapalazzo.com/2019/08/19/five-steps-to-make-company-value-statements-work/)

But if the real values under the surface and the words of the values in the shiny values statement brochures are in sync, values can be like wings that that lift us to do amazing things together.

Values are challenging

If values can do so many good things for you, why is it difficult to stick to ethical values in business? There are, of course, many complex reasons for this, but I will only pick two very powerful ones:

•             the slippery slope and

•             performance pressure.

Moral decline always starts small

When I am working with managers, they always ask me “But isn’t it ethical if it is legal?”

The problem is that the path from unethical to illegal is a slippery slope.

During my time at forensic services at a major accounting firm, I learned that economic criminals were always, shocked when they got caught. They still thought of themselves a good people.

You just do not wake up one day, go to the office and decide to do something illegal. You have done a hundred legal, but unethical things before that and you do not notice when you cross the line towards illegal.

Therefore, we have to stay mindful of the first little digression, because, as Cat Stevens sang “The first cut is the deepest”.

The money pressure cooker

The second force that can push people towards unethical behavior and rule breaking is performance pressure. We can observe this for instance in the oil drilling business.

An oil drilling rig is a dangerous place and work safety is key. But there are two situations when most safety violations occur:

• When the rig is not operating, because of a break-down. This means a massive loss of money. When the rig is working, it brings in a quarter of a million dollars a day. It is not hard to imagine that the pressure to get this money-making machine back on track is tremendous and it pushes people to cut corners and forget about safety protocols.
• The second situation that turns the cautious oil rig worker into a reckless risk-taker is when a big storm is coming up and the oil rig needs to get evacuated as quickly as possible. Here time pressure is the force that pushes people to the dark side.

Very often these two powerful forces of time and performance pressure form one irresistible cocktail. We can observe the powerful effect of this cocktail over and over again. Just take a closer look at the corporate scandal of your choice and in most cases extreme time and performance pressure will be among the root causes.

What to do

What can we do against these dynamics that can push normal, good people over the ethical edge?

Today we know that ethics depends much less on the ethical character of the individual, but to a big extend on ethical competence and on  a favorable environment.

How do you become ethical competent?

Building ethical competence is not something you can do on the fly. You have to prepare before being in the heat of the moment: You will need to anticipate and prepare for ethical challenges in cold blood. In most professions there are typical ethical dilemmas that come with the job. For telecommunications it is issues like client private data, in consulting it is staying truly critical and independent toward the hand that feeds you. Trying to resolve these dilemmas when your blood is boiling from time and performance pressure rarely results into the right decisions.

How to create an ethics-friendly environment

The most important ingredient for an ethics-friendly environment is a corporate culture where it is safe and worthwhile to speak up on uncomfortable truths (see my Speak-up blog series https://bettinapalazzo.com/2019/08/15/1-speak-up-the-role-of-leadership-is-crucial/) .

This is the most powerful antidote to the slippery slope of moral decline.

Dr. Bettina Palazzo

Der Beitrag The Name of the Game: Why values statements are important, why values are difficult to manage, and what to do about it erschien zuerst auf Dr. Bettina Palazzo.

How women can make themselves heard in the workplace with fierce grace

by Dr. Bettina Palazzo

I recently went to a conference in Athens and gave a keynote speech about how women can defend themselves from micro aggressions, exclusion and discrimination in the workplace.https://bettinapalazzo.com/en/palazzo-talks-en/

One of the tools for effective self-defense, I am suggesting is “feminist fight club scripting” (wording inspired by Jessica Bennett’s best-selling book https://www.feministfightclub.com/the-book  ).

The idea is simple, but powerful: Having smart and cool phrases ready whenever you happen to get under macho pressure.

Being ignored, undermined or even attacked as a woman in a professional context triggers our deepest, darkest and most irrational instincts. Due to this sudden rush of adrenaline over-reacting or freezing can happen easily.

If women become aggressive, they are easily punished by male backlash and are labeled as unlikeable or hysteric.

If women react defensively and just smile and let the undermining situation pass, things will never change or can even get worse.

So how can women navigate this unfair choice between either playing the unlikeable bad girl or the good girl that is not taken seriously?

Fear not, there is a golden middle path: Being well prepared, staying in control and standing one’s ground with calm confidence because you know what to say and how to say it.

Simply having a tool-box full of cool defense sentences ready will make you more resilient to discrimination and micro aggressions, because they do not catch you by surprise, but well prepared and ready.

For example: A classic challenge for women in the workplace is that they are interrupted, ignored or even that their ideas are first ignored and then picked up by a man as his own (It seems to be so common that there even are a words for it: “bropriation”!).                             

I started to research and collect power sentences like this:

• “I need to make a few more essential points!”
• “Thank you for reinforcing what I covered a few minutes ago.”
• “Thank you for picking up my idea. I am glad we are talking about it again.” (Source: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/proven-success-strategies-for-women-at-work )

Or let’s say your colleague is hitting on you during a meeting or is making inappropriate comments about sex. Face him, stay calm and say:

• “Can we focus on work, now!” or
• “Let’s keep this professional!”

Of course, it is essential that you deliver these sentences slowly, with a loud and calm voice, a self-assured body language and then you shut up, give them the icy stare and move on immediately.

After the Athens conference I went to the Acropolis museum. An amazing experience!

But the most incredible surprise did not come from the unique architecture or the breathtakingly beautiful sculptures and artifacts that you can see there, but from a young American woman, that I overheard.

She was visiting the museum with her family and I heard her share her thoughts about this horse sculpture with her father:

“What do you think the artist felt after he finished this amazing piece?”

Her father had obviously not listened to her and said: “Did you know that the English stole many pieces form the Acropolis?”

And this wonderful young warrior princess reacted in saying to her father:

Wow, the skies opened, and the angels were singing, I had witnessed an epiphany (= unexpected and surprising revelation).

I was deeply impressed. What a powerful sentence!

This young woman did not accept that her father just did not react to her passionate and smart statement about the sculpture and went off to his own ego trip. He probably did not have evil intentions and had not even noticed that he behaved disrespectful and not appreciative to his daughter’s interesting thoughts.

Like this father most men in professional contexts, too, are often unaware of how they brush women off.

He just had not listened to his daughter and she called him out on it with courage and confidence without making a big drama out of it.

She was not aggressive, but she stood her ground and communicated that it was not acceptable that her father did not validate her comment. The genius of this reaction lies also in the fact, that it increases the chances of being really heard and understood. That way speaking-up against male arrogance can be turned into an opportunity for change.

Because, let’s face it, no man thinks he might be discriminating or ignoring women. We know that from research on ethical behavior: Most of us are convinced that we are morally good people and if somebody tells us that we are not, we instantly become defensive. This phenomenon is called “moral identity threat”. It you want to initiate changes in behavior and not put people off by making them defensive, you have to avoid this “moral identity threat”.

The reaction of our amazing unknown warrior princess was achieving all of this to perfection. I was deeply impressed. There is hope if we are raising a new female generation like this!

What are your feminist fight club scripts?

Please share them in the comments and let’s kick off the creation of a collective toolkit!

Der Beitrag My Warrior Princess Epiphany erschien zuerst auf Dr. Bettina Palazzo.

A friend of mine said recently to me: 

„I never understood why companies publish value statements. I cannot imagine that this has any effect.“

If I look at many corporate values statements I have to admit that he is right: empty word bubbles on glossy paper, that present an organization that does not exist in reality. Cliché values like teamwork and integrity are overused and are not get specified what they really mean for that given company. In consequence values statements like this cannot create any emotional appeal. And finally very often nothing happens in the company after the value statement is published. It stays a dead piece of paper with no link to real-life behavior.

What a pity! What a waste of time and energy! I think this situation can be explained by the fact that companies tend to underestimate the  complexity of managing values in a credible way and overestimate the power of publishing policies and written statements.

There are tons of studies that show that companies with a strong values-based culture are more successful, because connecting your people to a purpose that goes beyond the profit motive is extremely powerful and motivating. Humans want to be part of something that is bigger than themselves, where they can have impact, appreciation and persue common positive goals. Values can be like wings that lift us to do amazing things together.

So what do you need to do to avoid the 4 apocaliptic riders of bad value statements?

The 4 apocalytic riders of value statements:

• Too general
• Not authentic
• No emotional
• No link to behavior

1. Make values specific for your company

The first step towards a values statement that works is putting extra effort into the choice and wording of values in order to develop values that are specific for the respective company. 

Instead of simply picking the usual suspects of over-used values like the above (excellence, integrity and communication) or the equally commonplace client orientation, teamwork or trust, you need to find out what really defines the culture of your organization. Choosing client orientation, teamwork and trust is the lazy way out. Nobody can be against them. All companies need client orientation, teamwork and trust, because without them they would soon be out of business. 

You need to do some more heavy thinking and find out how exactly e.g. do you serve your customers. How do you do it differently than your competition? What is unique about a clients’ experience with you? 

A good example of specific values comes from Ikea. Their values are: Humbleness and willpower, leadership by example, daring to be different, togetherness and enthusiasm, cost consciousness, constant desire for renewal and accept and delegate responsibility. They have defined values that really fit their culture and could not be used by almost any other company. 

2. Only authentic values are credible

The second step towards good value statements is ensuring that they are authentic. This is best achievied by developing them in a combination of a top-down and bottom-up approach. This helps to avoid the common pitfall of coming up with a list of unauthenic and unrealistic values that reflect the wishful thinking of top- management. In fact, it is often hard for the people at the top to know what the culture and climat of the rest of the company looks like. In general things tend to look rosier from the top. 

Does that mean you should start with a couple of employee focus groups to come up with your new company values? That depends from your situation and your corporate culture. The danger of starting with a bottom-up development is the fact that you create expectations with coworkers that might get disappointed by the top-management. 

When I work with clients on value statements I usually like to start with a first input from the top management that is than specified and modified by a series of bottom-up workshops. In these workshops we discuss questions like 

• “What does this values really mean to us?”
• “Could we do without this value?”
• “What are positive stories about this value?”
• “What do we still need to do to realize this value?”

With the material from these workshops it is much easier to come up with a first draft for a value statement that is both authenic and specific. In addition you gain employee buy-in from the very beginning.

3. Aim for the hearts

The third step toward good and credible value statements is making them emotionally appealing. The Bavarian Bank Sparda is a thougth-provoking example how to do this in a courageous and unusual way. Unlike most companies they did not initiate their values management process with a top-down process but with a focus on the individual coworker. The banks visionary and charismatic CEO, Helmut Lind, Sparda wanted to change the bank by shifting everybody’s attention to the strengths of every coworker. 

On a voluntary basis coworkers filled out an online questionnaire and participated in workshops that helped them identify their natural talents. This created an enormous emotional traction, credibility and trust, because suddenly the men and women in the bank felt seen in their own special charatistical strengths. A deep desire that every human has. It also became much easier to appreciate diversity, because the value of difference was made transparent in the workshops. 

I am deeply impressed by this approach that really starts with the people in the company. On the basis of this appreciative process that emphasized the different strength of coworkers the next step was to look for agreement and unity: What should be the values that we all could agree to for our company? 

Helmut Lind had the courage to give up his leadership control and put his trust into the collective intelligence of his people by giving them all a say in the development of the banks value statement. The fact that an amazing number of 74% of all coworkers volunteered to participate in the process, shows the the high level of engagement the strength-focus process had created. 

The values that were the result of this process were robust, credible and emotionally appealing. They were strong enough to enable the bank to decide not to invest in e.g. in risky specultations into currencies or food because it contradicted their value of justice and sustainability. A contested strategy before the financial crises of 2008, a wise decision afterwards. And while the banking sector in general did not do very well after 2008, Sparda Bank continued to be successful.

4. Link values to behavior

The forth step towards a successful value statement is making a systematical and constant link to behavior and the management’s relentlessly communication about the values.  We find a positive example for the constant implementation and communication of company values at the hotel chain Ritz-Carlton.
Their 12 service values all start with “I” which expresses personal responsibility and they are all very action oriented and specific for the hospitality business:

Service Values: I Am Proud To Be Ritz-Carlton

1. I build strong relationships and create Ritz-Carlton guests for life.
2. I am always responsive to the expressed and unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests.
3. I am empowered to create unique, memorable and personal experiences for our guests.
4. I understand my role in achieving the Key Success Factors, embracing Community Footprints and creating The Ritz-Carlton Mystique.
5. I continuously seek opportunities to innovate and improve The Ritz-Carlton experience.
6. I own and immediately resolve guest problems.
7. I create a work environment of teamwork and lateral service so that the needs of our guests and each other are met.
8. I have the opportunity to continuously learn and grow.
9. I am involved in the planning of the work that affects me.
10. I am proud of my professional appearance, language and behavior.
11. I protect the privacy and security of our guests, my fellow employees and the company’s confidential information and assets.
12. I am responsible for uncompromising levels of cleanliness and creating a safe and accident-free environment.

Source: http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/about/gold-standards 

But their implementation and communication effort does not stop here: already when recruiting new employees the values fit is tested. Once hired every new employee gets trained on these values for two days and has to present them by heart in front of their colleagues. In order to integrate the service values in the day-to-day work every morning in every Ritz-Carlton Hotel around the world a 15 minute work meeting takes place: the round-up. During this meeting the priorites of the day get communicated, the service values get discussed and positive “wow” stories of exceptional examples of customer service are shared. This is the Ritz-Carlton way of using the emotional power of story telling. 

They also go one important step further: They empower their employees to deliver great service by granting every employee a discretionary spending of $2,000 (per incident) to satisfy a customer.

Sounds a bit extreme? Maybe… But Ritz-Carlton seems to be very successful with this highly structured approach for creating a values-oriented corporate culture: Employee turnover is at a very low – 18% versus the industry average of 158%. 

5. Leaders must relentlessly communicate and implement values

The fifth and final step towards an effective value statement is making everybody – and especially leaders – accountable for the consistent implementation and communication of values.  The main responsibility for making a values statement fly, lies with managers, of course. 

An inspiring example comes again form the CEO of Sparda Bank, Helmut Lind (yes, I admit it, I am a fan….). Since one of the company values is mindfulness, he is giving mindfulness seminars to his coworkers on 24 days every year! A great example of how you can continuously show your coworkers that your are serious about your company values.

Unfortunately, often the leadership of a company comes up with some fancy words and than expect that somehow magically their coworkers will adopt these values and use them as a guideline for their behavior, while top managers hide in the shadow. This is a very efficient way to quickly lose coworkers buy-in into the company values.  

Somehow leaders seem to forget too easily that they are under constant observation by their coworkers. If their coworkers do not see that their managers fully embrace the companies values, role-model them continuously, talk about them frequently and convincingly, everybody will forget about the values and follow the cues that the leaders’ acutal behavior shows them. 

As always also in value management actions speak louder than words. You cannot expect that your coworkers will embrace the value of reliability if you are e.g. notoriously late for meetings. 

Furthermore, leaders need to step in if their coworkers disregard company values.  If one of your company values is “Appreciation” and you have a manager who constantly mistreats his coworkers you have to take action, even if this abusive manager happens to be economically successful or a friend of you boss. But holding others accountable for company values and role-modeling them should not only be done by managers but by everyone in the organization.

Summary

In conclusion, even though value statements at the first glance seem to belong in the soft, fluffy and everybody-knows-how-do-it category of management tools, they require in fact rigorious thinking, honest soul-searching and consistent implementation and communication.

Everybody can come up with a list of nice sounding company values. But if a value statement is not specific to the companies culture, business model and strategy the value statement will not create positive effects like orientation and motivation for employees. 

If value statements are not authentic, they will not be credible and create more harm than good. At best, they will be quickly forgotten. 

If company values are not emotionally appealing they will not win peoples’ hearts – which actually is the core aim of a value statement. 

If company values are not constantly communicated and linked to behavior, nobody will take them seriously. 

If managers are not the shining examples of living and enforcing the company values, nobody else will do so. 

So, yes, you should absolutely have company values and if done correctly your company will profite enormously from such a process, but you have to know that you will open a Pandora’s box if you do not do it with care, conviction and authenticity.

Related links:

https://culture-officer.fr/5332

https://www.userlike.com/de/blog/unternehmenswerte

https://rctom.hbs.org/submission/the-ritz-carlton-ladies-and-gentlemen-serving-ladies-and-gentlemen/

https://enorm-magazin.de/ein-banker-geht-aufs-ganze

https://www.ecogood.org/de/gemeinwohl-bilanz/unternehmen/portrats-sparda-bank-muenchen-eg/

Der Beitrag Five steps to make Company Value Statements work erschien zuerst auf Dr. Bettina Palazzo.

Corporate values statement only seem like fluffy, easy stuff. Beware! If not done properly they can create a lot of damage.

« Excellence », « integrity » and « communication » These seem to be the most popular buzzwords in corporate value statements. 

I roll my eyes as soon as I see these values anywhere. Why? I will give you four reasons why they make me nervous:

1. One size does not fit all

First of all, values like excellence, integrity and communication are way too generic. They could be adopted by any organization. Who would be against excellence, integrity and communication? But are they really specific for the company and its culture or business model? Probably not! Excellence can mean many things to different people. It certainly makes a difference what we mean by excellence whether you are working in a bank or a hospital. 

Integrity? It means that you always stick to your moral principles no matter what the benefit might be if you break the rules. This value, too, needs a lot of definition and soul searching before a group of people like a company can agree what it really means to them:

When is a gift a bribe?

How do we deal with confidential information? 

Can I be friends with a supplier? Etc.

Yes, way too often value statements are empty word bubbles! Please avoid that. Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

2. The true colors are always shining through

Second, often companies succumb to the temptation to choose values that sound appealing but are too far away from their corporate reality and somehow hoping that the simple act of proclaiming that value it will become a reality in the organization. For example, when companies put “communication” in their value chart they wish to express with this value, which is not even a value but an activity, that they want everyone in the organization to cooperate effectively and openly with as little political power play as possible.

Wishful thinking in many cases!  Of course, the people in the company know this and react with cynicism. 

You cannot declare that your company cherishes collaboration, open communication and team work when in reality your corporate culture is driven by fierce internal competition, politics and monetary incentives only. What we need is an inside-out approach.

You have to do your internal cultural homework before you go into the world and brag about what a wonderful company you think you are. 

Values statement will never work, if they are only the icing on the cake, they have to be the very foundation of a corporate culture.

Within the icing-on-the-cake approach the top management comes together and agrees on some fancy sounding words that are than communicated to the lower ranks. This does not work. It is like putting on make-up without washing your face. Or like learning some moves and gestures to appear more self-assured without doing the hard internal work of personal development.

France Telecom had to learn this the hard way in 2008, when they got hit by a series of over 30 employee suicides: victims stabbed themselves in the middle of company meetings, jumped out of the window at work and left good-bye letters that clearly stated that they killed themselves because of the pressures and fears at work.

At that time France Telecom was in a difficult transition from a state-owned company to a player in the highly competitive and dynamic international telcom market and could not fire employees with a public servant status. Therefore, CEO Didier Lombard had introduced a merciless shake-out project that aimed at demoralizing employees in order make them leave the company “voluntarily”.  As a reaction to the suicide series Lombard said that this “fashion” of suicide should stop and that it the media coverage created an effect of contagion. The waves of public outrage went high, Lombard had to leave and is still today on trial for harassment. Of course, at the same time France Telecom had a value statement that said that the well-being of their employees was very important to them. 

It is clear that after a disaster like that it will be very, very hard to ever make coworkers believe in the beautiful words of a value statement again. This is one point that is often ignored when companies initiate a value management project:

If you screw it up, credibility is lost for a very long time, if not for ever.

At the same time it is true that values can and should be aspirational.

You can use values as part of a change program. But if you do that you have to make clear that you know that you are not quite there yet and prove that you have measures like training, organizational redesign or new performance standards in place to get there.

3. No Emontial appeal

Third, if values are too generic and unrealistic they do not create any genuine emotional response or connection for the men and women in a company who know the true colors of their organization all too well. 

Of course, client orientation is important, but this is not a value that would deeply resonate with the hearts of employees. This is nothing that makes people get out of bed in the morning and go to work with joy and anticipation.

How can you make corporate values emotionally appealing?

Not easy, but it helps to always start with a motivating overall purpose of the company that goes beyond the profit motive.

Humans always yearn for meaning in their life.

As philosopher and Holocost survivor Viktor Fraenkel famously put it:

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” 

This human desire for meaning is nicely illustrated by Harish Manwani’s (COO of Unilever) TED talk in which he tells the story of his first day at the company where his boss asked him why he was there. Manwani answered: “To sell lot’s of soap!” and his boss said: “No, to change peoples lifes!”, because the original purpose of Unilever was to improve hygiene in order to help prevent contagious diseases. Clearly changing peoples lifes is more emotionally appealing than selling lot’s of soap, right?

4. No link to everyday behavior

Forth, very often values statements are not linked to behavior. They get developed, glossy brochures rolled out, employees (maybe) read them, laugh bitterly because they are so unrealistic and cheesy and then they forget them, because nothing happens that would link these values with the behavior of managers and employees.

The mere proclamation of value buzz words will never, never, never influence people’s behavior. How people in an organization actually behave is the ultimate prove to the value pudding. Without this link to behavior a value statement loses all credibility and disappoints all expectations that unavoidably come up when a company opens the value Pandora’s box.

And by the way, these three values, excellence, integrity, and communication were the corporate values of Enron. And we all know how this ended: In jail, bankruptcy, and shattered hopes. Somehow Enron had managed to win prices for their value statement, but it definitely did not keep their top management from cooking the books and inciting their employees to cut-throat business behavior with the help of an inhumane incentive system. 

In a nutshell, ever so often value statements do not go beyond orgies of humanistic prose in shiny brochures that nobody can take seriously. In extreme cases they are a more or less random collection of buzz words sound like this hilarious song by Weird Al: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4 

On the other side, of course, values are important for companies in our highly volatile, complex and ambiguous times. Old-school management that works with order and command is too rigid for this new fast-moving world. The younger generation of corporate coworkers is looking for more freedom, more fun, more autonomy and more purpose in their jobs. Here a corporate culture that is driven by values and a purpose that goes beyond simple profit maximization creates a positive appeal for future coworkers, higher levels of motivation with current coworkers and a more inspiring and more flexible way of decision making. Ideally, instead of applying rigid rule books, controls and processes, coworkers decide on the basis of common values. 

So how can you come up with a value statement that will actually have these positive effects instead of creating cynicism and ridicule?

Stay tuned for my next blog post and on the five steps to make them value statements work.

Der Beitrag Four Reasons why Corporate Value Statements don’t work erschien zuerst auf Dr. Bettina Palazzo.

My story

When I was working as a research assistant in Germany in the 90ies, one of my tasks was to help organize conferences. At one of these conferences I meet an economics professor and we had a nice talk. The week after the conference he called me in my office and said that he would like to “intensify our relationship…” WHAT? I asked him to explain himself better and after a lot of beating about the bush he finally let the cat out of the sack (no idea if this German saying is in anyway equivalent in English, but I guess you get the meaning, right?): He wanted to offer me a job as a PhD. candidate with a much better salary and a more interesting degree…under the condition that I would become his lover!

Ouch! I said:” Thank you, no thank you!” and felt kind of weird and drained the rest of the day.

Much later in life and after a few other experiences in male dominance strategies, I started asking around and discovered that also most of my female friends had experienced stories like this and had never shared this with anyone.

Then came #metoo and it became clear that sexual harassment was a much wider phenomenon than most people had thought.

So why is it so difficult so talk about sexual harassment?

You guessed it. The reasons are many, they can be complex, and they are powerful. 

• Some women feel ashamed to admit that they have been sexually harassed. Nor surprise here, it is pretty embarrassing being reduced to your sexuality in a professional context. 

• Sometimes women think it was their fault. Sometimes they have low self-esteem and do not speak-up. 

• If you open up about being sexually harassed, you become vulnerable and this is often a risk in an organization.

• If you admit that you have been sexual harassed or discriminated against, people might see you as a victim. That is not a career-pushing image you want to have! Then there is the realistic fear that people will not believe you, if you report on sexual harassment, 

• the fear of being ridiculed, 

• the fear of negatives effects on the work relationships, on your career. 

This is especially true in cases where the harasser is your boss or up the hierarchy from you. The fear of retaliation if women speak up about sexual harassment is real.

According to a study from 2003 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14570522) 75% of women how spoke up eventually got fired. 75%!

• And finally, women just do not know how and to whom to talk about these attacks. Back in the 90ies the thought that I could have blown the whistle at the university administration of this professors never crossed my mind.

We see there are many and good reasons to not talk openly about sexual harassment. In addition, there is a lot of misunderstanding out there about sexual harassment. Still today people tend to think sexual harassment is about (awkward) flirting and being strict and outspoken would turn the professional world inhumane and fun-free. Catherine Deneuve made a statement like this. Sorry, my dear. This is wrong! Sexual harassment is a power dominance strategy that wants to limit women to their sexual status in order to undermine their power as a professional. Or it is, like in my professor case, the misuse of professional power for the purpose of getting sexual favors. 

The hidden costs of Sexual harassment

Sexual harassment is harmful not only to women, but also to men and to organizations. A company were sexual harassment is tolerated, is usually not a very nice and supportive place to work for anyone. According to some studies sexual harassment is most frequent in companies that are male dominated, hyper competitive and forgiving when it comes to bad behavior (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/organizations-sexual-harassment/546707/). Do you want to work there? I wouldn’t!

If cases of sexual harassment become public, the damage for the company can be costly: reputation loss, legal costs, decline of employee motivation, bad employer image etc. 

But even without public exposure the hidden cost of sexual harassment should not be underestimated: the victim(s) (yes, usually, if there is a hostile environment in a company, you will find more than one case) will often be less productive, have more sick days and eventually leave the company. Turn-over is costly for companies: about 1,5 of a yearly salary for replacing just one experienced manager. (https://iwpr.org/publications/sexual-harassment-work-cost/) That way companies have been losing talented women for a long time. Talent that they are utterly needed in the face of our fast moving and more and more diversified economy.

It is also quite easy to imagine that sexual harassment does not only affect the productivity of the victim, but spills over to the whole team. According to one study this costs companies 22.500 $ per person in a team that is infected with sexual harassment (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2007.00067.x).

Finally, a corporate culture that makes it impossible to speak up on sexual harassment is also not a place for addressing uncomfortable truths in general: impossible deadlines, faulted products, wasteful processes, unrealistic strategies, mistakes of all kinds? Covering up problems and mistakes is a risky strategy. Successful companies make it possible for their employees to openly give critical feedback on things that go wrong. Only companies that cultivate an open feedback culture will survive the current shake out of turning bureaucratic corporate giants into agile self-organized entities that create innovations.

Consequently, my bold thesis is:

Harassment free companies are also more successful and more innovative.

So what needs to be done?

Of course, in order to fight sexual harassment, the change needs to come mostly from men and from organizations. But this will take a while. In the meantime, it is (unfortunately) an important career skill for women to be able to deal with creepy guys.

But how can we learn this important self-defense skill, if we do not share our stories? If again and again women think they are alone in this? That it is their fault, that their just need to toughen up?

Keeping your stories about sexual harassment and discrimination to yourself not only prevents women to learn from each other, but it also harmful for the long-term self-esteem and success of a woman. As the writer Maya Angelou said: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Sharing your story of shame and anger has a liberating effect.  

I have been working in business ethics for over 25 years and I have learned a thing or two about how to make people talk about sensitive topics. In fact, in most of my business ethics trainings the same thing happened: In the beginning everybody is shy and apprehensive about the topic, because, participants are not used to talk about ethics in business and they somehow fear that it might touch on their moral identity (We all want to think about ourselves as good people). But as soon as I create a save space and make it easy to talk about ethical dilemmas (by using a game), people usually do not want to stop talking about their stories of ethical challenges. They all had had these moments in their work life and it was liberating to finally see that they were not alone with this and being able to openly discuss them.

Dealing with these issues alone because you do not dare to ask other’s advice can be quite a burden in your work life. 

Speaking up is an ability that can be trained. Like a muscle that gets bigger with exercise.

Despite all the fears of speaking up on sensitive issues like ethics or sexual harassment, there are still are people who dare to speak up.

What do you think? Who are these people? What is different about them? Do they not have these fears? Are they brave superheroes?

Are they maybe in a more powerful position?

No.

People who do speak up on important concerns do this because they have spoken up before. People who have spoken up on smaller concerns before, are much more likely to speak up on more important problems.

So, the degree of fear, power or bravery do not play a role. It is the practice that makes the difference.

This is why women need to learn to talk about sexual harassment and discrimination, share their stories, support each other and learn from each other.  

The basic structures of a sexual harassment attacks and discrimination are often similar: inappropriate comments and jokes, unfair work division, extorting sexual favors, inappropriate touches and emails etc.

If women unite and exchange their stories, they can find out what worked and what did not work so well as defense strategies. That way they can collectively build a tool box that will help them to react with calm confidence in most tricky situations. 

Without this kind of preparation, it can be extremely hard to come up with smart reactions on the spot, because often women do not see it coming and they are under stress. The consequence is that women automatically fall either into a predator or prey reaction. They attack back and risk to create more aggression from the other side and being labeled as the bitchy feminist. Or they stand there like a deer in the headlight and freeze, laugh, tilt their head, nervously touch their hair and go along (I know! It had happened to me when I was starting my career.). In any case they will become destabilized. And this is exactly what harassers want. They want to get women out of balance, because they cannot stand to see them successful and strong. 

Let’s sum up:

• Sexual harassment is difficult to talk about.

• Sharing stories helps to liberate women form the burden of these attacks. 

• Women can defend themselves better if they share defense strategies that worked for them.

• If women can mentally prepare for sexual harassment and discrimination it is so much easier to stay calm and confident.
• Especially the new generation needs this kind of preparation. Without this, the circle of attack and helplessness cannot be broken.

So, what can we do?

Yes, women can create defense workshops themselves and train in clever reactions and responses. But wouldn’t it be even better if companies would be very clear about how they want to address sexual harassment and discrimination from day one of a new employee. Both to men and women?

Unfortunately, still today many companies are in denial about sexual harassment. I recently talked to a client’s diversity & inclusion manager and he told me that sexual harassment was considered not an issue in their organization, because on the company’s complaint hotline no cases were reported. Of course, as you might guess now, this does not mean that there are no cases, but that women do not even trust the independent ethics hotline enough in order to speak up. It is highly unlikely that there are no cases of sexual harassment in a male-dominated company of 50.000 employees. We do know from research in ethics and compliance that if you do not have any reports on an issue on your hotline, that this is actually not a reason to relax and not worry, but a serious red flag.

In conclusion, yes, talking about sexual harassment is difficult and risky, but hoping that the problem will go away by not talking about it, does not work. Neither for women nor for organizations. Women need to share their stories and create circles of support that provide women with a practical tool box of smart defense strategies. But this I only the second-best solution. Companies need to be transparent about sexual harassment, make clear what the expectations are, make it safe and worthwhile for women to speak up and, most importantly, do not let bad behavior pass without consequences. If this is ruthlessly done, then the day will come when we will no longer need to talk about sexual harassment, because it has become a thing of the past.

Der Beitrag Let’s talk about sex…ual harassment! erschien zuerst auf Dr. Bettina Palazzo.