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One Way to Prevent Prejudice
What can leaders do about prejudice? I think the best thing that leaders can do to prevent prejudice from getting in their team’s way of working well together is to create a space for conversation, to talk about what are the policies at your company. Because it’s really easy for me to sit here and to say, there’s a line between one person’s freedom to believe whatever they want, but they can’t impose those beliefs on others. Really hard for you to define exactly where that line is. And different companies, different teams draw that line in different places. And there’s not one absolute rule of where the right place to draw the line is. What is really important is that you have a shared understanding of where that line is.
Three Ways to Prevent Bullying
What can leaders do to prevent bullying? Three things. First of all, you’ve got to create conversational consequences. You’ve got to learn how to disrupt bullying in the moment. Second of all, you’ve got to create compensation consequences. If you, as a leader, give high ratings and pay good bonuses to people who bully others, then you are rewarding bullying, and it is going to escalate. The third thing that you have to do as a leader to prevent bullying is to create career consequences. So don’t promote a person who bullies others, even if they’re getting good results because there’s a ton of research that demonstrates that when a person gets great results by bullying others, they do more harm than good. They may be getting good results, but they are causing other people, a bunch of other people, to get bad results.
It’s not enough, however, not to promote that person. You’ve got to give that person some feedback and tell them that if this behavior continues, not only will they never be promoted, but if they can’t change their behavior, they’re going to be fired. It’s important to go into this conversation in a nonjudgmental way because sometimes people are not aware of the impact they’re having on others. And it’s your job as a leader to make them aware and to help them change. But if the person cannot or will not change, it’s your job as the leader to fire that person.