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What can you do as a leader to prevent physical violation? I think that one of the most important things you can do to set boundaries at work is to make it really clear to everyone what the rules of engagement are. You want to have a culture of consent. All that means is that everybody on your team needs to understand and needs to understand very explicitly that if they want to touch someone, even if it’s just to shake their hand, they need to know if the person wants to be touched in that way. And if the person doesn’t want to be touched, don’t touch. And if you don’t know, don’t touch. You want to make sure that this is quite explicit. This is the kind of thing that seems like you shouldn’t need to say out loud, but in today’s world, you do.
You also, when you create a culture of consent, you make sure that you are hooking into people’s intrinsic ability to understand one another. It’s tempting to create sort of rules of the road. “There’s no touching at work.” “No handshakes at work.” But you know what? There are some people who want to hug and want to give hugs at work, and they’re going to do that. There are other people who don’t. So what you want to do is you want to say, “Look. If you want to touch someone, you need to know if they want to be touched in that way.”
I found, after COVID, that it was useful to even do this with the handshake because there are some people who never want to shake hands again. They’d much rather do the elbow bump. And even before COVID, I found, I was working with a group in the Middle East. And I was in a meeting, and I stuck my hand out for someone for him to shake it. And I realized he was uncomfortable. And it was not my right to insist that he shake my hand. It was my job to notice that he felt uncomfortable and to say, I, you know, “I’m sorry. You don’t have to shake my hand.” He was happy to work with me, but it was against his religious convictions to touch someone who is not his wife. And so instead of shaking hands, he would sort of put his hand on his chest and bow. And that’s fine. You need to learn how to pick up on these cues with each other if you’re going to work together better.