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What happens if you’re working in an organization where your leadership has not created the kinds of systems that prevent discrimination, harassment, and physical violations. How can you speak truth to power without blowing up your career? I think there’s a few things you should always do. The first thing that I recommend is that you document what happened. Even if you think that you’re not going to take any kind of legal action, documenting what’s going on is a great way to make sure that you don’t feel gaslit by your experiences, that you don’t start to blame yourself for what’s happening to you, which is easy to do if you’re experiencing discrimination, harassment, or physical violations.
The next thing that I recommend that you do is find someone you trust and talk to them. Build solidarity with other people. It’s so easy to feel isolated when you’re in that situation. So find people who you trust, who you can talk to. The third thing that I recommend that you do if you’re experiencing these problems is to locate the exit nearest you. Even if you don’t want to quit, it’s really good to know what your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, your BATNA, is. So now you’ve documented what’s happened. You’ve talked to other people who you trust about it, and you know what your exit options are. You know what your BATNA is.
Before you take another job, I recommend talk to your boss. This feels horrible. Nobody wants to do it, but talk to your boss about what happened. Maybe your boss was not aware of what happened. Maybe your boss did the thing and wasn’t aware of the impact. And maybe if you tell your boss, they’ll knock it off. They’ll fix the problem. Maybe they won’t, but give a person a chance. If your boss doesn’t do the right thing, the next thing you can do, you don’t have to do, but you can do is go to HR. HR is supposed to be part of the solution, and very often, HR is part of the solution. Some of the best mentors I’ve had in my life have been HR leaders. However, I don’t want to overpromise. There are times when HR is most definitely part of the problem, not part of the solution.
If HR doesn’t help solve the problem, you still have a couple of choices. You can talk to a lawyer. You can take legal action. One of the checks and balances that we still have in our society is our legal system. If you don’t want to take the legal route, you can also tell your story publicly. One of the things that gives me optimism is how many people are, feel more comfortable today telling these stories about what happened to them, and how many people are open to hearing these stories. When I was writing this book, I kept sending drafts to my father who was just shocked at the things that had happened to me because he would never do those things, and those things would never happen to him. Same thing with my husband. And it was so useful for both of them to hear the stories, and they were open to hearing the stories.
There was one company where I worked, and there was a whole email alias called “Yes, at” and the name of the company. And people wrote in and told stories about these sort of horrifying, disrespectful things that had happened to them. And it was really helpful for people to understand the different ways that we disrespect one another, often without meaning to, sometimes meaning to, and how we can come together and create a better work environment. Those are the things you can do to speak truth to power without blowing up your career.