Women at Work - Work After #MeToo

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

While once accusations of sexual harassment would be met with — at most — a monetary settlement and a non-disclosure agreement, today they are more likely to be publicized and investigated. Now, the challenge is, how do we harness this new attention to sexual harassment to make work a safer place for women? Guests: Joan Williams, Amy Gallo, and Michael Kimmel. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network. For links to the articles mentioned in this episode, as well as other information about the show, visit hbr.org/podcasts/women-at-work.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at Work. From Harvard Business Review, this is Women at Work. I'm Sarah Green Carmichael, Executive Editor. I'm Nicole Torres, Associate Editor. And I'm Amy Bernstein, Editor of HBR. This Me Too moment is stunning to me because it represents such a sea change from the world I entered in 1982 when I graduated from college and went to work at a network news operation in New York. Sex was everywhere, but no one ever talked about out, she would have tanked her career. The change is that today, I believe the complaint would be taken seriously. The organization would have to pay attention.

So I believe we've turned a page on all of that, and that is absolutely fantastic. Now the challenge is, here in the midst of this Me Too moment, what do we do with it? How do we take all of this newfound awareness and all this energy, harness it, and turn it into something constructive? This episode, we're talking to three experts and to each other about sexual harassment and sexism. We'll go over what's illegal and what's just wrong and how to handle misbehavior. First up is Joan Williams. She's a professor at UC Hastings College of the Law, and she's an expert on what U.S. law has to say about sexual harassment. Later in the show, HBR's resident expert on conflict, Amy Gallo, talks us through what to

do when somebody at work asks you out, or might be asking you out, or on the flip side is leaving you out from socializing with clients or other colleagues. Try to establish this is a professional environment, even though we might be chit-chatting and building a relationship. Finally, we'll talk to a man. That's right, the first man on this podcast. Michael Kimmel's trying to get men to step in when they see other men harassing at work. He's come up with a primer for men who want to be allies. Most men don't want to say the wrong thing.

Most men don't want to do the wrong thing. But we don't know how. We don't know what to say yet. But now, our conversation with Joan. Joan recently wrote an article for HBR with Rutgers University history professor Suzanne Lebsack. It's called Now What? And it's about whether this is really the end of harassment culture. We started by asking a big, basic question. What exactly is sexual harassment is one of two things. The first is called quid pro quo sexual harassment, and that's basically sleep with me or you're fired. That is conditioning

a workplace benefit on sexual favors. The second type is called hostile environment sexual harassment, and that is what it sounds like, creating a hostile environment in someone's workplace. And there the legal test is that the environment must be unwelcome. If it's welcome, it's not hostile. Also, the hostility must be stemming from things that are either severe, it can be one thing if it's very severe, but that's really unusual. So almost always it's pervasive. So it has to be severe or pervasive. So if something is not severe, but it's kind of the death of a thousand cuts, that's the pervasive part. And then the environment has to be something that a reasonable person would find hostile. And the plaintiff herself has to find the environment hostile. So that's the legal definition of hostile all has sexual harassment. But a lot of what some of what's been coming up

in the news is rape. Quite a bit of what's being coming up on the news is sexual assault, which is basically unconsented touching of someone's private areas. So I have a question, Joan, about this reasonable person standard, because one of the arguments that you make in the article is that there was a long time when women were by definition not considered reasonable people, that we were hysterical, or if we were feminists, humorless, you know, harpies. Do you think the standard has changed over time as to how we define what reasonable is? You know, people have always thought of sexual harassment as not cool, but it's kind of been a tisking matter of sort of matter. And the other thing is that a stereotype has been used to silence or discredit women. So even then when, well, if it happened,

it was bad, but you know. And we call that stereotype, I and my co-author Suzanne Lebsack call that stereotype the vengeful lying slut stereotype. This is actually what Anita Hill ran into in 1991 when she testified at Supreme Court Justice Thomas's hearings. She was called a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty. And she was asked if she wasn't just a scorned woman. So there's the vengeful lying slut stereotype. And, you know, I think a couple things have changed. Sexual harassment is no longer seen as just, you know, a tisking matter. But the even more dramatic change is that women are being believed. I mean, one of the most important central moments was when Senator Mitch McConnell said about the women accusing Roy Moore, I believe the women. I'm going like, you do? Really? That's the big, big, big change. So you also wrote that historically it's been hard to win a sexual harassment suit. Do you think that is different now? You know, it's really too early

to tell, but certainly some of the polling suggests that it's going to get easier. Again, one of the ways that women lose lawsuits, as well as other situations, is when people write off their testimony as unreliable, because they're just a scorned woman getting even, or they're just a humorless woman who can't take a joke, that kind of thing. And with this big shift towards taking women's sexual harassment allegations seriously, if you look at some of the polls, I don't have the numbers down completely flat, but something like two-thirds of people now say that women's complaints about sexual harassment, they believe they'll be taken seriously. And that's way up from something in the 20s just quite recently. In your article for us, you wrote that, you know, some men have become fearful that they are now refusing to meet with women alone because they don't want to give any appearance of impropriety. How do you think companies should address those worries? Well, I mean, I think it's totally legal to refuse to meet with women alone in a room with a closed door, so long as you never meet with men alone in a room with a closed door. If you meet

with men alone with a closed door and closed door. If you meet with men alone with a closed door and you don't meet with women, that's called sex discrimination. You're treating women differently solely because they are women. And what happens behind closed doors in business contexts is tacit, sensitive information is shared, important, sensitive decisions are made. And to exclude women from all of that, that's just, you know, you want to be sued, be my guest. That is sex discrimination. The Pence rule, I will never have lunch or dinner alone with a woman without my wife present. That's totally fine. So long as you never have lunch or dinner alone with a man without your wife present. Absent that, you are choking off women's business

opportunities in a way that is illegal. Can't say that strongly enough. So just sort of practically speaking, if you are a woman in this new environment who feels that you are being harassed or there has been an incident that you didn't want, When's the right time to report an incident? How do you start thinking about keeping a record? Do you have to wait for something to happen multiple times? What's your advice to women in this situation? I mean, I think the advice is so crystal clear, and that's why I started out with a legal test. You know, if somebody basically says, sleep with me or you're fired, you just go straight to HR. I mean, that is just so illegal, right? But if it's a hostile environment situation, keep in mind, you have to signal clearly that it's

unwelcome. And so the challenge is, how do you signal that it's unwelcome without being caricatured as a humorless you-know-what? We give some examples, like lots of funny ways to do it, and both funny and firm, two different varietals. Ways to do it in the book that I wrote with my daughter, Rachel Dempsey, What Works for Women at Work. We were saying, well, like, you know, what do you do, ladies, if you're in a situation where the discussion has gotten pretty ripe, and then all of a sudden it's way over the line. And some people said, you know, that really makes me feel uncomfortable. We're at work.

Let's get back to work. And that's the sort of very straightforward approach. The other, but this one woman, she just went, she looked at the guys and she said, eww, and it worked perfect. They stopped. They stopped. And so there's a lot of strategies in what works for women at work. But low-key matter of fact works and humor works. And I'm sure, you know, human beings are very variable. I the past is they were afraid of their career being stonewalled or being punished for speaking up. Isn't this risk still present or do you think it's less of an issue? advice to women is just in a very matter-of-fact way, let people know if something is unwelcome. Because we are in a far better place now for people to actually hear that. Will sexual harassment disappear? No, it will not disappear. Are we in an incredibly different situation than we were a

year ago? Yes, we are. And I think it's time for women to realize that if something is unwelcome, they can say that it's unwelcome and expect it to stop. There's a lot of stuff that happens in the office that wouldn't meet the legal standard of sexual harassment, but it still might be something that a woman doesn't want. And she might even go to HR and say, listen, this happened and it wasn't cool with it. If the company then retaliates against her, that's illegal too, right? Even if the original thing wasn't illegal. Yeah. You know, one person can do one thing that in itself is not pervasive. But if you go to HR and say, this happened to me and I said it wasn't welcome and it continued and I'm not pleased about it, just so you know, that's actually something the company should want to know. Because if that's happening in a pervasive fashion to a lot of people, that's called being pervasive.

And so you shouldn't assume that just because one guy was just a little jerky to you, that he's not being super jerky to a lot of other people. So that's the way that pervasiveness works. But the retaliation point is a different and very important point, which is that it's easier to prove retaliation often than it is to prove the underlying sexual harassment claim. And retaliation just means that because of prior sexual harassment or prior gender bias, when you complain about it, that you're retaliated against. That's also illegal under federal and typically state law as well. And it's a lot easier to prove because all you have to prove is this is the way I was treated until I had this problem or complained.

And now this is the way I was treated afterwards. One of the points you make in your article is that firing is the new settlement. So it used to be that, you know, the male boss, or not always the male boss, the boss would be accused. There'd be a pretty good reason to believe that the accusations were for real. They'd pay off the accuser, usually banish her. Yeah, with a non-disclosure. to my point, which is that these things used to be handled in private, although it just feels like corrosive secrecy to me. Do you think that that secrecy is a thing of the past? Oh, I mean, I've been talking to people who sit on boards of directors and, you know, more to the point, they think that secrecy is a thing of the past. The kind of thing that happened both at Fox and at the Weinstein Company, where you had multi-million dollar, long streams of multi-million dollar or very expensive settlements that were settled with

non-disclosure agreements, and the guy just goes forward either with a slap on the wrist or without even the slap on the wrist. At this point, doing that risks not fulfilling your duties to the company as a board. Now, if it's a minor thing or if it's a consensual relationship that just did not follow company policy, I would expect that some of those things are settled. These long strings of truly egregious behavior being handled through settlements, either in Congress or in corporations, will be widely understood to preclude that. about women at work has been that we are too emotional to be in leadership roles, that we can't just separate personal and business. And we, you know, we can't just leave all of our female feelings at the door when we go into an office. And this whole sexual harassment conversation, like some of the backlash to it that has emerged is about men kind of saying like, well, they want to bring all their like sexual feelings into the workplace. My attitude is, well, first of all, this isn't all men, but it is some men.

And some men are losing something. Some men are losing an entitlement to treat every woman in their environment as a sexual opportunity. And they're losing a weapon to undercut women at the top. And all of a sudden, she has to not only be really good at her job, she has to not only be really good at office politics, but she has to somehow navigate a situation where somebody powerful is trying to undercut her. And she's trying to, you know, the old rule, she was trying to prove she wasn't a slut, and she's trying to prove she's not a whiner. And she's trying to, you know, the old rule, she was trying to prove she wasn't a slut, and she's trying to prove she's not a whiner, and she's trying to prove that she's carrying a backpack that the men aren't carrying. And so I think what we've seen is that this is one of the backpacks that women are carrying that is one of the reasons why we really haven't seen a lot of progress for women in work since the 1990s.

So if you had to sum up what is changing, what has changed about the workplace as a result of Me Too, how would you do that? I think that the way I would sum it up is that most people, when they go to work, they want to work. Unless they make an explicit decision based on individual quirky factors that they would like to take a work relationship in a different direction. And then as adults, we expect to ask and to accept the answer. And that's where we are now. That's not where we and it's a huge one. Do you think, Joan, that is a pendulum swing? You know, so much of women's, the advancement of women's rights in the United States has been the story of a swinging pendulum. Do you think it's a more permanent shift? You know, I don't know, Sarah. I wish I did. I mean, I lived through the Hill-Thomas hearings,

and we thought that was going to be kind of the end of it. And it totally, totally wasn't. I do think that the pendulum may swing part of the way back. I'll be very, very surprised if it swings all the way back. But with the Hill-Thomas hearings, as we all know, he won, she lost. Yes. You know, she lost her tenured job at the University of Oklahoma Law School. Yeah. The injustice of that was really shocking. You know, what I have been saying to reporters is, when they ask me the same question, is I say to reporters, you know, it depends a lot on you. What would have happened if the Washington Post had not uncovered the fabricated allegation against Roy Moore and had simply printed it. I said, you know, good on the press. We're relying on you. The thing that would be most damaging is to have a really high profile instance where a woman was found to be clearly lying. And I think there are people who are going to be trying to

make sure that that happens. Well, Joan, thank you for this interesting and occasionally sobering conversation. Thank you. Thank you all. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Joan. Thanks, Joan. Bye. So the point about how if there were more women in leadership roles, sexual harassment would decline makes me wonder if in a way we've sort of named it the wrong thing and because i think the term sexual harassment as human beings we focus on the first part of that and not so much on the harassment part and i almost wonder if it would be better termed either just harassment or sexist harassment because it seems like what it really is is a mechanism to enforce a status quo in which men have power and women are intruders but when we call it sexual harassment that's when we start to get into this

oh well there's like gray areas and sometimes they're just asking someone out or like giving them a compliment and actually it seems like maybe it's helpful in a way to just focus more on the harassment aspect and less on the sexual aspect. I think that's really smart and absolutely true. And I've never heard of a company saying, we got to go hire more women so that we can handle our harassment problem. And that's not why you would want to hire more women anyway. I mean, you do it because you want diversity and you want different perspectives. And I do buy what you're saying, Sarah, that what we're seeing here, if we take one step further back, is not just, you know, my power over you. It's that urge to make sure that the traditional balance of power doesn't change. Because I'm going to lose out if I'm a guy.

Yeah. I like reframing it as sexist harassment. Joan makes the point that, you know, women carry a lot of backpacks that keep them from advancing, that make it harder for them to succeed at work. And sexual harassment is one of those backpacks. You know, it's often used as a tool to undermine women so that they cannot rise to the top of companies. It's a way of reminding the woman and everyone else who's witnessing what's going on, this woman's a woman. It's belittling. Yeah.

It's demeaning and belittling. And if you've ever been at the other end of that, it is unforgettable when it's done to you. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free

at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Mudupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life.

Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. If a colleague has ever come on to you and you want nothing romantic to do with him, you know it's hard to figure out how to respond. How do I say no? Do I say no? What if saying no affects my career? What if he won't take no for an answer? There's the well-meaning but unwanted ask, and then there's sexual harassment. We're going to talk about both. To help, we've brought in Amy Gallo, HBR's in-house expert on difficult conversations. She's the author of the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict. I was on a business trip during this taping, so you two

got to talk to Amy without me. So here's the scenario Amy B and I posed to Amy G. A co-worker asks, hey, do you want to go get a drink with me after work? Like in my mind, that'd be like, oh, that's casual, friendly, professional, but that's me. For someone else, that could be, are they asking me on a date? How do I know if this is romantic or not? It's very confusing. Right. And that happens outside work too, right? People ask you to do things and the question, is this a date? Is this a come on, right? It's a big question and it's really helpful to clarify that. And, you know, there's a little bit of gray area between a casual, let's go for a glass of wine as colleagues and, you know, a more intense, hey, let's go out on a date. And I think we need to acknowledge that gray area is you and says, I want to have sex. Right. It's much more often. Well, that's pretty darn seductive right there. Yeah.

Nothing like subtlety. But it's more often, hey, do you want to get a drink? What are you doing? You, then maybe it's just a, hey, I want to get to know you better. Maybe it goes this way. Maybe it goes that way. That's the way it goes with romance or friendship in the office. Yeah. And maybe if someone does say, hey, do you want to get a drink after work, a male colleague, you could respond in a way that clarifies that says, if you're talking about having a drink and talking about work, I'd love that resounding yes. If you're talking about something, you know, a little more romantic, I just want to be clear, I'm not interested in anything but a professional relationship. Yeah, I think that's great advice. Yeah.

Or, yeah, you can just say it's not, that's not really on the horizon for me, something like that. Yeah. Something that doesn't bring in the issue of attraction, doesn't bring in, you know, your own discomfort, but that just really lays a clear line. Yeah. I hate to go back to the it's not you, it's me thing, but there's a reason that persists. And, you know, that's just not in the cards for me right now. Right. Well, and it's not you, not in the cards for me right now. Right. Well, and it's not you.

It's me is far less negotiable. Yeah. So, right. If you said, oh, well, you're married. Great point. Yeah. Right. If you're married, I don't want to go out with you.

OK, well, my wife and I have an open relationship. Right. Like then you start getting into this whole negotiation. Right. Right. Which you don't really want to be in. But if you're like, it's not on the horizon for me, that's a much more straightforward. Right. Right. Which you don't really want to be in. But if you're like, it's not on the horizon for me, that's a much more straightforward. Yeah. So if you find yourself

in a position where a coworker is coming on to you romantically and it's making you uncomfortable, what do you say? Okay. Well, I've been there and what I've said is stop. Did you say it like that? Yeah, I said, stop. Just stop. You're really, really making me uncomfortable. And it was a much older person with a lot of power. And it was making me extremely uncomfortable. And then I finally said, you're going to make me not want to work with you again.

Yeah. I was in a similar position where I was having an extensive email exchange that combined professional and personal topics where it was very vague. But I remember I lived with roommates at the time and I printed out the email because that's what you did back then. And I took it to my roommates. I said, is this or is he hitting on me? And they said, oh, yeah, he's hitting on you. And once I sort of had that consensus, I wrote a very direct email that said, I'm uncomfortable with this conversation. I'd like to keep our relationship professional. Yeah, because you don't, the mixed messages, I mean, we have to own responsibility for delivering really clear messages. So I'm curious what happened in both of those cases.

Like were either of you afraid of being retaliated against for your directness for laying that line very clearly? I mean, I was in a situation where I had a good standing in my organization. I had a great relationship with this man. I did not really fear for retaliation. I knew I could sit down and say to him this is not what I want Did it occur to me that this man has control over my livelihood when I take vacation what projects I get? Absolutely, I felt comfortable that it would be okay, but I think I was very lucky I think a lot of people do fear the retaliation and this this boss You know, I wasn't the only person that he asked out. And I do

sometimes wonder if other people had consequences. And part of the reason I wasn't interested in this person is because he was my superior. And I just knew how awkward that could be. I've had people who are peers ask me out on dates who I've worked with, and I've said yes. And, you know, it worked out fine. I didn't marry any of them or end up with any of them, but it was fine. And I think the power dynamic is important to consider when you're responding. And the fear of retaliation is real. You have to evaluate the risks in how you speak. But I do think no matter what, being clear about what you want and what you don't want always benefits you. I also wonder if you also have to kind of mindset into play about you know sort of

laying down the the bright line and saying even saying you know you've even you've put me in a position where i'm afraid that if i say no that's going to come back to haunt me yeah and just kind of you know that's a shot across the bow right there's also i. I think we also have to consider here the career opportunities in the can we go out and have a drink request. Even if it's not romantic and the person is genuinely trying to connect with you, saying no could be detrimental for your career. I've talked to women in financial services who say, you know, my male colleagues are going out with our male clients all the time. No one asks me because I'm a woman and they're afraid it's going to be romantic. Her solution has always been to bring her spouse. So if someone says, you know, can you meet with this male client? She'll say, great, I'll bring my spouse. He'll bring, hopefully bring his, try to establish this is a professional environment

even though we might be chit-chatting and building a relationship okay so if you have said no you've made your point very clearly but that behavior the requests kind of keep coming when do you know when to elevate it well i have a test which is is he preying on other people? Will my not saying something open the door to his harming others? And if the answer is yes, then you have to do something. And then what you have to do is sort of depends on your context and your relationship with your boss and your relationship with HR, but you have to do something. And my first move is usually to have the conversation directly. You know, this is, you know, you've really stepped over the line kind of conversation.

Well, and what you said earlier, Amy B., around, you know, laying out, you've put me in a position where I'm fearing for my job. Because oftentimes, again, assuming positive intent, this person might just be very interested in you, assuming they're not a predator. Might be persistent in doing that because they're getting different signals that maybe you're intentionally or unintentionally sending or not. And they just need it laid out for them. This is the consequences of your actions. Do you see this? Right.

And sometimes people might back off once they see that. If they don't, certainly, definitely elevate. And that, again, will depend on the quality of your HR group, you not speaking up is that other people are harmed, that is not generally a risk worth taking. So as a manager, if you have one of your direct reports or even a colleague come to you and say that they have been a target of some kind of sexual harassment, what do you do? What do you first say to them, and then what do you do about the situation? Well, I would urge them to go to HR with it. And if they're afraid that HR will turn a deaf ear to it to mention that they mentioned it to me, because, you know, then it gives them some accountability,

gives HR some accountability. And if they were, you know, just too devastated because then it gives them some accountability, gives HR some accountability. And if they were just too devastated by the whole thing to go to HR, I would go to HR, partly because it's the right thing to do and partly because it's your obligation as a manager. The thing I've dealt with more frequently, I've dealt with this twice, is the person who comes to me and says, hey, I've got to tell you something, but you have to promise not to tell anyone. And then proceeds to tell a horrific story of predation.

In which case, I told him that I was going to ignore him. And went directly to, in one case, HR, and in the other case, the boss. Yeah. And I think just a point about that conversation, when someone does tell you, whether they tell you not to share it or not, just say, thank you for telling me. Because acknowledge that this was a hard thing for that person to do. Oh, that's such a good point.

And that they're nervous that you won't believe them, that they'll get punished and put that at ease because that's going to help them make a better decision about how to handle it going forward. Yeah, that's such a great point, Amy J. When do you approach the person who has been accused of that behavior, if you're also their manager? I think you have to talk to HR about how to handle that if you're talking about a case of sexual harassment. If there's behavior that's unclear, if the person who's come to you says, I'm not sure, you can go to that person because it is your job as a manager to set team norms. So you can go to the person who's been accused. Again, if it's a legal issue, you do have to involve HR. But if it's on the line or unclear, you can go and say, I've heard this.

You don't have to tell who the accuser is. I don't know if it's true or not. I'm not that interested in exploring if it's true or not. What I want you to understand, if it is, that that's not acceptable and I won't tolerate it. And then you have, hopefully, you record that conversation, not actually record it, but make a note that you had the conversation, send a follow-up email. Then you have a hopefully you record that conversation not actually record it but make a note that you had the conversation send a follow-up email then you have a record so if it happens again and it does get escalated you've done your duty as a manager well and you also want to you want to stamp it out yeah right yeah i mean that's the point there is if someone's been warned and this behavior recurs you got to get rid of them there's nothing more corrosive than a manager, even a well-meaning manager, turning a blind eye to these reports. Oh gosh. It's what got us in

the situation that we're in right now. Absolutely. Yeah. These conversations can be very awkward. If you feel like someone has propositioned you, if you're a manager who received a complaint, but the ground is very murky and you're not sure what to do about it. Like, what should we be reminding ourselves about, like, the issue of sexual harassment at work? I would say one big takeaway for sure is that these will be uncomfortable conversations, but discomfort is not an excuse not to have them.

And being uncomfortable, having conflict, disagreement, it's a normal, healthy part of interacting with people. I don't know anyone who goes through life feeling 100% comfortable all the time. But don't let that feed your hesitancy or justify not acting in situations where you owe it to the other person or you owe it to yourself to do so. You know, sometimes being professional takes guts. Right. And you may also say the wrong thing. And that's okay. I think a lot of men right now are concerned.

I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to be alone with a woman, right? They have all these boundaries that they're drawing, which are really unfair to women. We're essentially, you know, you're talking about quarantining them in an organization. You might say something that is not perfect, and that's okay, as long as you are sincere, compassionate, empathetic, you apologize, and your intention is good, you can get through those difficult conversations.

So we now know what the legal definition of sexual harassment is. We've talked about how it's important for women to say if a comment or come on is unwelcome. And it's a relief to hear Joan say that we're in a far better place now for people to actually hear that. But we can't stop sexual harassment if the men we work with and who witness it stand by silently. That's why Michael Kimmel is trying to get men to intervene. He's the founder of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University. He explains what he thinks men should be doing and saying to help us stop sexual harassment in his recent HBR article, Getting Men to Speak Up. We asked him why men don't call out other guys on this kind of behavior. In one word, fear. We construct this idea of masculinity.

If you ask men, what does it mean to be a man? One of the first things they tell you is it means being brave, courageous, strong. And we're wimps when it comes to this stuff. You see, why do men not interrupt other men in a workplace when they're harassing a woman, when they're putting a woman down, belittling her, saying something stupid or sexist, and then just seeing if they can get a rise out of her? Well, men will say, well, I don't want to, I'll get marginalized, they'll come after me, I don't want, you know, they suddenly, like, they're suddenly as frightened as you could get. And so I think this is an important lesson. Men don't speak up. And what that does is that the people who are doing this

behavior assume that men's silence means that men agree with it, that it's being done in our name. So my feeling about this is most men are not okay with it. Most men are not down with this, but they don't know what to say and they're afraid of coming forward. So typically what happens if a man is going to challenge a sexist comment that's made in a public setting, you know, at work, like a meeting or, you know, a big group presentation, is that he will go to the other guy after the meeting and say, you know, hey, that wasn't cool. But what is the problem with calling out a comment in private after a meeting that way, rather than just in the moment in front of everyone? Well, you know, I have to say, I that more men did what you just described. My experience with this is that if there's a meeting with, you know, eight men and two women, let's say, or even one woman, and some guy, let's, you know, make some sexist remark, after the meeting, one of the guys will go up to the woman and say, oh, I'm really sorry about what he said in the meeting there.

I don't agree with it at all. At which point she kind of wants to strangle him. She wants to say, where were you when I needed you? This doesn't do me any good now to make me feel better. So I think what we need to do is after the meeting, I think we have to go up to one of the other guys who was at the meeting who didn't say the awful thing, but you can watch him during the meeting, and he's shuffling papers, and he's kind of uncomfortable. He's looking down at his shoes.

And you go up to him after the meeting, and you say, hey, you know what he said in that meeting? I don't like it. I'm going to say something next time. And the other guy says, yeah, I don't like it either. And at that point, you have an ally. And so what you say then is, listen, if he says something like that next meeting, I'm't like it either. And at that point, you have an ally. And so what you say then is, listen, if he says something like that next meeting, I'm going to say something. But listen,

if I do, you have to say something right after I do. Because if one guy says it, he can easily be marginalized. But if two guys say it together, they open up a space for other men to enter. And I think most of the men are sitting there uncomfortable with it. Most men don't like this. And how do I know this? I know this because what's the thing that you hear most often in workplaces today from men? You hear them saying, I don't know what to say. I don't know what's okay anymore.

I'm walking on eggshells. I don't want what's okay anymore. I'm walking on eggshells. I don't want to say the wrong thing. I regard that as really positive. I think what it's saying is most men don't want to be jerks. Most men don't want to say the wrong thing. Most men don't want to do the wrong thing. But we don't know how. We don't know what to say yet. I think this is terrific. This is the moment where we're actually being asked to sit in that discomfort and begin to figure out what the new rules are. How should we be thinking about generational differences? I've been thinking about this because in your article, you say, you know, men in their 60s who are now being accused of something they did 30 years ago, they're almost bewildered that they're being judged by modern

day standards. But I mean, should they not be? So my feeling is we are living in a new normal. The rules that we grew up with, the rules that we thought we were going to be playing by are no longer the rules. I think we have to look to young people to show us the way here. But so let me ask you a sort of, I guess, maybe slightly more pointed question about this, because I think in some media outlets, when older men have been accused of harassing behavior, there has been this kind of upwelling of support for them in a weird way where it's like, oh, especially if he's like a beloved popular man, where it's like, oh, he grew up in a different time. And I just, I wonder how much slack is,

how much slack should we be giving these guys? Because, well, I won't tip my hand on my personal bias. Oh, go ahead. Tip your hand on your personal bias. Go ahead. I think not very much. I think it is not going to surprise anyone that the world has changed. Like, look all around.

There are self-driving cars. Like, come on, just keep your hands off your secretary. It's not that hard. That's my feeling. Okay. So here's my thought. It depends on the posture of the men. If I'm in my 60s or 70s and I'm accused of something that I did 30 or 40 years ago when I thought I was playing by different rules. And someone comes to me and says, you know, what you did was wrong. If I say, oh, no, it wasn't. It was completely fine.

You know, that was the way it was then. And, you know, women made their peace with it. It was okay. Or if I say, you know, given what I know now, I am really sorry about that. If it happened today, I would never have done that. And if the men are willing to look at their past behavior, whether it's 40 years ago or four minutes ago, with some kind of honest assessment and apology to women that they may have hurt inadvertently by doing what they thought was normal, but say, you know, given what I know now, I wouldn't do it again. I'm really sorry that it

hurt you. I had no idea. I thought it was just like what you were supposed to do in the workplace. If you can say that honestly, I think, okay, you know, let's move on. And I'm a big believer, you know, I think that the model for this is the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa. There has to be some way to reintegrate. You don't just write off half the human race and say, okay, all men have done this, so therefore they're a write-off. So maybe I'm a little bit more forgiving than you are, but I feel like there has to be some idea of reconciliation and restoration after you rethink your behavior, because after all, that's what feminism is asking of men right now in this Me Too moment. Look at your past behavior. But feminism is asking more, isn't it,

Michael? I mean, after truth and reconciliation, we had a profound shift in the power. Yes, of course. In South Africa. Yeah, right. So isn't that really where we're going here? Well, I hope so. My feeling is that's right, that the possibility of real reconciliation comes with the possibility also of a real shift in power. And frankly, I mean, I guess I'm just overly optimistic these days, but I think these, there's, you know, the number of women who have been mobilized to run for office, who are running for office, who are just awesome. I mean, I have a feeling that we're going to see the beginning of that shift in power democratically in the next, in this, in the coming elections. So I agree with

you. Okay, but, but, but also, there's a a difference between women or in the case of South Africans, blacks taking power and men ceding power. And I think that – and we started this conversation with a point about power, that men do these things. They rub women's shoulders and they do the things we don't want them to do because they can. And the subtext there was, it's a display of power. Are you seeing any sign of a willingness to cede some power? Well, I don't know if it's a sense that men feel that they had power. I think it's going to be a little bit sort of more psychological than structural. In the beginning, men thought they could do this and get away with it. Now they fear that they can't, so they won't do it because they're afraid. The next step after being afraid to do it is that it becomes normal not to do it, right? The next generation

won't think about doing it because it's no longer normal. It takes some time. Now, will this come with a significant power shift? No, not in the U.S., but I think that there's going to be greater equality. I think that's the direction that we're moving in. I would like to see us move in that direction faster. But I'm talking about what would motivate men to rethink their behavior through this new lens if there's not something on the other side that says, okay, now we want to reintegrate you back into this under these new rules, where you make amends and you say, you know, you apologize. And after that should come some sense of forgiveness or reconciliation. I'm a believer in that restorative justice and restorative justice may be at the collective level where we do finally

sort of catch up to Europe and implement quotas on boards. And, you know, I mean, maybe that's the restorative justice that we need. Well, Michael, thank you again for talking with us today. This has been really interesting. Well, thanks for having me. Thank you. Thanks, Michael. I'd love to take up Michael's point

about truth and reconciliation. Because on the one hand, there's a perfectly reasonable question there, which is, is it women's job to forgive? And on the one hand, there's a perfectly reasonable question there, which is, is it women's job to forgive? And on the other hand, you have to kind of forgive to move to the next part, which is to rebuild and restructure the way we all relate to one another and we all interact. And at some point, being angry and fighting back has to move to something more constructive. We're in a very important point. I totally buy what he's saying.

And I don't think we're through that quite yet. He's given me something to think about with this analogy to truth and reconciliation. We're in truth right now. What's reconciliation going to be? Exactly. What does reconciliation and forgiveness really look like? Is it one woman, you know, learning to forgive in a kind of personal way, the man who harassed her? Is it companies forgiving people who've done terrible things while employed for them? Like that would be something totally different. There is a sort of fine line between revenge and holding someone accountable. And what I feel like

has been happening now is that men are finally being held accountable and it's somehow started to get conflated in the popular discourse with a kind of female revenge, which I don't think is right and I don't think is appropriate. Yeah. and I think we need to sort of tease out the constructive outcomes. You know, for one thing, it's not okay to look the other way anymore. Yeah, there are other things that can come out of this, but I think we need to start teasing those out and talking about them and operationalizing them. Have you guys been hearing from the men in your circles that they are bewildered and confused and don't know what the rules are now? No, not at all. Because this is not the way they behaved ever. I've been hearing that from some men

in sort of my 30-something age cohort where it's not that they ever behaved this way they just sort of they knew that like rape was wrong grabbing women's bodies was wrong like calling someone honey or sweetie was wrong but they are now terrified that they might have like complimented a woman's outfit and now be accused of harassment and i find this level of fear totally irrational and it's hard for me to refrain from judgment because I want to take their feelings seriously but I also feel like really do you really not know how to act anymore yeah I haven't been hearing you know among friends and people I know like any concern on their part that oh they might be worried they will say the wrong

thing now or that the rules have changed. The most interesting conversations I've had have been trying to separate out like what is inappropriate because it's a work context, which is more behaviors than what's inappropriate in an outside of work context. But I think that is a good thing that we're now having those conversations because the nuances, no, there's no nuance in a guy masturbating in front of a woman who works for him. None. Not a lot of nuance there. Yeah. But I do think some of the other conversation you just mentioned is important and it's important for us to have it and not be so frightened of having it. What did you think about Michael's advice for how men can help each other speak up when they hear a sexist comment that makes women in the room feel uncomfortable?

I was really interested in that because it just, I thought it was idealistic. I didn't think it was very realistic. And then it also ignored the woman's role in this and I don't think we need to be rescued and I worry about that dynamic and that's what was kind of floating around in my head when he was talking about that I also think that you know it must be very powerful for a man to call out another man I don't think it's going to happen an awful lot, but I do think sometimes a woman in a senior role can call out a man in a senior role and say that was not cool. I want the message to land. I don't want to embarrass people. I don't think that serves anyone. And I don't think it gets us closer to the goal, which is to erase behavior that makes others uncomfortable.

But the question about that, Amy, because I really think that if you are in a meeting and someone makes a comment, you might deal with it later privately, and you might be very strong in how you give the person the feedback that that was not okay. But in the room, to the bystanders, it just looks like nothing happened. Well, it depends. I mean, in a situation where there is a statement that I would regard as egregious, I think, you know, this is all hypothetical, so who knows.

And I don't want to valorize my hypothetical self, brave as she is. But I would hope I would say something like, you know, that's not cool. Yeah. One of the things I also just struggle with on this is that I think there are men out there who are trying to be allies, who are trying not to sort of be the white knight rescuing the maiden, you know, and who think that, well, if a woman's offended, she'll speak up and like she should speak up because like that's what an empowered woman would do. But then what ends up happening is that women are constantly made to carry the burden forward ourselves and

men don't shoulder their share of the load and what the research tells us is that when women and minorities advocate for diversity issues or anything like that at the workplace they suffer at cost white men do not suffer for doing that they don't pay a penalty so while it might feel scary actually you don't really lose political capital for doing that if you're a white man. I want to give Michael credit for offering a really good tactic, which is to make an alliance with another man and then both agree to speak up when it happens. That seemed really practical. That's practical. And that's actually a good tip for anyone who wants to get their point across in a meeting. Absolutely. I just want to broaden it. So it's not just like men seek out other men, form alliances with them, and then speak up for the women when they look uncomfortable in the room.

The only thing that I was thinking there was that if that happened to me, there was a sexist comment directed my way. And I knew that that was kind of taking place onto the side, you know, for my benefit. People really cared about me, for my benefit, people really cared about me, had my best interest at heart. I'd still feel weird and like disempowered in a way, like not being included in or given the chance to speak up myself. What would be a better way? So in, I think he also talked about one way, which maybe is less effective is when a man comes up to you and says, I'm so sorry that that happened to you in a meeting. Like, I don't know. And, you know, it's true that that's probably not effective, you know, because maybe that happens or does this happen when I'm not there? Can you speak up for me or like support me if I decide to speak up? Yeah, let's call them out on it. Yeah.

Let's say that's not cool. Yeah. So bringing women into the picture. And that's our show. I'm Amy Bernstein. My co-hosts are Sarah Green Carmichael and Nicole Torres. Our producer is Amanda Kersey. Our audio product manager is Adam Buchholz. Kurt Nickish is our consulting editor. And Maureen Hoke is our supervising editor.

And while this is the end of our podcast episode, I assure you this isn't the end of our coverage of this important topic. Me Too signals a serious change in the way we think about harassment in the organization, and we'll be publishing more ideas and guidance about how to lead that change. A good place to go from here is hbr.org slash aftermetoo, where there's a lineup of articles on managing Me Too, including the ones by Joan and Michael. Talk to you next time.