Responsibility to behave
I have been through an interesting experience this week which caught me a little by surprise. During a meeting with a prospective client to assess each others suitability to work together I had the misfortune to have to sit across the table from a successful business person who was offensive, sexist, rude and basically boorish.
No, I am not suggesting this person was unique, I have experienced a few in my time, but in this example I was caught back by his overt sexist comments in front of one of my female staff. This caught her and I off guard and we should have taken immediate action but took some time to react.
Obviously we have complained about it and advised we wish to have nothing to do with this business, and I have discussed with all of my team how we should react and handle such situations in future. Firstly remove the offended parties from the room without hesitation and immediately - then deal with the person offending.
This post is not about the actual best way to handle such a scenario as a professional business we have processes in place to deal and respond to such issues. This post is about the ignorant / arrogant behaviour that still exists, in this era, by people who have some power (real or not) to exert over others.
It confounds me that Leaders, Managers, Owners, Politicians (and all who may have some form of control over others) continue to act irresponsibly and with such personal disregard, and the belief that their views are realistic and acceptable. It is in the press with politicians and sports people constantly finding new ways to behave poorly in relation to people of other sexual preferences or genders.
I understand there are many personalities in this world, and would not profess to be a perfect angel myself, but those people , such as this business owner, are allowed to behave this way in public and all the laws in the world have no control over their offensive behavour. One would hope at some point they will get caught out by a member of staff or other individual being in a position to take legal action against them. The systems require to much proof and costs to enforce and the owner or person with much financial capital has a much greater ability to hire legal representation and to dismiss or hide the matter.
What have we done about it at ireckon?
I rang the agency, operating in the middle, and advised them we would not be interested in the work and have left it to others to handle. Of course there will be other development shops to whom the money is the important factor and the size of the account / and or reputation of the brand is more important to building their businesses, than the person from whom they are taking the money.
Yes - here is the holier than thou speech! For me I needed to make sure our brand means something. Our company handbook has the following values in it:
- treat everyone we deal with as we would like to be treated
- honesty / the truth. Tell it like it is even if someone doesn’t like it
- titles do not make a person, titles are just titles. You make yourself by what you do and how you behave
- everyone deserves respect and should be treated accordingly.
There is a lot more in the handbook but these ones relate to theme of this post. I don’t want our company character to be written in a handbook and not followed through. We don’t want a written word but an implied ‘this is how we actually do it around here’ type of company character.
I don’t want our company to be about the money at all costs, I want it be about something with a bit more spine!
I want my members of staff to be able to stand up and defend their integrity and feelings no matter who is sitting across the table. And I want the person behaving inappropriately to know - ‘Not here you don’t!’.
As I age (only a little) I am learning more and more how to turn away prospective business, sack poorly behaving customers, and avoid attracting boorish - painful people into our life. This might sound arrogant (I hope not) or perhaps foolish (I don’t care) but with such a world full of opportunities and with the reality of only having a finite number of years on this planet I don’t want my staff, my family, or myself to have to put up with rude, offensive, sexist or discriminatory people due to their positions of influence.
Maybe if more of us turned down business, left schools or sporting groups, and continued to not condone public figures from being allowed to get away with unacceptable behaviour it will have less space in which to breed and grow.
I wonder why business owners with millions of dollars are not exposed in the press for their inappropriate behaviour in the same way that our sporting heros are?
What would the ramifications be for me to display both name of the individual and his comments and his company on my blog? (*note to my legal team - I won’t do it* - well not today) Would this be the right thing to do to stop it occurring? I don’t think it is the right thing to do myself, particularly as there is no right of dispute for published material on the web, before some harm is done - that said the harm done by comments of these people to others is of equal importance and they have little right of recourse once the offensive words are spoken even if appropriate action is taken.
Before I started my own company I worked for a dominant personality who was intelligent but a bully. His behaviour was in general terms okay but daily you would be subjected to his aggressive behaviour and oftentimes abuse. Because most people just choose to leave that environment and leave them to their devices as our self preservation is more important, we don’t effect a greater change, as they ultimately end up with enough people that remain employed by them and are intimidated enough to continue doing their work, who enable them to continue to acheive success depsite their unacceptable behaviour.
The more holistic of you out there will say karma gets them in the end, and it is quite obvious, as with the person this week, that their self worth is quite low and their lives are generally hollow (it is so obvious when you are around them). Others might say this is tall poppy syndrome, I don’t agree necessarily, I believe we must force change in our selves and in others where behaviour is unacceptable. I don’t want my children dealing with people of this nature in 10 years time while we wait for karma to bury them!
I know next time around I will be more direct immediately and advise them to leave and make it clear why they are being ejected. Frankly their business is not worth it to me.
I guess I learned something this week (as I do most weeks if not days) - and that as a business owner trying to behave responsibly, and with a responsibility to behave, I need to be ever vigilant for issues that I do not expect to occur.