On Courageous Conversations

This Week’s Topic: Speaking Up

1 Strategy 🎯 

I vividly remember being in a team meeting and watching in horror as my manager unloaded on a teammate (who was also a close friend) for making a minor mistake.

Her response was overblown and borderline abusive.

I wanted her to know that it wasn’t ok to talk to people that way. So I took a deep breath and said…

…absolutely nothing.

I still regret not speaking up.

It’s not that I’m completely averse to confronting bad behavior. Last week I walked past a man in the park hitting his dog in the face while the dog cowered in fear. I had no reservations about intervening and telling him to stop immediately.

But calling out the behavior of a random a-hole in the park is very different than confronting someone in a position of authority.

We tend to overestimate how likely we are to intervene and call out unacceptable behavior.

Especially when we view the offender as having more social status or power than us.

A Yale psychologist named Stanley Milgram explored this phenomenon in a famous series of experiments in the 1960s.

Study participants were told by a doctor to administer increasingly painful electric shocks to a participant in another room each time that participant answered a question wrong.

With minimal encouragement from the doctor, all 40 study participants continued to administer shocks, despite the sounds of a stranger screaming in agony in the next room over.

While most people did pause to question the experiment at some point, all of them proceeded to give painful shocks to a complete stranger when the doctor told them to proceed.

The doctor and shock victim were both actors, and nobody actually got shocked.

You can watch a 2-min video with actual footage of the experiment here.

The study, which has been replicated numerous times, provides strong evidence that we aren’t as prone to speaking up as we like to think we are.

In her bestselling book, “Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels”, Psychologist Catherine Sanderson shares some simple strategies you can use to speak up with more confidence when you encounter problematic behavior.

1. Keep it Short: Not every intervention needs to be a full-blown teachable moment that embarrasses the other person. Often a simple “That’s not cool.” or “I don’t agree.” allows you to express disapproval while keeping the stakes low.

2. Assume Sarcasm: Responding to an offensive comment with “I know you’re just joking” can be a savvy method of voicing your disapproval, while giving the person an opportunity to save face by playing the just-kidding card.

3. Make The Discomfort About You: If your disapproval of a comment or behavior is rooted in your personal connection to an issue, say that. For example, in response to a homophobic comment you might say: “My nephew gets bullied for being gay, so homophobic comments are tough for me to hear.”

    

4. Find an Accountability Partner: Often we don’t speak up because we’re not sure others will have our back. For repeatedly problematic behavior, it’s unlikely you’re the only one who disapproves. Making an agreement with a teammate or friend to publicly support one another can provide a social safety net that makes speaking up less risky.

Reply to this email and let me know! I look forward to hearing from you.

See you next Wednesday,

Darin 

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