Bringing Dignity to the Workplace

I don't think we need to respect people's actions that are taking away the dignity of other people. Does work sometimes feel like that group project you dreaded back in school? Hi everyone, I'm Celeste Headley. You're listening to Women Amplified. It's a podcast from the conferences for women. And today we're joined by author and speaker Rosalind Weisman. She's best known for her book Queen Bees and Wana Bees, which became the inspiration for the hit movie Mean Girls. In my conversation with Rosalind, you'll learn the difference between respect and dignity. And why some people seem to revert to middle school behavior in the workplace, and also you'll learn how to be an effective ally. There is so much to talk about, so let's jump right in. The thing that you're most known for, of course, is writing the book that sort of articulated different types of Mean Girls. And that became a movie which became a musical. But you have what movie is that? I don't know. No one knows that movie. It's been quite some years since then. And you have evolved to talk about, well, one of the things you talk about is allyship, which is where I want to start. Which is, am I wrong in thinking of allyship as sort of the balancing force on the other side of Mean Girls? Ooh. Well, one of the things that's confusing about our relationships is that in the same relationship, a person could be incredibly supportive. And that same relationship can have cruelty in it. And the thing that comes to mind when you say that, like with allyship is that our relationships are so tricky. And so people can say, I'm just being honest. And honesty is a really important thing to have in a friendship. But you don't want somebody who's an ally who's going to really tell you the truth, but also then make you feel like crap in the process, right? That's not what we need. The support of allyship goes. So it's such an interesting way to start because what does it really mean to be an ally? What does it really mean to be loyal? What does it really mean to speak truth in your relationships, including the conversations that only you have with each other and your friends or people in your family, but also conversations you have with yourself. So I don't know. You have to really good question, like out the gate that's really can get really deep. Well, you know, when we think of allyship, we often think of groups of people, especially who are maybe less empowered within, especially within a workplace. But I wonder, do only people who are disempowered need allies? No. I think everybody does. And I think we're also scared to say what we really feel because we catastrophize what's going to happen. If we actually say what we feel like, oh my gosh, this person's going to get so angry at me or it's going to ruin the relationship where I'm going to lose my job or in the case of parenting, like my child will suffer a horrific consequences for the rest of my life, their lives. If I don't handle X problem perfectly or I'm quiet, I think we're all increasingly conditioned to not be allies and to be quiet and to not speak out. And there are so many ways in which we could be allies in our professional lives and our personal lives and our family and our communities. And we don't because we're so afraid of what's going to happen to us if we speak out. And that is, it's so problematic in so many ways, but you're right or and you're right that technically we've tended to feel that an ally is somebody who has equal or more power than the person who is being targeted and they advocate for you. And I also think that and I absolutely agree with that in positions where people, quote unquote, take a neutral stance that often that neutrality is not neutral. It's actually siding with the person that has the most power. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about how to speak up because I find it interesting so often the people who are willing to speak up in my data point of one, right, in my experience, very often in workplaces, the people who are most willing to speak up are the people that you referenced earlier, the people who say, well, I'm just being honest, but all they're doing is insulting you and claiming it honesty, right? So if we're all afraid to tell our real thoughts because we're afraid of repercussions, how do those of us who don't want to insult people? How do we get the nerve? How do we get over the fear, I guess? Well, there's also, I want to go back for a second because there's also another way that people do this where they, where the privilege that they feel of being able to speak for others also silences people. So when you're sitting around like a, you know, a table with a group of people, but this happens in so many different contexts that somebody says, because you referenced like as my experience as one, right? Which is an awesome thing to say because you're saying like, this is just my experience. But one of the things that happens in the contacts and situations you're describing is that a person will feel comfortable saying, well, I speak for everyone else when I say. And first of all, that's not true. Second is that that person wields whatever power they have so people don't say actually what they really feel to that person. And then that person feels comfortable saying, oh, well, I can speak for other people. And so their truth, their honesty, their perspective, their experience, their perception, their decision making, becomes the thing at the table. And it happens in all different kinds of contexts from family to professional to parenting to just so many different contexts of, well, I'm speaking for other people. And you know, even worse is when those people feel like they are the truth tellers, right? They're the only ones that have the, you know, ability to say the truth. And everybody else is sitting around being like, I don't agree with this person, but I am not saying anything because it is not worth it. It's not worth it. So my, my answer to your question is how do you not insult people but say your truth? Well, this really goes to the work that I do with respect and dignity. So respect and Latin means to admire someone's actions. It is about how you behave. We oftentimes can flate the words respect and dignity as if they mean the same thing. They don't. And we have all been conditioned and I work all around the world. We've all, and this is something I see all around the world, is that we have been conditioned to show respect to people that are in positions of power and authority, especially when they are doing things to take away the dignity, the essential worth of other people. And so what that means is that we have to show respect to people that we actually don't and that when that happens, we get angry and that respect really is about not how you treat someone well but showing and displaying a power dynamic between people. And as long as respect is used in that way and we don't have words to actually say the truth of how respect is misused. And it sometimes is weaponized by people to silence people with less power. We cannot have honest conversations like pretty much anywhere. It's a really powerful thing, but the answer, the road out is about using dignity and being able to say, I don't have to respect in your mind, like when you're having to deal with somebody across the work environment that is just being demeaning to someone else or again in your family or if you have children with other people and connected to your child's life, that being able to say to yourself, I don't have to respect these person's actions, but I do need to treat them with dignity, with worth. Then it completely changes the power dynamic in your own body and you can show up in a completely different way and you can actually be courageous and speak your truth in a way that just comes off much differently than when respect is the thing that's in your brain. And so the answer to my question is you've got to get a lot more dignity in your life and in some ways, a lot less respect by using it and when we use it, we use it correctly. Are you swimming upstream here, Rosalind? I asked that because all my life. So I asked that because when you are describing the type of people who assume that their experience relates to everybody and that the solutions they've found will be the solutions that work for everyone, you're describing the internet. Oh, you're describing social media and influencers. Like literally you have people saying, I stopped eating peanut butter and this is why everyone in the world should stop eating peanut butter, right? Like this is literally most of the content that I see when I go on social media. It feels like the current environment is working against you. Oh, I'm telling you, like, my whole life I've been swimming upstream and when I write things, and not only it's even worse actually because when I write things, then people take them and then they use them in all different kinds of ways, right? And so for example, I did not write Queen Bees and wannabes so that and create a taxonomy of girls like Queen Bee, banker, all the other. that stuff. And for the boys too, I didn't write this so that mothers could go around, there's two ways in which it annoys me the most, where mothers can say, "Oh my goodness, that or this, it's unfortunately it's mostly moms." But it is also dad sometimes of like, "Oh, that girl in my daughter's class, she's a queen bee." Because it's so pathologizing. I didn't use to create that taxonomy to pathologize women. And then in the workplace what really annoys me is when women will say, "Oh, she's being a mean girl in a work environment." Because there's so much baggage around that of like, is she being assertive? Is she being a leader? Are we having a hard time dealing with somebody who's advocating for themselves? Like, are we having a hard time actually saying when we're upset and frustrated with somebody in a competent way? And that's on us and we got to do some work on that. So, yeah, people have been using my work in all different kinds of ways. Like, I could spin this and tell you, "Oh, you know, there's all these people who do all this great work with my work." And that's true. That is true. But it doesn't take away from the fact that there are people who absolutely subvert the stuff I do all the time. You know, and the other thing that strikes me as difficult is that people are using it as a way to stereotype women as though it's neurological or biological. Right? Like, I get that a lot of this is cultural. Most of it is probably cultural. But some of the biggest drama queens in the office have not been queens at all. They've been drama kings. Like, men can be, you know, some of the worst for this. And yet, you know, some people use your completely honest work in trying to help women and understand each other to pretend like men are the opposite. Yes, absolutely. Another thing that's incredibly frustrating. So, yeah, the I wrote a book called Masterminds in the Wing Men about the social lives of boys. And I did it. It came out in 2015, I think, was the first time I came out. And I did the same thing. I had 150 boys help me. Nobody thought that I could get boys to help me. Right? I could not get them to stop helping me. I couldn't. And it's really because it wasn't like I was saying to them, oh, I know about your life because I work with, you know, young people a lot. I actually said to them, I really don't know like why you are the way you are. Can you please tell me like, you know, what is it? Like, what's going on in your life? And I'd really like to know. And also, I could be wrong about some of the things that I think. And so, my God, I could not get them to stop talking. But here's the really frustrating thing. And I think women, I think we're all part of this, is that we were so, there was like this gleeful when Queen Bees and One Bees came out. And then Mean Girls, you know, just blew up everywhere and continued. It's the never ending machine. Is that there was this gleeful pathologizing or what you were talking about sort of superficializing or stereotyping women's behavior and connecting it to these terms? When the book on boys came out, which is, I think we can arguably say, is if not equally more, if not more so profoundly important to understand how to have boys and young men feel that they can contribute meaningfully in our communities and feel that they are being listened to and that they have a deep emotional life that might look different than maybe what we perceive and define as a deep emotional life or what that looks like in their friendships. I think we're all paying the price pretty clearly. And I think that, no matter what, like sort of how you vote, that understanding that so many boys feel disenfranchised, disengaged, do not feel that they have a path forward that makes sense to them. I think that's pretty clear. And yet, even though so profoundly we have been impacted by our refusal to look at boys' lives and emotional lives as being important to all of us, not only to them, but to all of us that we all benefit from boys having healthy emotional lives and being able to come into their masculinity with strength, purpose, confidence, and competence. We've all suffered from this. And yet, people's attention was absolutely focused on Queen Bees and Girls and very dismissive of the experience and what I was writing about boys. You're listening to Women Amplified from the Conferences for Women. Start the New Year right by investing in the most important person in your life. Future you. Tickets for the March 4th National Conference for Women are now on sale at ConferencesForWomen.org. Join us for an all-virtual, full-day experience designed to help you grow your career, expand your network, and build skills that last. No travel, no logistics, no stress, just world-class speakers, actionable learning, and the flexibility to join from anywhere. Learn more and get your ticket for the virtual National Conference for Women, this March 4th at ConferencesForWomen.org. We started here talking about allyship. And allyship is a relatively recent concept, especially in the academic and scientific world. Another thing that's a recent concept is studies that are carried out by women. Yeah. And this brings to mind your work, especially when you're talking about interpersonal dynamics within organizations, because the reason we thought for so long that women were more emotional than men was because the studies were carried out by men and they didn't include emotions like anger, as emotions. And so now we have this much better picture. What has sort of changed in the landscape of research that helps us better understand the way we interact and where problems might arise? Great question. Well, you know, the more work, there's two things. The more I do this work, the more this work meaning try and understand how we can be more competent at managing ourselves and our interactions with other people. With some semblance of compassion, like to others and to ourselves, with grace, with some sense of competence. The more I do this work, the more I really do see the similarities and the patterns of what I've always worked in. It's really, really interesting that, you know, for both, for whoever you are, that we, in human groups, that we tend to, and it's a drive, it's an incredible drive for us to feel a sense of earned prestige in a group that we are valued by the group. We are constantly, and this is more intense as adolescents, but, you know, gosh, like I've seen this so much in workplace environments, it's hard sometimes to distinguish like workplace dynamics from, you know, the dynamics I work with in middle schools. That's depressing. Well, I mean, it's not, you know, it's true that people are so, it's like they want to stay in the group. They want to be able to be seen as having a place of value in the group. They're often looking for who is the person who has the most power in prestige and align themselves with that person. And it's very difficult, especially as we get older, it's very difficult for us to speak to and say things that are difficult to hear to people in positions of power. And I'll answer your question this way, that what I noticed and what I call the invisible operating system is that when we are young, and especially in our early adolescents, and this connects with work that I've done with David Yeager and his recent book called 10 to 25, that's really great for people who are supervising this, the youngest generation of the workforce right now. What we know is that when we're in early adolescents that we have these experiences in conflicts with other people and conflicts inevitable, so we will have conflicts with other people and power dynamics will be in those conflicts. And so when we're in early and mid-adolescence, we learn for better and for worse how to speak up or not in those moments. And then they become patterns. And then as we get older, they get quieter, they're not so constantly in our face all the time. But as we get older, they just get quiet except for when there's an imbalance of power in our lives or when we are in conflict with somebody. And when that happens, then what I call the invisible operating system comes right back. And it guides our behavior, controls our behavior without us even realizing it. And so why is it when we're in the workplace that all of a sudden you look around and you're like, why is everybody acting like they're 12 years old? Why am I acting? Like I am 12 years old. Why is there so much gossip and clikiness and exclusivity and meanness in my workplace? And a lot of it can be traced back to how people learned, again, for better and for worse, their invisible operating system and they haven't learned how to rewire it. And you can rewire it. But until you do and become aware of how you manage yourself in conflict and being able to speak to people who have more or less power than you do, your invisible operating system is going to be your default setting. And so a lot of what I do and a lot of the research that I'm looking at is how do we identify that? And then also how do we rewire it? Because for me, I think research is really, it's very important, absolutely. But I want to make it better. My work is all been about how do I create, listen to people first, and I define listening as being prepared to be changed by what you hear. So listening to people and understanding their context, and then developing with them, the skills, the very concrete skills and strategies and even scripts and words to be able to put and help them so that they can speak in these moments where it's so difficult and they can rewire things in more powerful ways. I am constantly flummoxed by why we don't ever learn how to get along with other people. Because people are annoying. I know, but I mean we are a social animal, right? We're all sapiens. This is a big brain social animal. We are. We are. We are only surviving communities. Yes. And yet we're consistently surprised that fights happen when really we should be like fights are going to happen. Let's learn how to handle them, right? Absolutely. We don't train children how to get along with other people. We don't train people in how to you know do things as a team. If you think back to all the times you got to sign a group project in school, who liked that? Oh, oh, you are speaking my, this is like my my religion. Yes, exactly. And then we dump them in the workplace and we're shocked that people don't get along and hate working together. Like why don't we? Yes. Why? Why? Well, that's, I mean, let me add on to when we're in group dynamics or like science projects or any kind of project in school. And one person is going to micromanage the project. One person is going to write and blow it off. Yeah. Exactly. Or the person who's micromanaging is going to think, you know, it's going to take over and then the other person will be like, why do I even, why am I even going to try? Because the micromanagers is going to do it anyway. And then they look like they're not actually doing the work. And they aren't, but they're doing, they're not doing the work because they don't want to deal with the micromanager, but they don't know how to have the skills to be able to have the conversation. And we do this just to your point in middle school and high school. And we don't give them the skills and then people struggle in their work environments. Yeah. So remember you said to me like, wait, Rosalind, don't you do a lot of like a lot of what you do is like, what did you say? It's upstream. Swimming upstream. Yeah. Swimming upstream. I mean, like I've been talking about this. Like, why is it that we like, can we please do this differently? Because we, as you're saying, you cannot be surprised that people don't know how to deal in groups in a workplace when they didn't learn it in schools. Now, so the answer to you is a lot. So here's my, here's my, my, my bulleted list right now. My bulleted list right now is that it is really profound about asking yourself the question of how did I learn how to stand up for myself when I was younger? And how does that impact me now? Is a profound question to ask oneself? That's the first thing. The second thing is that as far as parents go and this directly impacts this next, the generations that are coming up into the workforce is that parents that have been raising children for the last, these last like two generations of kids have been raised to parent on fear and catastrophizing. And one of the ways in which they fear is not trusting other people. And what that means, I'm not taking away from, of course, I'm not, from the very important things that we've done, and I have worked on myself personally on child safety and child protection. Or all of the things that happened in the, you know, that we're always happening, but came to light, right? Very much so. In the last two generations. But parents, we have this, you know, we have this slogan, right, that it takes a village to raise a child. And it's become a superficial sound bite. And it's actually an incredibly sad testament to where we are now. And actually what I'm really trying to work on, and sort of, you know, sort of small peep politically around the country, because I'm very, very proud of the work I do, even today, all across, all across the country. And in many different countries with different political backgrounds and political realities, that what's so important is being able to recognize that the village is complicated. The village that takes a village to raise a child, we have to acknowledge that there are people in our village that we're not going to get along with, or raise their children differently than us. If dignity is our foundation of recognizing the worth of every person, then the village gets much stronger. But the village today, one of the things that's happened that's so problematic is that we don't trust people in our village. And we fear them. And so we don't, so for example, like do, do parents trust the people in their church communities, in their faith communities, not as much as they used to, do they trust teachers, not as much as they used to, do they trust coaches, not as much as they used to. Now there are reasons for that. And there's some good reasons for that. But what's happened is that there's an assumption that all these people are bad, or that we leap to the worst conclusion that they are incompetent, or that they lack integrity. And then we took it back to your social media stuff, and then we listened to what people are saying on social media about people in our community, and we don't trust them. And we trust an influencer that we've never met, and we trust an influencer who's saying to go back to your comment, don't eat peanut butter, and we trust them much more than the people that we should be talking to in interacting with, and our children should be interacting with every day. And so our children do not develop the social skills with what we call weak ties, our neighbors, our aunties, the people in our communities. Our children don't do that. And so they become socially incapable. And you know what we do instead? We blame their phones. That's what we do. We say, oh, it's the phones. The kids are addicted to the phones. And we are addicted to the phones, by the way. And the other thing is we do not focus on and identify the people in our communities that are literally outside of our door that are important for our children to have relationships with. Instead, we get super anxious, we get super catastrophizing, and we blame the phones. And then when taking their phones away, it doesn't solve the problem. Then we blame something else. Yeah. Right? We blame, I mean, and also very few parents have the moxie, have the fortitude to like take the phones away. And um, you know, I just, what it's sitting right in front of us, it literally for people from work environments to our homes, it is sitting right in front of us is that the village not only raises the child, it raises each of us. And it makes us feel not so alone. And the thing that's happened, not only because of social media feeling isolated, but the other part is is that we feel as parents. Like we have to do it. We are told parents are the best people to know how to raise their children. Okay, I've raised two children. I couldn't, there were times that I was not the best person to know how to make a decision about my children. I had to depend on the people in my community who loved my children were connected to my children, but were not their parents and had wisdom. And it's like we have, we don't want to listen or we don't trust the wisdom that's around us. So I'm actually optimistic in a way, which is crazy, because it's the only way to be, I guess. I mean, I've had my moments recently. I've just absolute despair, frankly, but it's the only, you know, I've just decided, like we have to fight for our villages and we have to fight for the relationships that we all deserve. And that includes in our families and in our workplaces as well. Is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't? Well, gosh, maybe, you know, to be really concrete, because you asked me at the very beginning, like, what do you do in a workplace? You know, and I want women to, I want people to really feel like, okay, what do we do around the workplace? You know, the work, you know, the staff meeting, the, you know, when you feel that somebody's being undermined. And you asked me about allyship. And I think concretely that there's usually a person who is advocating a position and people are blowing it off or not taking it seriously. There's different ways I can look, but I want you to pay attention to that. And the next time a person in that position tries to advocate for something and you can see around the table, it's not being taken seriously. I think the moment of allyship is right there where you say something like, hey, I know we've got a really busy agenda right now, because you probably do, right? Everybody does. Everybody does. They've been really busy. Right. We do. Right. So that's, that's, let's be realistic. Like we have a busy agenda right now. So we can't talk about this in depth right now. But what Angela is saying is really important. And I think we need to put some time to focus on that, you know, and then give, give two options of when that possibly could be. Even if you're not in the supervisory position, you're giving like, maybe there's, you know, here's two options that I'm thinking about. The next staff meeting or maybe we do another, you know, concrete suggestion. But that way you are literally role modeling for everybody. This is what it looks like to, to use what I would call, "generative authority." You're using your authority for the good of others regardless of your title. That is good advice always. Rosalind, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. You are so welcome. It was wonderful talking to you. Love your questions. Thanks again to Rosalind Weisman for joining us. We really hope this episode gave you a deeper understanding of workplace dynamics and how to navigate challenging relationships there. You can hear more of of Roslyn's insights by following her on Instagram. She's at Roslyn's. The conference is for women is the largest network of women's conferences in the nation. They draw more than 55,000 women and men to annual events in Boston, Philadelphia, Austin, and California. And we're online, too, with the virtual national conference. Learn more about all our events and join our community at conferencesforwomen.org. I'm Celeste Headley, and this is Women Amplified from the Conferences for Women. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Celeste, and I'm trying to find and be well.