Translator: Lisa Rodriguez Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
So my birthday is in December.
Any of you who have birthdays in December,
you know kind of what a short shrift that is.
(Laughter)
But in December, I got a great gift.
It was a gift of insight.
It was a gift of inspiration.
I was walking through a store and I saw a magazine rack,
and on the magazine rack was the cover of TIME magazine.
And if any of you saw it,
TIME magazine does a "Person of the Year"
issue every year.
And this year they chose to do their "Persons of the Year"
as the leaders of the #MeToo movement.
And there were five powerful women pictured on that cover,
and they were all dressed in black.
But they were facing the camera, and they were facing it head on,
with looks of determination on their faces.
And I've been working in the area of harassment prevention
for about three decades.
Don't hold it against me, I am a little old.
I don't look as though, right?
(Laughter)
But, this was the first time
that I had seen the conversation around this issue
get to this intense level.
Everybody was talking about it.
Everybody was engaged in the conversation.
And so that was my gift of inspiration.
But then there was somebody else on that cover.
There was a sixth person on that cover that you might've missed.
And we all know from the NCAA Championships
that that sixth person can make quite a difference,
and that was my gift of insight.
The sixth person was a woman who wasn't visible on that cover -
all that was visible was her elbow,
clothed in black.
And that elbow represented the woman
who had not yet found the ability to use her voice
to come forward and say,
"This has happened to me, and it's wrong."
That person represented all of those people,
who had been subjected to harassment in the workplace
but for whatever reason could not come forward and say anything.
They had not yet found their voice.
And that was my gift of insight
because I think if we focus on the elbow,
I think we can get some inspiration
for how all of us can be a leader in the #MeToo movement.
So this #MeToo conversation is an intense conversation,
and we've been engaged in it now for six months.
And for a while the stories were coming one right after the other,
and then they kind of petered off,
so I wondered what would happen when the conversation stops.
Where would we be?
Would we be further ahead?
I hope that we move the conversation forward.
And so how do we move the conversation forward?
And I think what we need to do is
we need to understand a little bit about what's happening,
but we also need to all form the same team.
We need to all be on the same team.
And whether it's harassment based on gender
or based on other protected classes
like race, or national origin, or color,
we need to make sure everyone has a respectful workplace.
So how do we do that?
Well, the first thing we need to do is to understand the nature of the issue.
And so I thought about that issue of sexual harassment
and I said, "You know, there are elbows out there in the workplace,
and we need to figure out how to bring them out of the shadows."
So how many elbows are there in the workplace?
So I looked at some of the research that's been done,
some of the studies where they went in and asked people,
"Have you been subjected to sexual harassment in the workplace?"
And when they asked the question that way,
25 percent of the respondents said,
"Yes, I've been sexually harassed in the workplace."
And then they stepped back and they said,
"Wait a minute, not everybody defines sexual harassment in the same way,
and some people who've been subjected to sexual harassment
don't use those terms."
So what if we included the behaviors,
and we said, "What are the behaviors that we're concerned about?"
And they asked people that question,
and 40 percent of the people said,
"Yes, I've been subjected to those behaviors."
And then they did other studies and they said,
"Well, what if we include
not just what we think about with sexual harassment,
especially when we're talking about the #MeToo movement -
those sexual innuendos and propositions,
what if we included gender-demeaning behavior
like the comments in the workplace about "a woman's place is in the kitchen,"
or "Why don't you go make coffee,"
those kinds of behaviors.
What if we include those behaviors?
When they included those behaviors,
60 percent of the women said,
"Yes, I've experienced that behavior in the workplace."
So if you have a workplace with 100 women,
60 of them had been subjected to that behavior.
And that's a big number.
So, the number I want to talk to you about a little bit more though
is this number - it's a much bigger number,
and I think it's one of the reasons why we all need to be on the same team
in terms of getting to the issue of harassment in the workplace
and creating respectful workplaces for everybody.
So when they went in, they asked people who've been subjected to harassment;
we know from the research that it causes real psychological
and even physical injury to people who are in the workplace.
And then they went in and asked and they said,
"How do you feel about what's happened to you?"
And 83% of the women said, "It makes me angry."
"It makes me angry."
So of those 100 women in your workplace,
60 of them have been subjected to harassment.
If 83 percent of them are angry, that's over half of your female workforce.
What does that do to employee engagement?
What does that do to teamwork?
What does that do to collaboration?
And then there are very real costs like absenteeism
and tardiness and turnover.
There are real economic costs to this issue,
so we need to get to the bottom of it
and make sure that everyone has a respectful workplace.
So I started thinking about, "OK, what's the solution?
I have this insight, I have this elbow,
What's the solution?"
And I heard lots of people say, "Well, we need more laws."
Now, I'm a lawyer,
and I'm here to tell you I don't think we need more laws.
(Laughter)
We've had laws on the books for five decades.
Five decades.
And lots of organizations have been working on this issue,
and they have policies, and they have procedures,
and they have training.
They've been working on this issue,
but we still have elbows in the shadows.
And one reason we do
is because it's not comfortable for them to come forward.
And so we need to figure out,
OK, what is it that we can do to make our workplaces more comfortable?
To make our society more comfortable?
So people feel comfortable coming forward
and saying, "This happened to me. It's not right. Let's fix it."
Because we can't fix it unless we know the depth of the problem.
And so when you talk about this issue of "we need more laws,"
how many people do you think
actually come forward within their organization
and make a complaint?
It's about 15 to 20 percent.
So of those 60 women,
only about 10 of them actually made a complaint
within their organization,
the rest of them were silent.
And how many of them do you think actually sought a legal solution,
tried to use the laws to get a solution to their issue?
Only about five to seven percent.
So that's only three out of the 60
that ever actually got to a legal solution.
And by the time they seek out a legal solution,
everyone is so angry and upset and damaged,
and the workplace is so damaged
that often it's beyond repair.
So a legal solution is not the issue.
We need to get to the point where we can try and help people
feel comfortable telling us what the issues are
so we can solve those problems.
So, in the fall, we heard all about Hollywood,
and Amy talked about that a little bit earlier,
and we heard all about Hollywood,
and we heard about the casting couch culture.
How many of you were aware
that that was the culture in Hollywood
even though you've never been there?
There's a Wikipedia entry for the casting couch.
We all know the definition:
young women must put out to get ahead
in Hollywood.
Why is it that everybody knew about that,
and nobody did anything?
We have this culture of silence.
We see things happening;
we hear things happening;
we know they're not right.
But we feel like we have to be silent about it.
And I think that's one of the keys that the elbow can teach us.
Now, where does this come from?
Well, a lot of it comes from the way we were raised.
I don't know about you, but I was raised "Don't be a tattletale."
"Don't be a tattletale.
Members of your team are counting on you,
and so don't tell on people, just keep going."
And then we all knew that the person with the power
was the person with the ball.
And if you speak up against the person with the ball,
they will take their ball and go home.
So we know there will be consequences
if you tattle.
So part of it is the way we were raised, the way we are taught to think,
but a lot of it too is our organizational cultures
and a lot of it is the culture we live in.
We are so bombarded with so many issues that maybe we see something
and we don't say anything.
And so we have to break through that culture of silence.
Just as an example,
there is a PBS Frontline documentary
on janitorial workers who work at night,
and I would really encourage you to watch that.
So they work at night, they work alone,
and often they're women,
they're refugees or immigrants,
they're not native English speakers,
they're very low-income,
often the sole support of their families.
And many of those women
were raped by supervisors.
Sexually abused, sexually assaulted.
But they did not feel that they had the power
to be able to stand up and say,
"This is not right."
"This can't happen."
And it was only when someone listened to them,
and someone heard their story,
and someone took up their cause
that they were able to come forward,
tell their story and make it right.
So we all have to be on the same team
to break through the culture of silence.
And I thought of four ways that we can do that,
we can all be leaders.
The first is to be a friend.
The social science researchers tell us
that one of the first ways that those subjected to harassment cope
is seeking social support.
They seek out their friends.
So what are their friends supposed to do?
You might feel powerless
but one of the things you can do is just to listen
and to listen intently
to the pain and the heartache of somebody that's telling you their story.
The other thing you can do is encourage.
A root of that is "courage."
"Encourage" means you're trying to give them the courage
to use their voice to solve the problem within their sphere of influence.
And then you can break the silence
by saying, "When this happens, it's wrong. It shouldn't happen.
Everyone deserves a respectful workplace."
And then the next thing we can do is as coworkers.
If you're in an organization,
likely there are elbows in your organization.
And so one of the great things we're doing in harassment prevention now
is doing bystander training.
Because often the target of harassment doesn't have the ability to speak,
but bystanders who see something happening can speak.
So bystanders can support the target;
they see something, they say something.
They confront the harasser.
And then they can break the silence by using their voice
to tell someone who can hold people accountable.
And then if nothing happens,
they can keep breaking the silence by saying, "This is not right."
Our culture should not support the idea
of disrespectful behavior in the workplace.
And then the next way you can help is as leaders.
Whether you're leaders in the community or leaders in an organization,
people look to leaders for models of respectful behavior.
So what does your behavior look like?
What is your behavior telling everybody within your sphere of influence
about how they should behave and how they should treat other people?
Leaders can also use their power
to hold people accountable.
So if someone does engage in disrespectful behavior,
they can say, "That's not right.
You're in my sphere of influence,
and that's not going to happen within my sphere of influence."
And leaders can also break the silence by speaking up
and encouraging those who've been subjected to disrespectful behavior
to come forward.
We want to hear your voice.
And then when they do come forward,
making sure that nobody takes their ball and goes home -
they're not subjected to retaliation.
And then the last way we can all be leaders
is by working together.
What can we all do together?
I want to move this conversation forward;
I do not want to go backwards.
I think we've got the momentum,
we've got the elbows to focus on,
we've got the culture of silence to focus on.
So what all of us can do
is to break the silence,
and say, "When this happens in the workplace, it's not right."
But at the same time - and this is one of my great fears -
I don't think we can be disrespectful in the way we approach that conversation.
We can't call for the execution of the person who tells a bad joke.
Because if we do,
we get backlash.
People see us being unreasonable,
and they will say,
"Well, this is not as big of a problem as we really think it is."
So we have to be respectful in our conversations
and engage people in conversations -
help people understand
why this behavior is not acceptable in the workplace.
That's how we can all be leaders.
Now, when I was a child,
we used to play this game called Red Rover.
Do you remember Red Rover?
"Red Rover, Red Rover, send David right over."
Right? You all remember that game?
Okay, what did you do when you played that game?
You formed a team.
You formed a line.
So I want everybody to stand up.
Stand up.
So Red Rover, we joined hands.
And we said, "We are a team, and we are strong,
and we are stronger together."
We are stronger together.
And our team
is going to stand up against this disrespect in the workplace.
Right?
Now, when I was a kid,
it was legal,
if you had little kids on your team
and they weren't quite strong enough
and you weren't sure you were going to be able stand up against that,
what you would do
is you would join your elbows together.
So join your elbows together.
(Audience chatter)
That brings you -
that brings you closer together
and you are united as a team.
And what you have done is
you've said to those elbows in your midst,
"I'm on your team. I want to hear from you."
And I think, as a team,
we can all say,
"Enough."
Thank you.
(Applause)