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On June 15, 2020, the US Supreme Court held that transgender and sexual orientation are prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The reasoning is straightforward: in order to decide if the employer wanted to fire a homosexual or transgender employee, the employer had to consider that employee’s sex. The Court said what the employer called this decision making process was irrelevant (e.g., it’s about being gay, not about sex), because in order to decide it …

I know a lot of lawyers will think, “Self-compassion? Isn’t that for weaklings?” It is precisely this thinking which makes our profession suffer so much. Thanks to a recent study by the ABA and Hazelden, we now have empirical evidence of how the stress of the legal profession affects us. Wouldn’t it be great if the act of honing and refining your mental processes through higher education led to being free of the stress caused by our fight or flight …

In my last two posts, I talked about how bullying can occur and how we usually deal with it: as though it is an aberration in the workplace culture and, once we’ve found and eliminated the bully, the problem has been solved. But we know bullying occurs because of conditions which allow it to occur. In Bullying in the 21st Century Global Organization: An Ethical Perspective, the authors describe the sources of bullying in global organizations as a combination of …

Some bullying is obvious, some is subtle. Often, organizations want to know if there is legal risk when they are deciding to do something about a problem like bullying. Bullying at work can usually be grouped into certain types, such as threats to professional status or personal standing, isolation, over work and destabilization (meaning failing to give credit, meaningless tasks, removal of responsibility, repeated reminders of blunders, or being set up to fail). It can reach

What should an employee do if he or she knows a co-worker is being threatened, teased, demeaned, called names, glared at and ostracized? I think we can all answer this question — the employee should report the matter or stand up to the bully. Whether or not they will do so depends on your organizational culture. Does your organization see the value of respect in the workplace? Does your organization live by its values? Bullies can only thrive if leadership …

Some organizations talk about privilege and have developed a common and shared language around what it is as part of their diversity initiatives. Other organizations don’t yet have a common understanding. We can think about privilege as: “Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do. Access to privilege doesn’t determine one’s outcomes,

Do you really have to be brutal when delivering feedback to others? Some people think “nice” is a four letter word. This comes from a workplace culture where people are afraid to speak the truth. Instead of looking for a “nice” way to communicate critical feedback, they think there is only the opposite choice — being cruel when giving feedback. This is a classic example of dichotomous thinking. Dichotomous thinking means thinking of a situation in terms of black and …

Avoid the “post hoc fallacy” of your daily work life There was once a wise man named Nasreddin, who had a wicked sense of humor. One day, he was observed in his garden sprinkling bread crumbs. A servant asked him what he was doing. He replied, “I am sprinkling bread crumbs to keep the tigers away.” The servant replied, “But there are no tigers within 1000 miles!” Nasreddin smiled and said, “See? It is working!” Nasreddin was poking fun at …

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! This time of year we are reminded of all we are grateful for, if only because we have a holiday forcing us to stop, reflect and focus on the positive things in our lives (and our favorite pies). Noticing the good things in our lives and work brings balance and positive feelings, and reminds us of all the good there is in our lives. You probably won’t be surprised to learn gratitude has been associated with …

We all know that our sympathetic nervous system can be triggered if we face a physical threat or danger. Someone shouts at us, we almost get into an accident, we are attacked physically and we go into fight, flight or freeze. This causes our brain to trigger our sympathetic nervous system, release adrenaline and send blood to the major muscle groups and away from the executive functioning part of the brain. Hence, we can run away from the threat. Psychological …

We’ve all heard that Millennials aren’t loyal, they don’t like to work hard and they love innovation and change. We’ve heard they prefer technology to people and they can’t stand being told they aren’t perfect. Like with almost anything else, you can even probably find some surveys which state all of these things. But what is actually true? Since Jennifer Deal wrote Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground, the idea that the different ge

Having implicit bias means we are not consciously aware of having limiting judgements and pre-conceived opinions about a certain segment of society — whether racial, gender, age or some other defining set of characteristics. Another way to understand implicit (or unconscious) bias is to think of your subconscious automatically, or involuntarily, processing a set of impressions about another person in a way that forms a negative judgement of said person, resulting in unintenti

You’ve acknowledged to yourself that you recoil from giving critical feedback to employees. Whether this stems from a desire to avoid workplace conflict, a lack of confidence in your communication style or concerns over doubting your opinion post-feedback, you would like to improve for your own sake, and for the sake of your employees. After all, they are relying on you as their manager to guide their work performance in order to succeed at their career goals. How to proceed?

When I have asked managers why they hesitate to give constructive feedback to their employees, I hear things like: I’m worried she’ll get upset I’m afraid to hurt our relationship I don’t think he can take it and will argue I don’t want to start a conflict What do all of these excuses have in common? Fear. We fear the other’s reaction. Notice how in each of these explanations, the burden is put on the other person. “She’ll …

Previously, I discussed why we might be reluctant to give others feedback and gave some ideas for approaching feedback in a positive way for positive results. This week, I’d like to talk about the downside of not giving feedback and why it’s such an imperative if you want to maintain effective working relationships. What is implicit bias? There is a lot of talk about implicit bias these days. We are grappling to understand what it is and how it impacts …

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws define and prohibit “discrimination” at work. Discrimination is a term of art and it has required components in order to prove it exists. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is the federal agency charged with seeing these laws are complied with. Employees can also hire private attorneys to advise them. EEO laws protect particular classes of people from discrimination. Sometimes people say EEO laws give these classes of pe

Giving and receiving effective feedback may mean giving up “Northwest Nice” to be present and authentic I’m one of those people who can be a little smug about how awesome it is to live in the Northwest. We have gorgeous mountains, rivers, lakes, coastline, forests and great food. We place a premium on good relationships, which gives us strong communities. But just like everything has an upside, everything has a downside, too. Our preference for positive relationships can some