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My husband was born and raised in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Located right on the shore of Lake Michigan, Benton Harbor was a popular destination for African-Americans who fled the South in the Great Northern Migration of the 1940s. In those days, the townās many automotive factories created an abundance of well-paying manufacturing jobs. As a result, these African-American families didnāt just get to put food on the table, which was a very real struggle for them when they lived in the South. Better, they finally got to participate in the āAmerican dreamā of home ownership, a decent education, and a future full of limitless possibilities. In the late 1970s, however, outsourcing put a damper on all that. Eager to save a buck, manufacturers began to eliminate industrial jobs in Benton Harbor for cheaper labor in Mexico. Factories closed, jobs disappeared, and the pain of hopelessness quickly settled over this once-booming town.
It wasnāt long before the crack epidemic spread to Benton Harbor. In the midst of the townās despair, drugs offered a sense of escape. For those men whoād lost their jobs, drugs also provided a means of providing for their families. What the men gained in terms of being breadwinners, however, these families quickly lost to poverty and despair. This hopelessness made it challenging for Black families to stay together. Thankfully, my husband was one of the lucky ones. Although his father had been a victim of Benton Harborās sudden economic downturn, he managed to keep his seven children fed by refurbishing and selling vacuum cleaners out of his basement. It wasnāt easy growing up with nine people in a two-bedroom home, but the Bowman household was filled with love, respect, and dignity.
Even so, parents can only do so much to help their kids withstand a tempest of negative influences outside of the home. Iām glad to say my husbandās parents found a significant ally in his third-grade teacher. She knew how vulnerable her students were, and she made it her mission to keep them off the slippery slope toward despair and on the path to hope. Each morning, sheād begin class with a song:
Oh, what a beautiful morning,
oh, what a beautiful day,
oh, what a beautiful morning,
nothing will stand in my way.
What a way that was to start the day! From there, every lesson was fun and engaging. Her classroom was always a positive environment. Even if these kids didnāt feel loved at home, they sure felt it at school. They mattered and they knew it. The Power of One.
Sadly, my husbandās fourth-grade experience was the polar opposite. His new teacher looked out at his class of almost all African-American boys and immediately assumed the worst. They were nothing like the āgoodā (a.k.a. āwhiteā) kids over in St. Joseph. Instead, he thought they were destined to roam the streets of Benton Harbor, and he told them so. What was once a positive environment of respect and encouragement quickly devolved into a bitter clash of insults and bad attitudes. Instead of singing āOh, what a beautiful morning,ā my husband and his classmates sulked into the classroom, ready to live down to their teacherās expectations. Where there had been Aās and Bās the year before, there were now Cās and Dās in their place. Innocence turned to deviance as these kids learned to hate school rather than to cherish it. Pride gave way to despair as they learned the ātruthā about how short they fell and why they would never amount to anything in life. And the prophetic word their teacher spoke over those kids ultimately came true when a great many of them began to take on self-doubting, low self-esteem attitude, and a feeling of not being āenoughā to pursue their goals and dreams.
Stuck in Default
Just like my childhood cardiologist and that discouraging partner at my first firm, my husbandās fourth-grade teacher operated in what I call the default modeāa habitual descent into functional powerlessness. The default mode is ā¦
- habitual in that it reflects a settled pattern of behavior. My uber-educated cardiologist had developed the habit of only relying on what he already knew and not seeking and exploring ideas and information.
- a descent in that we allow our biases and stereotypes to admit only a singular perspective of others. Instead of seeing his classroom as a field of rich possibility, my husbandās fourth-grade teacher decided his energy would be wasted on a group of African-American kids who could have just one possible outcome.
- functionally powerless in that it strips us of the resources we already have. That cardiologist silenced my mother. That partner couldāve seen me. That teacher couldāve believed in a classroom full of Black kids. Regrettably, due to the default mode, they didnāt exercise their power, which is the same as not having any to begin with.
Thankfully, my husband and I turned out alright. As stories coming out of the #MeToo movement show, others havenāt been so lucky. One of the stories that strikes home for me is that of a woman named Maria Diaz. Maria was a loving wife and doting mother of three little girls. For the earliest years of their lives, she poured herself out for them as a stay-at-home mom. When her youngest was finally old enough for kindergarten, though, Maria decided to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a certified public accountant. She went to college during the day, took care of her family in the evenings, and studied well into the late-night hours. After four long years, Maria completed her degree and became the first college graduate from her family.
Academic success looked good on Maria, and corporate America was quick to notice. Straight out of school, she signed on to work for a big four accounting firm. Coming from a family that discouraged women from entering the workforce, Maria refused to take the opportunity for granted. She knew she was on the leading edge of an entirely new future for her and her three girls. But when Maria got to work, all her pride and anticipation quickly began to fade. Mariaās new boss didnāt want a thing to do with her. In fact, he barely said a word to her. An email was his preferred mode of communication: short, impersonal, to-the-point. That was fine, she supposed. Thatās just how some people choose to communicate. But one day, when Maria made the kind of mistake youād expect from a new accountant, all that changed. Rather than correct her in a simple email, Mariaās boss chose to berate her in front of the entire office.
Crushed and humiliated, Maria pressed on nonetheless. Not long after, she began to notice the mood in her office. Sheād come in expecting a culture of hard work and individual merit. Instead, she found an atmosphere of backstabbing, sabotage, and incivility. Everyone wanted to be a partner, and they were willing to do anything to get ahead. It wasnāt long before Maria learned what it would take for her to climb the ladder. Pressured to attend an after-hours company event, she was quickly disgusted to see what happens when you add booze to an already toxic workplace culture. Worst of all, she encountered a pervasively sexual environment. Coworkers and senior leadersāeven her own bossāall engaged in conversation that seemed entirely inappropriate for a professional setting. She was mortified by the sexual jokes, innuendo, and suggestive comments. Surely, she wasnāt the only one made uncomfortable by this type of conversation and behavior, but the default mode has a nasty tendency of rendering good people silent in the face of what theyād otherwise be quick to condemn.
For the next year, the cycle continued. Passive-aggressive behavior from her boss, antagonistic relationships between coworkers, sexually charged encounters after workāall things that Maria felt uncomfortable with but endured for the sake of her career. Of course, all of the sexual tension had to express itself somewhere. And thatās precisely what happened when, one night, her boss had a few too many drinks and decided to make his move. Pulling her aside, he went in for a kiss. Mortified, Maria got herself out of there and headed straight home to her husband. She trembled as she recounted the event. Embarrassed and ashamed, Maria struggled to share the intense burden sheād been forced to carry all this time. Her husband was livid but supportive.
Mariaās husband encouraged her to report the incident, but she hesitated. That whole night she laid in bed thinking about all that might happen to her if she pressed the issue. Would they believe her? Would she lose her job? Would this ruin her reputation? After a while, though, she remembered her firmās āzero toleranceā policy for sexual harassment. If you thought youād been a victim, it was your job to report it. No hesitation. So, the next morning, she mustered up every last ounce of courage and marched down to human resources to report what had happened. Right away, Maria was shocked to find herself on the defense against a barrage of belittling questions:
- Are you sure thatās how it happened?
- Is that really what he did?
- Maybe it was just a joke.
- You know heās a senior partner in the firm, right?
- Do you really want me to file this report?
Everything she had feared was coming true. It turned out the organizationās tolerance for harassment was considerably higher than āzeroā when it came to the conduct of its āmore valuableā members. Still, Maria forged ahead. For two excruciating weeks, she waited for the investigation to run its course. When she was finally brought into HR, she felt a sense of relief in knowing this would all be over soon.
Mariaās relief soon turned to despair as the woman on the other side of the table began to speak. āMaria,ā she said, āweāve concluded our investigation and were not able to corroborate what youāve alleged. In fact, weāve learned youāre the problem here. You havenāt been performing as well as you ought, and youāre just not a team player. So, as you know, we have a 12-month probationary period, and you didnāt make the cut. Today will be your last day.ā Maria was devastated. She cried all the way home, wondering how she would share the awful news with her family. When she did walk in the front door, though, she decided not to say much at all. āI have a headache,ā she whispered, as she discreetly headed into the bedroom with a bottle of wine and a handful of pain pills. The next morning, Maria Diazāfaithful wife, devoted motherādid not wake up.
Mariaās overdose was ruled accidental. When her coworkers heard what happened, they were shocked. They didnāt see any of the toxicity that contributed to her untimely demise. Instead, they saw a busy motherāovertired, overworked, and unable to handle the demands of a big four accounting firm. Rather than take stock of their own complicity in her death, they washed their hands clean and moved on. āTragic,ā they said as they got back to work. Had they not been stuck in default, they may have thought a bit harder about the conditions that led to her death. One of them may have chosen to exercise his or her own power to stand up for Mariaās memory and to ensure nothing like that ever happened again. Unfortunately, they didnāt. Score another one for the default.
Wake Up and Drive
Mariaās story represents one particularly egregious instance of the default mode at work in an organization. Backstabbing coworkers, an āuntouchableā boss, and a complicit human resources departmentāeach of these actors chose to perpetuate the status quo rather than own up to their power and use it to serve others instead of themselves. Although the results may be less dramatic and pointed than what we saw with Maria, and the actors may be less overtly pernicious, the same default-mode thinking and citing exist in virtually every workplaceāat least, every workplace Iāve been called to work with. This leads to all kinds of cultural pain, such as:
- Burnout. Unchallenged assumptions about the correlation between working long hours and our personal commitment to the organization lead employees to overwork themselves.
- Homogeneity. Organizational norms become a strait-jacket as people are forced to conform rather than express their creative individuality.
- Fear. Unchecked misbehavior on the part of superiors and high performers creates a reluctance to report for fear of retaliation. Bystanders and witnesses to misconduct duck under a ābetter them than meā mentality in order to survive.
As we saw with Maria, this last pain is the most destructive consequence of the default mode, and itās worth dwelling on a moment longer. When unchecked harmful behavior works its way through an organization, this behavior becomes a part of its culture. In Mariaās case, the company had a stated culture in which there was to be āzero toleranceā for harassment and discrimination. In this, they aligned with virtually every other corporate entity in America and, more significantly, federal employment law. Yet, for Maria and untold numbers of women in corporate America, stated culture exists only on paper. The actual cultural environment in which they work not only tolerates harassment and discrimination, but it fosters it. Iāve watched high-performing CEOs get away with making a pass at every desirable object of the opposite sex. Iāve seen high performers get the benefit of the doubt even in the face of overwhelming evidence against them. Every time this happens, culture withers as employees learn what the organization is actually about.
An organization can post the laws and write up all the policies and regulations they want, but none of that will work to end harassment, discrimination, and all the other behavioral pains that rot companies from the inside out. Why? Because policy doesnāt shape culture. Behavior shapes culture. Defined and enforced expectations shape culture. Accountability shapes culture. A policy isnāt worth the paper itās written on if leadership isnāt willing to demand conformity to the expectations set therein. Cultures only get changed when leaders recognize the default at work and get proactive and intentional about helping their employees cultivate the power to make a better place for themselves and their coworkers. As Iāll argue in Chapter 4, we need environments marked by civility, courage, and candor if weāre going to disengage the toxic behavior that threatens our organizations and re-engage the employees around or under us. And the only way weāll see that sort of cultural change is if we own our power and encourage others to do so as well. You may think that effecting such a shift is beyond your power, but change comes fast and hard when individual behaviors create a cycle of action.
What does that look like? A few years ago, I was invited to speak in the Middle East. My husb...
