Part 2: Positive Bystander Action: What’s at stake?

Part 1: Social Media in Bystander Action – A Help or Hindrance?

Part 3: Positive Bystander Action: What Does It Look Like?

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. (Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968)

The story below illustrates the impact of the silence of our friends.

A technology company was having trouble attracting and retaining women engineers. One day a group of project managers and engineers were having a meeting to review a new product. There were 9 men and 1 woman in attendance. One of the men said “This remote is so stupidly easy to operate that even my wife can use it.” No one raised an eyebrow or spoke up about this comment. After the meeting the woman’s boss asked her, “Why didn’t you say something?” and she replied “Why didn’t you?”

The woman left the company shortly after this incident. True story? Unfortunately so. An isolated incident? Unfortunately not.

Micro inequities such as this one accumulate over time causing a culture of stress and anxiety as a result of not feeling valued or respected. Eventually people will go elsewhere. Too often the responsibility for taking action with respect to diversity and inclusion is placed on the marginalized groups such as women and people of color. It is not their responsibility. It is everyone’s responsibility. We are all responsible.

What Is at Stake?

Organizations often claim “diversity” and “inclusion” are values but then something happens that appears to violate these claims. If the violation of the norm is met with silence, the conclusion is that it’s not really a valued norm after all. What happened at the product review meeting described above let everyone at the meeting know that inclusion was not truly valued as a norm.

A norm or value is only as strong as what happens when it is violated – if nothing happens then it isn’t really a value. (Maureen Scully, School of Management, UMass Boston)

Positive bystander action signals that inclusivity is a real value, not just something talked about for the sake of sounding good.

Bystanders Uphold Norms

Here is an example of how norms are upheld. If I drank from someone else’s coffee cup at a meeting, we can assume that there would be a response that would let me know my action was inappropriate. “Hey that’s mine” or something like that. I would know I had violated a norm – don’t drink from anyone else’s cup. When bystanders take an action – even a small one, like saying “get your own cup” – they reinforce that a norm is valued in the organization. Bystanders can “pivot” a situation, signal that they are allies, and make an organization’s promises about diversity real. The greater the number of active bystanders making micro equity actions, the more people feel included.

Often, diversity training focuses on the negative – the perpetrator, the victim or the legalistic element. People learn what is wrong but don’t experience how to increase their awareness of how to intervene in their workplace culture. Bystander awareness training empowers employees, raising awareness about cultural filters and perspectives enough to realize when something is an “ouch”. The training encourages positive action and discourages negative behavior. According to Scully and Rowe, “a bystander could be anyone who sees or otherwise becomes aware of behavior that appears worthy of comment or action…Bystanders can highlight positive acts that might otherwise be invisible or overlooked. They can redirect or de-escalate negative acts that might problematic.”

Bystanders do not speak for or over the person on the receiving end of the comment or action. Their actions of noticing serve to raise awareness that something just happened. As our friends, they are not silent.

What’s at stake for you? How will positive bystander action communicate the values and norms in your organization?