The Workplace Coach

The beauty and the curse of social media is that everyone now has a platform to voice their opinion.  If your opinion is controversial enough, or you have enough followers, your opinion might even go viral.  When that happens you will get extra exposure through the news outlets picking up the story and the next thing you know, that little 2 minute rant about whatever on YouTube (or Tik Tok or Facebook or your platform of choice) has got millions of views.

Now lots of these videos give us a giggle and that’s great but what about when they actually start to affect policy, or societal norms, or create division, or start riots or worse? And what does this have to do with cancel culture in the workplace?  Give me a minute, I’m getting there.

Forbes magazine published an article in 2020 and offered this definition “There is no single accepted definition of cancel culture, but at its worst, it is about unaccountable groups successfully applying pressure to punish someone for perceived wrong opinions. The victim ends up losing their job or is significantly harmed in some way well beyond the discomfort of merely being disagreed with.”

Essentially, what can happen in the workplace is this.  Anyone in the company who disagrees with a particular policy or procedure or communication can write to the CEO or the Board or the media, and express their outrage or concern and how whatever it is that they find offensive needs to be changed.  Unfortunately, what can happen in response to this is a kneejerk reaction to remedy the situation for the 1-2% of the workforce (or population) who might have similar concerns, and the policy or procedure or whatever gets changed across the board for everyone. 

We are seeing more and more of this in workplaces, in government, in society.  The vocal minority, often virtue signalling, now has the power to change the status quo for everyone, and it comes at considerable cost, time and effort. Where it becomes especially dangerous is when someone in the organisation, often a manager, is accused of something they actually haven’t done.  We have seen how damaging this can be to somebody’s career even when they are subsequently exonerated.  The accusation and subsequent ‘outrage’ is enough to kill a person’s reputation and credibility, and completely negate a long and sometimes illustrious career.  

Comedian Ricky Gervais expressed his thoughts about cancel culture, likening it to “road rage”, noting that some comedians are too afraid to make jokes now for fear of offending some small minority of their audience.

“It’s things happening too fast that you can’t take back. People dig in and people want to be heard,” he mused. People want to feel they have an effect. It’s why people heckle a comedian. They want to feel they were there. Now people are heard.”

He went on to chew over the merit of “cancelling” public figures on the platform, adding “An idiot stands next to a genius on Twitter and it looks the same,” he noted. “It’s the same font.”

I think we can all agree that people do need avenues to express how they feel, to report issues and concerns, to raise matters that might need to be raised.  I do however urge you though, the next time you receive a report of some grave injustice that is being perpetrated in your workplace, take a breath before you act on it.  Maybe investigate a little, get some advice and then make a measured and considered decision about what action to take. 

“I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.”

― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

The Workplace Coach