Page 33 - An Indispensible Resource for Being a Credible Activist

terns, such as everyone in one department is of one race yet the city where the company is
located is very diverse, it is important to raise these concerns with leadership. Or, when some
employees’ errors or violations of policy are overlooked, not acknowledged, or minimized yet
those same violations of policy or similar errors of other employees are documented, disci-
plined, or used as reasons for termination, HR professionals must take note and find a way
to discuss these inconsistencies with their leadership and their legal departments.
This is also true of assessing whether an applicant is an appropriate hire for the com-
pany and whether the applicant has proven to be an appropriate hire during the usual three-
to six-month introductory period. (See the HR Tool entitled “Sample Interview Questions,”
on pages 21–22)
You will need to develop your own EI so that you can monitor how your credible activist
role is affecting your leadership, your company, your own position, your colleagues, your stress
levels, your health, and your life. You will learn to observe and measure these to see if your
actions are welcome or not. Are you being valued or devalued? Are your efforts appreciated as
the loyalty to and concern for the company that they are, or are your efforts considered annoy-
ances and/or personally embarrassing for those with whom you raise these issues because they
may fear this represents some failure on their part for not having noticed or acted?
You’ll need to learn to measure these responses to your actions and determine how far
you want to go with certain things. Do your credible research and present it in a brief for-
mat with citations ready for those who don’t have much time to be persuaded by you that
another course of action would be better. You will need to learn whether presenting the busi-
ness case, the ethics case, or both to your leadership will be the most effective manner of
persuading them on any given issue.
You will want to use all of your emotional intelligence skills when communicating ver-
bally and in writing with your corporate leadership regarding any suggestions you hope to
put forth. Even if you are being excluded from meetings and processes and even if you are
being treated badly, you will want to remain as professional and pleasant as possible.
Frequently, not only are credible activists whose input is unwelcome in the workplace
excluded from any power-sharing, but they are also actively devalued in the following ways:
ridiculed for any reason at all, marginalized in various ways, excluded from information and
processes, slandered, and discredited personally and/or professionally without reason.
This requires an enormous amount of emotional and psychological resilience as well as
well-developed emotional intelligence to endure. You will also need a good support system in
your life, perhaps a good therapist, and you will need to take excellent care of yourself phys-
ically, emotionally, and psychologically. If you have a spiritual practice, that can help and be
a source of strength for you as well. Being part of a community of even one or two other HR
professionals who fully understand this kind of experience will also be enormously helpful.
If it helps you to understand why adults with whom you work, whom you believed
were mature professionals, and whom you may have even considered friends would behave
in ways that are childish, cruel, irrational, and destructive to themselves and to the corpo-
rate culture—or why your corporate culture seems to sanction the ridicule of some employ-
ees but not others—be sure to do additional reading regarding group dynamics, power
sharing, emotional intelligence, and the primal brain. A brief explanation is shown in the
HR Tool entitled “Checklist of Behaviors,” on pages 20–21.

16 The H R Toolkit