The New Leadership Imperative: Stomping out Destructive Workplace Cultures

Progressive Harassment is the New Sexual Harassment

Recently, the latest fashion in work circles has been to become tolerant of abhorrent behavior among a small minority of workers who prefer to use virtue signals over value (as in enterprise value) signals .?

These apparatchik demands started with silencing dissenting voices to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs (translation: illegal “proactive” discrimination that disfavors certain groups for hiring and promotion while pushing forward others based on demographic identifiers, not merit, because equity, after all, centers on equal outcomes, regardless of inputs or hard work).?

And more recently, they’ve extended to even more absurdist causes, having nothing to do with business, such as signaling solidarity with any crusade in which victimhood, not achievement, is lionized, even if the supposed victims are genocidal maniacs who murdered and/or raped over a thousand civilians, including American citizens.

Regardless of whether these young workforce turks signal progressive solidarity by attempting to silence and label as racist any micro-aggressing co-worker who would expect the same of someone with a darker skin complexion as someone with a lighter one or express outright anti-semitism at Jewish co-workers and investments in Israel, they are doing one thing which is anything but new: creating a toxic workforce culture, one just as destructive as those which would tolerate sexual harassment.?

Many reasonable employees inside firms who would otherwise speak up when seeing such behavior have often sat silent in recent years for fear of reprisal, retaliation, or, the greatest sin of all, being labeled “racist” or “misogynist” for not being a proactive ally (whatever that means these days). Most recently, National Public Radio (NPR) correspondent Uri Berliner was suspended from work and docked pay (and later resigned) for speaking out against the one-side, dogmatic, progressive echo chamber his employer had become.

Yet, might the tide be changing?

Google, a firm known most recently for its “woke AI” release, which refused to render any white figures in history as white when painting virtual pixels, recently took action against protestors, marking a 180-degree turnaround for the tech firm.?

According to The Daily Wire, before this week, “Anti-Semitism appear[ed] to be rampant throughout Google’s workforce.” Recent incidents include one employee “finding the words ‘kill all Jew’ written on a bathroom wall inside its offices, and a Jewish employee being assaulted by anti-Israel protesters on one of their campuses [as well as] a group of employees attempting to hijack an International Women’s Day event to bash Israel.”?

No reported punitive actions were taken from these incidents.

But this week, a number of Google employees decided to occupy the office of divisional CEO, Thomas Kurian, “for more than eight hours to demand the company stop doing business with Israel were arrested late Tuesday,” according to sources.?

And for the first time, CEO, Sundar Pichai took decisive action, arresting and firing the employees .

Writing to employees, Pichai wrote: “Unfortunately, a number of employees brought [protests] into our buildings in New York and Sunnyvale. They took over office spaces, defaced our property and physically impeded the work of other Googlers. Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive and made co-workers feel threatened … following investigation, today we terminated the employment of twenty-eight employees found to be involved.”?

Just as Pichai did, it is time for all employers to stop tolerating progressive harassment in the workplace. In many cases, it has become “so bad,” according to one of our colleagues, formerly an executive in procurement and supply chain at a Fortune 500 manufacturer, that some of the best talent is decamping for middle-market companies (often private equity owned) that promise a workplace free from progressive intimidation and discrimination.?

Of course, the irony of Google “going first” here is not lost on us. Hopefully, it will send a message to others: we've climbed out of an enterprise value-destroying crevasse from which only those bent on destroying Western civilization and innovation would want to return.