Monthly Archives: July 2012

Late in the afternoon, the members of the contract cleaning crew arrive.   Some  are African-American.  Some are Latino.  And, as I hear in the accented voices that respond to my greetings and comments as we pass each other in the halls, on the stairs, or stand in the elevators, a few are immigrants to the United States from Russia and countries once in the Soviet sphere.

We stopped to chat on Thursday, an African-American woman and I.  She was walking up from the basement level, where my history records are stored, to the floor assigned to her to clean.   Not the first time we’ve stopped to chat.

I mask how I feel about the more difficult aspects of my job as a federal historian from everyone I encounter during the workday. All I said about myself Thursday was that my office is about to move down a floor from where we are now (not the basement). And that my boss and the staff have started packing up the books and files in our offices for the relocation.

The woman on the stairs told me it had made her sad to see the stories in the news about the four-year old boy who had shot himself in the head with a gun.  A member of his family had left the weapon on the seat of a vehicle parked in front of the house.  We talked about responsibility and where people stand in relation to each other.  I said, “we have obligations to look out for each other.  We can’t just go through life head down and focused on our own selves.”  She gazed at me and smiled, “Look at you!”  She could tell I really meant it.

Something made the cleaning lady lean over from the step above me and to embrace me.  Then she walked on up the stairs to empty the trash cans and to clean the offices and restrooms in the building.

Not all of us have kind people we see during the workday, in and out of our workplace, who lift our spirits, as I do.   Not all of our workplace experiences are pleasant.

Time to write about Rebecca’s recent essay, “Full Disclosure:  Sexual Harassment in the Archives.”   Not just the very troubling and dismaying experiences she describes happening to her while working in an archives.  But also broader issues.   Who looks out for whom and who doesn’t.  Who speaks up and who doesn’t.  And why.

I read Rebecca’s post as soon as she put it up in June.  I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  Now is the time to write about it.  Because this morning I read a seemingly unrelated commentary in the Washington Post about the dysfunctional nature of the U.S. government’s national security classification system.  It focused on someone who seems like a lonely warrior in his advocacy in Washington and whom I admire.  J. William Leonard, former director of the Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).  He spoke in 2006 at the Society of American Archivists conference in Washington, DC.

What’s the connection between that and Rebecca’s story of harrowing experiences in the workplace?  Stewardship.

When you’re an executive, a manager, a supervisor, you officially have people in your care.   In. Your. Care.  No brainer to look at it that way, right?  Except not everyone does, not in the same way.  So bad things can happen.

Things such as what Rebecca describes.  Supposed “pranks” such as a boss having a female employee’s boyfriend (who started an internship in the same workplace) fill out an “Employee Sexual Activity Form” about his relations with her.  So very wrong.  Especially as she was victimized on the form with the phrase “mostly consensual.” So wrong.  So very, very wrong.

Rebecca did what anecdotal evidence suggests many people in such positions do.  She became withdrawn in a workplace where she previously had joined in on pranks and jokes.  She didn’t turn to the human resources office.  And she started to look for (and found) another job elsewhere.

Her story drew many thoughtful comments.  But that is largely where the conversation remained, contained.  Yet this and related issues warrant discussion.  We need to talk about harassment.  Abusive behavior.  Managerial actions, bad as well as good, that affect people, whether they occur in interpersonal relationships, policy decisions, or tactical maneuvers.

You learn a lot about how someone rolls by observing them in the workplace.  Sometimes it only starts to fit together after things implode.  Sometimes, you can hit rewind (wait, I’m showing my age) and see the signs.   Such as the person who fires off pre-emptive shots at others in seeming efforts to place them in a one-down position in relation to himself or herself.   One of many ways to shut down conversation.  Yeah, you see it on listservs and at blogs sometimes, too.  Control.

When I read Rebecca’s story, I thought, “who was looking out for her?”  It’s a question I’ve asked in a different context about my generation of archivists at NARA, where I worked from 1976 to 1990.  We ended up in a position during the G. H. W. Bush administration that one official later referred to as abusive although the situation involved handling policy questions, not sexual harassment.  But the question is the same:  “who was looking out for those in a position of workplace dependency?”  The answer, for her, for us, was: seemingly no one.   The abuse and the situation were different.  But the sense of being vulnerable and having no one to whom to turn was very familiar.

Rebecca explained,

“Could I have reported the sexual harassment? I guess so. But I didn’t really see a situation where it would end well for me–or for my boyfriend, whose employment status was far less secure. HR might just say “You two shouldn’t have been working together anyway” and force him out. They might leave my boss as my supervisor, which would be awkward. They might fire him, in which case all my co-workers would hate me. And since this was my only archives experience, I would need to use my boss as a reference to get another job in the field.”

Rebecca was very brave to blog about the incident.  And the aftermath as she became more withdrawn and no longer felt comfortable being herself at work.

“When you’re a humorist–when your entire professional reputation is based on the perception that you are both funny and provocative–it is very difficult to step back and say, ‘Hey now, that you joke you just made? That’s. Not. Funny.’ And hadn’t I said, just a day or two earlier, ‘Do whatever you want’?”

In any situation involving a superior and a subordinate, the higher ranked person has a greater obligation to think through the impact of his or her choices.  He or she has more power than the other person.  Moreover, the door has to stay open to conversations about workplace issues that may come up in the future.

Mutuality is important in making relationships work, and not just in the workplace.   We all need to be comfortable being ourselves but we also need to accept that there will be reasonable limits.  When what two people need in a situation conflicts, empathy helps us find compromises or solutions.  That’s why effective leaders point to empathy as a quality they value.  The ability to step back and look at something from the other person’s viewpoint, whether you’re officially one up or one down, can make a real difference.

Rebecca’s post ends with the wise observation that not only is it important to establish what she calls negative boundaries but positive ones, as well.    She gives good examples of positive feedback in relationships.  (My favorite is “Thanks for listening to me vent.”  We all need that sometimes!)

Why wasn’t there more discussion of Rebecca’s post in the blogosphere?  Why no link or talk about it on the Archives & Archivists Listserv?  I think it has something to do with unwritten rules.  Something I’ve observed on Twitter and on Facebook is that if a topic comes up that is a little off from the unarticulated but clearly group defined “center” of the spectrum, people hang back.

If one or two post reactions, others join in.  The longer the silence after something is tweeted or posted on a wall, the less chance it will lead to back and forth talk about it.  Something about people in groups in public places, I think.   But sometimes, you can pick out people with really good leadership qualities (or potential as leaders) and strong self actualization in observing when they speak up on difficult topics.

It  isn’t easy.  I admire those who show such independence.  Susan Cain, author of Quiet, explained it very well in the New York Times in January. She wrote

“People in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic others’ opinions and lose sight of their own; and, often succumb to peer pressure. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that when we take a stance different from the group’s, we activate the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the fear of rejection. Professor Berns calls this ‘the pain of independence.’”

But the truth is, the social world isn’t entirely social.  There are various constraints, especially in certain workplaces.

Intensity of experience may be a factor, too.  I’ve been thinking about that recently.  I wonder from time to time about the appropriateness of discussing joy that has its roots in earlier pain.  It’s as if we’re supposed to live our lives in some other-defined narrow space of “normal.”  And not reveal much about the pretty wide spectrum of good or bad things (which vary for all of us) that we experience.

My blogging friend, John H. Taylor, offered a smart take on feelings in a comment at my blog last spring.  It was under a post I had put up to thank my former pastor, who later was defrocked for being gay, for helping my sister and us during her terminal illness.  Father John observed about grief as expressed in mourning loved ones under the post I wrote about my pastor:

“Dealing all the time with people who are mourning, I warn them that there will be a decent interval after which the culture will pronounce that they should be over it, should move on, shouldn’t talk about it, whatever, whereas healthy people process their losses in all kinds of ways, including poetry, music, fiction, and, in your case, posting and blogging.”

But if we act in conformance with the culture’s pronouncements, we mask what really happens in life.  That weakens our ability to learn and to teach, both.  In the workplace.  Among friends.  And at home.

We need to watch over each other.  Look out for each other.  In issues related to managing people.  And in considering policy issues, such as the ones for which Bill Leonard is acting as an advocate.   It was hearing a friend tell me in the summer of 2010 that Tim Naftali’s experiences nearly mirrored those of my archival cohort that led me to start blogging.   (I found out later, after he reached out to me in his professional capacity in May 2011, that AOTUS David S. Ferriero started reading my blog at the time I first started writing posts in December 2010.  I’m grateful that David did so.)  As Tim recently observed, public history is fragile.  His experiences ended well but he believes “it was a near thing.”

I hate what happened to Rebecca.  I’m glad I’ve been spared that sort of thing.  I understand why not everyone can speak up about such experiences.  I feel for them.  But I’m grateful to Rebecca for speaking up about what happened to her.

An editorial this morning in the Washington Post points to a recent executive order by Mayor Vincent Gray of the District of Columbia.   Gray, who offered  brief remarks at an event this past spring at the National Archives and Records Administration that I attended, directed District government employees to use their dot gov email accounts to conduct public business. 

The Post links the issuance of the mayoral order to revelations by the Deputy to the District Chief Financial Officer, Natwar Gandhi, in a deposition.  Prior to taking a position with the District government, Nat Gandhi was an official at a federal agency in the legislative branch whose records nevertheless are subject to the Federal Records Act.   

“In a deposition for a lawsuit brought by fired lottery contract officer Eric W. Payne, a deputy to Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi said that if an issue needed to be discussed without becoming subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requirements, “we would have perhaps had a conversation on personal e-mail.” D.C. Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan rightly said at the time that content, not the delivery system’s format, determines what is subject to FOIA.”

The mayoral order directs employees to use government email for public business and to send copies or blind copies to their dot gov accounts in the rare instances where circumstances lead them to only have access to personal email accounts.  This is a solution I pointed to during the George W. Bush administration when Karl Rove’s use of a personal email account was the subject of brief discussion at two records related listservs to which I then subscribed.   As is often the case in such forums, there was little examination of whether the requirements were working and if not, why they were being avoided.

The Post notes that the Mayor cannot issue directives to the D.C. Council, a legislative body.  It urges the Council to pass legislation with similar requirements for use of email by its members and staff.   The editorial illustrates a common misconception about such matters, that issuance of policy is the answer to such problems.

“Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) told us he’s in general agreement that private e-mail accounts should not be used, but that it’s something the council needs to study. We don’t think it should take long to realize that there’s a problem with a policy that allows council members to evade scrutiny in conducting public business.”

Although pointing to a need to study an issue can sound like bureaucratic avoidance or foot dragging, I don’t believe the option should be rejected out of hand.  In my view, policy issuances can end up hollow and ineffective if the people issuing them don’t examine — in a smart way at very deep levels — the underlying reasons for behaviors they are seeking to correct. 

Understanding why officials hide is the key to changing their behavior, not simply saying “in an ideal world, this is what you are supposed to do.”   Officials need to accept the underlying reason for compliance.  The best way to do that is to figure out what they fear and then provide positive incentives, and not just admonitions and sanctions, to try to get them to change what they are doing.  Simple scolding rarely works, in government as in other human relationships.