A few years ago, a dear friend introduced me to a phrase that I have thought about ever since.
What you permit, you promote.
It hit me hard recently, watching the fallout from the U.S. men's hockey team locker room situation — the joke made at the expense of the women's hockey team. Two teams. Both Olympic gold medal winners. One treated as the real thing, one turned into a joke.
It isn't about whether you made the joke.
It's about what you do when you're in the room. Because what you permit to happen in your space, you promote. By saying or doing nothing, you are giving it the green light. And what you participate in, you promote even further.
Silence is a choice. Laughter is participation. Permitting is promoting.
The real issue in that locker room was power. Those players have immense power in our society by any measure. They have a platform, voice, money, status, social standing, physical strength and ability. And, they were in a room with men who have more power.
Power is always hierarchical. There are always people with less, and always people with more. And one of the defining questions of leadership is what you do with the power you have.
Do you focus your attention up and try to gain proximity to even greater power than your own? Or do you use your power to include, respect and reach out to those who have systemically less?
This was an opportunity where a hand could have gone out. It didn't.
To be clear this isn’t about being perfect. We have all been in a room where something happened that we knew wasn't right — and we froze. We looked around. We didn't know what to do or say. We told ourselves it wasn't that bad, or that speaking up would cost us something we weren't ready to lose.
Then the question becomes - what do you do next?
Mistakes are opportunities for reparation. For apology. To make a different choice going forward. The question is whether we take them — or whether we hope it gets forgotten and we get to keep our place in the power hierarchy intact.
So unless a genuine apology is made and real attempts at reparation, I will not be excusing bad behaviour. When someone is in a leadership role we should expect accountability for bad behaviour. That accountability isn't a burden, it's leadership. It’s knowing what you stand for, and then standing for it.
— Belinda
Subscribe to Unsubscribe
Yes, we see the irony. But trust us—
you’ll want this in your inbox.