The fourth installment of our quarterly Business Practice feature invites you to imagine witnessing a slight in a group meeting:
You work as a product manager at OmniTech. Once a quarter, the product managers for the different technology teams meet to set goals, solve problems, and coordinate their work.
OmniTech is a fairly flat organization. However, Ryan Miller, the most senior product manager, ends up being a de facto leader because his opinion generally carries the most weight. Greg Brooks, the manager who has been at OmniTech second longest, runs the meetings. In addition to you, Ryan, and Greg, there are six other team leaders: Michael, Steve, Yong, Becky, Ishaan, and David.
As Greg is getting ready to start the meeting, he turns to Becky and asks, “Will you take notes during the meeting and then send them to everyone afterward? I know you did it last time, but you’re good at this sort of thing. Most of the team leaders are better at focusing on the big-picture issues.”
Greg’s question was not directed to you, but you may nevertheless want to respond in some way—either in the moment or later. Would you respond to this event? If so, who would you approach, when, and what would you say?
For this scenario, readers were invited to propose strategies for responding. These strategies include the usual script of words that they would utter, as well as certain other elements such as timing of response, target, follow-up, etc. And unlike in our previous scenarios, a permissible response was to do nothing. As with past scenarios, readers who submitted answers were then able to rate other people’s responses.
Why is this question difficult?
Greg’s request that Becky take notes is commonly termed a microaggression, described by Columbia’s Derald Wing Sue and his coresearchers as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative . . . slights and insults.” The term, as coined by the psychiatrist Chester Pierce, refers to an action that denigrates a racial group; but in this case, Greg’s request can be seen as disparaging Becky and women more generally. Scholars such as Joan C. Williams of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law have observed that women get “stuck” disproportionately with administrative tasks, such as taking notes, ordering lunch, and scheduling meetings, and research by Carnegie Mellon’s Linda Babcock and Laurie Weingart, Maria P. Recalde of the International Food Policy Research Institute, and Lise Vesterlund of the University of Pittsburgh has found women are more likely to be assigned or volunteer to take on “nonpromotable work.” (Women may also receive different performance management than men: our previous installment of Business Practice found that readers reacted differently to an underperforming Stephanie than her otherwise-identical male alter ego, Stephen.)
Interpersonal conflict is seldom pleasant, and this scenario is especially tricky because Greg may not have meant to slight Becky. A confrontation, particularly a public one in front of other product managers, could therefore lead Greg to be defensive. Finally, the situation is complex strategically: Should you speak to Greg now or later? Is a subtle approach or a more direct confrontation appropriate? Should you talk about the specific behavior or provoke a larger conversation about culture and norms?
Scenario participation
We posted this scenario on February 13, 2019, and closed the survey 15 days later. We received 218 responses, ranging in length from 1 to 440 words, with a median length of 52 words. The responses were rated 4,106 times. Each response was rated on average 28.4 times (median: 28), with 139 responses (64 percent of them) receiving 10 or more ratings. (The infrequently rated responses were submitted late in the cycle, close to when the survey was closed).
Ratings
Responses were rated on a 1 (“Strongly disapprove”) to 7 (“Strongly approve”) scale. A histogram of all ratings is shown below.