The meaning of words and actions

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This is going to be a shallow dive into a very deep pool.   So be ready for some big ideas, only touched upon superficially. 

To keep things clear and simple- I’m going to use the terms ‘sender’ for the person performing the action/saying the words, and ‘recipient’ for the person observing or hearing.

“They said what?”

A common source of conflict in the workplace is the words and actions that one person that affect another negatively.  This can be a major offence, or a minor slight, but it periodically falls upon HR or management to ‘sort it out’; to sit in judgement of the actions and behaviours of the sender and decide whether wrongdoing occurred or not.

What do words and actions mean?

The problem we have is that truth in human behaviour is highly, HIGHLY subjective.  It’s not about what people do or say, it’s about what those actions mean.  It’s when we lay over meaning to these actions that we apply a thick layer of subjectivity.   

Let’s use the example of ‘sweetheart’, it’s only a collection of 8 phonemes caused by a human larynx contorting and passing air through it.  To anyone (or anything) other than an English-speaking human, it’s just noise.  Its meaning lies entirely in the mind of the sender, the recipient and any observer.   Another similar analogy is a raised finger- its meaning only exists in the minds of the humans observing it (did you imagine a finger pointing up, or at?). 

How to decide

Here’s the answer halfway through the article, not at the end.  Ask yourself these questions:

- Was the action/words/behaviour of the sender in contravention of a social norm?  Did it cross a line? 

- Did it cause harm (including emotional harm) to the recipient? Note that it doesn’t need to have been directed to them, only heard or seen by tthem.

- Should the sender have known that the behaviour was outside of social norms?

- Were there mitigating factors?

A good example to consider are swear words.  Generally they contraventions of social norms, but not in all workplaces.  But swearing at someone is rarely normal in a workplace, and can cause harm.

Mitigation

Once we’ve established that a line has been crossed, we need to turn our mind to mitigation.  And don’t discard this question automatically; it’s too easy to conclude that:  upset person + bad word = wrongdoing.  Because the biggest issue at hand is: did the sender do what they did, anticipating its impact?  Or should have anticipated its impact? Because that’s our concern- employees who will cause harm knowingly, or carelessly.

But it could be plausible that harm could be accidental- that the sender genuinely did not intend to cause harm, that they did not anticipate harm, and this error was understandable.  Very likely this will be their explanation- that they thought harm would not be caused.  Often we are turning our mind to the question ‘is it plausible they did not know?’ and/or ‘is it reasonable that they thought the recipient would be fine with this’?

Don’t fall for relativism or whataboutism

Here’s two poor excuses you need to be careful to not fall for.  Relativism is that everything is subjective, nothing is true, all interpretations are equally valid, so the sender’s perception cannot be set aside; “I think it’s fine, it’s not my problem if they see if differently’.  Making a decision on subjective behaviour is hard, but you’ve got to do it.  Some secret sauce for this- observers are very useful.  How did they see it from an impartial perspective?

Whataboutism is a logical fallacy we see a lot in the workplace, and in the world in general.  ‘What about Bob?, they are worse!’ or ‘That over there is a problem- why don’t you fix that first?’  In essence, it’s the assertion of ‘let he without sin cast the first stone’, that accountability can only be required by someone who cannot be held to account themselves.  If we accept this, then no one could be held accountable for their actions, because no one can get their house spotless.

Two hands clapping?

This is a tricky one, because it’s common. Tension and offensive behaviour is rarely one-way, and often builds between two people- I will deal with micro-aggressions another day, but these can be fuel to the fire.  But don’t fall for the ‘it takes two-to-tango’ cop-out; small slights should not weighed equally with big slights.  My mantra- if two people are to blame, then two are to blame, not no one.

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