Summoning the HR Police
Recently, after I delivered a keynote on Restoring Respect, the head of HR at a large LA-based corporation approached me with a perspective I hadn’t considered. “We all know that many employees call human resources professionals in their company ‘the HR police.’ But what they don’t realize is that some managers really force us to play that tough cop role. They’re too afraid, or too conflict...
How to Successfully Manage Conflict Across Cultures
Conflict on global teams can show up in ways you may not expect. Here are the skills to navigate these moments. Ted and his team had reached a crisis point. Ted is a senior leader with a global company. His team had been collaborating cross-functionally on a project with another team, but the project had come to a standstill. The relationship between both teams had broken down, to the point of...
Antisemitism on the Rise
I must admit, until Ye – the musician and designer formerly known as Kanye West – tweeted that he would “go death con 3 on Jewish people,” I wasn’t paying as much attention to the rise of antisemitism in this country as I should have. Shame on me. Quick research shows that according to the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks antisemitic behavior in the US, there was a 37% rise in...
The Bullied and Their Guns
When I learned that the Texas school shooter was bullied in school, I couldn’t help but think back to my childhood. I was bullied mercilessly in middle and junior high school. I was beaten up, my lips cut, my glasses broken, and my clothing torn on a regular basis. I was called “f*gg*t” repeatedly, not because I was gay, but because I sang in the choir, and acted in plays and musicals, and...
Why the Chris Rock/Will Smith Oscar Altercation was a DE&I Issue
An Invited Opinion By Rainea Cumberbatch On Oscar night, Sunday March 27th, Will Smith became the fifth African American to win the prestigious Best Actor In a Leading Role award for his portrayal as Richard Williams in King Richard. The actor won the Oscar from an academy which, in it’s 94 years in existence, has only nominated 23 Black men for this award. We also watched Will Smith...
5 Ways Disrespect in Your Company is Costing You
Conflict in the workplace has far-reaching consequences that go far beyond transient misunderstandings. My 20+ years of counseling executives from some of the world’s largest organizations on how respect affects the bottom line informed a lot of our work at The Center for Respectful Leadership. I work in the business ecosystem using two very distinct models – fix it or build it. I...
On Respect and Policing
Last week, the NYPD police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who many believe recklessly caused the death of Eric Garner while arresting him for the relatively minor offense of selling loose cigarettes in a park in 2014. As someone who served as a specialist trainer to the NYPD during the 1980’s, this entire saga weighs heavy with me. Decades ago, while working...
30 Years and 2,500 Programs in Learning & Development- Has Anything Changed?
My first real training development and delivery job was for the New York City Police Department in the 1980’s and it was a doozy: use professional actors to help train police officers learn how to manage what they called “EDP”s – Emotionally Disturbed Persons. My responsibility was to cast and direct the actors and help them create realistic characters – like drug addicts going through...
When Employer Trust is Lost
Last year, I was leading a program on respect and trust with a dozen mid-level managers at a new client’s headquarters, when I found myself in a strange situation: everyone stopped talking. I was covering the four conditions that must be met for a relationship to have a high level of trust — competence, openness & honesty, concern for others’ best interests, and reliability — and I...