Whistleblowers as Rebels
I like whistleblowers.
I admit being a little envious of those who are successful. I am sympathetic to those, like me, who lose. I believe them. I am fascinated by all who struggle for
years.
Sabina
Burton has struggled since 2012. She
was an associate professor of criminal justice at University of Wisconsin-Platteville
when a female student came to her with
a complaint. During class, the male professor
had given the young woman a note that said, call me tonight! and included his
personal phone number. The incident
disturbed the student.
Burton reported it to the school dean and the department
head, Thomas Caywood. Caywood explained the
student had misunderstood: the professor was conducting an experiment. Burton was not satisfied.
A week later Caywood sent a memo to all staff ordering them
to refer student complaints to him, not to anyone outside the department. A rebuke of her, Burton thought. Then Caywood and the dean pulled support for
a cybersecurity curriculum she was developing.
Other retaliations followed, Burton said. She filed a grievance with the university. Right after she complained to the EEOC about sex discrimination and retaliation,
the dean sent her a “letter of direction” describing a pattern of unprofessional
and inappropriate behavior. He gave her
five specific directions, which she didn’t appreciate. Allegations in the letter were false, she would
claim.
Her grievance was rejected. The EEOC didn’t support her. So she filed a civil lawsuit in 2015. That lost, and she asked the university to
reinstate her grievance. She demanded removal of the false and defamatory letter
of direction from her file. It rejected
her request, and in 2017 she sued again.
That lawsuit lost, too. But she
is appealing the decision. Meanwhile she
has been locked out of her office, denied access to campus, and removed from
teaching an on-line course.
The story is further complicated by the fact that the
department was dysfunctional even before the errant professor’s note. And some believe Burton’s harsh treatment stemmed
from her conservative politics at the liberal school.
How do we understand Burton’s tenacity and UW-P’s ungenerous
response?
Harvard professor Francesca
Gino’s new book, Rebel
Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life, builds on
her years of research into how people make decisions. Our biases and emotions lead us to suboptimal
results, she says. Like those reached by
Burton and UW-P. To do better, we must become
rebels.
Non-rebel employees who act by rote are threats to their
organizations. They need to be fully engaged
if the business is to thrive. She offers
advice:
1.
Seek out new ideas, new ways of doing things.
2.
Encourage constructive dissent, not yes-people.
3.
Open conversations and listen to others. Do not shut them down or ignore them.
4.
Be authentic in relations. Build trust with others.
5.
Learn everything you can about an activity, but
do not be wed to what you think you know.
6.
Recognize constraints and work creatively within
them.
7.
Do not seclude yourself in some corner office. Work with the people you lead.
8.
Welcome accidents and turn them into successes.
The problem is that this advice sounds so reasonable that most
companies already claim to follow it.
HomeFirst Services of Santa Clara County (previously called EHC
LifeBuilders) espoused values
of creativity, openness, respect, and teamwork. Then it fired me after I identified and blew the
whistle on several violations.
For its part, UW-P has a Division of Diversity and Inclusion
with an executive director and chief diversity officer to make sure problems
like those identified by Burton do not happen.
Still, she was fired.
Organizations admire new ideas until there are just too many and it’s time to get the work done. Dissent
can be constructive until it becomes disruptive. Listening to others is fine unless, like
Burton and me, they don’t stop talking. Authenticity
is great until it irritates, and trust should not get in the way of at-will
employment.
Gino offers a test to understand what kind
of rebel you are and how you can improve.
She arrives at a neat 2-by-2 matrix of rebel types:
In describing rebellion as resistance to external and
internal pressures, she echoes David Riesman’s other-directed
and inner-directed American characters. But
Gino takes the idea in a different direction.
While she assures us there is no good or bad rebel type, she
encourages Pirate-leanings (“you don’t let bad psychological habits hold you
back”) that resist all pressures. And she
cautions Guard-types (‘you may be missing opportunities to develop as a person
and to challenge others to do the same”), who are less able to resist any
pressure.
In this scheme, many whistleblowers would probably be often
categorized as Travelers, driven by internal pressures and resistant to
external pressures. That’s how I tested. It is also consistent with Professor C. Fred
Alford’s conclusion, based on his interviews of whistleblowers: we are driven
by moral narcissism[1].
To me, though, Gino does a disservice to people of all
sorts. In her model we are blown one way
by external forces and another by internal forces. Self-aware, the best of us can escape those
influences. The rebel is sui genesis.
But no one truly escapes determination. We think we resist pressures, but others see
more clearly how we serve ourselves.
Rebels might be better categorized as Actors along different
dimensions. Say, “disposition to act”
and “sense of agency.” The whistleblower,
motivated by myriad influences, acts with full intent. Successfully or not, she acts. She perseveres.
[1] Alford, C. Fred. Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational
Power. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. 2001, p. 79.
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