Victims often take years to gather the courage and speak out about past abuses. When you hear someone telling you stories of their past abuse, the one thing you shouldn’t say is, “why didn’t you speak up sooner?” The question is very obvious, but unfortunately, so is the answer. Most victims fear that they will be punished if they say something. Victims of abuse, especially sexual assault, often stay silent. If they say something, the chances are good that the accused person employs DARVO, a term coined by Jennifer Freyd. It means Deny, Attach, Reverse Victim, and Offender. Things may quickly turn against the victim.

Anyone can become a target of injustice, a victim. But everyone can also play other roles. In Just Work, Kim Scott points out that we all play an additional role when faced with injustice: a bystander. If you are in a leadership role, you also play a part of a leader whose responsibility is to act and prevent injustice from happening.

Unfortunately, many of us also play the role of the perpetrator now and then, often without even realizing it. It is the unconscious bias that makes us act less than honorably.

1. Bystanders have a lot of power to fight injustice

The bystanders have a lot of power over bullies and abusers. It is the responsibility of the bystanders to intervene when they witness bullying. Life is not fair, and you can’t solve all the world’s problems, but you can break the vicious cycle at least on some of them. By not intervening when seeing a bully, you empower them to continue their practice or even escalate it as they will feel that they are untouchable.

“It is the responsibility of the bystanders to intervene when they witness bullying. Otherwise, they become part of the problem. They become enablers.”

When you are a bystander in a bullying scenario and don’t know what to do, consider following the 5Ds (Direct, Distract, Delegate, Delay, Document). You can directly get involved by naming what’s happening. You can distract the perpetrator and interrupt the incident. You can delegate the intervention and ask for help from some authority or others. If the situation is too dangerous to intervene, you can delay by walking away, checking in with the victim later, and reporting to authorities. Sometimes the best you can do is turn from bystander to upstander by distracting the bully or simply documenting what’s going on so you can act as a witness later on.

“When you witness a bullying or harassment scenario, consider following the 5Ds: Direct, Distract, Delegate, Delay, Document.”

Upstanders have several advantages that make them great at dealing with bullies. As Scott points out, there might be one person causing the harm, one victim, possibly one leader, and seven potential upstanders in a team of ten people. There is strength in numbers. Not to mention that since they are a neutral party, it is much easier for them to point out what they see and document the behavior impartially. It is not easy to ignore the opinion of someone who has nothing to gain from the confrontation.

2. Beware of becoming a perpetrator

Because we all suffer from biases, we all have the potential to become the perpetrators of injustice. We may not realize that we are harming others, but that doesn’t change the fact that we do. To prevent us from becoming bullies, we need to work on self-awareness. The more we understand our unconscious biases and potential prejudices, the easier it is for us to stop in our tracks when we are on the way to hurting someone. Self-awareness won’t help you fight injustice in the workplace, but it will help you not contribute to it.

“To eliminate your own bias as much as possible, you need to be aware of it.“

This can mean asking for help from someone else who can catch you when you exhibit biased behavior and point it out to you. Then it is up to you to digest the feedback and develop measures to limit the specific bias. This, of course, requires a level of strength and a growth mindset.

Growth mindset is a term coined by Carol Dweck, and it describes a belief that everyone can learn and grow. The opposite is a fixed mindset when people believe their traits and abilities are fixed. When you get your bias pointed out and have a growth mindset, you want to learn more about how it exhibits and find ways to improve. When you have a fixed mindset, you will start acting defensively because you believe the person pointing out the bias is saying you are bad. Since you are a good person and good people aren’t biased, you deduce that your behavior couldn’t possibly be biased, so you don’t even attempt to change.

Dealing with your biases requires you to be willing to become vulnerable. You need to admit that you are not perfect. You may need to ask for feedback you may not like. You need to overcome it and not beat yourself up for being biased. We all are. It is the fact that you are trying to do something about it that counts.

3. Language matters

Become a student of language. People often use hurtful words or make biased comments simply because they are too lazy to look for words that would describe the topic of conversation better and wouldn’t offend anyone. There are at least 170,000 words currently in use in the English language, as counted by Oxford English Dictionary. Our tendency to simplify our speech and use the same set of words even in context they are not suitable for makes us sound prejudiced.

When looking at some of the other major dictionaries, you can see that Webster’s Third New International Dictionary has a word count of 470,000. When it comes to other languages, Korean has over a million words, Portuguese 800,000, Chinese 378,000, German 330,000, and Czech 250,000. And these are just the dictionaries. The real word count in the language will be even higher.

“Be precise with your words. You will better describe what you want to say and won’t be unnecessarily offensive.”

Kim Scott points this out on an example of sight metaphors. Imagine you talk to a visually impaired person and say, “do you see what went wrong?” You meant well, but you could have also offended the person. Of course, they don’t see! More importantly, that is not what you meant. If you were more careful and precise with your words, you would use “understand” instead. It would better describe what you are asking and wouldn’t be offensive.

4. How to fight bias in others

Biases can never be eradicated, but most people can fight at least some. All it takes is to point out their biases to them. Good people may become horrified about how their behavior impacted others, apologize that they haven’t realized the harm they are causing and try their best to remove the bias and act better in the future.

“Bias is unconscious, so helping the perpetrator understand the impact on you is usually enough. It opens their eyes and allows them to do better.”

To fight bias, use statements starting with “I” to help the person who exhibits biased behavior against you see the situation from your perspective. You don’t want to label them as being bad. Again, bias is unconscious, so helping them understand the impact on you is much more powerful. If you explain how the bias is harming you, the other person may apologize and stop whatever was causing the injustice. Or they may become defensive and try to justify their bias, and you will at least know that it is not a bias but prejudice.

5. How to fight prejudice in others

Prejudice, because it is conscious, needs more effort. Just pointing it out doesn’t solve the problem, as people are aware that they are prejudiced against something or someone. It is part of who they are, and telling them that their prejudice is wrong means telling them that they are a bad person. The approach here is to show them a clear boundary between being who they are and having the right to believe whatever they want on one side and the right of others to be free of their prejudices on the other side. It is your right to believe whatever you want, but don’t impose your beliefs on me if they hurt me.

“Prejudice is conscious, and just pointing it out doesn’t work. Show the perpetrator a clear boundary between having the right to believe whatever they want and the right of others to be free of their prejudices.”

You need to have the conversation, and you may even need to be more forceful, but you can’t expect the person to change their beliefs. The best you can hope for is that they stop forcing them on you. Kim Scott suggests using “It” statements. You point out their behavior and how it is unacceptable. “It is disrespectful towards women on the team to tell these derogatory jokes.”

The culprit will not change and will most likely keep telling these jokes, but not when women are around. Did you change the person’s belief? No. Did you stand up to create a better working environment for women? Yes. The more non-arguable statements you can make, the better. You do it by references to company policies or even laws. “It is against company policy to make derogatory jokes against a group of people as that inhibits our ability to work together effectively.”

Putting it all together

When dealing with bias, it might be enough to point them out so the person realizes it and has an opportunity to fix it. When it comes to prejudice, the perpetrators are aware. They know of their beliefs, and pointing them out elicits only a “yes, I know, that’s me” reaction. Your role is not to point it out but to prevent the person from pushing his prejudiced beliefs on others. People can believe whatever they want but can’t impose those beliefs on those who don’t share them.

Don’t become an enabler. You need to intervene and become an upstander when you see others exhibit abuse or bullying behavior. When you do so, others may join, and there is strength in numbers. While the victims alone may be powerless against a bully, your intervention may make all the difference.

When you are in a leadership role, it is your moral obligation to stand up to bullies and abusers. That is what being a leader means. And when you try to fire someone for their prejudiced behavior, you are not firing them for their beliefs. They can believe whatever they want. It is their behavior, the fact that they impose those harmful beliefs on others, that is the problem.

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What is your take on the topic? Do you believe you never discriminate against anyone? Do you agree with the ideas presented here? How do you fight bias and prejudice? How do you react if someone points out your own bias?

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