Just Work

Kim Scott's Just Work is about creating a collaborative and respectful work environment that enables people to perform at their best and enjoy working together. Scott explores the concept of fair work, identifies the barriers to achieving it, and offers concrete solutions to overcome them. The goal is to build a fair and effective work environment where everyone feels valued and can reach their full potential. This summary highlights key ideas and practical advice from the book that can help leaders and employees create more inclusive and equitable workplaces.

When we fail to respond to inappropriate behavior or injustice, a variety of negative consequences arise that affect individuals and the entire work environment. By choosing to remain silent when faced with prejudice or bullying, we weaken our own position. We feel powerless and our self-esteem declines. This can lead to long-term feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration that negatively affect our work performance and well-being. By remaining silent, we prevent people from finding out about our bias or inappropriate behaviour. Those who perpetrate bias or bullying do not receive the feedback that would enable them to become aware of and correct their behaviour. This perpetuates and reinforces a toxic environment. Failure to respond to inappropriate behaviour can damage relationships with colleagues. Those who witness or are victims of such behaviour may lose trust in those who remain silent. This can lead to a breakdown in teamwork and a deterioration in the overall atmosphere in the workplace. By remaining silent, we allow inappropriate behaviour to become the norm. A toxic environment where prejudice, bias and bullying are tolerated is ineffective and unproductive. Innovation and high performance are difficult to achieve in such an environment. Kim Scott offers practical advice on how to respond to different forms of unfair behaviour. By using "I" statements for prejudice, "it" statements for bias, and "you" statements for bullying, we can communicate effectively and improve the work environment. By breaking the silence, we can create a work environment where everyone feels valued and supported, leading to better collaboration and greater job satisfaction.

When you don't know what to say in situations where you're experiencing prejudice, bias or bullying, Kim Scott offers some practical advice that can help you respond effectively. It is appropriate to use "I" statements when dealing with prejudice. Prejudice is an unconscious stereotype, and when you encounter it, you can use "I" statements to express your point of view without blaming the other person. For example, if someone incorrectly addresses you or assumes something incorrectly based on a stereotype, you might say: "I don't work here, I'm about to give a speech." In this way, you correct the person and give them an opportunity to realize their bias. For bias that is a conscious belief, it is effective to use "it" statements. These statements can refer to laws, company policy, or common sense. For example, if someone expresses a biased opinion, you might respond, "That's a violation of our company policy" or "That's against the law." In this way, you clearly establish the boundaries between one person's freedom to believe what he or she wants and imposing those views on others. For bullying that is intentional misbehavior, it is best to use "you" statements or questions that confront the aggressor and set clear boundaries. If you are facing bullying, you can say: "You can't talk to me like that" or you can ask: "What is happening to you here?" If that seems too risky, simply divert attention with, "Where did you get that shirt?" This puts you in an active role and the aggressor has to respond to you, not you to him. By using these strategies, you can respond effectively to inappropriate behavior and help create a more fair and respectful work environment.

Confront your biases and be part of the solution. Bart routinely referred to his colleague Avery incorrectly, constantly referring to her using the pronouns "he" and "his" even though he knew Avery used "she" and "her." When he pointed this out to her several times, she was understandably angry. Instead of defending himself, Bart admitted his bias and took concrete steps to curb it. He asked his entire team to jump in when he messed up, so that Avery wouldn't be in the position of having to constantly correct him. Then he went even further and, with a team of managers, developed a company-wide training program designed to encourage every colleague to express their true selves at work. Bart was able to deal with his personal bias and turn it into a growth opportunity for the entire company. All of us have unconscious biases and prejudices, whether they relate to race, sexual orientation or gender identity, religion, political beliefs or other characteristics. Growing up in the society we live in, prejudice is all too common. However, we are not powerless in the face of our own prejudices; we can invite people to bring them to our attention, learn from the feedback and, over time, change our language, behaviour and patterns of thinking. The most important step is to identify our prejudices. Get feedback from people in your environment and ask them to be designated as prejudice-busters. If people know that you are open to criticism, they are much more likely to speak up and help you point out problems so you can fix them. However, make sure you don't expect the underrepresented members of your team to do all the unpaid work of educating you. Constantly training other people can be exhausting. If you can afford it, pay professional de-biasers, such as diversity and inclusion experts, to assess your language. When your bias is brought to your attention, you must face the urge to defend yourself or explain that you had good intentions. The impact of your behavior on someone else is important. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and adopt a growth mindset: what can you learn from this situation? Practice acknowledging your mistakes, apologizing, and taking concrete action to change or make amends. Instead of just saying "I'm sorry I was a jerk," try to name the bias as accurately as possible. "I'm sorry I keep confusing you with the other Asian woman on our team. I know you're two different people." If you're willing to put in the effort, you'll build more collaborative and respectful relationships at work. You'll enjoy your work and your colleagues will too.

People who strive for fairness play an important role in creating a fair work environment. Aileen Lee, a partner in a venture capital firm, attended an important meeting with two male partners. When the executives they were meeting with sat down at the conference table, they chose to sit across from Lee's male partners, so she was facing an empty chair. All of their comments were then directed to her male partners and not to her, even though she was the person in the room who had the expertise. Then one of her colleagues said: "I think Aileen and I should switch seats." Lee moved to his seat across from the executives. The dynamic in the room changed immediately. She automatically joined the conversation. By her colleague's use of the term "I", he made it clear to everyone the way in which their unconscious bias was forcing her to exclude them. Aileen's colleague acted like an upstander, someone who intervenes when she notices bias, prejudice or bullying. If Aileen had drawn attention to what was going on in the meeting, she might have faced prejudice piled on top of prejudice - she might have been told she was 'oversensitive' or 'rude'. Her colleague, who was male, was unlikely to have encountered this kind of prejudice, so it was easier and more effective for him to disrupt prejudice than it would have been for Aileen. It cost him nothing and ensured a successful meeting for them all. He did it because he cared about Aileen - and also because he simply wanted to win the deal. Aileen had the relevant expertise, so he had an incentive to listen to her. Too often, people harmed by prejudice, bias or bullying also get jobs to fix the problem. But upstanders are an essential part of the solution. Upstanders can intervene in one of five ways. They can do it directly - as Lee's colleague did. They can delegate by asking someone else to intervene - a supervisor, a clerk, or just another person in the room. They can distract to give the aggrieved person a moment to regroup. They can document what is happening. They can delay and check on the person who has been harmed by prejudice, bias or bullying after it has happened. It can be tempting for bystanders to try to be knights in shining armor or "white saviors" who swoop in to the rescue. But such an attitude is actually counterproductive. Being an upstander does not mean trying to attract attention. It does not mean standing up "for" someone who is "weaker." It means intervening in the interests of all.

Managers must actively prevent prejudice, bias and bullying to create a fair and effective working environment. Many CEOs sign their employees up for a workshop and that's the end of it, or they put the problem in the hands of the HR department, but that won't work. CEOs need to do three key things. First, they must teach their team to break down biases in the moment. Make confronting bias as routine as correcting typos. Come up with a common vocabulary so everyone knows what word or phrase to use when they notice bias. Take the shame out of the game by helping people respond with grace rather than defensively when they are the ones whose bias has been pointed out. Make sure everyone is committed to doing their part in disrupting bias, even their own. Second, leaders should write a code of conduct that clearly states what the rules of respect and cooperation are that everyone chooses to follow. People can believe what they want, but they can't say or do what they want on your team. Where is that line? Third, they must create consequences for bullying. If leaders don't want bullying to escalate, they must create conversational, compensatory, and career consequences. Don't elevate that genius jerk! Consequences need to be clear and applied consistently so everyone knows that bullying will not be tolerated. Leaders must also actively work to minimize the risk that power will be abused. When power is layered on top of prejudice, bias and bullying, things get worse. The result is unlawful behaviour: discrimination, harassment and physical violence. To prevent discrimination, leaders must quantify their bias. Leaders must measure what matters and design their people management systems with fairness in mind, or the result will be systemic unfairness. To avoid harassment, leaders must create checks and balances. Do not allow any manager to have unilateral decision-making power in deciding who is hired, salary, promoted or fired. Make sure that employees have different people in different chains of command with whom they can discuss problematic behavior. To avoid physical violations, supervisors must create a culture of consent. This means that if you want to touch someone, even shake their hand, it is your responsibility to know if they want to be touched in that way. If they don't want to, don't touch them. If you don't know, don't touch them. Managers must also ensure that employees can safely report problems without fear of retaliation. Set up ways for them to report anonymously, or ensure that there are multiple people they can contact along the various reporting chains in the company and even in the boardroom. Having to report a physical violation to a person who works in the chain of command of the person who wronged you does not inspire confidence that the issue will be well resolved. Leaders have a key role to play in preventing prejudice, bias and bullying, and in doing so contribute to creating a fair and respectful work environment where everyone feels valued and supported.

Make sure that power doesn't harm your team. When power is layered on top of prejudice, bias and bullying, things get worse and lead to unlawful behaviour such as discrimination, harassment and physical violence. When a person has enough power to put his or her bias or prejudice into practice, especially when he or she has unilateral decision-making power over pay, hiring, promotions, or firing, the result is discrimination. When a person has unilateral decision-making power, they can abuse it, and their bullying often escalates into verbal harassment. When a person has power over another person, they are more likely to touch the person in an unwanted way, and physical violence is much more likely to occur. Managers are responsible for taking proactive steps to minimize the likelihood that discrimination, harassment, and physical rights violations will occur at their direction. When these things do occur, despite the leader's best efforts, the leader is responsible for responding in a way that minimizes the likelihood that they will happen again and that is supportive of the people harmed - responding with institutional courage. To avoid discrimination, leaders must quantify their bias. For many years, companies have felt that if discrimination is the result of unconscious bias, they cannot be held legally accountable. But new HCM and diversity disclosure requirements are changing that. If executives do not measure what matters and design their people management systems explicitly with fairness in mind, the result will be systemic unfairness. To avoid harassment, leaders must create checks and balances. Don't allow any manager to have unilateral decision-making power in deciding who gets hired, salary, promotion, dismissal. Make sure that employees have different people in different chains of command with whom they can discuss problematic behavior. To prevent physical violations, supervisors need to create a culture of consent. Essentially, this means that if you want to touch someone, even shake their hand, it is your responsibility to know if they want to be touched in that way. If they don't want to, don't touch. If you don't know, don't touch. Managers must also ensure that employees can safely report problems without fear of retaliation. Set up ways for them to report anonymously, or ensure that there are multiple people they can contact along the various reporting chains in the company and even in the boardroom. Having to report a physical violation to a person who works in the chain of command of the person who wronged you does not inspire confidence that the issue will be well resolved. To minimize the risk that power will harm your team, you must take the following precautions. Managers are key in preventing discrimination, harassment and physical violence and their role is essential to creating a fair and safe work environment where everyone feels valued and supported.

Quantify your variance to correct for the error of homogeneity. Imagine that the CEO announces to shareholders that the company is not doing so well in sales this year. Instead of examining why this is the case and outlining a strategy to improve performance, he just shrugs his shoulders and says he doesn't know what to do about the problem. Shareholders would revolt. It's the same with diversity in the workplace. If leaders don't measure what matters and design their people management systems with equity in mind, the result will be systemic inequity. How do you quantify your bias so you can improve diversity on your team? Do you have data on hiring, compensation, promotions. You can disaggregate this data by gender, race, and other important factors. Look for trends. Are women hired less often on average? Are your black employees not being promoted as quickly as white employees? Try to understand these trends. Ask why they are occurring. When technology executives have a bug in their software, they throw all their analytical power into understanding and fixing the problem. Inexplicably, however, some of those same executives often look the other way when it comes to understanding and addressing the lack of diversity on their teams. Instead of taking the data-driven approach they are so familiar with, they act as if they can't understand the problem and don't even try. But others do try, and they are some of the most successful engineering leaders in the world. Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering at Google, was determined to find out why Google recruits so few women to its engineering team. He didn't trot out the old "pipeline problem" excuse. Instead, he began working with institutions like Harvey Mudd College to find out why its engineering program graduates more women than other programs. Harvey Mudd found that their "culling" courses tended to knock out more women than men. When they dropped these courses and focused on teaching rather than knocking out students who couldn't yet program, more qualified engineers graduated who were women. Eustace shared this knowledge with other institutions and urged them to do the same. By applying the same analytical rigor to the problem of underrepresentation on his team that he applied to other problems, he achieved important improvements. To truly quantify bias in your company, you'll need to analyze every step of the employee lifecycle: hiring, rewarding, promoting, mentoring, and more. Look for areas where underrepresentation is present and/or worsening. Also look for areas where it is improving. If things are going in the wrong direction, find out why and what to do about it.

Checks and balances can help prevent harassment. Unchecked power creates the conditions for harassment. When people have too much power, they are more likely to commit bullying that crosses the line and becomes harassment. Managers who have too much power over their employees are prone to abuse it. If one person has unilateral decision-making power to hire, promote, or fire, you are naturally reluctant to speak up when that person bullies or harasses you. Therefore, it is easier for that person to get away with such behavior and more likely to get away with it. How can you curb abuses of power in your company? By making sure that all managers, from junior managers to the CEO, have to make decisions in consultation with other people. Making important decisions as a team will help prevent one person from having too much influence. It will also help you make better decisions.

A culture of consent can prevent physical violence. It is the responsibility of the person who is touching to be aware of how the other person feels when someone touches them. If the other person does not want to be touched, do not touch them. If you are unsure, don't touch. Unwanted touching is grounds for dismissal. Dating within your chain of command, even if consensual, is also grounds for dismissal. Power dynamics can make it difficult to express consent. During Covid, many people worked remotely. As we begin to work in person again, we have a real opportunity to reinforce a culture of consent in the context of a handshake. Some people are comfortable shaking hands again. Others want to switch to a wave or an elbow punch. If we can learn not to extend our hand just assuming that the other person wants to touch it, but rather to greet each other with a handshake asking what is comfortable, we can reinforce a culture of consent. Another key tool for responding to physical violations with institutional courage is to ensure that your employees can safely report issues without fear of retaliation. Set up ways for them to report anonymously, or ensure that there are multiple people they can contact along the various reporting chains in the company and even in the boardroom. Having to report a physical violation to a person who works in the chain of command of the person who wronged you does not inspire confidence that the issue will be well resolved.

Love and joy are core values that can contribute significantly to creating a fair work environment. Tracy K. Smith, the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States, offered a beautiful reminder in her commencement address to the Class of 2018 at Wellesley College that to achieve our ideals, we must bring love and joy to work. Smith said that we tend to avoid the word "love" in the context of politics, demographics, and policy, and instead use terms like "tolerance." Tolerance, however, is modest. It just means that we make room for someone else next to us, but we don't give them full credit. Love is a radical shift. Love says that the needs of others are just as important as our own, and that we can only truly honor and protect ourselves by honoring and protecting others. Love assures us that giving others what they need is a way of serving ourselves and all of us together. In order to embrace love, we must overcome fear and fixation on our own claim to power or authority. We can look forward with excitement to the work we must do to create more just workplaces, instead of the deep fear that too many people bring to the task. We can experience this love and joy in small ways, even with people we barely know. In a podcast Kim Scott recently recorded with Tiffani Lee, a partner at the law firm Holland & Knight who leads its firm-wide diversity and inclusion efforts, they chose to talk radically openly about race. The world didn't come crashing down around their shoulders. On the contrary, they had a great conversation, laughed a lot, and it was a joyful conversation. Conversations like this won't end racism, but if we all had more conversations like this, we could take one small step as individuals and one giant leap as humanity. Bringing love and joy into the workplace means creating space for honest, open and joyful interactions that foster respect and collaboration. It's about overcoming fear and entitlement to power so we can build workplaces where everyone feels valued and supported.

Kim Scott's book "Just Work" highlights the importance of creating a collaborative and respectful work environment. A fair workplace optimizes cooperation and respect, with bias, prejudice, and bullying being the main barriers. Silence in the face of unfair behaviour has hidden costs. Scott advises how to respond effectively to inappropriate behavior using "I," "it," and "you" statements. Combating one's own biases involves accepting feedback and actively addressing bias. Leaders must prevent bias, prejudice and bullying, set rules of respect and cooperation, and ensure consequences for bullying. Quantifying bias by analysing data on recruitment, pay and promotion is essential. Checks and balances help prevent abuse of power and harassment. A culture of consent and safe reporting of problems fosters trust among employees. Love and joy are key values for creating a fair work environment. Embracing these values fosters open and joyful interactions that lead to greater job satisfaction and effectiveness. Through cooperation and respect, we can achieve workplaces where everyone feels valued and supported. Do you have feedback for us? We'd love it if you let us know your opinion on our content! Just send an email to feedback@rewio.app with the title of this book in the subject line and share your impressions!