Sexual harassment: The culture that everyone knows exists, but somehow just accepts as ok by Joanne Wilson

The sexual harassment suit that has played out in the public eye at Fox News is fascinating yet perhaps not surprising. What is mind-boggling is that once Gretchen Carlson had the guts to file a law suit for Ailes behavior how many other women felt empowered to do the same. For years each of these women, and I am sure there are more, decided to just either live with it, ignore it or leave the company.
My guess is if any of this actually gets to court that we will all be witness to a culture that everyone knew existed but somehow just accepted it as ok. Do we believe that Fox is the only company that allows their executives to behave that way? I doubt it.
In my senior year of college I was making the interview rounds at every top retail program. One of those programs was Bloomingdales. My last interview of the day there was with a male VP of all of ready-to-wear. He was one of the handful of top executives in the company. As the interviewed ended he cornered me in the door and made more than a few inappropriate comments. It is a bit of a blur now but it was about how I looked and having a drink.
It occurred to me the next day when I was back in Boston that this guy sexually harassed me. When Bloomingdales called to offer me a job in their program I declined. I also told the person who called me that the VP had made inappropriate comments to me in the interview and it was not ok. My guess is nothing ever came of that but I wasn’t going to let it pass.
Then many years later when I was running a company in the garment center, the guy who ran it made sexual comments to every woman in that company except me. He probably knew I’d kill him but I told him countless times that it was not ok what he was doing and he was going to end up in a law suit.
Even at Macy’s, where I did take my first job out of college, I saw sexual harassment right before I left. I was in a meeting where all the buyers were presenting the season to the head of the division and the VP who oversaw the division. All the buyers were women and the heads were men. The comments about women’s looks, bodies, boobs and more was beyond inappropriate. One of the men actually felt up one of the women’s legs up while she put her presentation up on the board. Everyone giggled like it was funny but I was disgusted.
I told the head of HR what had happened and I also told the head of HR that I was told that women do not move as fast as men. I am sure that I was blackballed after that because of the anger and tension that was being driven towards me from my immediate boss. Besides the fact that the company just went private and it was a complete mess and I was thoroughly bored in my job, it was the environment that really pushed me out.
I hear from too many women founders who go pitch men that say shit that you can’t make up. I am not sure if they are just ignorant or that this kind of behavior has just been ignored by their peers. As more men and women stand up and say we are not going to take it anymore such as the women at Fox did, we will see healthier company cultures and I bet more mutual respect across the board. Sexual harassment is real and it is NOT ok.
KINGSMITH.

How To Answer, "Tell Me About Yourself" By J.T O'Donnell

When we meet new people in our careers, we often get asked, "Tell me about yourself." While it sounds like a simple question, you may find yourself feeling stressed and thinking things like:
What do they want me to say?

Powerful Ways To Create Your Own Happiness By Travis Bradberry

Happiness comes in so many different forms that it can be hard to grasp. Unhappiness, on the other hand, is easy to identify; you know it when you see it, and you definitely know when it’s taken ahold of you.

8 Memorable Moments Of The 2016 Olympics From Which Every Leader Can Learn By Andreas Von Der Heydt

There are some aspects to criticize the Olympic Games about. However, there's been many inspiring, heart-warming and genuinely emotional moments and stories at Rio 2016. Here's 8 of the best from which every leader can learn. From which we all can learn!

The Single Most Poisonous Factor in the Workplace Today By Ben Judah

The most important commodity at any work environment is the people. Without a motivated, well trained and talented team behind it, even the best technology will falter and fail.

How To Survive A Difficult Boss By Travis Bradberry

Difficult bosses contaminate the workplace. Some do so obliviously, while others smugly manipulate their employees. The “bad boss” has become a comedic part of work culture, permeating movies and television, but when you actually work for one, there’s nothing funny about it.

How Complaining Rewires Your Brain for Negativity By Travis Bradberry

Research shows that most people complain once a minute during a typical conversation. Complaining is tempting because it feels good, but like many other things that are enjoyable—such as smoking or eating a pound of bacon for breakfast—complaining isn’t good for you.
Your brain loves efficiency and doesn’t like to work any harder than it has to. When you repeat a behavior, such as complaining, your neurons branch out to each other to ease the flow of information. This makes it much easier to repeat that behavior in the future—so easy, in fact, that you might not even realize you’re doing it.
You can’t blame your brain. Who’d want to build a temporary bridge every time you need to cross a river? It makes a lot more sense to construct a permanent bridge. So, your neurons grow closer together, and the connections between them become more permanent. Scientists like to describe this process as, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Repeated complaining rewires your brain to make future complaining more likely. Over time, you find it’s easier to be negative than to be positive, regardless of what’s happening around you. Complaining becomes your default behavior, which changes how people perceive you.
And here’s the kicker: complaining damages other areas of your brain as well. Research from Stanford University has shown that complaining shrinks the hippocampus—an area of the brain that’s critical to problem solving and intelligent thought. Damage to the hippocampus is scary, especially when you consider that it’s one of the primary brain areas destroyed by Alzheimer’s.

Complaining Is Also Bad for Your Health

While it’s not an exaggeration to say that complaining leads to brain damage, it doesn’t stop there. When you complain, your body releases the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol shifts you into fight-or-flight mode, directing oxygen, blood, and energy away from everything but the systems that are essential to immediate survival. One effect of cortisol, for example, is to raise your blood pressure and blood sugar so that you’ll be prepared to either escape or defend yourself.
All the extra cortisol released by frequent complaining impairs your immune system and makes you more susceptible to high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. It even makes the brain more vulnerable to strokes.

It’s Not Just You …

Since human beings are inherently social, our brains naturally and unconsciously mimic the moods of those around us, particularly people we spend a great deal of time with. This process is called neuronal mirroring, and it’s the basis for our ability to feel empathy. The flip side, however, is that it makes complaining a lot like smoking—you don’t have to do it yourself to suffer the ill effects. You need to be cautious about spending time with people who complain about everything. Complainers want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves. Think of it this way: If a person were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? You’d distance yourself, and you should do the same with complainers.

The Solution to Complaining

There are two things you can do when you feel the need to complain. One is to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. That is, when you feel like complaining, shift your attention to something that you’re grateful for. Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the right thing to do; it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood and energy and substantially less anxiety due to lower cortisol levels. Any time you experience negative or pessimistic thoughts, use this as a cue to shift gears and to think about something positive. In time, a positive attitude will become a way of life.
The second thing you can do—and only when you have something that is truly worth complaining about—is to engage in solution-oriented complaining. Think of it as complaining with a purpose. Solution-oriented complaining should do the following:

• Have a clear purpose. Before complaining, know what outcome you’re looking for. If you can’t identify a purpose, there’s a good chance you just want to complain for its own sake, and that’s the kind of complaining you should nip in the bud.
• Start with something positive. It may seem counterintuitive to start a complaint with a compliment, but starting with a positive helps keep the other person from getting defensive. For example, before launching into a complaint about poor customer service, you could say something like, “I’ve been a customer for a very long time and have always been thrilled with your service ….”
• Be specific. When you’re complaining it’s not a good time to dredge up every minor annoyance from the past 20 years. Just address the current situation and be as specific as possible. Instead of saying, “Your employee was rude to me,” describe specifically what the employee did that seemed rude.
• End on a positive. If you end your complaint with, “I’m never shopping here again,” the person who’s listening has no motivation to act on your complaint. In that case, you’re just venting, or complaining with no purpose other than to complain. Instead, restate your purpose, as well as your hope that the desired result can be achieved, for example, “I’d like to work this out so that we can keep our business relationship intact.”

Bringing It All Together

Just like smoking, drinking too much, and lying on the couch watching TV all day, complaining is bad for you. Put my advice to use, and you'll reap the physical, mental, and performance benefits that come with a positive frame of mind.
KINGSMITH.