It was the 1980s and the beginning of the legislation that declared sexual harassment against the law. Who would have thought of such a thing? A law declaring some of the bad behaviours in a workplace were no longer acceptable. Having worked in a variety of corporations over the preceding years, from private business to government departments in the field ofHuman Resources I’d seen many incidents of behaviours that were now categorized as sexual harassment. In fact I’d experienced some of those behaviours first hand and I hadn’t liked it! I had learned to be vocal and direct and did not let transgressors get away with sexual comments or behaviour. Because I had learned to defend myself in the business world, I automatically started to assist other women (at the time the vast majority of the sexual harassment complaints were females complaining about men’s behaviour).

The stories shared around the table when speaking to a management group are eerily similar. Employees who are very good at the technical part of their job but who seem unable to get along in a team environment. How do we deal with the folks that just don’t get it?

Too often, the answer is to do nothing, to tell ourselves, our old selves that there is nothing to be done unless a formal complaint is initiated. Managers seem to feel that allowing employees to “vent” to them is enough, that they just needed to talk to someone and didn’t actually want anything done. All comforting thoughts for those of us that do not like dealing with conflict but dead wrong.