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Hello, and welcome back to the Marcus Williams Training Academy podcast where we talk about all things misconduct: behavior, response to that behavior, and how it impacts all of us. Today we are going to have another episode of our segment, Misconduct Myths, where we talk about things that people say and that people believe regarding misconduct that simply are not true. So, before we get started please subscribe, hit the notification button whether you're watching this video or you're listening in your favorite podcast app, please subscribe. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, leave me a review. I would appreciate it very much. Share with your friends. Okay, so the myth that we are talking about today is the myth that good people can't do bad things, that everything is black and white, that there are good people that do good things, and there are bad people that do bad things and nothing in between. Now I think we can all agree that someone who is say, a serial killer, is a bad person. They are living their life doing bad things constantly. And there are people who are good people who do their very best to make good decisions every day. Hopefully we all are that way; we all are trying to make good decisions every day as we go through life, but the truth of the matter is, we are all human beings. We are all imperfect. We all make mistakes. Good people in fact do bad things. So let's talk about some stories, some things that have happened over the last couple of years that have tried to punch through this myth to get people to understand that human beings are a lot more complicated than black and white good and good versus evil, that people make choices some days that are good and other days that are bad. And it doesn't change-we can't give a title or a label to that person as good or bad based on one day's decision or one behavior. What about the sexual abuse scandal in the catholic church? We have priests who have dedicated their lives to helping people, to preaching, to teaching, to comforting and instead abused children. Sometimes over the course of years a lot of those people you would say are simply evil, they did it for so long and was so-have so many victims that they are evil. Yet, their public persona, the persona that people saw every day was of a good person. They had members of their congregation that went to them for help, for support. They were there mourning with people who lost loved ones. They were presiding over christenings, over baptisms. They were standing up and giving mass and sermons, things that really helped people in their congregation. Yet, behind closed doors they were doing evil, wicked things. They were engaging in sexual abuse. There are a lot of other organizations that are like that as well. The Boy Scouts of America faced a scandal. They're currently going through lawsuits. There are class action suits against the Boy Scouts for abuse that scout masters committed. These are men and women who volunteered their own time to go in and teach young men and women skills, to help them learn how to live a good life, to teach them the Scout Oath and the Scout Motto. And those are principles that are good, yet they use that position to do evil. Teachers. I remember-this isn't a new thing where we hear about teachers who engaged in sexual abuse of students or of minors. And this isn't a new thing. I remember when I was in high school one of my teachers was accused of having a sexual relationship with a student, and that teacher was married to another teacher. And back then what happened is the student, the female student, whom he was abusing, had-was mercilessly mocked and harassed, and she is the one who had to leave the school and go somewhere else. But it was the teacher who was actually engaging in the bad behavior. Coaches. What about the story at Penn State? Joe Paterno, Joe Pa, a coach who was famous worldwide. People looked up to him in his program, and the way he mentored his players and his coaches. And yet he had a coach engaging in and abusing players, and it came out that he (Paterno) knew about it and did nothing. He made bad decisions while at the same time he was doing good things. It can go on and on. So, the-a lot of times when those come out, people suddenly go oh good person, switch, suddenly bad person. It's more complicated than that. We do dumb things. We make bad decisions. We also make good decisions. We all do it. So, I did a quick search kind of looking at the results what is this attitude, this myth that good people can't do bad things. How does it impact sentencing? How does it impact the discipline or the punishment? So, we can look to the criminal courts and see how it has played out there, and we can take that also into the private sector. Those same attitudes, those same beliefs, the same things happen in companies in corporations as do the courts, because it's-it's the same people making these, making these decisions. A jury is made up of the jury of our peers. So, I did a quick search and pages and pages came up of instances where someone got a light sentence because they're, they were a good person. So, there's a good example of a pastor in Knoxville, Tennessee, Pastor David Lynn Richards Jr. So, he was a someone who helped his community, who served his community in the church and he was abusing his, I believe it was his, adopted daughter at home. Serving the community doing good in public, abusing his daughter at home. And he got what many believed to be a light sentence. He was sentenced to just 12 years in prison. The prosecutors were going for life because of how this abuse was ongoing over the course of years. So, he was someone he was charged with “sexual battery by an authority figure.” So, it was his adopted daughter. And people were outraged. People were outraged, not just at what he did but because of the light sentence, what they perceived to be a light sentence. And the judge did that because of all the community service and help that he had done in the community. So, simple abuse. One of the first stories that popped up. There are many other times as well. You may remember the story of Brock Turner. So, he was accused of raping a drunk woman in an alley behind a bar. He went to Stanford. Two other, actually they were international students, went by, saw something happening down the alley, kind of didn't feel that it was right, went down there to investigate to see what was happening and found him, Brock Turner, raping this girl who was passed out drunk. And he got essentially probation. People were outraged. They called for that judge to be fired because he would-and the defense was that he had, this probation would ruin his, ruin his athletic career and it was enough to destroy his life anyway. We don't need to destroy it anymore. He was this promising young man who did a bad thing. “He's a good person.” They lessened the horror of what he did because of who he was. When I was a Special Agent with NCIS, I saw this all of the time. So, in the military you get performance evaluations and ratings just like you do in the private sector. So, on a scale of, it was on a scale up to five, so a 5.0 Sailor or 5.0 Marine was someone who was doing, was exceeding expectations in every aspect. Someone-and you'd get those ratings and those would go to whether or not you would get promoted so they were very important. And many times you would, a case would go before a panel into a court. (So, a panel is the same as a jury in the mil, in the military justice system). And they. the defense attorney would bring out all these ratings. Look, he's a 5.0 Sailor, she's a 5.0 Marine. They get all these great ratings. They do great work. They-and that somehow was a defense against what they did. The defense against the rape that somehow mitigated this bad decision because if he's a good Sailor at work, if he does all his job and he exceeds expectations and he's a good leader and he helps all of his-all the other Sailors in this unit, then there's no way he could have raped someone that Friday night after drinking in the bar or at the party. There's no correlation between those two. Someone can be a great worker and still do something bad. But that was the defense. This person is a 5.0 Sailor so therefore couldn't have done what he is accused of doing. When I was investigating title ix cases, I would get that same thing all the time. Now, I did those investigations for a religious university, and I would constantly, I would get the religious leader to be a witness. The respondent would ask me to, they would name their witnesses and they would ask me to talk to the religious leader who would say, “No, he's-he's a great person. He follows all of the precepts of our religion, therefore could not have done it.” Or, talk to my friends; talk to my parents; talk to my Boy Scout leader from when I, from when I was younger. My high school coach. All of these people who only saw him doing good things but weren't witnesses to the bad thing that he was accused of doing and they would come in and say, this young man is a great young man. He serves other people. He's very nice. He walks old ladies across the street. He helps people carr-he helps carry their groceries to their car. He's always serving others so there's no way, I don't believe it, I don't believe he could have done this thing he's accused of doing. And my question is, “Well, were you there?” “No.” “Do you have any firsthand knowledge of that?” “No.” “Have you ever been on a date with this person?” “No, of course not. I was his religious leader (or his sports coach).” “Okay, so you don't know how he behaved on, how he behaves on a date generally. You don't know how he behaved on this date specifically.” Or they would bring in someone they went out with on a previous date, a person who they didn't assault and that person would say, “No, he was a perfect gentleman. He never did anything to me, so therefore he couldn't have done it to someone else.” All of those witnesses are important to talk to. Building a complete picture of a person and their character and their behavior and their decisions are all very important, but you have to remember that someone who, just because someone is a good person in other aspects of their life or maybe in all aspects of their life, it doesn't really matter. That does not mean that they can't make a bad decision. That doesn't mean that they can't do something bad or even evil. Do you truly believe that there are good people and bad people and nothing in between? I mean look at your own life, your own behavior. There are things in your life that you were probably ashamed of, things that you've done that you don't want anyone else to know about. Maybe they were in the open and you've paid the price and you've dealt with the consequences. Maybe they haven't. But that's your secret, something you don't want other people to know. But you consider yourself a good person, don't you? You try-you try to do your best. You wake up every day with the intention of doing good things, or at the very least not doing bad things. And I think that's how most of us live our life. We don't wake up and say I'm only doing good today. We wake up and we go throughout our day with just an intention to not do anything bad. And it's not even a conscious decision. We don't say it in the mirror. We make decisions based on our-our upbringing and our learning and our belief systems and our value systems. And sometimes we screw up and we make mistakes. This can come into play in a misconduct investigation. If you're the investigator and you're-you are talking to these witnesses, you're talking to the manager, to the boss, to the co-workers who says this person is great, I can't believe this could have ever happened? Who-who would ever believe he would have done such a thing or she would have done such a thing? I just don't believe it. Don't take that down. That's all-all of that information is important. It's all a piece, a puzzle piece in your puzzle. But remember you are looking for people who have relevant information, people that can either corroborate, substantiate, or the opposite. Do they actually know about what happened? Did they see? Did they talk to someone? Did they witness something? Did they receive some-do they have some sort of evidence that helps you in your case? In a criminal investigation one of the first things that you do when you have someone who is accused of a crime is you pull their criminal history. That is totally appropriate to do. You want to see their past. You want to see if there are similar arrests or similar behavior in their past. You want to see if they're violent, if you have to take special precautions when you approach them. Information is good, but those previous convictions don't really mean that they did or didn't do what they're accused of right now. So, if you are the investigator, again for misconduct investigations in your company, you may-the first thing you do you might pull their personal personnel records. What kind of disciplinary actions have been taken against them in the past? Have there been any prior complaints? Maybe. And if there isn't don't let that sway you into thinking this one isn't true just because they have never had a complaint before. Maybe they've been doing this all along and just no one has had the courage to complain or to file a complaint or report them. Maybe this is the first time they've done it. You're investigating that incident individually. Another thing you might find is you may look through there and you may see a pattern of complaints that started small. Maybe it's sexual harassment and it started with comments and then it-the next one was some touching, massaging shoulders or something like that, all little things that alone there wasn't much you could do about. But when you look back at this pattern of behavior that all led up to what you're investigating right now, which could be maybe a sexual assault, now you can go back and maybe revisit those behaviors because you saw that pattern moving up. You can put those things together. The bottom line is that you can't judge what, you can't make a decision based on what you know about a person's past or what you know about a person's character. Just because they were accused, just because you have only seen them in a good light doesn't mean that the accusation isn't true or that it is true. That is not good evidence. That happened in the-in the Catholic Church scandal for years. No one would believe them because a catholic priest is a good person. He wouldn't do such a thing. Yeah, we now know that that is not the way that we should think of this. And you would think that because of these big organizations that have gone through these shocking revelations, that that would have changed the attitudes of society, but this still exists today. People still don't want to believe that someone who serves their community or does good things or is well known or well liked could do something so bad or dark or evil. Take the allegation on its face and investigate it for what it is. Don't make up your mind beforehand. That will influence and impact your investigation. If you're not the investigator, and if you're not the investigator, you’re just a co-worker, there is a strong pull to take sides. You want to be on the side of the complainant or the respondent. She's my friend. He's my friend. I know this person. I don't know that person. People start to take sides without any knowledge of what actually happened. That can destroy a team. It can divide a company. It can divide a community or a neighborhood. You can't take sides. You have to allow all of the facts, all of the evidence to come out. Don't make up your mind based on this myth that good people can't do bad things, that we are good or bad. We are complicated. Human beings are complicated. We do good things; we do bad things. And I hope in my life that I'm doing a lot more good than I'm doing bad, and that the bad is not serious. But we all do bad things. We all make poor decisions. Thank you for listening or watching this episode of the Marcus Williams Training Academy podcast and Misconduct Myths. Think about what we talked about and if there are any instances in your life where maybe you've jumped to a conclusion based on this belief system or this myth because of what you knew about a person. Subscribe to my podcast. Hit the notification bell on whatever platform you're using, however that works, so that you are notified of all of my future episodes. Please share. Let other people know about this podcast. If you're a human being and you work with other human beings, the things that I talk about are applicable to you. Thank you and we will see you next time.

Hello, and welcome back to the Marcus Williams Training Academy podcast, where we talk about all things misconduct: behavior in the workplace, how it happens, and how it is treated, and the response. Today is another segment of our Misconduct in the News and this one's a little bit different though because this was not a story picked up by the normal news media. This was a story posted on social media on Facebook specifically by the complainant himself; a long post detailing what he endured in the workplace working for Disney. And it has been picked up by industry blogs and websites in the theater industry. But the best source of information is the post itself. Normally we don't have the, essentially the statement from the complainant to work off of, and so we do here which is interesting. We don't have a response from the accused employee or the employer, Disney, we only have the complainant so just like in all of our Misconduct in the News segments, all we have is what is publicly available; and so we are going to dive into the story and talk about the response, what was done correctly what was done incorrectly, and we'll go from there. But before we get started, please subscribe whether you're watching the video whether you're listening to the podcast, however you like taking in these episodes, please subscribe, hit the applicable notification button so that you know when a new episode is dropped. If you're listening on Apple podcast, please leave a review. Okay, let's dive into the story. So, Cooper Howell is the complainant. He is the person who posted this information on Facebook. He is a black man, an actor. He tried out for Disney's “Frozen.” It's a stage show based on the popular animated Disney show “Frozen.” And he had no expectations of getting a part, but he was called back and he ultimately was, he was cast in the role of Prince Hans. Very excited. So, he breaks his story into two parts, heaven and hell. And he said at the beginning it was heaven. He got this dream role. He loved the director. He loved the cast. Everyone worked well together, and in his opinion they put together a magical show. So, the director was Liesl Tommy and she was the one who cast him, and he said she treated him fantastic. So, “Liesl MADE SURE, almost overly sure that the poc’s (people of color) in the cast felt equal…[f]rom having Disney executives come and tell us that they were happy to have us there, to side conversations with John Lasseter, we were made to feel overly welcome playing the parts we were playing.” So, everything was going really well. Now I want to make it very clear that racism is unacceptable in any form in the workplace, in personal relationships, or anywhere else. This episode, the purpose is not to talk about the racism that he experienced or what that means, it's to talk about it in the context as misconduct in the workplace, a violation of policy that should be investigated and dealt with. So, we're focusing on that. So, I want to keep, I want to keep focused there and just make that clear from the beginning that that is where we are going with this story. So, everything was going great and then it wasn't. So, now we get to the segment on hell. And I just kind of gave you the background. He wrote more about how-how great it was, but essentially Tommy went back to New York City and she was replaced by Roger Castellano, the new director. So, Castellano came in and “he told us on the first day” his task “was to ‘change the show.’” Have you ever had a manager who came in in the very first day said, “Okay, I'm here to change everything?” He starts, he or she starts making changes, fixing things, basically communicating to you that you're broken, that things are not working well, that it's not going well. Essentially saying here the show is no good, I've got to change things. And he made it sound like that was his task, like he was hired to do it that way. That's how, Howell describes it. So, just as it would be in any workplace the employees were a little taken aback and they defensive. Here they are doing their best. They've worked really hard on this show they thought it was going really well and suddenly someone comes in and says it's not. So they push back a little bit. So, Howell says, “Everyone's initial reaction was to push back, but when people who questioned their notes or their changes started getting days removed [from] their schedule or being replaced entirely by a new actor, the Hyperion theater became a place where no one was allowed to speak out.” So, they tried this push back. It's saying hey but this is why I do it this way and suddenly there was retaliation. So, it wasn't just that the director said no, I'd like you to do it my way now. I'm the director. Suddenly there was retaliation. They stopped getting shows. Essentially it's like if you were on an hourly job, you would stop being put on the schedule. Suddenly your hours drop that you were you're scheduled to work. So, direct retaliation; so this hostile work environment started to form. This is what Castellano was creating. Now as a director of a show, you're in charge. It's your show and it can be really frustrating when your cast members start questioning everything you say. You give them a note and they argue about it. Not only does that take a lot of time, but it's not, they're not the director. They don't get to see the entire vision of the stage. That is the director's job, not the cast member's job. And having been in that position it can be really annoying. But it's improp-it's totally wrong to then retaliate against those people. If it becomes a problem you have a conversation with them off to the side saying hey if you've got, if you think I'm doing something wrong, let's have a conversation about it privately. When I'm giving notes, you know, I'm the director and I need you to follow them. But anyway, he was taking that role giving notes and creating this, I'm, you know, I'm the boss, I'm in charge. If you question me you will be punished. Howell said no one felt they could “do anything for fear of losing their livelihood.” In other words, it got to the point where they thought if they, if they argued or didn't agree that they would actually lose their job. That was the level of fear among the cast. So now there's the targeting, specifically of Howell. So, Howell played with a good friend and he played across from her in the show. She played Princess Anna. Her name is Dominique Paton. So, Castellano pulled Howell and Patton in to the room and said, “When the two of you perform the show together it's too…urban.” Too urban. Howell took that as a very racial racist remark but as a good actor will do, he asked for clarification. What do you mean by that? It is, is it in the way that we're speaking, our pattern of speech, our rhythm, the way we move, the way we talk, the way we interact? What specifically are you talking about? And they said, “And when asked what he meant, he smiled with a little shrug and said ‘you can figure that out.’ You’re smart.” Howell said from that point on, instead of being Prince Hans he was black, “Black Hans” and she was “Black Anna.” Racial harassment in the workplace. And then he and Paton saw a marked decrease in the number of shows that they were scheduled to do together, actual action that this manager was taking against them. They weren't getting scheduled. And then they started getting more notes. So, everyone would get notes here and there, and when you get to the point where you're performing every day, your notes should go down drastically because you're on stage, you've already done all your rehearsals and all the work. It should be little things. But he said he was getting, he and Paton were getting copious notes every day on every single little thing, and as a good actor he said that's fine, if we're doing something wrong, give us notes. No problem; that is totally appropriate. But-but Castellano made a mistake that managers frequently make in assuming that employees don't talk to each other. And Howell did. He talked to other co-stars and said, are you, is he is he being as nitpicky with you as he is with me? Is he really, you know, giving you this amount of notes? And they all said, no, we're hardly getting any notes at all. It's only you. These notes are targeted at you. Howell said he even would sneak into the audience to watch other co-stars play the part and he noticed they were doing things that were a little bit different or interpreting the script in different ways and they were not getting any notes, even when they took liberties with the script. Whereas, he would and he felt like this was all targeted because of his race. Now we add a sexual harassment component to it. So, if you have little kids watching, this might be the time (or listening) this might be the time to hit pause and listen to later. It's not overly graphic, but we are going to talk about some body parts here. So, Howell said, “And then I started getting notes about my penis. Most of the time these ‘penis sessions’, as I call them were given in private rooms without a stage manager present.” So, this very uncomfortable conversation without anyone else there, just between the two of them. And I don't know policy wise if they're required to have a stage manager during those kinds of meetings, but that would have been smart on the director's part anyway. So Howell's response was this is the costume that Disney gave me. I'm wearing what I was issued. And he was a prince so he had these tight pants like tights and castellano was saying his penis was way too noticeable and distracting in that costume. And Howell was saying what do you want me to do? So, in dance when you're in a cost-in a tight pants like that, think of a male ballet dancer, you may have seen they wear what we call a dance belt. And if you're not familiar with that, think jockstrap for an athlete. So Howell said his point was well it's Disney's, if Disney thinks there's a problem, Disney needs to fix the problem. That's not on me. And he said his white co-stars were actually given dance belts for the same thing, but he wasn't. He was being told he had to go out and get his own. It seemed, and I don't know, again, I don't know if that's true or not, if they were issued a dance belt or if they brought their own. It would seem like someone, as a dancer he would have one. But his argument was, I'm required to wear a specific costume; you should provide me with that costume, especially if you're providing it to everyone else. So, racial component in that he wasn't given the same, issued the same equipment as his white co-stars and sexual harassment because of this constant, and it became this constant thing talking about his penis. And usually it was in these private sessions, but then it went out into the open. It became public, which is even more, you could call that harassment. This is behavior, sexual in nature that is just not appropriate, it's offensive, it's objectively offensive. He said, “Once, he screamed at me in the green room in front of all my co-stars during lunch about how incredibly unprofessional I was, about how he was tired of seeing my [d-word], and that if I didn't go buy myself one I didn't deserve to be there anymore.” And then, (I’m trying not to use the word because I want this available for all audiences except for, like I said, small kids in this section). So now it's public, what do you do? Howell wanted to know what to do. So, here's where we get to the response and kind of the-the biggest, the misconduct. You know, there's this these allegations that this misconduct happened, we've got that. But, now let's talk about the response. He said, “During this time I went to every stage manager in the building and told them about being singled out and about my penis. They all told me to write a complaint report and it would go to some place called ‘HR.’ Which I did. Numerously. More months passed. Nothing from ‘HR.’ Multiple cast members who witnessed my note sessions encouraged me to go to the HR themselves. I didn't honestly know what an HR was. As soon as it was explained to me by my allies even what an HR was I went to the head of HR at Disneyland herself and waited outside of her door. I asked her if she ever got any of my HR reports and she told me that she had received no HR reports from the Hyperion ever.” He was turning in these reports and they were never making it to HR. So we have multiple problems in this paragraph. One, clearly we have a training issue that he doesn't know what HR is, that HR is human resources and that human resources is the place to go if you have a problem if you have a complaint, if you need help. If you-if there's misconduct being perpetrated against you at work, that's where you go. He should have known that. That should have been part of his on-board training as soon as he was hired. So, that's a massive training failure. You can say, how does it, how would he not, how does someone not know about HR? Well not everyone has experience with it and how would they know unless someone tells you that that's where you go? When you're having a problem, how are you supposed to know? That’s a major training issue there. Second, co-workers saying you need to go to HR. Why didn't someone walk him there? Why didn't someone help him get there? And when he made these complaints to HR, I don't know if they were electronic, if they were paper, who he turned them in to, but I hope they didn't go through Castellano's desk, because clearly there needed to be another process to make this complaint. And maybe there is one and he just didn't know what it was or he didn't submit them to the right person. I don't know. But he thought he was communicating complaints and for months got no response. He thought nobody cared, nobody was doing anything, and it's because they never actually received it. And I don't know where that where the failure point was in that process. We just know that it was a failure. And there is some responsibility on his part that he should have followed up earlier, he should have made sure that it got to where it needed to go. He should have done some research and some homework to find out. And the co-workers the stage managers, they should have known that. They've been there, a stage manager is someone who works not just on that show, has probably been there for a long time. They would have known better. Someone should have helped him get his complaint to the right person. So, then he goes to the head of HR. He basically bypasses everyone. It goes straight to the head. She said okay fill out this form. You have someone in your office who says he's made multiple complaints. Nothing's been done about them. He finds out that you never even got them and you hand him a form and say fill this out? How about have a conversation? How about you walk through the form with him to assure him that you are going to do something and that you care? So, we're starting off on the wrong foot with the HR response already. And as the director of HR, that's not what you do. Is that-if that's not your job, walk him down to the office of the person who will be handling his complaint and ask them to take care of him. Take a few moments to take care of the person to let them know that you're taking their complaint seriously. Okay, next paragraph. “As we went over it, she asked me some questions and then set up a second meeting.” So, we did kind of a little bit of an interview not much. “On the second meeting she said that in order for my report to be given credence I would need witnesses to give their testimony. The witnesses, in fact the very people that told me to go to HR in the first place, said no. They didn't want to lose their jobs. In retrospect that might be the thing that hurt the most but, whatever…anyway, I was told ‘well…without testimonies we'll do an investigation and we'll call you when we've completed it.’ I never received a phone call.” Never received a phone call. This, in my opinion based on this information, was not handled correctly. We do an initial interview. We call the person and said okay, you're responsible for creating your own witnesses. You're responsible for talking to everyone. Basically, the burden is on you to do the investigation. Bring me all of your witnesses. Now, it is totally legitimate to say, give me a list of people who saw or witness this behavior so that we can contact them as witnesses, and it’s even appropriate to say you're welcome to talk to them beforehand and ask them to be a witness on your behalf. Fine. But the problem is they put the burden on him to go and talk to these people, to ask them. And they were also living in this hostile work environment. They were also afraid to go against the director. So, as soon as this HR director knew this; as soon as she understood that, yes, he's targeting me personally but everyone is afraid of him, then that needed to be handled differently. She needed to call those people in separately and say we have rules against retaliation. You are protected under our policies as a witness. So, if you'll give your statement now, we can't fix it not only for Howell, but for everyone unless we talk to you. It's up to you, but we want to assure you that if anything happens that you believe is retaliatory because of you talking to me today, let us know immediately and we'll handle it. They needed to assure these people that they were free to talk and share what happened without being punished or retaliated against. But instead she just sat back in her office and said you go out and do this work and when he came back and said they don't want to, they're afraid, she said oh well not much we can do. We'll do an investigation. Did they actually do an investigation? It doesn't look like it. They never got back to him. They never told him what happened. He never saw anything actually happening. Nothing was ever fixed. It felt like to him it was just swept under the rug and nothing was done. That may be. The truth may be totally different. Maybe they did an investigation with as much information as they could. It's very possible. But he doesn't know that because they never communicated that. They lost that trust. So, because of this experience Howell took this role that was his dream role, this heaven, lived through the hell, went to ask for help, got no help, and he ended up quitting. He said he left his job with this with a horrible bad taste in his mouth because of the way he was treated and the way it was handled. Now misconduct happens. People are treated badly. They will have bad experiences at work. But that doesn't mean that that needs to color their entire employment experience at your company. If it had been handled correctly; if someone had helped him get to HR sooner, if HR had gone-taken a few extra minutes to show him that they cared, that they wanted to hear what happened, that they wanted to-to actually fix the issue, if there was an issue there that they wanted to investigate, if they took the time to go down to the theater themselves and maybe watch or call the actors in and assure them that they were safe to talk, that they wouldn't be retaliated against, all of these things HR could have done to mitigate, to build trust. Even at the end, if they couldn't have substantiated it and they could have said yeah, you know, yes he's being mean he's kind of a bully, but it’s not really a violation of our policy, could have got-that could have been the result. But there was no result. They didn't do anything. They didn't show they cared. So what happened destroyed the entire experience for one employee and then it got posted to the entire world on Facebook. And it was shared far and wide that that's how this company dealt with this situation of racial and sexual harassment in their workplace. What about when other actors read this story? They talk to him? Even though there are a lot of actors in this country, it is a small community. So, they see this. Do you think they are going to ever work for a Roger Castellano if they hear he's the director? How about Disney? Are they going to try out for a part in a show when there's a chance they will be treated the way that Cooper Howell was treated? Again, I only have his side of the story, but from that information, from his post, from him sharing his experience, providing essentially his statement to the entire world, we see some clear problems. Because even if that's not exactly Disney’s side, they-they may say that they did other things, the perception on his side was they did nothing. And that's the perception that was shared with the world. Trust. How you act. Taking that extra five minutes to build that relationship, to build that trust when someone comes to you for help is so important. Don't be so focused or so busy that you can't take a couple minutes to show someone that you care. It's not worth it. Take the time take the extra few minutes to focus, to listen, to be there for them. All right, that was this episode of Misconduct in the News, or Social Media. Please again, subscribe to my channel, to the podcast Marcus Williams Training Academy. Share it far and wide. I really appreciate it and I will see you next time.

Hello, everyone and welcome back to the Marcus Williams Training Academy podcast today we are doing another segment of "Misconduct in the News" and today we will be talking about the Ellen Degeneres show. I mean, how can we have a Misconduct in the News segment and not talk about what's going on there? Before we get started, one of the, if you're enjoying this podcast, if you are finding it informative or entertaining, please subscribe and share with your friends and co-workers. Okay, so, article by Buzzfeed News July 16th, 2020 is kind of when this broke open and there are a lot of, basically there were allegations that working on the Ellen show, it was a toxic work environment. Okay, so if you are in HR or you are the investigator, what does that even mean? What does toxic work environment mean? It's kind of one of those things where we know it when we are part of it. I've been a part of a toxic working environment. I've suffered from being in a toxic work environment. In fact, it got to the point where my wife wanted me to change jobs because it can impact your health, it can impact your sleep, it can impact your fulfillment at work. It really can impact if you're-if work is that bad, it can cause a lot of problems. So it is a big deal. You don't want a toxic work environment. But then how do you define it and how do you fix it? That's where it becomes a little more difficult. In my situation, a few of us-it was-the toxicity was created by our immediate supervisor: the way he treated people, the way he talked, the way his expectations-the way he managed our cases. It was bad to the point where we would drive up in the parking lot in the morning and we would try to get there early before he arrived so we could have at least a few minutes of peace before he showed up. So a few of us went to his supervisor to say, hey this is bad. This needs to be fixed, and file the complaint. And they, unfortunately they-their response was not a good one. But I understand it. The response was, show me policy violations. What has he done that's either criminal or against our policy? And then we can do something. Otherwise, you know the fact that he's being mean isn't, it's not something that we can do, that we can handle or deal with or fix. He is who he is, right? I'm not going to send him to some sort of "be nice" training. So essentially they did nothing, which then made it worse because we knew that we were going through this. Our chain of command knew about it and weren't willing to do anything about it. And it's very difficult when the person creating the toxic environment is the one who's in charge. So then who do you go to? How do you fix it? How do you complain? You just either have to deal with it or you quit; and you know quitting is not a great answer because number one you- do you have another job to follow up with? And maybe you love your job and you're good at it and you deserve to be there. You're the person the company needs, but they're driving you away because of this environment. So just defining toxic work environment is a difficult thing to do. We know it when we see it or we know it when we feel it, but how do you define it? So that's one of the problems that I've had in analyzing the articles on this case. Was there actual misconduct happening or was there just personnel that needed to be changed or trained? Or like, what is the issue? So the-some of the misconduct alleged was racism. All right, that's something that we can actually deal with. Is there evidence of racism? And that's something that-there is some subjectivity because one person can feel like a certain behavior, a comment, is racist and someone else not. So you have to look at your policy. This is where it is so important that the behaviors, the unacceptable behaviors are articulated and defined well in your policy. How do you as a company define racism? It's not because one employee says something is racist. It's how do you define it? How are you going to take action when there's an allegation of racism? So in the Buzzfeed article it said most of the former employees blamed executive producers and other senior managers for the day-to-day toxicity, so not necessarily Ellen, but one former employee said that ultimately it's Ellen's name on the show and she really needs to take more responsibility for the workplace environment. If she wants to have her own show and have her name on the show title she needs to be more involved, to see what's going on. Okay, I think that's fair. I think people would agree that the person in charge should know, but they're only going to know if it's brought to their attention. So then you have to look at, did she actually know was she part of the problem? Was-or was this happening behind her back and she had no knowledge of it? So one of the allegations was racism but, and Buzzfeed talked to a woman who made those allegations and she said that whenever she started to speak up against the discrimination or about the discrimination that was occurring, the racist discrimination, her colleagues distanced themselves from her and her boss didn't do anything; basically swept it under the rug or made excuses for it. So that's where we can start looking at violating the policy. That's where we can start looking at misconduct, something we can actually take action on because it wasn't even investigated. She's making an allegation and it wasn't even investigated. It was basically just excused and thrown away and said this is not a valid complaint. So now we have something to look at. So the-when this all came out, Warner Brothers said, okay we're going to investigate. So they started in what they called an internal review. And so this is from a USA Today article published on July 30th where they said that the internal review or investigation would be conducted by the parent company, Warner Media and they were going to be investigating racism, intimidation, and toxic work culture. Okay, I talked about that, how toxic is difficult. Racism is something that we can, from a misconduct standpoint. Obviously it's, you know, the toxicity is something that you can work on and fix, and it's part of your culture and it's something that you can, you should deal with. But specifically speaking about misconduct it might be a little more difficult. You need specific incidents. And that was what my bosses said when I brought that, when we brought that to their attention was, we need specific examples. And we gave as much as we could but they weren't like policy issues. They weren't policy violations. So Warner Brothers issued a statement regarding their investigation. So they completed their investigation and they issued a statement. They said quote, "The Ellen Degeneres show is and always has strived to be a place that brings positivity to the world. And though not all of the allegations were corroborated, we are disappointed that the primary findings of the investigation indicated some deficiencies related to the show's day-to-day management." Okay, they went on, "We have identified several staffing changes along with appropriate measures to address the issues that have been raised and are taking the first steps to implement them." So they essentially said, we investigated, some of the allegations were confirmed (there was a positive finding), others were not. But there was a problem so we're going to deal with the ones that were and we're going to try to fix the culture because we did find a culture issue. So that's great and hopefully that they will find solutions that work. So Ellen wrote a letter to her people, an apology letter, and she acknowledged her responsibility to the show that bears her name and she said, "As we've grown exponentially, I have not been able to stay on top of everything and relied on others to do their jobs as they knew I'd want them done. Clearly some didn't. That will now change and I am committed to ensuring this does not happen again." So this is kind of the "apology light" we could call it, basically saying, hey it's not my fault. They did it. I hired these people. I gave them expectations. They didn't follow them. They didn't do what I would expect them to do. It's not my fault, but okay let's fix it. And now I have to be a micromanager. That's kind of what that felt like. So she's claiming she didn't know this stuff was going on. So there were, there were a lot of tweets about this. There was even a comedian that, that went online and said you know share a story, provide, like asked for or promoted a cash reward for providing the best story about Ellen being mean. And people cited examples of when Ellen was mean to them. And that was kind of the problem that I see in the news stories is there's just a lot of: she's mean, she didn't respect me, or she didn't give me, she didn't talk to me, she didn't give me the time of day. Well, none of that it's misconduct; none of that is. That's someone being offended because a person didn't meet their expectations of giving them time. Like, we have one guest who complained that other guests got their own bathroom and she didn't. Okay, not saying that that was the right thing to do. That's not misconduct. So there's all these tweets: tweets in support of Ellen, tweets against Ellen. So this is from an article from The Insider and it is dated, well it's dated four hours ago from when I printed it, so the 5th of August, 2020. Here's the issue. Now speaking to investigators, whether you're in HR or an independent investigator, and this battle has been raged on Twitter or in social media. Tweets of allegations are not evidence. If the allegation is about a tweet, like the content of a tweet, okay then that tweet is evidence. But this is what I mean. If someone comes on Twitter and says, "Ellen was mean to me," or "I had a bad experience at the Ellen show because of [this-that]." That's a lead. That's not evidence. What that means is you need to contact that person as the investigator and say hey, I saw your tweet. I'm concerned about what you said. It fits into our investigation. Can we-can we talk? I'd like to take a statement from you about what happened. And because of the nature of social media and the ease of posting whatever you want, what I found is a lot of times there is no substance behind the tweet. They don't want to give a statement because there's nothing actually there when the, when you finally kind of say okay you're making this allegation, now let's talk about it. Suddenly the allegation goes away. So you can't just take this list in this article, there's like this whole list of tweets and they're just publishing facts, things that people said, and that's great. But if you're the investigator, that's different. You need to dive into it because you're trying to determine if the information asserted in these tweets is corroborated or not, if it's true or not. That's what you're doing. You're not just taking it at face value. So that's kind of just a pro tip if you are involved in an investigation like this and there's-there's been like a social media battle, or things have been hashed out on social media. So there were a lot of tweets and a lot of people who said Ellen is controlling. She-she's mean. She doesn't talk to people. She doesn't give people the time of day. Um, where she's gone on other shows and then the people were told you don't talk to her, you don't approach her. You know, she's "Ellen." Okay, that's not good behavior. It's not something that you-that's not a reputation you would want, but it's not misconduct. And that's the problem here in the investigation and that's why the-their response when they came out they said basically some stuff wasn't corroborated, some stuff was. Because being a meanie pants just makes you a meanie pants. It doesn't mean that you're engaged in misconduct. And maybe, if you know, if this is happening in your company and you have a manager who is being mean, who maybe you want to get rid of them, or reassign, or provide extra training because that's not conducive to productivity, to a good work environment. And you want a good culture and work environment. But you can't equate that with misconduct necessarily. Ellen is known for the mantra, "be kind," and that's kind of one of the main complaints is that she gets on the air, she tells the public, she shows this image of being kind to everyone, and just simply be kind, yet behind the scenes (and this is in the Buzzfeed article) they definitely don't practice what they preach with the "be kind" mantra. They were more concerned about Ellen's brand instead of helping me out. This is coming from an employee. So it's difficult to make a decision, uh about whether or not there was misconduct just from looking at these articles. But it was clear, it is clear that a lot of employees were unhappy and that's a problem in and of itself. That's a culture issue that you need to fix, because if employees are unhappy, we know they are less productive. They do less. They don't do as good of work and there is a lot of turnover. So this is kind of an interesting one. We don't have, kind of, clear allegations of, you know, specific behaviors. There's a few, but not a whole lot; and kind of the attitude that they had at the show was (this from Buzzfeed) "This is Ellen. This is as good as it gets. You'll never find anything better than this." So in other words, we can do whatever we want and you're lucky to be here. And that's not a good attitude to have if you want to attract the best talent. One of the big issues and red flags that did come up though and that hopefully they fixed, this is one employee who said, "I never felt like it was safe to go to my manager when I had issues because this was the same person who would wait for me to go to the bathroom and then message me asking me where I was and why I wasn't at my desk." So it's possible that there was more stuff going on and they didn't know about it because no one felt like they could safely make an allegation. No one felt like their allegations were going to be taken seriously. We've got this example; we have the example of the allegations of racism that both kind of show that if you're not taken seriously when you come to them with a complaint, they're going to stop coming to you with complaints. All right, so that is an issue. That is something that you should take away. We always complete this segment with takeaways and that's a takeaway that you should have with this segment is that you need to create an environment where people feel safe coming to you with complaints. They need to know that you have this policy, that you-your values matter to you enough that you will do something about it. Ellen talks about being kind and having these values of being inclusive and friendly and helpful and yet people didn't feel like that was true because that's not their experience. That's not what they saw. And really the only thing, you know, they talked about how Ellen should take more responsibility and and one of the only examples of her knowing that this was happening and not doing anything about it (from The Insider article) Glavin was one of the executives and one of the executives they said was the problem. It said "Glavin screamed at one member of staff in front of everybody else. 'He just went off on them. His whole face turned red...We were stunned. I was waiting for Ellen to say something. 'Whoa, Ed, don't talk like that'...'Do you know what she did? She giggled. She crossed her legs up on the chair and she said, 'Well, I guess every production needs their dog.' And from then we knew Ed was going to be the barking dog-her dog.'" So when you have the head of the organization, Ellen from the Ellen Show, so in your organization it could be your president or CEO, who or whoever it is. They saw this senior executive behave badly and did nothing to stop it or correct it and in fact laughed about it; that communicated to the rest of the team that that was acceptable behavior and that she wasn't going to stop it. The way that you handle allegations, the way that you handle misconduct or misbehavior communicates to your organization, your community, from the top all the way down, your actual values: how you are going to treat people, how you're going to handle situations, and if you're going to take allegations seriously. That one incident probably shut a lot of people down from coming with allegations or problems. So that's the takeaway. How you handle allegations even if they're small now matters because it will influence whether people come to you for help in the future. And if they don't come to you, you don't know about it. If you don't know about it, you can't fix it. You can't do anything about it. So this is kind of an interesting case. We'll see if things get better. They promise, you know they're promising they will. Ellen has committed to making things better. Hopefully they do. I only wish for success for the companies I talk about, but this is kind of a difficult case because there's kind of a lot of gray area on whether it's misconduct or not, and what to do about it. But it looks like even if they're things that weren't misconduct, there were things that could change and be changed as far as their culture and how they treat people. So thanks for listening or watching, whatever medium you're on. Remember to subscribe and I will see you next time on the Marcus Williams Training Academy podcast.