TL,DR: Social Pressure is one of the most effective tools we have in the SCA to drive changes in behavior from the local to the organizational levels.
So I posted the other day about how the saying “a few bad apples” means that when we see bad or toxic behavior, we need to stand up and do something about it.
So what does that mean, exactly?
Anyone who has gone through corporate bias training knows that there’s basically three ways to oppose bad behavior.
Intervention, Support, and Reporting. I’m going to add a fourth: Social Pressure.
Intervention can take different forms. Maybe it’s you telling someone in front of other people that a racial joke isn’t funny, or it’s you stepping in and getting the victim of an attack out of the situation. Maybe it’s the act of visibly recording the interaction.
Support can be providing emotional support after a bad interaction. It can be offering to review or edit a written complaint. It can be offering to go with someone to submit a complaint.
Reporting is pretty obvious: if you see bad behavior, report it to the proper people.
But the SCA isn’t an exact analogue for corporate life; there’s some parallels, but there’s some aspects that don’t quite match up:
1) We’re almost all volunteers, so it’s difficult to implement discipline, since there’s no financial penalty to walking away.
2) Policies for not-for-profit volunteer organizations are often behind the times and they’re implemented with varying levels of effectiveness because
3) Training for any of this is also implemented with varying levels of effectiveness.
All of which brings me to… #4. Social Pressure.
In many ways, Social Pressure is -all- we have to bring to bear in the SCA when we see bad behavior. Certainly, it is the one tactic that -anyone- in the SCA can use, and, in my opinion, it is the most important one for Peers to use.
Social Pressure can be any one of the methods above, but there’s additional ways that Peers, especially, can bring it to bear:
1) Bringing up bad behavior in Council – whether that’s in person meetings or on an email list, FB page, etc.
2) Bringing up bad behavior in household meetings just like in Council.
3) Acting as exemplars. Being those people that others want to emulate. That doesn’t mean never making mistakes, or never having to apologize — it means OPENLY DEMONSTRATING a desire to learn better and do better. Be an example of what to do. Be an example of how to do better. And being an exemplar means doing the other things on this list, like calling out bad behavior.
Yes, it’s important to reform the Board of Directors. Yes, it’s important to make changes at the organizational level. It is also important to make changes at the local level, -especially- Peers. Our oaths, rendered down to the most basic elements, say that we promise to protect the Society and the people in it even when the people hurting it are members of our orders.
