No, Luna - you’re a drippy LOVEY Liberal. The lovey part is important.

My question to you is this: If I decide not to say something I truly believe in a public forum, does that mean I don’t believe it? Or, vice versa - if I say something in a public forum that I don’t believe, just to make a point or incite discussion, does that change who I am?

Every person reading what I write is going to have their own impressions. Is it in my best interests to self-censor so that people don’t misinterpret? You betcha. After all, there is no way I can control what other people think - I can only control what I choose to share.

Let me put it another way - I am very careful not to post overly political comments on Twitter, my blog, or Facebook, because I cannot guarantee that people who believe differently from me will not take them personally. I have no control over their reactions, but I do have control over whether or not I post. Does the polarity in this context help my point?

-Katie

Just realizing I should make my comments HERE, not in Twitter. LOL. Not enough space there.

I started out by saying:

My vote still lies with transparency. Layoffs suck. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be hard for companies/HR people to do it.

Any hiring company that would fault me for complaining in my blog about a layoff.. Not sure I’d want to work for them.

It seems such a company is looking for people who pretend to not be human. I am not a robot, nor a pretender.

I continue my rant:

I realize hiring managers are often just people too, and have their personal biases. I’ve hired people, know lots of people who hire people, and we all use different criteria, sometimes opposing criteria.

As an employment candidate, I have two choices: I can either be myself and get hired by someone who likes me as I am. Or I can pretend to be all kinds of things I’m not, and get stuck in a job where I have to keep on pretending.

I’ve done the latter, and it’s miserable. It’s hard, but I’m trying to move towards the former. More transparency means more integrity.

Call me a drippy liberal, but the optimist in me reasons that if enough people believe in this, then it becomes culture. And when it is culture, those who don’t believe in it will be influenced by it.

I’m learning that interviewing for a job is more about finding a “good fit” for both the employer and the candidate. If they need robots who don’t get upset watching their friends get laid off, then they can find those layoffs.

I’m at work for 8 hours a day. It drains away too much of my life spending those 8 hours tense because I’m trying to fake being someone else.

Okay, Chris - you rock the house. You know that, right? The fact that you headed over to my little blog to respond to me (and on my birthday!) makes me feel all woozy inside.

I actually didn’t think you came across as a monster at all, and I hope that I didn’t insinuate that in the post. You reported what you saw. Some of the comments were a little more interesting, of course, but they didn’t come from you. My only suggestion to others is that this might come across as airing dirty laundry, which future employers might question.

I feel bad for Jive - they did what they felt was right, but didn’t plan well. I hope that they recover, both from a financial standpoint and an image standpoint.

Thanks for the visit, Chris. I wish you the best of luck in your new job!

-Katie

Wow. I had no idea this was going to cause so much commotion. A whole post about me!? I feel you going back and fourth on whether or not I am a monster for what I wrote. But like I said, I didn’t mean to damage Jive’s image. Transparency is something I have always practiced; with my friends, with my family, professionally and now the internet. I totally see how people have a hard time with that. But if we’re not honest and say what we mean and feel then things build up. You did the same thing sharing your views on me. And I loved it. No harm done.

PS - That was my real mom. She is pretty awesome. Hope you have a great birthday!!

Technically I’m libertarian, which only makes me half liberal, so I’m really only drippy and lovey half the time.

Yes, you can believe things and not say them. And I do have some discernment and there are times I avoid saying a lot of things in certain places.

However, there is a lot to be said for saying what you believe. Let’s pull this back to workplace opinions. If there’s a project, I can either be a Yes-Man, and say what I think my boss wants to hear, or I can give my honest opinions and constructive criticisms in the hopes of improving the end product. Companies who allow openness in this regard end up with better products and are more likely to succeed in the marketplace.

If your opinion then happens to be about some other department or corporate policies, maybe about how HR handles the training process, or how the support department handles calls, the company can benefit just as much to openness.

So in that context, I don’t think self-censorship helps anyone. Though certainly the methods of communication are important (note I said Constructive criticism).

Now let’s look at talking politics in the blogosphere. Most of the people active on the internet have a job or are in a relationship with someone who has a job. If we culturally discourage everyone with a job from posting their political opinions, content on the internet suddenly becomes quite apolitical. Public discourse becomes limited to the media, people who work in politics, and people without jobs. We return to 1995.

At this point, the few people with jobs who remain openly political online seem more extreme. Their politics become easy to marginalize, and those guys won’t be able to work.

This becomes a sort of cultural free-speech suppression that bothers me a lot. Historically, speech has been suppressed this way (and still is in a lot of ways — there are a lot of culturally taboo subjects), and I don’t like what the world when it’s like that. Public discourse is too important to maintain political, cultural, and societal health. (I haven’t even broached the subject of whistle blowing, which is also extremely important.)

Yes, I have more control over what I say than I do about what other people think. But at what point should my fear of what you think start to control what I say and do? Additionally, people tend to believe not necessarily what they say, but what they do. (Cognitive Dissonance theory, huge subject.) At what point does my fear of what you think eventually control what I believe? At what point does that lead us back to a homogeneous society where “normal” was the strongest cultural value?

I haven’t even touched the topic of lifestyle choices, where repression of that becomes a repression of self. Why should it be ok for a straight man to talk about his wife or girlfriend in casual office comments (”I went out on a date last night, it went well,” or “My wife made these cookies”) but NOT for a gay man to be as free (”My boyfriend made these cookies.”) In this case, if the gay man self-censors for fear of offending, the gay man actually has less freedom of speech in an office context than a straight man. Now extend that to the internet, and tell me he shouldn’t be free on his Facebook, Twitter, or blog to talk about things that are important in his daily life, that you’re allowed to safely express, but he isn’t for fear of offending someone and not getting a job someday.

I’d personally rather work towards a more open society and workplace culture, so if you’re gay or straight, liberal or conservative (or libertarian or socialist), if you have mild or strong complaints about your job, if you have valuable constructive input about your project or someone else’s department, all of these things are acceptable.

Historically, society becomes MORE accepting of diverse opinions and lifestyles the more people talk openly about it. I don’t see why this will be any different in a Web 2.0 context.

To me, diversity isn’t about making everyone feel warm and fuzzy about themselves — it’s about being open minded enough that you don’t miss value in a person or an opinion, just because it’s different from your own.

I did say “You Betcha.” You have permission to kill me if you ever hear me say “Uff-da.” That would mean my Minnesota conversion was complete, and I wouldn’t want to live like that.

Good points, Cassie. As I said, I think that there are some real lessons here for companies that are in the unfortunate circumstance of having to let people go - there are so many mistakes made, and people are not dealt with compassionately and kindly in far too many circumstances.

But, at the end of the day, people being laid off are professionals, and it’s in their best interests to act professionally, even if that means taming their public comments a bit.

did you just say,”You betcha?” you’ve rendered me speechless.

I have to agree with team transparency. I think it is natural for people to get upset when there are lay-offs, not necessarily because the fact that they lost a job, but the impression and attitudes associated with a RIF. In my experience most companies have handled lay-offs in ways that would warrant improvement. Even though lay-offs are very much a business decision, it is virtually impossible for the people being affected to see it that way. The least a company can do during a lay-off is be as up-front and honest as possible, and let's get honest, most people know that there is something going wrong long before it's announced. So I guess my take away is that I don't hold it against Chris for speaking his mind, everyone copes with difficult situations in different ways.

An employee, whether terminated for cause, force reduction or cultural misalignment, needs to leave with their dignity intact and remain an advocate for the organization they are departing. After reading Chris’ blog about leaving Jive, I can only imagine the thoughts going through various minds at Jive and his new employer. The post was certainly an outlet for the pain he felt at the poor handling of the RIF, but ultimately ill-advised.

Terminations are tricky, and there are security concerns: safety of co-workers, property theft, vandalism, protecting IP and customer accounts, etc. There are also cultural concerns, as those that remain look at how the termination was handled and make a judgement about the organization and the value it places on employees. And ugly firings and poisoned organizational culture make attracting good talent in good times that much harder. Let’s just put it this way, I will never go to work for some organizations based on what I know about their culture, regardless of the compensation I have been offered.

Many people have their identity closely tied to their work. When someone asks, “Tell me about yourself,” do you begin with your job title and company? Many do, especially in some cultures. Organizations should consider that some people have made personal sacrifices to advance the company agenda and accomplish the mission, and a termination invalidates those efforts and even who someone is as a person. How do you tell a parent that missed numerous kids’ baseball games to complete a work project that the lost time with family was all for naught? This is why the way in which a departure is handled and the validation of that individual is critical. The pain associated with a termination cannot always be avoided, but it can certainly be mitigated and ultimately transformed.

In some industries there is a finite pool of talent, and hiring someone is like taking out a talent lease. How an organization treats and eventually returns that individual to the market may have a direct bearing on the organization’s ability to lease in the future. There is a word-of-mouth credit market for organizations seeking to lease talent, and an organization’s talent credit score can be a primary factor in an individual’s decision to join.

I think it boils down to something fairly simple. Does a company want to present it’s brand Online or does it want a social community to do it for them?

Anyone remember the Jarvis/Dell fun back in 2005(6?)
Jarvis made remarks on BuzzMachine.com about a “lemon” he purchased from Dell and as a result created years of criticism on what was an otherwise nearly spotless Dell record. It snowballed into something that demanded Dell’s attention after a dozen or so posts by Jarvis to his readers.

What followed was the birth of several initiatives by Dell soon after that gave a ‘real voice’ and quick and easy way for them to address reputation management online. I won’t drive through the entire case study but what’s relevant is that if a company were prepared for communities that are already at large - reputation management would be much easier.
Needless to say… Dell is truly engaged today as a result - they learned their lesson the hard way.

Honest and transparent posts, like that of Chris, become more about dialogue than finger pointing when responded to in kind and companies are better prepared.

Kudos to Chris for his message and delivery - I’m hoping more take note of the transactions that took place and how something like this can be better handled or prepared for from a business and reputation standpoint.

(btw, great blog Katie - long time lurker.)

RecruiterGuy
aka: Chris
http://www.RecruiterGuy.net

Not sure what WordPress is serving up for you, but on a pretty serious topic, I admit: I LOLed. The WordPress auto-generator points me to a possible related post, “He Don't Need No Water Let The Motherfuhker Burn!” How many ways can be tear down convention in social media today?

I will be blogging on my reaction to your post sometime tonight.

[...] transparency in bad times bounced through our company like a hot potato. Our recruiter eventually posted this piece essentially alleging that sour grapes employees should use caution when airing their laundry for [...]