Are You a Leader Confronting Dysfunction Or a Victim Ignoring It?

For four years before slaying six people and wounding 13 including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Jared Loughner was an unremarkable college student at the Community College in Tuscon, AZ. In 2010 his behavior changed. He stunned a teacher by talking about blowing up babies. After his first event, campus police decided not to intervene but instead suggested to the teacher let’s “….keep an eye on him."


Unfortunately his behavior grew increasingly erratic, menacing, and even delusional. This was documented in fifty-one pages of police reports that were released only days after the shootings of January 9, 2011.

Although Loughner was warned that the behavior had to stop or disciplinary action would begin, he chose to continue attending class while remaining silent. Should have all been empowered to speak up and remove before he harmed someone or should we wait for the management or the Government to do it. I say yes. Let’s be leaders and speak up when we see obvious dysfunction and disrespect. I believe we should be empowered. I believe we shouldn’t wait for management or Government.

I acknowledge that it is debatable whether the teachers, police, the other students, and even his parents could have done more to prevent this atrocious act of a mad man. In my experience we often tend to think “someone else will do it” and that person often doesn’t act.

Too often we rely on our Government to save us and protect or in an organization we wait and rely on our managers in our organizations to solve it or correct it. The teachable moment is “we teach what we allow” and when we have an opportunity to speak up and we don’t then we either consciously or unconsciously allow the dysfunction to continue. We act as a victim and not as a leader.

In summary, if we don’t address disrespect and dysfunction immediately in our organizations we can almost always predict it will eventually escalate into something even more egregious that we cannot ignore. When something really horrific happens we are forced to act. Instead, if we had just taken action earlier we might have averted the horror.

Ten years ago I created a process to help employees in organizations to respectfully confront disrespectful behaviors. It is called The White Flag® Process. The White Flag® Process enables everyone to provide feedback about inappropriate behaviors. Employees can give feedback to each other and even to management using The White Flag® process.

The White Flag® is a metaphor for “Truce! Don’t attack me, I have valuable information and I am just here to help.” The American Red Cross uses a similar symbol. When the ARC representative goes into a dangerous area of conflict, they are always displaying their “red cross on a white background”. This prevents them from being attacked and allows them to help the wounded.

The White Flag® enables feedback in a safe and caring environment for the purpose of learning. Although it requires courage to speak up in the face of dysfunction we need more of this to avoid further dysfunction and even horrific events.

Let’s all be leaders of appropriate behaviors. Let’s not wait for either the Government or management to take action. Let’s take action ourselves and prevent the spread of disrespect or dysfunction. It is really up to us anyway. We are the ones who end up suffering.