Michelle: Here’s a thought, Mark: that awkward silence in a meeting after someone says something… questionable? That’s not just awkwardness. It’s the sound of an entire system either breaking or reinforcing itself. And most of the time, it’s reinforcing. Mark: Whoa. That hits a little too close to home. I think everyone has felt that silence. It’s like time freezes, and you can physically feel a hundred unspoken thoughts hanging in the air. You’re saying that’s… a structural event? Michelle: That's exactly what our author today argues. We’re diving into Just Work: How to Root Out Bias, Prejudice, and Bullying to Build a Fairer World by Kim Scott. And if that name sounds familiar, it’s because she’s the same person who wrote the massive bestseller Radical Candor. Mark: Right, the "challenge directly, care personally" framework. It was everywhere. But I remember hearing some pushback on that, too. Some people felt it was a framework that worked great if you were, say, a white male manager, but could get you labeled 'abrasive' or worse if you were anyone else. Michelle: You’ve nailed the exact reason Just Work exists. Scott got that feedback directly. She realized that for Radical Candor to truly work, the workplace had to be just and fair first. You can't have candor in an environment riddled with injustice. And her background is fascinating—she’s not just a theorist. She’s coached CEOs at Dropbox and Twitter, was on the faculty at Apple University, and even started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow. Mark: A diamond-cutting factory in Moscow? Okay, that’s a resume. So she’s seen power and dysfunction from a lot of different angles. What’s her personal stake in this? Is this just a leadership guide, or is there more to it? Michelle: Oh, there is so much more. It starts with her own story, which is so raw and shocking it basically reframes the entire problem. She had to confront the injustice in her own life before she could write about it.

Mark: I’m intrigued. Where does she start? What happened to her? Michelle: She takes us back to 1991. She's 23, brilliant, working at a private equity firm in Moscow. Her CEO, a man named Robert, loves to tell this one "funny" story at strategy meetings. He talks about a trip to the Bolshoi Ballet with some Soviet partners. Mark: I have a bad feeling about this. Michelle: You should. He recounts how one of the Soviet partners, Vladimir, offered to procure a ballerina for him for the night. And Robert tells this story as a punchline, emphasizing how he supposedly refused. The young men in the room, her colleagues, all laugh and seem impressed. Mark: Oh, that is vile. It’s basically a casual joke about human trafficking. What did she do? Michelle: Nothing. She felt sick to her stomach, disgusted, but she stayed silent. And for years, she told herself it was just a "joke," that she was overreacting. She was in denial, partly because, as she admits, she came from a place of privilege and hadn't been trained to see these things as the violations they were. Mark: That silence you mentioned at the beginning. She was living inside of it. That’s powerful. But that can’t be the only thing that happened. Michelle: Not even close. Shortly after that, she discovered she was being paid a fraction of the market rate. A friend in a similar job was making four times her salary. When she brought this up with her direct boss, Thomas, he just sneered and suggested her friend must be sleeping with her boss. Mark: Wow. Just… wow. The sexism is just dripping from that comment. So she’s underpaid and her concerns are dismissed with a misogynistic trope. What about the CEO, Robert, the storyteller? Michelle: She went to him directly. At first, he was all charm and smiles. But the second she brought up her salary, his demeanor flipped. He became hostile. He told her she was being ungrateful. He said, "My daughter is a year older than you, and I don't pay her that much!" He completely gaslit her, making her feel confused, greedy, and crazy for even asking. She left his office feeling totally demoralized, questioning her own perception of reality. Mark: That is classic gaslighting. Using his daughter as a benchmark is so manipulative it’s almost cartoonish, yet I can see how disorienting that would be in the moment. He’s not just saying no; he’s trying to invalidate her entire sense of worth. Michelle: Exactly. And it gets worse. She had a brief, consensual relationship with her boss, Thomas. When the CEO, Robert, found out, he punished her. He forced her to move out of the company housing in Moscow, claiming it looked bad. Thomas, her boss, faced zero consequences. She was left to find an illegal sublet, feeling completely isolated and targeted. Mark: Of course. The woman always pays the price. This is a masterclass in workplace injustice. It’s not one thing; it’s a whole ecosystem of toxicity. Michelle: And that’s the core of her argument. After leaving that job, feeling broken, she spent years trying to make sense of it. She realized we lump all this bad behavior under one vague umbrella, but to fix it, we need to diagnose it properly. She breaks it down into three distinct root causes, and the definitions are brilliantly simple. Mark: Okay, I need to hear this. How do you untangle that mess? Michelle: First, there's Bias. She defines this as "not meaning it." It's the unconscious mental shortcuts, the stereotypes that pop into our heads. Like the person who unconsciously assumes a female engineer is the note-taker in a meeting. It’s often unintentional, but still harmful. Mark: "Not meaning it." That’s a great, simple way to put it. It captures the unconscious nature of it. What’s next? Michelle: Next is Prejudice. This, she says, is "meaning it." This is when you take a bias, a stereotype, and you consciously believe it. You rationalize it. It’s the person who doesn't just unconsciously overlook the female engineer, but who consciously believes women aren't as good at engineering. It's a belief system. Mark: Okay, so bias is a mental glitch, but prejudice is a conscious belief. That distinction is crucial. And the third? Michelle: The third is Bullying. And her definition is perfect: "being mean." It’s the intentional use of power to harm or humiliate someone. The CEO, Robert, wasn't just biased or prejudiced when he gaslit her about her salary; he was bullying her. He was using his power to intentionally cause her harm. Mark: Not meaning it, meaning it, and being mean. Bias, Prejudice, Bullying. That clarifies so much. It gives you a language to identify what you’re actually facing. It’s not just a generic "toxic workplace"; you can point to the specific problem. Michelle: And that’s the first step. You can’t fix problems you refuse to notice, or can’t name. Her personal story is the painful but necessary entry point to this framework. It shows that even the smartest, most capable people can be trapped and confused by these dynamics until they have the tools to see them clearly.

Mark: Okay, so we can diagnose the problem in individuals. Bias, prejudice, bullying. But that CEO, Robert, sounds like more than just a biased guy. He sounds like a symptom of a completely broken system. It feels like the whole company culture enabled his behavior. Michelle: That’s the perfect pivot, because that’s exactly where Scott goes next. The problem isn't just "bad apples." The problem is the barrel itself. The issue is unchecked power. She quotes the famous line from Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Mark: A classic for a reason. But how does that play out in a modern office? Michelle: She points to research from psychologists like Dacher Keltner, who wrote a book called The Power Paradox. The research shows that as people gain power, they tend to lose the very skills that got them there, like empathy and collaboration. They start to depersonalize the people below them. A survey she cites found that rude and uncivil behavior in the workplace is three times more likely to come from someone in a position of power. Mark: That makes a terrifying amount of sense. Power insulates you from consequences, so you stop moderating your behavior. You start seeing people as instruments or obstacles, not as human beings. Michelle: Precisely. And this isn't just a moral failing; Scott is adamant that it's a business catastrophe. She brings in a huge McKinsey study that found companies in the bottom quartile for gender and ethnic diversity were 29% less likely to have above-average profitability. Injustice is inefficient. Homogeneous teams, often created by biased and unchecked leaders, simply don't perform as well. Mark: There’s the business case. So fairness isn't some "soft" HR initiative; it's a direct line to performance and profitability. But this all sounds good in theory. A lot of DEI initiatives feel like corporate fluff. Does Scott offer actual, systemic solutions, not just 'be a better person' advice? Michelle: Yes, and this is where the book becomes a true manual for leaders. She argues that enlightened leaders must actively build checks and balances on their own power. It’s not about hoping managers will be nice. It’s about designing systems that prevent them from being unjust. Mark: Okay, like what? What does a "check on power" actually look like in an office? Michelle: She talks about creating "bias interrupters." For example, in the hiring process. Instead of just looking at a resume and letting your unconscious bias run wild, you implement blind resume screening, where names and identifying details are removed. You use structured interviews where every candidate gets the same questions, so you’re comparing apples to apples, not just vibing with the person who reminds you of yourself. Mark: So you’re re-engineering the process to filter out the human tendency for bias. You’re changing the system, not just trying to change someone’s mind. Michelle: Exactly. Another key is quantifying everything. Don't just "feel" like promotions are fair. Track the data. Who gets promoted? Who gets the highest bonuses? Who gets assigned to the most visible projects? When you see a disparity—for instance, that men are consistently rated higher on "potential" while women are rated on "performance"—you have concrete evidence of a systemic bias that needs to be addressed. Mark: That feels so much more concrete. It moves the conversation from "I feel like there's a problem" to "Here is the data that shows the problem." But what about the really nasty stuff, the bullying and harassment? Michelle: For that, she says, you need a clear, simple Code of Conduct and real, unavoidable consequences. Not a 50-page legal document nobody reads, but a simple set of principles for how people treat each other. And when someone violates it, especially a bully, the consequences must be swift and visible. Bullies, she argues, aren't swayed by appeals to empathy. They are swayed by consequences. Mark: That brings up the criticism we talked about earlier. It's one thing for a leader to implement this. But what about the person on the receiving end? Is it really safe for a junior employee, especially from a marginalized background, to call out a powerful bully? The book has been critiqued for potentially underestimating that risk. Michelle: It's a valid and crucial point. Scott does address this by providing different strategies for different roles: the person harmed, the upstander (or observer), the person who caused harm, and the leader. She emphasizes that the burden shouldn't be solely on the victim. The goal of building these systems is precisely to make it safer for people to speak up, because there's a clear, fair process to handle it. But she acknowledges that in a broken system, speaking up is incredibly risky. That’s why the ultimate responsibility falls on leaders to fix the system itself, so that individual courage isn't the only line of defense.

Michelle: So when you put it all together, you see this powerful arc. It starts with the intensely personal act of noticing injustice, even when it's happening to you and your mind is telling you to ignore it. But it can't end there. The real work is moving from that personal awareness to building systems that check power and make fairness the default, not the exception. Mark: It’s a shift from focusing on individual intentions—"I didn't mean it!"—to focusing on collective results. The system is either producing fair outcomes or it isn't. And if it isn't, it needs to be redesigned. The CEO's intentions in the Bolshoi Ballet story don't matter. The result was a toxic, demeaning environment. Michelle: Exactly. As Scott says, "Results matter more than intentions." A just workplace isn't a place where everyone has perfect, unbiased thoughts. It's a place where the systems—hiring, promotion, feedback—are designed to produce fair results anyway. Mark: So what's the one thing someone listening can do tomorrow? If they're not a CEO who can redesign the whole company, what's a practical first step? Michelle: Scott offers a lot of simple communication tools. One of the most basic is the "I" statement for when you observe bias. Instead of pointing a finger and saying, "You're being sexist," which triggers defensiveness, you can say something like, "I don't think you meant that the way it sounded." It’s a gentle way to interrupt bias, to fill that awkward silence with a small act of correction rather than complicity. It’s a start. Mark: A small hinge that can swing a big door. It doesn't solve everything, but it stops the reinforcement of the bad behavior in that moment. That feels doable. Michelle: It is. And it leads me to a final question for our listeners to reflect on. What's one 'awkward silence' you've witnessed recently, at work or elsewhere? And thinking about this framework, what could have been done to fill that silence with a little bit of justice instead? Mark: That’s a powerful question to sit with. It’s about recognizing our own agency in those small, critical moments. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.