As you may have noticed, people with power are typically reluctant to give it up, and often have the means to defend their prerogatives. This is a serious impediment, since there’s no way to build a human-centric organization without flattening the pyramid.

The stories we tell ourselves from a few scant pieces of evidence are often flat-out wrong, especially when we’re in the Pit. Nine times out of ten, the other person is not out to get you. Your coworkers don’t think you’re an idiot. And, yes, you deserve this job.

When a negative story takes hold of you, step back and question whether your interpretation is correct. Are there alternative views you’re not considering? What can you do to seek out the truth?

This is the nub of F&R. If your people choose to abuse the freedom you give them, you need to fire them and fire them loudly, so others understand the ramifications. Without this, freedom doesn’t work.

You do not have the right to traumatize abusive people, to attack them personally or publicly, or to sabotage anyone else’s health. The behaviors of abuse are also survival-based, learned behaviors rooted in some pain. If you can look through the lens of compassion, you will find hurt and trauma there. If you are the abused party, healing that hurt is not your responsibility and exacerbating that pain is not your justified

right.

You do have the right to walk away, to literally and virtually gather yourself up and remove yourself from the dynamic. Take space in order to remember and fortify yourself. You have the right to create boundaries that generate more possibilities for you. Those boundaries may be short term or permanent.

Sometimes this was because the takedown wouldn’t have had the impact I wanted; destroying a person doesn’t destroy all of the systems that allow harmful people to do harm. These takedowns make it seem as if massive problems are determined at an individual level, as if these individuals set a course as children to become abusers, misogynists, racists, liars.