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I sat in near shock yesterday morning as Savannah Guthrie announced to the world that Matt Lauer, a fixture on NBC's TODAY show for 20 years, was fired from NBC as a result of an allegation of sexual misconduct. Reporting from other sources appeared to confirm NBC's assertion that the incident was not isolated. This news followed last week's revelations that CBS' Charlie Rose was relieved of his responsibilities as news anchor for sex-related indiscretions.

The same day, news broke that Garrison Keillor, best known as the creator/host of Minnesota Public Radio's "A Prairie Home Companion" was fired from his employer, also for sexual misconduct.

News about Lauer and Keillor completely stunning. These are two men who project themselves as intelligent and measured. I really liked Lauer's delivery and the way he would interact with his co-hosts on TODAY; He gave me the sense that he was witty, rational and risk-averse, and I admired him for that. In the years I listened to "A Prairie Home Companion," I was attracted to Keillor's wit and dry sense of humor even back in the mid-1980's.

Granted, I don't pay much attention to tabloid reporting ("the hot sheets," as they were called in the movie Men in Black). I seem to very vaguely recall Lauer was on the cover of one of those rags some months ago... Vanity Fair reporting suggests The National Enquirer had harrasssed Lauer for years:

Lauer had been dogged by stories of infidelity for years, so much so that he had become a regular target of the tabloid press. That focus narrowed his world, according to a former colleague. "His pattern was that of a beleaguered person who was constantly being pursued by The National Enquirer," the former colleague told me. "He was their target No. 1." The Enquirer regularly ran stories on Lauer’s rumored affairs. "The Enquirer was suspected to have a crew on him, and he couldn’t do anything," the former colleague told me. "He’d led this lonely life after his wife moved his family to the Hamptons. He was always being followed."

I posted a reaction to the Lauer announcement on Facebook and received several responses. Perhaps the most notable of these was from a friend from high school who wrote, "They act for a living. Of course they know how to come across as sincere on the screen."

I took this more as a warning about perception. Case in point: Bill Cosby, whose Emmy®-nominated show Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids ran for 13 years, and whose comedy albums I nearly memorized when I was a kid, was accused of sexual assault by 60 women. The accusations started becoming public in 2014.  ¹

The Annual Sexual Harrassment Beat-Down

I've been in careers that have required a lot of training. Sadly, sexual harassment training has been part of that training my entire adult life. And I say "sadly," because it's simply completely asenine that companies and agencies in our society are compelled to train their staff on how to behave like people because, invariably it seems, some jackass has to ruin things for everybody. In 1991, a small group of Navy pilots at an annual convention brought the operations of the entire US Navy to a standstill. ²

And, as a man, I'm mortified by having to undergo this training annually and sign an acknowledgment that I've understood the it and the company policies (which often include terms like "zero-tolerance" or even more threatening language.) It's a punishment, really, understandably designed to prevent repetition of some incorrigible act of an irresponsible jackass somewhere along the line.

And, in the wake of this training, one byproduct is always the same: the female team members become alienated in a way, because no man dare make eye contact with a female team member anymore after the virtual beating they just received from HR and Legal (I'm talking about the training). ³ Another byproduct: the message HR and Legal intended to send was accompanied by other messages with some consequences. I've had to endure some pretty heavy- handed sexual harassment training in some private sector companies, and it didn't leave me thinking favorably about people in that department.

I'd bet there is data out in the world that measures the impact of sexual harassment training on (appropriate) cross-gender relationships. And I'd bet it shows a significant dip in the health of those relationships following every instance of training administration. I even wonder if some men, immediately after training, actually get angry and wilfully deny opportunities to their female counterparts or reports, because they blame them for having to go through these wasteful exercises?

Of course, companies don't really have a choice. They have to establish policies for legal reasons; they become the standards by which HR can measure an employee's performance. But I feel pretty comfortable in saying companies can and should find ways of communicating their policies without alienating their workforce. The bad thing is, that negative impact I talked about earlier is likely considered a completely justifiable consequence — a price of being in business. They're not incorrect.

I'd opine that companies aren't really motivated to find those better ways of communicating their policies, because the company has no profit-based incentive to do so. It's not like we're going to see an interview with some former CEO saying, "Welp, all our men quit because they were offended by the sexual harassment training we made them take." With no incentive to change to a less Draconian approach, men will continue to feel threatened, women will continue to feel shunned, morale will dip, and relationships will suffer, year after year, as per policy.

The Message is Lost

Having said all of this, it's clear some aren't getting the message. ⁴  But then, perhaps the examples we're seeing on TV aren't getting the training. Either way, as long as there are men behaving badly in the workplace, the rest of us who can be adults and keep our hands and our thoughts to ourselves will continue to suffer.

Fallout

Lauer, Rose, Keillor and others are part of the fasionable trend of public exposure (no pun intended) of the bad actors. Honestly, I'm not sure where all of this is really headed. Clearly for the victims, the endgame is a measure of justice. Those getting outed on the evening news are seeing their careers flash before their eyes like the bulb on the camera that once adored them.

But what about the impact on the rest of us, who have sense? Will we be subjected to even more training? More stand-downs? In my opinion, the only thing these would do is make the good actors more resentful of the distractions.

I don't want to have keep paying the price for the idiots who can't keep themselves in check. Can't I just subscribe to something similar to a TSA Pre-Check program for sexual harrassment so I can just initial the policy acknowledgment and get on with my work life? Have some sort of background check that looks at the number of complaints over my entire work history and clears me?

Sex Partition

Why do we have to keep damaging many perfectly good relationships — relationships that are healthy and good for the company — because of bad actors? How divisive is this going to become? Will we reach a point where men will consider female coworkers an unacceptable risk? "I left my position at ACME because I was assigned to a team with some female members, and I wasn't about to subject my career to that kind of risk." Sure the example sounds silly, but there are men who are honestly afraid of the potential damage any slight misstep might cause. The LA Times article cited above included this quote:

One study found that almost two-thirds of male executives are even reluctant to have a one-on-one meeting with a junior female employee.

The author of that article, Kim Elsesser, is a psychologist, author, and lecturer at UCLA. What Elsesser describes here is what she calls a "sex partition" — the notion that a particular action is viewed differently when different sexes are involved. Example: A man, in the role of a superior, having a closed-door meeting with a subordinate. The meeting with a subordinate man is considered entirely appropriate, but the closed-door meeting with a woman is questioned, which eventually impacts the normal superior-subordinate relationship. Elsesser argues a sex partition commonly hurts the female subordinates, because they miss the coaching and other opportunities the male subordinates receive.

What Does the Future Hold?

What else could this mean for multiple sexes in the workplace? Could we actually arrive at a point where sexual misconduct is so rampant that there's actually a stigma about hiring men? That female applicants are preferred over males because of a popular belief that men are unable to control themselves, and therefore pose an unacceptable risk?

Eventually, the US is going to have to have the uncomfortable conversation about why it is "me too" is storming through the private sector, yet certain national-level public officials remain unscathed.

For now, I guess we'll just stay tuned to the news.

 

Image credit: CNN, Lucasfilm Ltd.