See Me: The Case for Recognition at Work and Beyond with Michèle Lamont
Professor Michèle Lamont - Renowned Harvard Sociologist, Author
Michèle Lamont is Professor of Sociology and of African and African American Studies and the Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies at Harvard University. An influential cultural sociologist who studies boundaries and inequality, she has tackled topics such as dignity, respect, stigma, racism, class and racial boundaries, and how we evaluate social worth across societies.
Her most recent book is Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World (forthcoming with Simon and Schuster, September 2023). Her other books include: Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American UpperMiddle Class (1992), The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration (2000), How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment (2009), as well as the coauthored Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil and Israel (2016).
In this conversation we explore recognition, dignity and worth with renowned Harvard Sociologist Michele Lamont, unpacking her latest book 'SEEING OTHERS: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World'.
To learn more about Michèle, find her books and articles here:
Michèle Lamont’s website
Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World
For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.
Episode Transcript:
Spk0 Sally Clarke Spk1 Alexis Zahner Spk2 Michèle Lamont
[00:00:09] spk_0: Welcome to We are human leaders. All of us want to be recognized to be seen and valued. But for many, this is far from our actual experience, can dignity and respect, fix our workplaces and bring a sense of worth for those who feel lost, hopeless, forgotten and ignored. And amid countless conversations surrounding inequity and de I efforts, how can we as leaders truly promote social inclusion? I'm Sally Clarke and today Alexis Zahner and I are speaking with Harvard professor and sociologist Michelle Lamont who has studied dignity and worth for decades in her inspiring new book, seeing others, how recognition works and how it can heal a divided world. She makes a persuasive research driven case for prioritizing recognition and respect in an inequitable society. We explore what we can learn from the change agents who are transforming representation. We understand what ordinary universalism is and how this can impact us at work. And Michelle shares some practical ways that we can start to drive recognition today. Michelle illuminates an inclusive path forward with new ways of understanding our world and our humanity. Let's dive in.
[00:01:24] spk_1: Welcome to the We are Human Leaders podcast, Michèle. It's a pleasure to have you here with us today. And we'd like to begin by getting to know you a little bit more and understanding your story and the journey that's brought you to this important work that you're doing now.
[00:01:39] spk_2: Sure. Well, first, thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. I love the title of your podcast. The listener will understand even more why as they discover what my book is about. So, what should I say? Well, I'm a Professor of Sociology African American Studies at Harvard and I'm also an expert on Europe. I wrote a few books, Comparing France and the US and also a big comparative book on experiences of racism in the US, Brazil and Israel. And I'm also the mother of three Gen Zs, which is important for the purpose of this book. Since, as we will see, there's a lot of the book that's about the conversation between Boomers and Gen Z for those who don't know Gen Zs are young people who were born after 97 or so. So right now, they are between 2025 and they're really thinking very hard about what to do with their lives. And I live in Boston, I'm Canadian, which is also important to know because I think I'm writing about American society as an insider slash outsider because I've lived here since 83. I lived in France for 34 years before coming to the US, but I'm very interested in how to promote collective well being through the kind of society we create.
[00:02:49] spk_1: It sounds like you personally have quite an interesting intersectionality of your experiences, culturally as well. Michelle growing up in Canada, I assume. And then was it like a move to France or how did that look for you?
[00:03:00] spk_2: The introduction explains a little bit how my own personal experience led me to write this book. So I grew up in Quebec during the peak of the independence movement, which was very much a moment where I did the French Canadians were in the process of redefining their collective identity. They used kind of the state as a tool uh uh economic engine to affirm their independence in relation to English Canada. So it was really a period of economic and cultural growth of really denouncing the ways in which we had been victim of British colonialism and then English Canadian colonialism. And then I went to France where I had friends from all parts of the world who had survived, you know, difficult episodes. I had a friend, actually a boyfriend who had kind of survived the dictatorship in Brazil and had many friends imprisoned. And uh I had a neighbor who had survived the May. So, you know, these were the late seventies, they were very much moments where many people were talking about American imperialism. And then I got a fellowship as a postdoc to go to Stanford University and I didn't know that much about American University. So I really discovered I got there just as uh Silicon Valley was taken off with, you know, the introduction of yoy culture in California. Suddenly you could find good croissant, which was quite a revolution. You know, the society was changing and people were buying extremely expensive bicycles and cars. And so, I mean, these early until the age of 25 basically, I was exposed to very different environment. And later on when I was 45 I was asked by Canadian Foundation to co-lead a very important research group called the Successful Societies Program that was subsidized by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. And the purpose of that group was very much to think it was a large group of like 1520 scholars from different disciplines. And we were asked to pull our tools together to try to reflect collectively about how to create a successful societies defined in terms of collective well being. You know, how can we imagine the conditions for society that would allow more people to prosper together? So that really led me to want to write this book on recognition, which is really about how to broaden the circle of who matters and who is seen in our
[00:05:14] spk_0: society. And I think this is such an incredibly relevant topic for all of us who are listening right now and certainly in the context, business and work, how we work because it is such an important component of our experience within our societies, Michelle. And I'd love to start just by understanding from your perspective, you know, in a nutshell, how would you define recognition? And why does how we define recognition matter?
[00:05:38] spk_2: Well, to go to the, you know, a real shortcut, I happen to have an apple here. So as I say in the book, it's not about, oh I recognize that this is an apple on the table or I recognize that this is gym on the street. It's really about this capacity that human beings have to give value to each other, to see each other, to make each other feel valued. And this is something that only humans can make do for human beings. So since your podcast focuses on work life, I mean, what happens when you remove human beings from the equation when more and more people are working with A I and are being, you know, evaluated by algorithms. So that's a big question I presume for your listeners. So it's really about in my book, more specifically, I'm not a psychologist, I'm a sociologist. Although I recognize the importance of things like mindfulness or, you know, really intracranial things you can do to make yourself and others calmer and more happy and more focused on how can we create a society that provides us messaging to broaden recognition and reduce stereotype and stigma. So the book is based on 185 interviews which change agents who are people who through their work are creating new narratives. So that includes you, you know, Hollywood creative and stand up comics and people who are working in advocacy and you know, leaders like the leader of Patreon, the guy who created Patreon, which diffuses the creative work a great many people. So it crosses many policy domains as well. And then there's also a interviews with Gen Z who are college students in the Midwest in the US and also on the East coast. And when we interviewed them, it was fall of 2019 during the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2020 to see what were the challenges that they were experiencing and also how were they projecting themselves into the future in terms of their ideals and what kind of society they would like to live in? And how do they imagine a good life,
[00:07:36] spk_0: such an interesting exploration that you've undertaken in really clarifying? I think what recognition can mean for different generations for different sort of segments of society. And just to give it a little bit more of a practical sort of grounding Michelle, how do you sort of explain recognition in almost a sort of an example? How might we imagine recognition, looking for example, for a leader in an organization,
[00:07:58] spk_2: for a leader in our organization? It would be to make visible those who are in a corner and always invisible to celebrate, not only the highest achievers, but also explain to achievers that it's nice to pat you in the back, but sometimes it's other people's turns. So it's really about distributing a feeling of that you're valued and seen to a wide number of employees if you. So when you think about the E I, it's not only about increasing numbers of underrepresented groups, it's very much about making everyone feel dignity and value, not only as producers and you know, people who help the organization pursue its objective, but also as caregivers, you know, understanding that if you help your workers take care of their Children when they're sick or bring their mother to the doctor when they need it. You know, it creates a much more better quality of life for the workers, but also so quite potentially more loyalty to the organization and the greater commitment for realizing the goals of the organization if you
[00:08:57] spk_1: will. Thank you Michelle. And I like this language. I heard you say the distribution of the recognition and it is so often we see particularly in organizations a very merit based distribution of recognition. And I think that's a really helpful way of helping us broaden what recognition needs to
[00:09:14] spk_2: look like. Yeah, and I'm not against merit, but often when we embrace the language of meritocracy, we tend to ignore how some people are always on an escalator in part, maybe because they grew up in a middle class neighborhood. With excellent schools or they had parents who were very highly educated. So those who are successful by the society's dominant standard, you know, in terms of degrees or socio-economic success, they've always often very big beneficiary of a great deal of advantages. So I think we need to nuance this liberation of the notorious by a much broader consideration. And also to only celebrate people who are college educated professionals and managers is sending a message to the vast majority of the population that doesn't have a college degree. And that is something that people often ignore that they're losers and they feel like losers and they feel very much that society treats them as losers. So that creates a huge tension in American society, but also in many European societies. And we know that for instance, the series, the entertainment shows that we watch at night, they tend to have many professionals and managers who are always painted as, you know, examples of success that we should aspire to. And it's very hard to see representative of the working class who are celebrated. So that also feeds a lot of the resentment that is behind some of the political polarization that we are experiencing now. So I think it's a good moment to take stock of this and think about how to address it.
[00:10:44] spk_1: Absolutely. And Michelle for an individual, what is the experience of that? Does that become like an internalized version or vision of self? Can you help us explain what the impact on the individual might be for that.
[00:10:57] spk_2: Sure. I'll give you an example of one of my graduate student who's trans and they were explaining to me that as they were growing up, they come from a South Asian family. There was no tools in the environment to make sense of their identity. So clearly, they experience themselves differently than most of the other kids in their class. They literally didn't have the label or didn't know what that was about, you know, and it's only has they got a little bit older that they realize, oh, wait a minute, I'm not alone. And there's a lot of people like me. So I think what we're witnessing now with, you know, young people insisting on non binary pronouns or on unisex bathroom. It might seem to many people, oh, this is a snowflake issue, get over it. But for people like this student, it's extremely meaningful to have their identity affirm publicly and recognized. So I think until people who just make fun of work culture, realize that for some people, this is truly an existential matter, just like perhaps the way woman. I'm a boomer. So I remember reading the female mystique in the seventies and discovering the word stereotyping. And I didn't know at all what the stereotype was and to discover that it existed and that women were stereotyped as, you know, less intelligence, more passive, good caregivers, but not too good, not too bright. You know, I mean, it really gave me the tools to make sense of what was happening in my life. I love my family. It's terrific family, but it was sexist family. So, you know, I had to do the dishes every day and my brother mowed the lawn once a month and it was you, that's perfectly fine. So I really had to fight against this. So I feel like in some ways, the literature from second wave feminism really gave me Betty Friedan and many others gave me the to fight for myself. And you know, being becoming aware of where those messages that are making you feel bad about yourself or depressed or passive, or you feel like you really feel that people are not treating you well and you don't understand why. Well, if this environment gives us narratives, different ways of understanding ourselves, it can really be beneficial to the individual, but also to groups. So it's not only a micro individual thing, it's also about transforming demeaning, associated with groups that feel that they have been undervalued. It's
[00:13:20] spk_0: fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing your personal experience there, Michelle. And I think for me, I feel like there is this sort of level of awareness of my own privilege. But that the more I explore, I'm I keep encountering new layers in which that manifests and new ways in which I hadn't actually been aware that that actually worked in my favor and it sort of feels like a bit of a continuous journey in that sense, is that sort of how it works from your perspective.
[00:13:44] spk_2: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think a lot of what we take for granted is often invisible to us. Right? What part of reality is in the background and in the foreground depend very much on what surrounds us. What messaging is possible around us. So that goes for what kind of neighborhood you're raising your kids. And you know, there's such a, although I'm a sociologist and I'm an expert on class and racial boundaries. I've written several books on this. I still discover new layers that I was not fully aware of it to, to really understand what it means. I think it takes a lot of exposure to people who don't live in your reality. And actually, I had an interesting experience recently, which is I have twins who are 22. My son has a wonderful girlfriend who comes from a working class family and it's been very interesting to have my son reflect to me about the privileges that he's had growing up because he comes from upper middle class family and he's becoming much more aware of that from this daily contact with his girlfriend. So it's very interesting. I think it's layers upon layers upon layers. It's so deeply structure is our reality. It takes a while to get it. Yeah,
[00:14:53] spk_1: absolutely. And Michelle, you mentioned that in the research for your most recent book, you'd spoken to numerous change agents in sort of the business environment as well, or cultural entrepreneurs as you call them, who intentionally aim to transform how we perceive differences in others. What can business leaders who want to make change in their organization? Learn from some of these change agents? Well, two
[00:15:16] spk_2: change agents that I talk in particular about are Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart. I mean, they're both models who are certainly, you know, icons of capitalism, extremely successful women, but each of them have tried to destigmatize specific groups as they were in the process of making money. So Martha Stewart, her audience was very much working class women who aim to improve themselves and the way they would do it is by becoming excellent middle class home makers. So she told them how you can have, you know, set up a very nice table for Sunday dinner or, you know, do a lot to gratify your domestic environment. And for many women, those were tools of self empowerment. I mean, at the same time as culturally often homemakers had been put down. So it's paradoxical that she was able to both affirm the role of, you know, the mystic as an area where women could gain a sense of dignity and self esteem. And she did while making money herself. And of course, we know the rest of the story, you know how she was put in prison, et cetera. But nevertheless, she can't stand. She does certainly stand as an example of all of this and all it does also for Oprah Winfrey with her denunciation of domestic violence and, you know, as a survivor of violence as well. And her being out about this and giving women who had suffered the same fate, tools to make sense of their experience and to not just think of themselves as victim that giving them the tool that they need to gain a sense of their own agency and create the life that they want. So those are two excellent examples. I think as for employers in general, I think really celebrating not only the workers who are the most productive or the most competitive, but also those who are often invisible, you know, sitting in the offices that are back there in the corner and who often do a lot of the emotional work necessary to keep an organization. So not only shining a light on the big stars, but really adopting a much more pluralistic set of standard to figure out who should be celebrated and what a range of people bring to the workplace.
[00:17:26] spk_1: Yeah, and it sounds Michelle as Sally mentioned as well. You know, obviously being a white female, there are certain privileges I've been forwarded my entire life. It sounds like as a leader, there needs to be this cognizant moment of perspective shift of noticing those who we perhaps haven't noticed in the past. Do you have any insights for a leader in terms of sort of unpacking their own, whether it's bias or what needs to happen for us on an individual level, to start noticing some of the things perhaps we were ignoring or taking for granted with recognition in the past.
[00:17:58] spk_2: Oh, yes. I'm sure that many women who are listening at supervisors who engage in what sociologists call homoly, which means basically feeling closer, culturally and more approving or people who are like you. So if you're a middle aged white man and you relate better to the other middle aged white men around you, you're much more likely to pat them on the back and ask them to go for a beer or whatever, all this social oil, the glue that makes create so solidarity. But if you're a supervisor, you really need to be able to relate to a wide range of people. So that would certainly mean, you know, taking time to talk with the workers with whom you share less and try to understand where they come from. And also what are the challenges that they are encountering in their lives that can be very different. So I think if you include in the duties of the middle level manager to give dignity to everyone and including not, it's not only a question of numbers to have more diversified, what's the workforce, it's also very much a question of making sure that all the employees feel like they are listened to and that their needs are acknowledged and if they need to bring their older mother to the doctor on a Thursday afternoon and they can have time to do this, you know, and this kind of work really pays off in the sense that you have workers who are more committed to the workplace, who treat the workplace more like home and are more likely to go the extra mile as well. And
[00:19:24] spk_1: it sounds like Michelle, you mentioned this example of, you know, perhaps taking someone for a beer is like a way to say thank you or get close to them. It sounds as well. There's this element of learning to relate to people in different ways outside of our typical comfort zone and how we might, you know, build friendships or build connection to other people as well.
[00:19:42] spk_2: Exactly. And it's not necessarily going for the beer itself. Maybe the middle aged male doesn't want to ask the young woman for beer for obvious reason, but there's other ways of engaging people around their leisure activity and asking them. Did you have a good weekend? You know, are you hanging out with your family? What are you doing? I think the pressures of productivity often prevents people from taking time to do this. So,
[00:20:05] spk_0: absolutely. And yet there's so much, you know, research these days to show that taking that time and creating those bonds and you used the word dignity a couple of times as well. Michelle, and I think that's such a key part of, you know, it's such an important outcome that leaders can drive through, ensuring that their behavior really is around taking the time to connect and understand and holding space for an experience that might be different from their own. Now, you touched earlier on the concept of meritocracy and I just wanted to dig deeper in this notion for a second because I really think, you know, there's a lot of assumptions that we can make that are around work and about an even playing field. And that, you know, this concept that's very think embedded in American society, but also in Australia and many others as well, that simply a lot of hard work, if we just work hard, a particular outcome will arise some successful manifest. And I'd love to hear from you what you see as being the danger in that there. It's still a very persistent narrative. How is that hurting us? And, and what narrative might me best
[00:21:03] spk_2: shift to? Well, I think it's a narrative that very much connects success to moral worth. So as you just said, people are viewed as successful or people who are presumed to have better discipline, work ethic, all kinds of things that are coded as morally valuable. And at the apex of the system are the college educated professional and managers who still make up a minority of the overall population. And we are celebrating meritocracy. We also implicitly put down those who don't have the college degree, which is the majority of the population. So in the book, the first two chapters really kind of draw what's happening with the American dream in the context of growing inequality in the US and many other advanced industrial societies where many workers feel very much that they're left behind and the ways in which the upper middle class is very self congratulatory. At the same time as it really suffers from its succession with work. Because after 2008, you will remember many people lost their job. The middle class, many people became extremely anxious about their kids being downwardly mobile. So there's been really a steady increase in the level of anxiety and feeling overwhelmed even among the top 20% of the population. So now we are in a regime where even the most, you know, successful members of society feel that they're in a very bad place in terms of mental health. It's a society wide crisis more much more in the US than the UK by the way. And they've also put a lot of pressure on their Children. So you've had books that have been published like Excellent Sheep, you know, or a helicopter parenting, which is all about parenting go and have mock because the pressure that is put on the kids is enormous. And for those of us who teach college are very aware of how much time we're not spending, dealing with the mental health of undergrads. And at UCL A, you have a center that produces annually a survey of first year undergrads and they are able to show a constant increase in the number of them who feel overwhelmed and suffering from anxiety. So I think this means if you look in particular at GEN X, they go on to get on the job market around the the depression, the great recession of 2008. And they quickly realized that, you know, a house is not within reach for them. So organizing their life toward the accumulation and the goods and getting the white picket fence and all the whole deal is not realistic for them. But also they don't want it in part because they don't want it. Many of them don't want it because they're very critical of overconsumption. So they talk about the hidden treadmill of consumption which is destroying our planet. So the Gen Z whom we've interviewed for the book, clearly given this confluence of mental health crisis and the lack of the weak belief in the American dream. They have to come up with new dreams. So the book argues that in order for them to find hope, they turn towards something that is much more reachable. And for them often, this means trying to create a life that is more organized around inclusion and living a good life now, which means creating a community in a community of people who care for each other where people don't have to be in the closet, either as first gen or as queer or whatever, you know, and people should publicly live in a way that is in line with their values. And I think many agencies and millennials are very committed to that. And you have a kind of cultural gulf between the boomers who often don't understand why they the whole culture of young people is taking place. They just don't understand where it comes from. And I think once you understand that the ideals that have animated the boomerang generation is meaningless for those young people, it makes much more sense and it allows I think to create boundaries or create bridges rather between generation that are really, really needed. So, and that's done in part through these change agents when we've interviewed. So the book talks about, for instance, I did an interview with a person named Joy Soloway, who's the creator of the show, transparent and transparent. The main character is advanced, middle aged trans woman who has recently transitioned and she has to get her kids on board. She has adult Children who are really pissed that their father is now a woman. And you know what you witness in the show is how she negotiates this new relationship. And the show helps the viewer go beyond the stereotype and understand the person in a three dimensional way and to humanize the person and to really help people move away from the stereotypes and then negativity. So and that is the creation of new narratives that offers alternative reality and it's happening through our society at so many levels with very deep consequences. I think
[00:25:48] spk_1: Michelle, I can't say how thankful I am to hear someone of a different generation to myself. I'm a millennial unpack that for us with more depth because I think that I'm very used to hearing terms like entitlement and instant gratification and you know, that we should expect things to fall into lap within my generation. And it feels, you know, there are days where it genuinely feels quite hopeless as a millennial. You know, we've been sold the candy of get a university education and everything else will work out and effectively. For many of us, we've got a lot of student debt. We're extremely educated. You know, I've got a master's degree which doesn't get necessarily applied all that often on a day to day basis. And yet in the last five years alone, I've seen the cost of housing in my local region double. I've seen the of electricity, the cost of cars, everything else increase and it feels like sometimes it doesn't matter how hard I work, things keep slipping out of grasp for many of us. So I just appreciate you taking the time to help us unpack that and also help us understand why it might be that different generations are putting their preferences for what meaningfulness looks like or what a good life looks like elsewhere, when the things that we've been told in the past to prioritize actually feel a little bit out of reach for many of us.
[00:27:04] spk_2: Exactly. I have a graduate student whose dissertation is comparing the college educated young people in their thirties who experience precarity in Boston and Madrid. And in many ways, the experience is very different because the cost of living in the two places is different in the US. They experience a very high housing costs, college education and health care costs and they cannot expect their parents to tell them move in for five years. Whereas in Spain, in contrast, they really, they think and they are right that their parents are gonna host them for five years and the desires and the hope how they imagine that they're going to get themselves out of the situation. They find themselves as very, very different with the young people in Boston feeling very much that all they need is more money even if it means like getting two jobs or three jobs so that they can make more money. And they don't, in some ways, I think they're more hopeless because they cannot see, you know, a way ahead. So yeah,
[00:28:03] spk_1: I relate to that experience.
[00:28:05] spk_2: Yes, I'm glad that it's useful to you, Alex.
[00:28:09] spk_0: I have to say also Michelle, I felt a little bit of recognized as a gen Xer as well because there was certainly that moment of disenchantment for me and many of my peers, you know, around the 2008. And even earlier, I think we around this idea of what the, you know, and I didn't grow up in the American dream, but what we've kind of been taught to expect was simply not going to be our reality. And there's a very optimistic part of me that thinks, well, that means, you know, there is potential for us to change our expectations to be different and better. But I also don't want to, you know, dil the fact that for a lot of people, it's a really confronting and quite intense feeling of being betrayed, almost this idea that we've been pulled along with as it were, is simply false. So it's a very interesting space that we find ourselves in
[00:28:52] spk_2: today. Yeah. And do you think that your generation is also looking a little bit at inclusion and ways to create a better life now as a response to the dead end that you've encountered? I think
[00:29:03] spk_0: so, Michelle, that's, I really appreciate that question. I think I find it difficult to say, speak for my generation. But I do certainly think that there is a sense I think partly because a lot of ARSO genetics has grew up in a time before the internet existed and there is a kind of awareness that we're missing community to some extent. So I think there's perhaps for us, maybe more of a focus, not so much on the individual pursuits and ownership of material possessions that drives us, but more of a sense of where are our connections and how connected are we staying? And are we present in our lives to the extent? That's possible.
[00:29:33] spk_2: Yeah. The social media is sure hard doing a number on people.
[00:29:37] spk_1: Yeah. Well, that's another dimension altogether, isn't it? And I think as a millennial, we sort of grew up on the cusp of both. I distinctly remember going through school in my young years with no computers. Like that wasn't a thing. Certainly not mobile phones. And then by the time we'd finished high school, you know, we'd learned to use the computers and I think we were allowed, you know, in my household. Certainly it was one shared mobile phone if we were away for a sporting trip or something like that. So there's definitely been a quick shift as well in my 32 years of life around and what socialization looks like and what connection to other human beings look like as well. And I think there's a real performative element to being alive right now, especially through social media that I think adds another layer of pressure around. Well, you know, am I doing what Instagram expects of me as well? And that's another layer and I'm sure with Gen Z and the multitude of apps that they have access to now. And of course, we have access to them, but perhaps just by virtue of being born 15 years earlier, it's not something that my social network engages with as much. I imagine that there's another even more intense layer in their experience of sort of how they're projecting themselves into their environment as well. Is that something that you've seen Michelle in your
[00:30:47] spk_2: work? Well, in the book, I talk about the transformation of the public sphere, which is basically this realm where collective ideas about what life should be are being produced by a number of institutions, but also media, whether the traditional media or the social media, I mean, it's very complex. But I remind the reader that the number of people in the US, for instance, who post on social media remains a very small proportion of the population. You know, so much of what we hear about when it comes to the polarization of American society is described as driven by the social media, but many people never use social media or never post on social media. And I think there's a lot of people who are much more into tolerance or indifference, living next to other people and live and let live. Then the polarization literature leads us to believe. At the same time, I know that for Gen Z, it's very intense, like we're talking now as there's a huge conflict between Hamas and the Israeli government that exploded last week. And my Children or Gen Z were just telling me how much pressure on their campus there is for everyone to post something declaring how they position themselves in the conflict. And I've even read a posting this morning that said if you're not saying anything, we're taking notice and you will be called upon when you know. So it's basically threat that if you're not taking a position publicly, you're viewed as either someone who fights with the Israelis. I don't know exactly what it means, but veiled threat basically. So that's a lot of pressure for young people who may not have the maturity or the self confidence to step back and say, don't bully me, I'm going to do it. I want, you know, and they live with each other in a dorm. It can be very intense the, the face to face and I certainly during the Black Lives Matter, you know, summer of 2020 there was certainly a lot of this. So in our interviews with Gen Z, we've certainly heard a lot about the ways in which the social media can be extremely dangerous in terms of how they think of themselves and their popularity and their need for approval. And that's maximized, I think also by the use of the data apps that totally puts them in a position of being, you know, top up some down, no all the time and no capacity to really take distance toward the marketization of beauty and desire that they experience nonstop. So
[00:33:15] spk_0: it's such a dehumanizing effect. I think that that can potentially have there. Thank you for highlighting that show. And now there's a concept that you mentioned in the book as well that we'd really like to share with our listeners. And have you explore a little bit and that is that of ordinary universalism and I'd love it if you could share with us what ordinary universalism means and what the practical ways we might be able to sort of integrate that into, into a workplace.
[00:33:41] spk_2: Sure. So the concept I developed it in the context of interviews that I conducted in the early nineties with North African immigrants in France when I was working on the book on the Working Class in France and the US title, The Dignity of Working Man. And I interviewed white and black workers in New York and White and North African immigrants in Paris. So I asked the North African immigrants, what makes you similar and different from the white workers? And many of these North African immigrants were illiterate, you know, they were just using the observation of everyday life to comment on my question, but also in the context where they were experiencing really a lot of racism in a daily basis. And these were people who had terrible jobs like cleaning a phone booth which really smells like pee especially in the summer or, you know, putting asphalts on roof, you know, jobs that really no one else wants to do because they're disgusting jobs. And I remember some, several of them were really drawing on experiences from their everyday life to put point to the ways in which we're similar as human beings. So some of the comments I remember were things like, well, humans are humans. You know, we all are born after nine months in our mother's belly. we all have 10 fingers. We all have to go to the baker in the morning to buy our bread. That's a very Parisian way of talking about this or we all Children of God, they're good and bad people in all races. We're all equally inconsequential in the cosmos and those statements are all true. So when it comes to celebrating and promoting dignity, we can be reminded that we all are all these things and we share a lot as human beings independently of our station in life or whatever our age or whatever class. And as we were, my, I didn't do the interviews with the Gen Z myself because they're unlikely to open up to a boomer the way I would have liked them to. So I had two graduate students do these interviews and we came up with a paper which really informed the chapter on Gen Z in the book where we argue that they prayed different themes together in talking to us about what they would like their life to be like. And we argue that they combined together a real appreciation for work and the idea of taking charge of their life to be entrepreneur and agentic and putting their life together with a real concern for mental health. So they talk about work life balance in a way that people in my generation certainly did not, you know, we would just be ready to work like this and not pay attention to mental health. And then also this focus on ordinary universalism, like really their anger at thinking that the 25 year old man would go out with a 17 year old woman. Whereas when I I was young that was frequent, you know, no big deal. So their attention to power differences and you know, issues of sexual harassment, you know, they are very, very attuned to creating an environment where people treat each other more equally. And that means also you are not designating people by their ethno racial identity. You don't see this Asian man, that's just not OK. And a lot of things that for people of other generation just seem a little too, you know, I don't know, sensitive or, and the last dimension of their identity was they really embraced the term Gen Z as a political generation that wants to say, you know, we're in the cockpits now we're the one defining because you guys, you screwed up so badly with the environment. So they think of themselves as a very political generation. And these four elements really come together for them as a collective identity and how they think of themselves as moving in the world. So the term of ordinary universalism is very important in the book because as having argued in the first two chapters that the American dream, while it brought many immigrants to the US, and it's not only an American story, it's also for all advanced industrial societies, it's not working anymore. So people have to come up with a different dream and that's largely about, you know, inclusion and treating humans as humans, you know. So it's a little bit like an alternative matrix for measuring people's worth. That is much more democratically accessible to everyone, not only to those who have the resources to get a college degree as the college degree is becoming out of reach for so many people. So in that sense, the book is very much a hopeful book, you know, because it defines a wave toward a more society that allows more people to prosper and, you know, to experience well being without being caught in everything that they don't have. Exactly.
[00:38:14] spk_0: And I think that's one of the parts that really resonated for us, Michelle. And it really feels like this res even with human leadership, sort of the concepts that we talk about and the way that we view, you know, leadership and the potential for change in the workplace. And I'm really excited and probably my ego is a little bit happy to hear that. I feel quite aligned with Gen Z despite being 20 years older than them. But that really does make such incredible sense to me. And there's a lot of, you know, excitement and optimism. I feel about the potency of that generation using the lessons that they're taking and the energy that they have to create a different future.
[00:38:45] spk_2: Absolutely. I totally agree with you and I also feel close to that.
[00:38:50] spk_1: It does feel like we're in rather safe hands, moving forward with these generations coming through. And hopefully, you know, taking over businesses and the political atmosphere that we find ourselves in as well.
[00:38:59] spk_2: There's a lot of hope and as you probably know in the context of the US right now, there's a big wave of unionization and also mobilization of workers. And some of these strikes really have young workers at their center, millennials or Gen I know that the Amazon strike, you know, being having restroom breaks was one of their main demand, which is if this is not about dignity, what is, you know, and I read the recent papers on what's happening in the labor movement today. And it seems that a lot of the experience that millennials and Gen Z learned through Black Lives Matter is now being transferred to unionization in terms of, you know, this is not only about wages, it's also about dignity. So broadening of the range of demands that workers are making that are also cultural. And the fact that, you know, for instance, with the Union of the United Auto Workers strike, the fact that those employers have been bailed by the government not that long ago. And now they're piling up the profits without redistributing is one of the things that the leaders are really emphasizing as absolutely not fair and it has really helped mobilize the workers. So,
[00:40:10] spk_1: yeah, it's a similar movement here in Australia as well. Michelle and I it's interesting, I can only speak to my own experience, but there's been a real dismantling of the unions in the last 20 years through labor reforms, especially in Australia. And it is encouraging to see people recognizing the power of the collective and coming together once again in these unions to stand up for both basic dignities, but also better working rights. And we're seeing it here in Australia, in particular with teachers, folks in the airline industry and things like that as well. So it is very encouraging. Yeah,
[00:40:39] spk_2: it's interesting that it's happening transnational, right? It is.
[00:40:43] spk_1: Yeah, absolutely. Now Michelle, we could spend probably the best part of a month having this conversation with you because this book is incredible and your research is so important. But what I'll do is ask sort of one final question if I will to leave us on a little bit of a practical note. Now, you share that there are three main avenues for building recognition through political activism and the law, through culture and media and through our own interpersonal experiences and networks. Now, sort of focusing on The Lady here. What can leaders do in business and in workplaces who might be listening right now to drive higher recognition? I know we've touched on a few of these, but could you leave us with some really practical takeaways for leaders listening today
[00:41:23] spk_2: in a paper I published last year with two co authors in the Harvard Business Review, we argued that, you know, paying attention to who is seated where so who is at the center of the work environment and who's at the periphery and really trying to, you know, shed light on those who are at the periphery by basically maybe rotating doing things that will really make those who feel that they are at the periphery that they are fully acknowledged and brought in. And that often is, you know, older women, people of color, you know, like maybe being a little bit more self reflective, but not thinking that the diversity training will do the job. I think that really requires for employers to really be much more thoughtful about their criteria of evaluation and how they systematically favor people who are like them and penalize people who are not. So that would be an important step I think and that creates, that requires humility and the willingness of, you know, self examining yourself. I think when I've submitted papers to management journal, they also often ask me exactly the question that you ask me concretely, what can people do? And I'm thinking at the end of the day for me, the recipe is understanding, gaining an understanding of the life of others and that for editors of management journals that probably doesn't sound very concrete. But I really think that's the answer. You know, they really need to think about learning to understand others as essential. So that would be my takeaway.
[00:42:53] spk_0: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that Michelle. I think it's such a, you know, I think for a lot of us, we kind of want something that's almost an easy fix. And I actually think that for a lot of us deeply understanding means going through a little bit of discomfort of acknowledging, we don't know exactly what's going on for someone else and maybe asking a question of someone that we wouldn't usually and really, you know, expanding our comfort zone in that way. So, well,
[00:43:14] spk_2: it's been a pleasure to talk with you. I really enjoyed it.
[00:43:24] spk_0: Thank you for being with us at, we are human leaders. For me, this conversation really drove home, how we behave at work, how we interact with each other in the workplace, has an impact that can go really far beyond our work lives. If you're curious what human leadership can mean for your team, your organization or even your own leadership. Find out more at www.wearehumanleaders.com. See you next time.