While the Boston Red Sox were getting trounced by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays the other night someone was vandalizing the home of a Red Sox fan in Raleigh, NC. Not just any Red Sox fan, the vandals tore up the home of the “governor” of the Red Sox nation (fan club). Not just run of the mill vandalism, it was team oriented. I think it should be called a hate crime. They spray painted Yankee pinstripes on the walls, they painted uniform numbers for A-Rod and Jeter on the back of his dress shirts, etc, etc

Here is the article http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/story/1258402.html

A few days ago I wrote about UNC beating Notre Dame. I remarked that it was just a game. Unfortunately, there are many who don’t agree with me on such things. When I read the paper there are some things that simply disgust me, this vandalism is one of those things.

We Americans love our sports. I like that but what do you do when the talk turns trashy at work? I know it happens from time to time. I suppose you could implement a no sports talk policy. Might as well put that right next to the no politics and no religion talk. Heck, might as well cancel the holiday party at this rate. And not a word of any birthdays either!

We should want our people to be passionate. We should want our people to have real relationships with each other. We should want them to talk about things beyond work. And we must have zero tolerance for any disrespectful behavior or trash talk. We know all about sexual harassment and hostile workplace and managers are usually on top of the blatant acts that break the law. But what about the subtle acts, or the ones that don’t break the law? Are we as aggressive in dealing with those? When a Red Sox fan and a Yankees fan are treating each other with disrespect do we address it or do we tell them to take it outside?

Behavior is a function of environment. Leaders create the environment. If people are behaving badly it may be a bad environment. If there is a bad environment…well, you know where that one is going. I will not say the leader is bad but I will say the leader has some work to do and it starts the next time they look in the mirror.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 18th, 2008 at 2:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.