I was talking to a pastor that works for a large urban police department that’s currently experiencing protests at universities. And I was asking them, who ultimately has accountability for what’s going on right now with the student protests? And they said, everyone does. When it comes to conversations with the protesters, we say, do you really want to allow your protest to get out of hand? You have a responsibility to make sure that those protests remain peaceful. And if you have agents within your community that are taking it too far, you’ve got to reel them in.
At the same time, he’s having the same conversation with police enforcement saying, is this really the time where you want to start jailing people who are protesting in an election year? We have to allow them to protest as long as it remains peaceful to give them that rightful space. So ultimately what this pastor has realized is that everyone has to take accountability for their role in the dynamic that we’re currently seeing in the news with these protests.
And that is something that especially in corporate America, you often see missing, that understanding that accountability belongs to all of us. Who in your organization are you blaming for lack of accountability? And what accountability could you take right now that perhaps you had already passed off to someone else as their responsibility?