In 2020, just two years before Elon Musk acquired Twitter, he said something about cancelling the cancel culture, depicting himself as the guardian of free speech and fostering a platform that safeguards open expression. However, while he reinstated several banned Twitter accounts, a new “ban” hashtag is seen trending every day on X, with the cancel culture being supported by some for social change and being opposed by others as a form of online harassment. The cancel culture is very much prevalent in India, and while it is a quite broad term with numerous implications, in this blog, we discuss the cancel culture in the workplace.
The rise of cancel culture in corporate life can be attributed to social media to a major extent. Social media platforms have amplified the powers of public shaming, with both pros and cons.
Before digging deep into the cancel culture in the workplace, let’s define what is meant by the term. The cancel culture, in general, refers to a kind of public shaming where an individual or a group of individuals “cancels” or “attacks” an individual, an organisation, or a concept for one reason or the other, often but not always by using social media platforms. The cancel culture in the workplace, in particular, refers to the withdrawal of social support, often with professional consequences, from an individual or a group of individuals due to “perceived” unacceptable behaviour or speech.
There are many reasons why leaders cannot afford to ignore the cancel culture in corporate life. In the cancel culture, team members often refuse to interact and work with the “cancelled” individual or group, significantly affecting the organisational culture and reputation, along with the morale and productivity of employees. A major consequence of leadership negligence is also the continuation of a toxic work environment.
The cancel culture in corporate life manifests itself in different, sometimes contradictory, ways. For instance, it tends to create an unsettling effect on free speech while apparently trying to promote accountability.
The cancel culture in the workplace, also known as the call-out culture, manifests commonly as silent treatment, exclusion from important conversations and meetings, public criticism and accusations, attempts to have the “cancelled” individual removed from their designations, digital shaming, and the spreading of rumours, leading to increased anxiety, stress, and even depression, particularly for the targeted individual. Career advancement, despite hard work, gets challenging, too.
When private missteps are made public, it often leads to social ostracisation and sometimes job loss as well. All this not only affects the work environment negatively, but it also affects the targeted individual’s emotional and mental well-being severely. The impact of private missteps thus gets amplified. Accountability for one’s actions and statements is important, but the cancel culture at work often becomes “excessive” and seeks condemnation for “unpopular” opinions and minor issues.
As mentioned earlier, too, the role of social media in amplifying conflicts is massive. Social media platforms allow for the information or “misinformation” to spread quickly, sometimes without context and sometimes even from a long time back, and result in public backlash and disagreements. Conflict resolution thus gets complicated for today’s leaders and organisations.
Let’s discuss the leadership dilemma now, which revolves around accountability and overreaction in the context of the cancel culture in the workplace.
Intervention should be primarily based on fairness (instead of fast condemnation) and factual accuracy (instead of prejudices and partial information). When leaders find irrefutable evidence of serious communication breakdowns in the team due to the cancel culture or evidence of misconduct on the part of the “cancelled” employee that violates the organisation’s policy, immediate and measured intervention is necessary.
The leader’s role is not to intervene for the sake of intervening. Rather, leaders should balance transparency, fairness, and company values while assessing the situation from all sides to preserve the overall organisational well-being. They should also understand that not every “unpopular” action or opinion calls for intervention.
While leaders should be cautious of overreacting to minor cases, they should not disregard the cost of inaction or overcorrection while surrounded by the cancel culture in the workplace. Leaders should also consider other ways of holding accountability, when needed, and overcorrection should not be one of those ways and the cancel culture the other way. Moreover, inaction amplifies the problem, rather than making it disappear. That’s a point to be noted.
A long-term solution to the cancel culture in corporate life is building a culture that promotes open dialogue, more than anything else. Some ways to build that culture are given below.
A work environment that is conducive to open and empathetic communication goes a long way in cancelling the cancel culture. It is not always easy to create such an environment, but there are ways to do so, some of which go through holding regular team meetings, encouraging transparency, valuing diversity in all forms, and ensuring proper communication and feedback mechanisms.
To build a culture that promotes open dialogue, it is also important to establish clear policies pertaining to conduct and redressal. Policy without proper enactment cannot eliminate the cancel culture in the workplace, true, but it is a crucial first step that provides everyone with something to turn to, when the surroundings get unfair or suffocating.
Leaders need to learn to differentiate between healthy forms of commanding accountability and unhealthy ones, many of which are associated with the cancel culture in the workplace. For this, self-awareness becomes essential on their part, as it helps them rise above their biases. Regular training can help leaders address systemic issues and “cancel culture situations” better.
In this blog, we discussed the emergence of cancel culture situations in corporate spaces. We learnt what cancel culture in the workplace is, how it presents itself in different forms, and why leaders cannot afford to ignore it. We also discussed some of the most effective ways to address cancel culture situations at work and nurture an environment that places a greater emphasis on empathy, active listening, and conflict resolution, both for the targeted individual or group and for the “attackers”. Like it or not, “cancel culture” can also happen to you and your organisation. So, stay vigilant and plan ahead.
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Often recognised as the Franchise Man of India, author and entrepreneur Ajay Gupta has positively influenced the lives and livelihoods of over 15 lakh students, 10,000 families, and 1 crore people through his multiple business ventures and funding for startups.
