Reference no: EM132307408

Lisa Baxter – Developing a Voice1 Part I Lisa Baxter is Senior Vice President for a large consumer products firm and has spent most of her career in that industry, working first in Sales Operations, then Distribution and eventually Strategy. Very early in her career, she worked as a junior strategy consultant. Reflecting on her career, she recalls a number of times when her ability and willingness to voice her values and perspective were challenged. Early in her career, when she was still in her twenties, she faced several sexual harassment situations. Once when visiting a client at his site, the company representative told her to succumb to his advances or her firm would not get the assignment. Another time at an off-site team meeting, a senior partner and vice president pressed his room key into her hand, telling her he could not concentrate with her in the meeting and that she must meet him that evening. The third time, when a senior manager in her firm tried to pressure her to respond to his advances, she learned afterward that he was approaching other women in the firm as well – women who were more junior than she. Looking back on these situations, Baxter now says: I never gave in to any of these demands, but I also absolutely did not speak clearly or with confidence. I was rattled and uncertain; I was young and junior in the firm. But I also did not experience any negative repercussions for my refusals. The firm still got the assignment from the client who threatened to withhold it; in fact, he really wasn’t in a position to make that threat anyway. And the senior partner I rebuffed just acted as if it had never happened. Each time I successfully held my ground, I became more sure of myself. You live through a few of these kinds of things and you learn that you can survive. You learn to speak more calmly and confidently when they occur. 1 This case was inspired by interviews and observations of actual experiences but names and other situational details have been changed for confidentiality and teaching purposes. This material is part of the Giving Voice to Values curriculum collection (www.GivingVoiceToValues.org). The Aspen Institute was founding partner, along with the Yale School of Management, and incubator for Giving Voice to Values (GVV). Now Funded by Babson College. Do not alter or distribute without permission. © Mary C. Gentile, 2010 2 Initially, however, I saw it as an individual challenge that I had to handle on my own. It was not until the third time, when I saw that women more junior than myself were also being harassed, that I raised the issue to anyone else in the firm. I figured: how can the organization act to stop this if they don’t know that it’s happening? I reported the incident to more senior executives in the firm and they asked me back a second time to gather more information. In the end, however, nothing happened – to him or to me. Discussion Questions ? What do you think of the ways in which Baxter responded to these situations? What did she do well? What might she have done better? ? What do you make of the fact that nothing seemed to happen when she reported the senior manager who was harassing junior employees? If you were Baxter, how would you have interpreted and responded to that situation? ? What can you learn from Baxter’s experiences? About voice? About risk? About timing? About priorities? About personal development? About organizational development?