Picture this: it’s Friday night, and you’re lying against your self-made pillow fort, watching a movie about social justice. The protagonist makes a fiery speech that would be labelled controversial by those who are favoured within a biased justice system. Perhaps you belong to that majority — perhaps you were born into it, whether it is a race that is more particularly preferred to be recruited for in your organisation over others, or whether it is wealth, gender, or beauty, or any of the other metrics that society historically judges a person’s worth by.

And despite your belonging to that privileged majority, you choose to side with the protagonist, who talks about an unfair caste system, or unequal wealth distribution, or the dangers of nepotism.

Here, in this moment in time, on a random Friday night as you lie against your self-made pillow fort, you are the protagonist. You understand her woes as she talks about a system that has failed her, you feel for her as she speaks of a brother who was killed over racist hate. Here, in this moment in time, you are someone else — someone who has suffered great injustice, someone who is seeking to rectify those wrongs, someone who is making sure no one will ever have to go through the pain of being a victim of all the wrongs you were a victim to. You can entirely relate to the other. 

This is what it means to have empathy, to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to understand the pain they are going through, and to feel that pain as deeply as though it were your own.

Monday dawns, bright and early, and you leave for your office. You set down your cup of coffee on your desk, and you crack your knuckles as you mentally prepare for another hectic work week.

Later that day, your manager announces that you’re getting promoted. There is a moment of silence as you share a look with your colleague who you know to be more qualified than you for this promotion. You are also aware of your manager’s biases against those of your colleague’s nationality, and you know you cannot put this down to harmless coincidence. 

In this moment, do you put your foot down, and refuse the promotion? Do you bring to mind the movie you watched on Friday night— the protagonist with all her fiery speeches against nepotism, against racism, against the otherisation of already marginalised communities?

Do you put your foot down, and practice the ethics you swore to live by as you watched a movie on a random Friday night? Do you put your foot down, because you remind yourself that inequality is unacceptable?

Or was that all it was— a movie on a Friday night? And all those commiserations with your colleague when your manager made those targeted remarks against his race, all those moments where you reminded your colleague that her talent would let her break the glass ceilings that social biases had put up— does all that mean nothing in the face of a promotion?

Are you willing to accept this injustice, only because it is in your favour?

Are you willing to be a bystander, and allow your workplace to foster a toxic work culture that places the worth of people in biases and prejudice, rather than in who they are and what they do?

Because an Upstander Culture is only fostered in the presence of the three E’s: Empathy, Ethics, and Equality.

The same three E’s you would have to have instilled within your core values, if you were to say no to that promotion, and stand up for your colleague, even when— especially when injustice favours you.

These same three E’s at the core of your company and community DNA is what will see the worth of people in the work they do. It is what will give them the respect they are due. It is what will create an Upstander Culture worth working within.

I challenge you to ask yourself these hard questions, as there is no easy answer. I challenge you to explore this deeply because I have been in this very position.