Leaders Need to Fully Understand How Sexual Harassment by Leaders Impacts Their Employees in Business and at Work

“No one ever told me at the time that I made them uncomfortable.”

As I started to write this blog post over the last week, my local public radio station had just broadcast Governor Cuomo’s above quote. As defined in law and regulation, it’s not the responsibility of the subordinate employee to tell their manager that what the manager is doing is making them uncomfortable: instead, it’s the clear responsibility of the manager to fully ensure that they are not engaged in any behavior that has been defined as sexual harassment under state and federal law in the first place. 

Cuomo has also responded to the sexual harassment allegations against him:

“I never intended to offend anyone or cause any harm. I spend most of my life at work and colleagues are often also personal friends.”

“To be clear I never inappropriately touched anybody and I never propositioned anybody and I never intended to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but these are allegations that New Yorkers deserve answers to.”

Speaking as both a workplace no-harassment trainer and a harassment complaint investigator, there’s no such thing as appropriate touching at work. No one – particularly leaders interacting with subordinate employees – should touch anyone in the workplace. Period.

I’ve conducted many sexual harassment prevention training sessions in the 30-odd years I’ve been an HR practitioner and a workplace harassment complaint investigator. In my training and investigation travels, I can anecdotally report at this writing that (hopefully) most trainees understand that they

• Can’t touch others in a sexual manner;
• Threaten others; and
• Sexually assault others.

From that perspective, the pickle in which Cuomo finds himself is not about his political affiliation / politics.  It’s a more universal issue to which anyone in a leadership position must pay close attention: the impact (not the intent) of a leader’s conduct anywhere on the sexual harassment spectrum with subordinate employees is compounded and made more harmful precisely due to their position of power.

With regard to the fact-gathering investigation process into such allegations and the length of time it should take: in a typical workplace, the organization’s leader would be suspended with or without pay pending the outcome of the investigation, which should not take many months, rather at the most, several months.  In Cuomo’s case, the allegations are all at this writing coming from former employees, so a decision to let the leader who is the target of the investigation remain in the workplace during the course of the investigation can vary by employer culture and several other factors. In my experience, the decision has always been to ask the target of the investigation to stay out of the workplace pending the outcome of the investigation to best determine if there’s a 51% or greater chance that the allegations are true.  NYS Attorney General Letitia James’s investigation response has been spot on at this writing; and this workplace is anything but typical.

With regard to terminating the leader’s employment: typically, a termination decision is based on the results of the investigation, not on the allegations alone. Fact discovery drives a termination decision: for New York employers, as mentioned above, there has to be a 51% or greater likelihood that the harassment occurred – employers are not required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the harassment occurred.

Until the recent white-hot spotlight on the more subtle (yet just as harmful to subordinate employees) allegations against Cuomo, it has been difficult for decades to get employees and leaders at all levels to understand that the following allegations against Cuomo fall on the Sexual Harassment incident scale:

• An ex-aide alleges Mr. Cuomo asked about her sex life and her opinion of dating older men.
• Another woman alleges that Cuomo had made her uncomfortable by asking questions about her romantic life and kissing her on the hand. Cuomo’s response was that’s how he generally interacts with his staff.
• Cuomo apologized if his actions had made these women uncomfortable, as it was not his intention. As I’ve explain in No-Harassment training sessions and previous blog posts, it’s the impact that matters, not the intention – factually, and by law. 

These additional allegations fall on the more obvious end of the Sexual Harassment incident scale:

• Another former aide alleges the governor ‘kissed me on the lips.’
• A third woman recounted an unwanted advance from the governor at a wedding. (Since a governor is always “on the job,” this allegation potentially counts as a workplace allegation, pending the outcome of the NYS Attorney General’s investigation).
• Another woman has alleged that Cuomo had given her an unsolicited “intimate embrace” after summoning her to a hotel room in 2000. She said she had resisted when he tried to do it a second time.
• And yet another woman alleges Cuomo had closed the door to a room in the Governor’s mansion, reached under her blouse and proceeded to grope her in a sexual manner.

Frankly, the entire narrative of these allegations against Cuomo is not only a cautionary tale for all of us in the workplace, it’s also a convenient story arc, perfect for leadership No-Harassment training.

Leaders: have you ensured that you know how sexual and other harassment impacts your employees – and do you definitively know what workplace harassment is under law and regulation, in business and at work?