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Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change at Work

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Tempered Radicals will appeal to all those who feel uncomfortable at work. Professor Meyerson draws on over 200 interviews in 3 companies and with many change agents to provide role models for how to shift the world of work to more closely match your own values, preferences, and background. The examples include people of different social identity groups, lifestyle preferences, values, and beliefs from the majority in their work units or companies.

A tempered radical is someone who responds to an inappropriate circumstance at work in a measured and thoughtful way, that leads to improving the situation for themselves and everyone else. They want change, but do not pursue a radical way of achieving that change.

You and your spouse have busy careers. Your spouse is away overnight, and the kids are home with the baby sitter. Your boss asks you to fly to New York to negotiate a last-minute deal. What do you do? In this case, the husband politely declines to go, and asks his boss to give him more warning in the future.

In a hard-driving technology company, people gently point out that 5:30 staff meetings mean missing dinner with the kids and gradually the meetings shift to earlier in the day.

A gay man hears another executive complaining about how gay people are always showing off their sexuality. The gay man points out that he doesn’t have pictures of his partner in his office, but the man who is complaining has pictures with his wife and children. Now, who’s advertising his sexuality?

Your company makes it hard to recycle. You arrange for appropriate containers to be placed at every desk, and people use them. The cleaning staff empties them at night.

Your company says it wants to hire African-Americans, but only recruits at top-level colleges where your company is not competitive. You quietly put up notices in churches with African-American worshippers to let people know that they should apply at your company.

You want to do a social audit of your company’s performance, but no one else knows what that is. You use your training program experiences to educate others and come up with a unanimous recommendation of your group’s task force that such an audit be held. The CEO agrees to let you go ahead.

By reacting to misperceptions, oversights, and intolerance, individuals can help others to improve their perspective on what needs to be done. The environment improves, and at the right time greater gains can follow. That’s the main message of this book. It is all about leading from wherever you are in the organization, rather than a book for CEOs (although they will learn a lot about how to create and nurture a diverse workplace).

In all the environments that Professor Meyerson investigated over 15 years, she found the following process at work:

(1) People resist quietly in ways that let them stay true to themselves.

(2) Personal threats are turned into opportunities to teach and improve the situation.

(3) Focus shifts to broadening the impact of the needed change through getting support and negotiating for change.

(4) Small wins are leveraged into bigger ones through skillful improvisation.

(5) Organizing with others to take collective action that leads to bigger changes.

In each case, the person has grown beyond thinking of their career as the only game in town. They are trying to establish a wholeness with work, personal life, and self. In many ways the book reminds me of the better books on communications skills. You have to know what you want, tell people what you want, and focus on ways of getting changes made that work best.

So, the role model here is someone like Lech Walesa rather than the radical firebrand who causes confrontation and loses. Although the road is a difficult one, many people will find it psychologically and emotionally rewarding. People “do make a difference” in ways other than being lone heroes.

The book’s appendices have extensive methodological details that made the work much more understandable.

I was very impressed with this book. It’s the kind of subtle, careful work that you don’t expect to find coming from a business school professor, or Harvard Business School Press. Professor Meyerson describes herself as a tempered radical also, who felt apart from the system even while she worked on her doctorate. I look forward to reading her next book.

What should be changed at your workplace? How can you help others to understand the need to change? How can your intervention help build small wins that will establish the validity of the principles you favor? How can you then build broader support?

Be the role model you would like to have at work!

Many of us work in places where we have a vision for how things could be better -- how we could work differently, treat people more respectfully, act on our values. If only, we think -- we could do something different--then we would really feel good about ourselves and proud about the places we work. This book inspires you to lead that change, to act on your vision. In these times when the impulse is to hunker down and just do our jobs, Meyerson gives us role models of people who have been everyday heroes, leading change that made their organizations better for everybody.

Meyerson's wonderful book has many virtues, it is well-written, it is well-researched, and it has diverse and lively examples. Best of all, it shows that leadership is not something that is reserved for the most senior managers in an organization, but rather something that can be done by anyone. Another great virtue is that it shows how to make a difference in a company without selling out or faking it. It should be required reading for everyone before they enter the workforce. Companies would make more money, treat their people better, and be filled with more joy and less fear if leaders at all levels followed her wise advice, and adopted the spirited, but constructive, attituide that exudes from this fine book.

First, let me start by saying that I liked this book and have been recommending it to others. As a "tempered radical" I wish that I had read this book early in my career. I had the wrong impression that hard work and results were enough as long as there were no bodies along the way. Young, naïve, and idealistic. Consequently, I am recommending this book to people starting their careers so that they get the reality of work as well as to others who just do not get that their approach is a major irritant to the powers that be.

I also liked this book because the author used her premise to package her ideas so that her tempered radicalism around race, gender, and other legally protected groups could be better heard by others. I came from academia too (and even received my PhD from Michigan where she had an early appointment in her career) but left that environment because of the oppression of free thinking and any kind of difference. This background added to my wish that this book had been around 10 years ago. I might have better succeeded in that environment if I had had this framework from which to work.

Although I like this book, I did not give the book 4 or 5 stars because the best of her book and the most important aspect of her premise was saved until last - the downside of the "tempered" approach. I do believe that revolutionary results can be achieved by evolutionary steps - small steps can achieve great things as they add up without the major heartburn or resistance that a revolution can cause. However, maybe evolution is not the best means to the ends and that cannot be decided until one decides whom they are and what they are about and decide whether tempered or full scale radicalism is what they want to do. This is a choice and is worthy of exposing at the beginning of the book. So although I may have succeeded in academia if I had had her premise from which to work, I would not have been happy because I would not have been true to me and the essence of who I was or am.

Evolution vs. revolution. To choose one must first know what one is willing to give up.

I bought this book because of it's universal applicability to business and Corporate America. What I found was that Debra Meyerson's book provided insight and a template on how to successfully effect change in any established group dyanic or organization from businesses to schools to non-profits to a small circle of friends. She effectively shows how a person can be true to their belief system and values, yet be a strong contributor in an organization that may not share the same beliefs...resulting in small but positive changes that pave the way for others.

This is an important book for you to read if your gender, ethnicity, or lifestyle makes you an outsider in your workplace. Debra Meyerson gives examples of how employees have successfully taken small steps to change their companies so they are accepted and their voices are heard.

In the opening pages of Tempered Radicals, it is easy to see that Professor Meyerson has hit upon some very important issues in the workplace. As you read on, she also provides interesting and effective solutions. This book is well researched and thought out. It represents a very creative perspective on the modern organization. A definite read for all!

This was a great read. This book really helped me make sense of some of my struggles at work. Events that used to fill me with anger and frustration don't anymore. I can now look at my work situation in a new light, and react to events in a completely new way. Knowing I'm not the only one who feels like I don't "fit in" has been a real help. In fact, it's been interesting seeing how I and other tempered radicals DO make a difference in our company.

I strongly recommend this book!

I first came across Stanford Organizational Behavior professor, Debra Meyerson's work as I was gathering research for the Responsibility for Choices chapter of my book, The Leader's Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success. Her fifteen years of research on how "everyday leaders stick to their values, assert their agendas, and provoke learning and change without jeopardizing hard-won careers" fit perfectly with the focus of this timeless leadership principle.

In her October 2001, Harvard Business Review article, "Radical Change, the Quiet Way," Meyerson finds that at "some point, many managers yearn to confront assumptions, practices, or values in their organizations that they feel are counterproductive or even downright wrong. Yet they can face an uncomfortable dilemma: If they speak out too loudly, resentment may build toward them; if they remain silent, resentment will build inside them." She discovered that the best leaders "learn to rock the boat without falling out of it."

This book is full of inspiring examples, solid research, practical how-to sidebars, and sound advice on leading change from positions of little or no formal power. Debra provides a powerful "evolutionary's manifesto" to being a Leader rather than just Follower or Wallower of change, injustice, or bad management from above (terms from my most recent book, Growing @ the Speed of Change: Your Inspir-actional How-To Guide For Leading Yourself and Others through Constant Change).

"Tempered radicals...mitigate their anger and use it to fuel their actions. In the world of physics, when something is 'tempered' it is toughened by alternately heating and cooling. Tempered steel, for example, becomes stronger and more useful through such a process. In a similar way, successfully navigating the seemingly incongruous extremes of challenging and upholding the status quo can help build the strength and organizational significance of tempered radicals."

"The first and most important characteristic of encounters turned into opportunities is that people see that they have a choice in how to respond. The second critical characteristic is that people recognize a variety of productive responses fall between the extremes of silent submission and aggressive confrontation. Being prepared to look for these alternatives in any encounter is critical to making effective choices in the moment."

"Tempered radicals inspire change. Yet their leadership resides equally in their capacity to inspire people. They inspire by having courage to tell the truth even when it's difficult to do so, and by having the conviction to stay engaged in tough conversations. They inspire by demonstrating the commitment to stay focused on their larger ideals even when they suffer consequences or get little recognition for doing so. Their leadership does not rely on inspiring through periodic heroism and headlines. Their leadership inspires - and matters - in big and small ways every day."

I found this book inspiring. As a person who has always considered myself at-odds with my company, it gave me hope that I too could be a leader and make a difference at work, without selling out. Thanks for this fabulous resourse. It was not only inspirational, personally, but I thoroughly enjoyed the case histories.