Richards - Go Together: How the Concept of Ubuntu Will Change How You Work, Live, and Lead

If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.

African Proverb

I was on a high.

Moments earlier, I had finished delivering a keynote speech at a prestigious northern California university about the critical importance of bringing kindness, positivity, and civility back to the American workplace. That was the key message from my first book, Making Work Work, and, ever since its release, I have been asked to share that message in speeches and workshops all over the country. On this particular day, I could not have dreamed for everything to flow together more smoothlythe large audience was enthusiastic and engaged, I delivered my message with as much passion and clarity as I could muster, and, immediately afterward, I was kindly given a long, standing ovation. Yes, I was indeed on a high.

It would not be long before I came crashing back down to earth.

Once all the post-speech handshakes and hugs from the audience were over, I noticed a young woman silently looking at me from the back of the auditorium. I was not sure if she was waiting to speak to me, so as the conference organizer and I walked past her on the way out of the auditorium, I smiled at her. Clearly uncomfortable, she looked down at the floor, avoiding eye contact with me. Initially, I did not think anything of our brief interaction, and the conference organizer and I continued walking toward the front of the building to wait for my ride to the airport. Moments later, the same young woman we had passed in the auditorium rushed over to us with tears in her eyes. There was an urgency on her face that immediately clued me in to the importance of what she was about to say to me.

I was right.

She grabbed my hand, locked her eyes onto mine with a seriousness that shook me to my core, and said the words that helped inspire me to write the book that you are currently reading.

Jordan (not her real name), while still squeezing my left hand, and with her voice trembling, said, Next week is my twenty-eighth birthday. And based on the workplace toxicity that Ive been dealing with for the past year, I made a decision...

At this point, she paused to look over her shoulder to quickly scan for any eavesdroppers before continuing in a softer tone.

I made a decision that I was going to end my life before living through another birthday.

Tears flowed from her eyes, and I sensed a relief in her body as those words escaped her lips. It was almost as if speaking those words to another person freed her from the suffocating prison of being alone and misunderstood.

The conference organizer, who was still at my side, stood in wide-eyed disbelief and covered her open mouth with her hand. The two of us briefly exchanged looks that silently communicated, Did you hear what I just heard? when the young womans grip on my hand tightened sharply. It was clear that she had to summon an enormous amount of courage to share these words, and her polite, but firm, hand squeeze was her way to ensure that she had my undivided attention.

The treatment that Ive been receiving at work is destroying my sense of self, my confidence, and, quite honestly, my will to live. It is like the hatefulness is everywhere. I said to myself that if I dont receive a sign in the next few days that there is a reason for me to go on, I would take my life the day before my birthday. I reluctantly attended this conference, and once you shared your story, you gave me hope that there are people out there who actually have an interest in changing things in this world. Your words allowed me to regain my power, and, most of all, you spoke to me. Your message was the sign I needed, and, because of you, I will be celebrating my twenty-eighth birthday, and hopefully many more to come. Before you left, I wanted to let you know that you literally saved my life. I no longer feel alone. Thank you.

Damn.

I gave Jordan a long hug as she buried her face in my chest and sobbed as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. Nothing needed to be said. Even though, on the surface, we could not have been any more differentshe was a five-foot-tall, twenty-seven-year-old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed white woman, and I was a six-foot-two, forty-three-year-old black manin the lobby of that universitys student union, we were the same. This was deeper than empathizing with her or feeling her pain. In that moment, I was her.

In Making Work Work, I opened the book with my story of attempting to end my own life due to the suffocating hopelessness that consumed me as a workplace bullying target. Sharing that very private moment in a very public way with the world was not easy. And as I comforted Jordan, I knew intimately the struggle that was waiting for her if she chose to share her story with anyone else. Sadly, there are no shortage of amateur psychologists out there who would be quick to offer their woefully uninformed diagnosis of Jordan as a weak-minded, spoiled princess who lacks the intestinal fortitude to handle the tough realities of working in the professional world.

Heres the thing, thoughthis is not a toughness issue. It never has been and it never will be. Workplace bullying is an unrelenting assault on your self-esteem, mental health, and physical well-beingand unless youve been on the wrong side of it, you have no idea how deeply it can affect you. Even worse, it is destroying lives all over the world. If you dont believe me, just type workplace bullying suicide stories into a Google search box for an extremely disturbing wake-up call.

Real human lives are at stake here.

Even though I consider myself fully awakened to this harsh reality, what Jordan did for me changed me. After that life-altering moment we shared together, I realized that I needed to widen my focus.