Choose to be Right, Not Popular

I want to tell you a story….      Imagine, if you will, a seventh grade classroom, filled with twelve and thirteen year old students.  In this school, there are three such classrooms.  Similarly, there are also three classrooms of sixth graders and three of eighth graders in this school.  Oh, and all nine classrooms are in a heated year-long  competition. The “Service Hours” Honor is at stake – a prestigious award for any classroom to win, proving their group spent this most time giving back to the community, and, (maybe more importantly to some) rewarded with an end-of year classroom pizza party.  Competition is fierce – for every hour a student participates in a community-related service role, the class is credited one service point.  At the end of the year, the class with the most points wins the adoration of the school – and the aforementioned pizza party.

Students take this competition very seriously.  Yes, it is about giving back to the community – but it is also a competition.  Winning is winning.

Back to our seventh grade classroom… the competition is tight this year.  This particular seventh grade classroom is in second place, trailing by a mere 10 points.  The teacher gives an inspiring pep talk.  One month to go.  Everyone needs to pitch in. Give back a little more.  Give of themselves.  Give of their time.

After class, the teacher pulls aside one of the classroom leaders, we’ll call him Tommy.   The teacher needs some help – there is a student, let’s call him John, who has not added many points to the classroom total this year and his additional points could really put their room over the top.  The teacher suggests Tommy “help” John understand how important his participation would be.

Tommy approaches John later that day and suggests that he join a group who would be painting a local childcare center that weekend. John politely declines.  Tommy explains, in stronger terms, that John’s help is not really voluntary anymore….he is expected to be a part of this “team”.  John, again, declines. Not his thing.

Next, things get ugly.  In an attempt to motivate John, Tommy turns up the heat.  He tells John that for every day he resists “doing his part”, there will be a consequence. Day one – John is grabbed afterschool by Tommy and some friends and duct-taped to a flagpole.  Day two – John receives threatening voicemails using profane language and racial slurs.  Day Three – Tommy  explains to John that if he doesn’t plan to help, that he “owes” his team….he needs to pay up - $100 to cover everyone’s lunch and refreshments while they work at the child care center.  And it goes on…

To make matters worse, Tommy has spread the word about John’s turncoat ways to their classmates.  Everyone now knows that John isn’t a team player.  They are going to lose this contest because of one guy – John.  So, John is shunned. He sits down at lunch and everyone else gets up and leaves the table.  The frustrations hits the brink – John throws his food trays across the cafeteria and storms out of school.

John takes his feud public. He makes a video documenting his ordeal.  When it goes viral, John’s classmates are furious at him. How could he throw them under the bus like that?!?!  People won’t understand that Tommy and the rest of the class were just trying to get John to be a part of the team, to contribute, to do his fair share – to help them win!

Now, take another moment – imagine again all these things happened in the same way – the contest, the competitive nature of the group, the leader looking for someone to guide a team member, the nature of how this teammate was being coerced, the terrible result – imagine all of that    ---   but now they're adults and in your office.

Bullying is bullying is bullying.  There are no excuses or exceptions.  And we need to open our eyes to how often we try to justify it.

So, I listen to way too much sports radio.  I know this seems like a digression – but bear with me.  While music has always been so integrated into my life, oddly, I’ve never been one to put on a music station in my car when I’m driving alone.  I like listening to conversations – and since political conversation on the radio these days is cartoonish at best, most of my driving time is spent listening to guys talk about sports.  I fully admit that I listen too much, too often, and there are more productive way to be spending my time… and yet I do it anyway. 

I mention this because this week, one topic has dominated the sports radio airwaves, and it really isn’t solely a “sports story” – in fact, I think it is a parenting story.  Richie Incognito, an offensive lineman for the Miami Dolphins has been accused by a teammate, Jonathan Martin, of bullying.  Maybe I’m downplaying the terminology here. What has actually happened is Jonathan Martin has been the apparent victim of workplace harassment, extortion and bigotry at the hand of Richie Incognito.   I won’t dwell too much on the details, as you can find them in countless articles published this week like this one: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/04/richie-incognito-jonathan-martin-racial-slur-threats_n_4213340.html.  In the end, fed up after yet another incident, Martin slammed down a tray of food during a lunch break at the Miami training facility and walked out.

Here is the amazing part to me – there are people out there, many in the NFL or former NFL players -- who feel like they can justify Incognito’s actions, and some actually blame Martin, the victim, for the problems he’s having!  I’ve read and heard comments like “he should have kept the issues internal to the team” and “he should have manned up and just hit Incognito”.  I’ve heard justifications like “every NFL rookie has to go through this” (Martin is actually a second year player, but this has been going on since last year) and “hazing builds a stronger team – brotherhood!”   Parts of this story actually made me sick to my stomach: http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2013/11/05/bullying-jonathan-martin-richie-incognito/3449621/

Where to start?  I think I should be very clear here – I’m not angry at Incoginto.  Some of you might find that unsettling, as there is plenty of evidence that would logically lead to having real anger at his actions.  And I’m not here to tell you that you shouldn’t be angry.   However, I choose not to be.  As a third party observer, what I feel is maybe not what you’d expect – I feel sympathy for Incognito.  This man is clearly broken. There is something missing from his life.  When people act in a way that makes others feel small, they are generally doing so to make themselves feel better.  The bully in grade school isn’t just a bully because he enjoys torturing his peers – he tortures his peers to give himself power and that makes him feel better.  And people who need to make themselves feel better at the expense of others clearly have issues. Bullies become bullies because something missing from their lives. 

This is not to suggest that Incognito is blameless.  Far from it.  He’s culpable for everything he did and should reap the repercussions.  But being angry with him is separate from wanting there to be consequences.  To do the things he’s done (and he has a long, ugly history of being a “bad boy”), I believe he must have a gaping hole in his soul.  It is my most sincerely hope, for his sake and those around him, he finds what he needs to repair it.  My guess is that won’t happen without a lot of professional help to guide the healing process. Let’s hope the ulcer isn’t so far gone that Incognito won’t accept some assistance in healing it.

What I see in this whole awful situation is a lack of leadership.  Let’s start with the coaches – there have been a couple of accounts of both players and coaches suggesting Martin should have “kept this in house” rather than allowing it to become public, as it is now.  Well, friends, if the management (i.e. “coaches”) wanted this to be an internal matter, they had their chance.  They could have created a culture of teamwork through support rather than torture (and make no mistake –“hazing” is torture.  Stop sugar coating it.  Duct taping a person  -- a human being – to a goal post…or forcibly gang-holding a person down and covering his entire body in Icy/Hot solution… or making someone run through a line where he is hit with bags filled with coins…that is torture no matter what more friendly term you’d like to attach to it).  The coaching staff could have created an environment with an ‘open door / no repercussion’ policy.  They could have guided the players to select high character guys as team leaders (ironically, Incoginto was, in fact, on the Leadership Council for the Dolphins).  They could have done any of these things, but they didn’t.

In fact, there are some reports that the coaches actually nudged Incognito to help”toughen up” Martin.  Want to know why?  Want to know Martin’s indiscretion?  Want to know what would so anger the coaching staff that they would encourage torture?  It was a doozie – you see, Jonathan Martin chose to not attend a non-mandatory, off-season training session.  So, instead of communicating with Martin, instead of discussing the importance of his attendance at such sessions, instead of investigating if there might be some reason he didn’t choose to attend….these so-called-leaders decided Martin needed to learn a lesson and “toughen up”.  Morons.  Shameful.  And if this information holds to be true, if they indeed encouraged Incognito’s behavior, they should all be fired.

There is another group who is culpable, too -- the players. Am I expected to believe they didn’t see the bullying?  Of course they did.  However, I have yet to see any information – neither evidence nor even an anecdote of how Martin’s teammates came to his support.  These big, brawny guys who pride themselves on being “brothers” and who claimed to have bonded through the “war on the field” shamefully sit by while one of their own is humiliated, extorted, threatened, and shunned by their peer?  The excuse of “clubhouse culture” is not acceptable – not for something like this.  Would you sit idly by if you knew a co-worker was abusing someone in your department?   Seriously think about that – if you saw someone being extorted, being physically roughed up, being called racial slurs, being shunned…  would you wash your hands of it?  If no one else was willing to call out this behavior, would you be okay with the mob-mentality acceptance? 

Here’s what I know – if this was happening around my kids, if they observed this type of behavior, I would not only want them to speak up about it, I would fully expect them to.  I want them to lead, not follow.  And to allow such behavior to exist, even if it isn’t being done to you – to allow it to exist and not to act is shameful. 

It so happens that Jack came upon a bullying situation earlier this year – for privacy reasons, I’m going to leave out the detail, but needless to say, there was a group of people who were overpowering an individual, and this individual was not the most popular person in school.  Many thought the group “cool” for being able to torment the individual as they did…. And Jack made a difficult decision.  He chose to be right rather than be popular.  He reported the problem, and the administration of the school handled things from there.

If my thirteen year olds son gets it – if he is willing to do what is right instead of what is popular -- surely grown men should be expected to as well.

To Richie Incognito, please find help. Admit your mistakes, take ownership, accept the consequences, learn from it and allow professionals to guide you to a better, healthier place. To his coaches and teammates, take a look in the mirror. No longer can you accept mob-mentality and allow this abuse.  You want kids to look up and idolize to you, earn it.  I know there are players and coaches who would never have allowed this to happen – Tony Dungy, Herm Edwards, J.J. Watts to name a few.  Be leaders, not followers. And to Jonathan Martin, thank you for having the courage to walk out and find a non-violent solution.  I’m sorry for what you’ve endured.  I’m glad that you’ve given us more focus and another opportunity to have this important national conversation.