[predaking]

I share a similar background to yours (employee, leader, founder, diverse org size) and would have agreed with you if it were not for the context of these changes. I too want to ensure people will safe and respected.

However:

* I don't believe any enlightened leadership posts publicly about wide-spread and company affected policy changes before informing and/or discussing with your staff. That's disrespectful to the people you serve.

* no enlightened leadership leads to a situation where 1/3 of your staff leaves on contentious terms. If that leadership was that enlightened, they either wouldn't be leaving or would never have been hired. It's indicative of leadership problems, cultural problems, and possibly a hiring problem.

* I don't believe at all that enlightened leadership discards its values the moment that they become difficult to uphold.

* If the new policies weren't in reaction to the leader being called to be accountable to the people he served and the mission he told them they were on, I'd probably be more agreeable to your point. In a vaccuum a safe place for people of all politica and creeds (short of outright hate) to work together is what you want. What I don't want is an unsafe space where no one feels they can question the leadership or hold the company to its values.

That being said, I totally respect your coming at this from a different angle and I agree that there's certainly more than one way to look at this (as the reactions in this thread indicate).

[JamesBarney]

> no enlightened leadership leads to a situation where 1/3 of your staff leaves on contentious terms. If that leadership was that enlightened, they either wouldn't be leaving or would never have been hired. It's indicative of leadership problems, cultural problems, and possibly a hiring problem.

To be fair to them the world has changed a lot in the last few years.

I used to talk politics with friends and family but I've have had to stop over the last couple years because because of how divisive it's gotten. I now avoid those conversations because I don't want to lose family or friends. I'm center left and people who preciously were slightly left of me would probably consider me a nazi, and people who used to be slightly to the right of me would consider me a communist.

I could see the same changes happening at work. And conversations that used to be ok escalating into insanely heated situations.

[Veen]

> That's disrespectful to the people you serve.

Perhaps this is not an enlightened view, and I would not have used the word “serve,” but employees serve the leadership, not the other way around. This is a company, not the government. As a citizen, the government serves me. As an employee, I serve my employer.

[predaking]

"but employees serve the leadership, not the other way around. "

Leadership is all about serving the people you're shepherding. There is a responsibility and a stewardship that comes with wearing the crown, and it's not always for everyone. =)

[mpweiher]

Which is why, as an employee, the employer pays me, and not the other way around.