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well together? Yes—if they respect the values of those with whom they work without trying to convert them, and if the organization itself has a clear values statement and helps people walk the talk, meaning that they have taken the time to educate people about what those values actually mean.
    a conflict of values
    One of the stranger workplace conflicts I’ve been called in to resolve involved whether it was appropriate for a woman to take time out of the middle of the day to get her nails done. This was not extra time away from work: She worked long hours and made up the time but the president’s secretary did not like her, labeled her as “difficult,” and objected to this “off
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    work” time. The Nail Offender’s immediate supervisor let her off the hook because she was a good worker. The secretary did not think this was “right,” and thus ensued years of petty fighting between the two of them.
    Believe it or not, I was called in to negotiate when the conflict had reached the stage at which the two workers refused to speak to each other and their problems interfered with their ability to get work done. Ironically, neither the president of the company nor the HR director wanted to get in the middle of the dispute.
    What this boiled down to was a conflict of values. We all have different values. No problem there. The problem comes in when our values are in conflict and the organization has not made it clear where it stands on these values issues. In this case the conflict was over whether it was appropriate to take time off in the middle of the day for an undertaking that appears frivolous to others.
    The real weenie here, of course, was the president, who had not made it clear what his (and the organization’s) values and polices were about flextime, use of personal time out of the office, and so on. He really thought that everyone should be in the office from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. unless they were bleeding, but over time he had succumbed to popular demand for a quasi flextime policy that had merely left everyone confused. The Nail Standoff was simply the symptom of a larger issue—
    the fact that the company had not explicitly and consistently stated a policy on flextime and workplace hours. Thus, the conflict was beyond the ability of the two employees to solve. The company had to put a stated policy in place.
    One way to deal with a values conflict is to analyze the issue and then discuss the clash with the other person or group. (Sometimes, if the situation has gone on too long, you may need a facilitator to accomplish this.) If you can move your
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    own understanding beyond “right” versus “wrong” and recognize that you simply have different values, the situation may become easier to bear. Then it becomes a matter of deciding whether one person’s values are in conflict with the organization’s stated values. If so, you need to resort to a complaint to a higher authority, as outlined in later chapters. Before doing so, however, I’d caution you to consider that all-important question: “How important is this really? ” If neither party’s values are inconsistent with the organization’s stated values, you need to negotiate a resolution of the values clash that you can both live with—perhaps with the help of an intermediary. They are many negotiation and conflict management tips in later chapters of this book.
    illegal harassment and discrimination:
    true legal violations
    By far the most frequent claim of unacceptable workplace behavior that crosses the legal line remains harassment and/or discrimination. When I wrote my first book on harassment in 1992, I would have assumed that we’d be finished with this topic by now. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Thanks, in part, to bra-snapping EVPs, these claims remain prevalent and real.
    But what constitutes illegal harassment