Influence & Co. Client and Partner Relationship Expectations

All Influence & Co. employees, clients, vendors, and partners are expected to abide by the following components of our company handbook. It is our duty to protect our employees and our clients to create a safe and inclusive environment for all — you included.

Failure to comply could result in the execution of clause 6D of our client agreement:

Influence & Co. may terminate this Agreement or at its option suspend its performance under this Agreement without incurring any obligation or liability to Client or any other person or entity by reason of such termination or suspension, each effective immediately upon written notice to Client, in the event:

(v) Client engages in conduct that, Influence & Co. believes, in its sole discretion, is or reflects disruptive or disorderly conduct, including, but not limited to, acts of violence, stalking, or threats of physical violence against any person, including without limitation Influence & Co.’s members, managers, owners, employees, and agents, or fails to comply with Influence & Co.’s documented Anti-Discrimination, Anti-Harassment, and Bullying Policy.

Note: We are all human, and to be human is to make mistakes. Our request is that if you catch yourself making a mistake regarding the guidelines outlined in this document — or if someone on our team speaks up to point out that you’ve done so — you acknowledge the mistake, apologize, and attempt to avoid it moving forward. Being accountable for our mistakes is the best way we can learn and grow from them!

Code of Conduct

Our Influence & Co. team consists of wonderful professionals from different backgrounds. Our workplace values diversity, inclusion, equity, and respect, and we have created a code of conduct to help us remain true to those values. 

This is not an exhaustive list of things to avoid saying or doing. Instead, it’s a code of conduct meant to help you think through whether your language and behavior are appropriate for our environment and to help everyone remain respectful of one another.

• Be welcoming. Influence & Co.’s environment should be a place that welcomes and supports individuals of all backgrounds and identities. This includes, but is not limited to, members of any race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, immigration status, socioeconomic class, education level, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, size, family status, health status, political belief, religion, or mental or physical ability. 
  
  
• Be respectful. You might disagree with individuals you work with, and that is only human. Being respectful, however, means you come from a place of seeking to understand and choosing to act considerately toward the other person, even when you disagree. 
  
  We acknowledge that disagreement can be highly demanding of emotional labor. Please assess your own bandwidth and know that you always have the right to draw a boundary. 
  
  
• Be mindful of your language. Do not insult others or make them feel isolated for holding a different point of view. Harassment and other exclusionary behaviors are absolutely not acceptable.
  
  Language is one of the most accessible tools for harm. At any moment, language can be weaponized to target folks based on their identities and cultures. Any identity-charged harmful language is not tolerated at Influence & Co. This includes, but is not limited to, slurs, tropes, stereotypes, mocking accents or dialects, and more.
  
  We recognize that ableist terms are particularly ingrained in everyday language. Influence & Co. staff are to put in their best efforts to refrain from using words such as crazy, insane, psycho, blind spots, and other terms that either stigmatize mental illness and/or disability or equate genuine lived experiences with ignorance or inability (e.g., paralyzed by fear, the blind leading the blind, falling on deaf ears, etc.).
  
  We acknowledge that binary gendered language can be harmful and exclusionary. We hold space for all genders. We affirm that trans women are women, trans men are men, trans is an umbrella term and there is no wrong way to be trans, and nonbinary folks are valid. We understand that gender differs from sex and commit to using gender-focused language (e.g., women, men, nonbinary, masc, femme, etc., instead of male and female). When we refer to women and men, those are trans-inclusive terms. We aim to use language such as all genders rather than women and men in order to challenge the gender binary. We will refrain from language that focuses on sex (such as male and female) because we know gender goes beyond our biological traits. We commit to centering all genders, regardless of how many gender-diverse folks are currently in the space. This also applies to heteronormativity. We commit to using neutral and inclusive language such as partner, spouse, etc., rather than gendered assumptions such as husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend. 

This code of conduct applies to every individual at Influence & Co. and those who partner and associate with the organization. Our goal is that this code of conduct never needs to be referenced because we hire and work with amazingly talented, respectful, and kind people who conduct themselves in this manner as a norm. 

This code of conduct was inspired by and borrowed heavily from our friends at Zapier. It has been edited and supplemented by consultants at Bakau Consulting.

Anti-Discrimination, Anti-Harassment, and Bullying Policy

Influence & Co. is committed to providing an environment of mutual respect and zero tolerance for discrimination in regards to race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation, and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information (including characteristics and testing), military and veteran status, incarceration, sex work, and any other characteristic or lived experience. 

Definitions and Examples

Discrimination: Discrimination refers to an action or a decision that treats a person or a group badly for identity-centered reasons such as race, age, disability, and more.

Discrimination may take on forms including, but not limited to:

• Verbal or written slurs
• A lack of promotion and advancement opportunities, as well as demotion and termination of employment, due to identity or other personal characteristics
• Wage gaps due to identity and other characteristics not associated with qualifications
• Exclusion
• Stereotyping, racial profiling, and labeling persons
• Tone policing
• Cultural appropriation and mocking of tradition

Harassment: Harassment is a form of discrimination. It includes any unwanted physical or verbal behavior that offends or humiliates. Harassment is behavior that persists over time, but some serious one-time incidents can also be considered harassment.

Harassment can take forms including, but not limited to:

• Verbal harassment
• Yelling
• Gossiping 
• Microaggressions 
• Slurs or threats 
• Unfair or inaccurate criticism
  
  
• Physical harassment 
• Threat or intent to cause harm
• Any destruction of property belonging to Influence & Co. or to a colleague, client, or community member
• Physical violence 
• Disrespect of personal space (e.g., coming too close after being told not to) 
  
  
• Sexual harassment 
• Sexually explicit language 
• Sharing images or videos of a sexual nature or of nudity
• Jokes with sexual connotations, unwelcome remarks of a sexual nature, or sexual insinuation 
• Sexually advancing comments and gestures with actual or implied work consequences 
• Unwanted physical contact such as touching, hugging, petting, or pinching 
• Physical assaults of a sexual nature 
• Repeated explicit discussion of sexual assault without content warnings
  
  
• Psychological harassment 
• Gaslighting
• Isolating or exclusion 
• Spreading rumors, gossip, or inaccurate and knowingly false information 
• Minimizing or trivializing
  
  
• Online harassment 
• Sending threatening emails or messages
• Sharing humiliating videos, images, messages, or stories 
• Non-consensual distribution of images or videos 
• Spreading gossip over social media, internal chat networks such as Slack, emails, or messages 

Bullying: Bullying is a form of aggression in which there is a power imbalance. The person doing the bullying has power over the person being victimized. It is generally ongoing. 

Harassment is similar to bullying whereby a person is targeted and hurt. Bullying turns into harassment when a person is targeted because of their protected identities mentioned above. 

Bullying can take the form of, but is not limited to:

• Physical 
• Verbal
• Psychological
• Online 

Behaviors outlined above will not be tolerated. If you voice experiences of any of the above, you will be believed. Survivors and those who have experienced harassment, bullying, discrimination, microaggressions, and more will be believed, listened to, and supported. 

Call-In and Call-Out Expectations

We believe in holding ourselves and others accountable. Sometimes this means being called in when our outlooks, actions, or interactions don’t match Influence & Co.’s core values of support, respect, trust, and evolution.

Influence & Co. encourages employees to prioritize call-ins where possible. Call-ins come from a place of compassion, empathy, and understanding that we are all learning.

Calling in refers to drawing someone’s attention to their behavior and contextualizing it so that they understand the harm and are welcomed in to shared knowledge. By learning about why their behavior was harmful, they are able to assess how to do better and mediate the harm caused. 

Call-ins provide an opportunity and space to dive in deeper. It works when there is true collaboration and a desire to learn and understand. It is based on clarifying intentions and moving past assumptions.

Tips for how to call in individuals in a safe and respectful way: 

• Allocate enough time and a safe and private space to talk.
• Focus on how to call out the behavior, not the person. 
• Challenge the concept, not the person.
• We all exist within systems of oppression, and they tend to make their way into our consciousness. No one is immune to this, so when challenging someone’s behavior, it can help to name the system they were influenced by.
• Ask open-ended questions: how, why, what, when, and who.
• Treat call-ins as an opportunity to reflect.

Calling in also expends emotional labor, which marginalized folks are expected to practice at disproportionate rates. While call-ins will be prioritized where possible, marginalized folks will not be tone policed if call-outs become necessary. 

Call-outs are generally less discreet than call-ins and may be voiced with more frustration and demands for accountability than call-ins, which request accountability. Call-outs may be necessary in the following exemplary cases (this list is non-exhaustive): 

• You are setting a boundary in that moment to let someone know their actions/words are not acceptable.
• You need to interrupt in order to prevent further harm.
• Folks have ignored your call-ins and have chosen to remain closed off to growth.
• Folks continue to perpetuate the same harm. 
• Multiple folks have experienced harm from the same person, and the harm is profound enough to make a generous call-in emotionally impossible. 

Where possible, conflicts with clients will be used as learning opportunities for the team. The person affected has the final say in whether the incident is shared in order to maintain their boundaries and confidentiality. Learning opportunities may look like meeting discussions, collective problem-solving, emails, and more.

In instances where a client mistreats, harms, harasses, or discriminates against an employee in a way they feel is severe, Influence & Co. may choose to end the client relationship. 

Definitions

• Calling in, coined by Ngoc Loan Tran in 2013, is an alternative to calling out. Rather than calling out problematic, harmful, or microaggressive behavior, calling in compassionately invites the antagonist to examine their behavior and its impacts, reflect, and learn from it. Calling in is an act of community care, demanding accountability and respect for all.
  
  
• Emotional labor, coined by Arlie Hochschild in 1983, is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job or appease someone in a position of organizational or societal power and privilege. It often disproportionately impacts marginalized folks who are expected to remain calm, gentle, and pleasant in the face of oppression.
  
  
• Tone policing is a tactic whereby someone dismisses the ideas and sentiments being communicated when they are perceived to be conveyed with emotions such as anger, frustration, or impatience. Tone policing contributes to racist tropes, such as the angry Black woman stereotype or the sassy Latina stereotype, and is therefore harmful in that it limits emotional scope for many folks who may fear reinforcing an existing stereotype.