MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Leading in an Age of Employee Activism

Leaders have been encouraging employees to speak up for years — after all, a healthy organization needs people willing to point out problems and share their ideas for improvement. But having invited dialogue, many managers are now finding that they are getting more than they bargained for.

Increasingly, employees are starting challenging conversations with management: “So, what’s our policy on Black Lives Matter, gender equity, and climate change? Or human rights in our supply chain?”

About the Author

Megan Reitz (@meganreitz1) is a professor of leadership and dialogue at Hult International Business School. She is the author of Dialogue in Organizations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and coauthor of Mind Time (Harper Thorsons, 2018) and Speak Up (FT Press, 2019). John Higgins is research director at The Right Conversation and a research fellow at GameShift. He is coauthor of Speak Up and Leadership Unraveled, which will be released by Routledge in 2022.

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