The imagery with which the cases DWDD-presenter promised to get well soon, was a bit of kitsch: “This mirror will hang in my room.” Mirror? As if everything revolves around what he could learn from the drama to become even better – and now on.
But it’s about something else. For power in the workplace and the call for social safety, which is also heard in parliament, at companies and at universities. You can boldly dismiss that demand as tyranny of tender souls who experience any criticism as an offense. But you can also see it as talking back to bullies, albeit often afterwards and therefore too late. Or even as a typical product of a society that propagates that an individual should always be able to develop himself everywhere – just like Van Nieuwkerk.
In addition, the Dutch like to present labor relations as horizontally as possible – we all count in this company! Yes, but in a culture of continuous review, assessment and rank. Everyone is equal and – unfortunately someone has to lose weight again – his own, fragile brand. That is the paradox of this modern individualism: to be wholly yourself, under constant surveillance. In that respect, too, it is a spectacle DWDD educational: the Top 2000 à Go-Go has now been cancelled, not because the presenter has also misbehaved there, but because the Van Nieuwkerk brand has been damaged. With success he was in charge of everything, without it he can’t even talk about himself anymore.
Made under the previous editor-in-chief NRC acquainted with a variant of leadership fueled by urgency and drift, which could go through and through (in a farewell interview, remorse was heard about the fiercest eruptions). The newspaper now has a colleague code for social safety. It prescribes, among other things, that we “respect” each other and “listen before we speak” (a bit tricky when starting a conversation, but the intention is clear).
If such a guideline counteracts harmful behavior in an organization, then that’s great. But it DWDDdrama shows that it is not the heart of the matter. It is not on the horizontal axis, but on the vertical: how power and control are divided. Precarious labor relations – a charismatic ringleader with a shell of interchangeable foot soldiers – are the real problem. No code that should teach employees to be polite to each other will help against this.
You wonder if some companies wouldn’t benefit from a course on ‘assertiveness and arguing’. Respect is nice, but if it smothers differences of opinion and criticism, you only create a new kind of insecurity: the fear of stepping on each other’s toes.
While those of some bosses, in Hilversum and beyond, could use quite a bit of a beating.
Sjoerd de Jong writes a column here every Thursday.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 24, 2022