E17 Solving Sexual Harassment & Bullying
Bullying and sexual harassment are real issues that plague organizations and impede performance. In the United States, 81% of women have reported being sexually harassed. When that harassment occurs at work, four out of five women who are harassed leave their jobs within two years. That’s an incredible detriment to the woman leaving and to the organization losing a talented employee.
One solution for greatly reducing sexual harassment is by building empathy. Morgan Mercer is CEO of Vantage Point. They have developed an innovative Virtual Reality training platform designed to build empathy and help companies prevent harassment and bullying. By creating immersive experiences, Morgan and her team are helping organizations resolve one of society’s greatest social issues.
In this interview, Morgan explains why we need better training for a safer workplace, the impact of #MeToo on training standards, and how to build empathy through immersive experiences. She also discusses her experience as a woman of color in the tech industry, her drive to empower others through VR, and her take on the future of VR.
Morgan and Vantage Point are based out of Los Angeles and serve clients around the world.
Morgan Mercer:
What you do directly impacts what you see. And so, the experience I have is going to be different from the experience you have, depending on what we do, which is a lot more true to life, to the ways that the world works. If I speak up sooner, the situation gets better. If I don't speak up at all, the situation doesn't get better. And if I speak up later, it's better than not doing anything, but there's something that could have been done sooner.
Don MacPherson:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to 12 Geniuses. This is Don MacPherson, your podcast host. In Season 2 of the show, we've been exploring the theme of creativity and innovation. This week's guest is Morgan Mercer, CEO of Vantage Point. What Morgan and her team at Vantage Point are doing is using virtual reality to prevent sexual harassment and bullying while building more compassion and empathy in the workplace. It's an immersive experience that is far more engaging than traditional classroom training or watching a video. You can actually feel what the victim might be feeling. I got a demo of the Vantage Point training platform just before the interview with Morgan. I can honestly say that being in this virtual environment and watching someone get harassed and bullied, triggered strong feelings of shock and disgust. I was quite surprised how real it felt. In this interview, Morgan talks about the innovative platform, Vantage Point, has created, her journey as a female entrepreneur and what the future of virtual reality will be like.
Morgan, welcome to 12 Geniuses.
Morgan Mercer:
Hi, thank you for having me.
Don MacPherson:
Thanks for being here. Maybe you could just talk about the problem or problems that Vantage Point is trying to solve within organizations.
Morgan Mercer:
So, we started with anti-sexual harassment training, but when we look at how we're going to expand out in the future, we're really looking at issues that impact society as a whole. Really do focus on areas like impacting gender inequitable views or gender equity as a whole, etc., and really training areas where traditional training formats don't necessarily work. So, really where the technology can be most applicable. The one thing I say is that what you don't want to do is take something that is flat format, or whatever it may be, and just move it to an immersive medium because that's not serving anyone. And so, really when we look at where this technology can really come in and make something significantly more applicable, really actually teach a concept that's not being understood, it comes down to anything related to empathy, EQ, EI, where a sense of presence, a sense of immersion, things like gaze, tonality, the contextual details truly do make up the experience or the learnings of the experience.
And then secondary, anything where self-insight or the ability to assess behaviors is beneficial. So, things like negotiation skills, that's something where I'm particularly passionate about it because women aren't taught to negotiate. But that being said, it could be used for women and men. And being able to actually leverage the technology to recognize tonality, sentiment, confidence, how somebody positions their counter-argument, etc., and actually look at that data at scale and use it to train people to negotiate better. That's something where you can do that with this technology, but you can't do that in person. Those are the areas that we're looking at.
Don MacPherson:
And you have started with sexual harassment training. Can you talk about the extent of the issue? Let's focus on the United States.
Morgan Mercer:
Over the last year to two years, we've heard a lot about it in the news; 385 of Fortune 500 companies now have headquarters or offices located in the states that are regulated to have this type of training. Essentially what we saw was Harvey Weinstein and a few other large names, and when I say a few, there were dozens, and dozens, and dozens, broke headlines. The one thing I always said before that was, women don't speak out unless they're speaking out in unison. And that's really what we saw with the wave of Me Too. Then, as you started to examine the training, the policies that we had in place, you started to see, okay, it's regulated at the state level for private sector, for public sector. Many states have it or requirements around it, regulated at the state level for the private sector.
And a lot of states didn't have training requirements. And so, as Me Too broke, you started to see this massive social movement, you started to see the breadth of it. So, 81% of women have been sexually harassed. Reports have consistently gone up. 80% of women leave jobs within two years of reporting sexual harassment. The one thing we haven't yet quantified, which I particularly love to talk about, is the economic impact of that. Because when you think about women getting their first job, they're already not paid the same dollar to a man's dollar when you have promotional opportunities occurring at the two-year mark, right? And you have women leaving, or promotional opportunities occurring at every one-year mark, and you have women leaving their roles prior to their promotional opportunities or prior to their being able to receive a pay raise.
Typically, when you negotiate your salary for the next job, you negotiate 15% or 20% or whatever it may have been of your previous salary. You have to look at the overarching economic impact of that. So, that's something we haven't quantified. When you look at the non-quantifiable impacts, so some statistics in recruiting, 50% of employees won't, or over 50% of employees won't work for companies that have tarnished brand images, right? And then, when you look at these companies that have these massive lawsuits, the impact on productivity, the impact on employee performance, the impact on media branding, etc., it's this massive, massive issue that now companies are starting to take very seriously.
Don MacPherson:
Can you talk about what the experience of the individual is when they're going through the training and how the training that you're delivering differentiates from traditional sexual harassment or other training that would be comparable?
Morgan Mercer:
The one thing, just to preface, that I always say is that feelings are inherently subjective. They're deeply steeped in personal context. And so, for me to try to describe a feeling it's impossible. I encourage everybody to try and they'll see what I mean. We use photorealistic characters that will actually make eye contact with you to, not only engage you in the experience, but recreate that feeling of you have an action, a role that you can play here, so speak up, or are you going to speak up? And so, it's a pick and choose your own storyline ending for a simplified way to describe it. What you do directly impacts what you see. And so, the experience I have is going to be different from the experience you have, depending on what we do, which is a lot more true to life to the ways that the world works.
If I speak up sooner, the situation gets better. If I don't speak up at all, the situation doesn't get better. And if I speak up later, it's better than not doing anything, but there's something that could have been done sooner. You can't explain a feeling. And that's one of the biggest issues, I would say, of existing training mediums, is that you're trying to explain a feeling and then trying to explain why it's wrong. And so, for me to stand here and talk at you for two hours, or for me to show you a video, not only can you discuss things like engagement, you're probably not paying attention. You could be sending off an email, talking to a colleague about lunch, physically present, mentally gone, zoning out, etc. But also, assume you were paying attention, there's no shared understanding of feelings because it's all explained to you versus felt by you.
Essentially what we do is we leverage the unique aspects of the medium to recreate or allow you to have a shared understanding of a feeling. And, of course, everything's trauma informed. We would never do a first-person simulation where we would put you in it. We would never do that. But what we will do is you'll be an observer, you'll see invasion of personal space, the tonality, people will look at you. And so, that's what we're trying to teach people and we're trying to train people around where they are versus assuming that every single person has a baseline level of understanding.
Don MacPherson:
What are some of the other trainings that you will provide?
Morgan Mercer:
So, we're looking at unconscious bias, inclusive leadership, etc. there have been a lot of requests for things like tough conversations, stuff of that nature. I think, again, anything that inherently is steeped in feeling and shared perspective taking, that's my best way to describe it, is it creates a shared perspective taking or a shared understanding around a problem. Anything associated with that is an area that we're looking at.
Don MacPherson:
Well, I just went through the training and, to me, it intuitively… I knew what the answers should be. So, how do you prevent people from gaming the system?
Morgan Mercer:
Some of the experiences are a little bit more black and white. So, the one that you went through is very traditional. We have some that are a little bit more gray area. So, we explore things like power dynamics. You'll have colleague to colleague, male subordinate to female manager, incumbent male manager to newly invented female manager, etc. We explore different power dynamics. We explore different social dynamics. Some will be office parties, some will be conference room, some will be… You know what I mean? A lot of times in a conference room, things are inherently business or inherently assumed to be business professional. But when you move it to a social setting or a social professional setting, a lot of lines and boundaries can overlap in people's minds, especially when there's alcohol present. And so, can we train people around that, and can we actually look at people's behaviors as they map out the two situations and start to understand how they're thinking about the problem comprehensively as a whole at a higher level?
And so, that's what we'll do there. Then also, there are never completely correct or completely wrong answers. Again, it depends on the experience you're going through, but we'll always have numerous answers that are correct or wrong. And some of them aren't as obvious. So, some of them will be, “I don't really want to get involved in this, let's leave it alone for right now. It doesn't seem serious.” That's something that people will say. And every single line actually, in our experience, has either come from a actual sexual harassment lawsuit, or a case study, or an anecdotal story that we've heard from one of our subject matter experts that we've worked with who have worked with people on these cases.
Don MacPherson:
How are you protecting the individual and their privacy?
Morgan Mercer:
All data is anonymized, and will never actually tie PII to any of the data around hesitation, empathy.
Don MacPherson:
What's PII?
Morgan Mercer:
It's personally identifiable information. And so, for example, your name or your email address, we'll never tie that. I am a huge, huge advocate for building technology ethically. And so, one of our company values is the heart of all we do as human. I don't ever want to get to the point where we are operating from a very traditional, I wouldn't say corporate, like capitalist mindset where it's money drives our decisions, because ultimately, my premise is continue learning, continued development, and that comes with user protection, user privacy.
Don MacPherson:
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Morgan Mercer:
So, I see a tremendous opportunity here where again, we haven't actually been able to explore the ways that people are thinking about some of these topics and some of these concepts. And so, of course, we are really excited to expand into these different verticals, train around different areas. But one thing I'm very interested in and excited about is being able to educate corporations, HR practitioners, CNI practitioners, L&D practitioners as a whole about the insights that we're able to gather. So, actually being able to publish some of the research, publish some of the studies, publish some of what we're learning so that we can push the needle forward as a whole, rather than just using that internally to inform our product design.
Don MacPherson:
We are talking with the CEO of Vantage Point, Morgan Mercer. When we come back from this short break, Morgan is going to talk about the challenges of being a female entrepreneur in the largely male-dominated technology field. She will also share her thoughts on the future of virtual reality.
Hi everybody, this is your podcast host, Don MacPherson. At 12 Geniuses, we write, report, and speak about the trends shaping the way we live and work. As we look toward entering a new decade, technologies like 3D printing, artificial intelligence, gene editing, and more and more sophisticated robots will continue to disrupt and change our society. If these trends are important to you, we invite you to follow us on social media. And to book me to speak at your next event, contact us at future@12geniuses.com.
We are back with Morgan Mercer. In this part of the interview, we will talk about Morgan's entrepreneurial journey, and we'll explore the future of virtual reality, including how full body haptic suits will stimulate our senses beyond just sight and sound.
Could you talk a little bit about what inspired you to get into this field and what it's like for you in this field that's pretty heavily male dominated?
Morgan Mercer:
Growing up, I had a realization that anything I wanted would be a direct result of the work I put in. And so, that gave me a really massive sense. I didn't come from a really affluent family, whatever. So, it gave me a really apparent sense of agency, of internal agency, internal control over my environment around me. So, I was always very adamant about pushing the boundaries, pushing the limitations. I was always like a very avid reader. I read every book on the Barnes & Noble’s classic literature list when I was in high school for fun. Started teaching myself Russian for fun. That was just me. And so, when I went to university, I was in Barnes & Nobles, and I picked up a book, and it was From Zero to Millionaire, or something. I can't remember. It's like this orange book by Ryan Blair.
And at the time, it was like my first book on entrepreneurship and business I had ever read. And I thought it was the coolest thing. It was like how he built a company from ground up, sold it for a million dollars, which at the time, I was like, “Whoa, no way.” It was just incredible reading about his journey and reading about, and being able to wake up every single day, work on something he loves, build it from scratch, build the team, all of the different aspects of it. I think risk is associated with everything you do in life. And I would say I've always trended towards being more of a risk taker because the way I view life is you should always do what makes you happy. As you start to calibrate around those decisions, you learn more about yourself.
So, I went to work for a startup instead of going to a corporation. I had internships with the Department of Homeland Security. It was like a very, very prestigious like internship. Or two people selected out of thousands, I turned it down. I had internship opportunities with like large digital agencies in New York, turned them down. I went to work for a startup, right? Being paid next to nothing, hustling, working long hours. But I loved it because that's what aligned with me and my personality and where I find happiness. I view happiness as being able to see the impact of your actions. And so, every single day I wake up, I feel like I'm doing something impactful to push the needle forward, and that makes me feel fulfilled no matter what's going on.
Don MacPherson:
What experience have you had being a female entrepreneur in the tech industry?
Morgan Mercer:
The one thing I'll say about that is it's all about perspective. On one hand, I could be like, I don't see that many people who look like me, or I'm in a room full with nobody who looks like me. Or, I'm part of 0.0006%, or I'm part of one of, I don't know, two dozen black women according to the last statistic I read on it, which hasn't been recently updated, but I'm sure it's still somewhat relevant, like two dozen black women who have raised over a million dollars in venture funding, etc. And so, I could look at that and be like, “Wow, it's intense.” Or like, “This sucks.”
But the way I see it, actively reframing it is it's really incredible that I get to be one of the ones pushing the noodle forward. One of my personal missions is to inspire 2,000 women to enter same careers this year. And, of course, I'm going to increase that number every year. For me to have the opportunities I do to inspire other women and minorities, and women who are minorities, to pass the baton forward, to teach, to educate, to be a face, that's incredible. To have the ear of so many influential, or thoughtful, or well-connected, or open-minded white men is also incredible. And that to me is being able to sit with somebody who can make a difference in the form of emotion, or investing, or whatever it may be, and actually share my perspective and share my experience, that will drive the needle forward.
Don MacPherson:
Well, thank you for doing that because I think it is really important, and you are a phenomenal example and a phenomenal role model for people who want to follow you.
Morgan Mercer:
You relax into it eventually. It takes time, you relax into it. And I think, again, the mindset's… It's really important to cultivate too, because if you don't, then on the other side of it, it can seem very overwhelming, or it can seem, I remember when I was first starting out, it did seem overwhelming when you would go to Crunchbase, and every single founder you would see would be a man, every single investor you would see would be a man, right? And you would never see female founders. And if you did, they would always have male co-founders. And the only female founders you rarely saw, if you ever saw them, were in the B2C space, etc. I actually keynoted AthenaHacks, and that was what I talked about was it was as if women weren't consequential enough to build products for men. They could only build products for other women, whereas men could build products for men and women.
That's the reflection I had initially. But again, there are so many upsides of what I get to do that if I'm focusing on that and those feelings and that mindset, that's going to act as more of a hindrance than anything else to me being able to achieve what I want to achieve. And so, really, it's looking at the flip side of it. I'm so fortunate I have so many amazing male allies in my corner who do listen to me and I can share my experiences with. That's incredible. The other thing I'll say, though, is that I have had to actively be self-aware of my own limiting beliefs, again, that are socialized, right? I love talking about statistics behind lack of gender equity and women dropping out of STEM, etc.
But a lot of these beliefs are really socialized from birth. And so, one thing I realized, numerous things, but one thing I realized specifically that's front of mind right now is that women don't negotiate, and that has true calculable business costs. I realized that early on because I didn't negotiate things as well as I should, or the same way I should've. And then you start to get comparatives of male counterparts, and you're like, “Oh my God, this is insane. What?” At first, you're like, “What? How did you get that?” And you're like, “Oh, well, I asked for it.” And you're like, “What?”
Don MacPherson:
You can do that?
Morgan Mercer:
Yeah. I'm like, you can do that. And then it's like, how do you do that? Because you never have learned, and then you learn by doing, and that's still expensive. Now I made it a personal rule; I negotiate everything. It's a personal rule and it has nothing to do with the person, or the deal, or with whatever. I just negotiate everything by default. Because what that does is it removes any likelihood or probability that I'll sit and question the what, or the when, or the if, or feel bad about doing it. And it removes any level of my judgment about the situation and it just makes it something that is, I just always negotiate. And so, I think that that's really important.
Don MacPherson:
No, it's very important, and I've noticed that too in my own business dealings that women just don't. And it may be stereotypical, but that's been my experience. And any woman I mentor, this is something that we talk about. And like, I had no idea you could do… Yes, you can. You can ask for something. You can ask for a raise.
Morgan Mercer:
And you shouldn't wait. You don't have to wait until the time is right. You don't have to wait until the perfect puzzle piece is fit together for somebody to give it to you. Because I find that's something a lot of women do too.
Don MacPherson:
Where do you see the next frontier for virtual reality in terms of different industries and how it can be applied?
Morgan Mercer:
With the hardware updates that we're going to see over the next 10 years with things like full body haptic suits, that's going to be incredible because you're going to enter a place where, imagine you want to swim the coral reefs and understand what they look like before global warming, if you believe in global warming. I do. But if we want to swim the coral reefs beforehand, you can literally put on a full body haptic suit, you can feel the waves as they… And you can leverage things like smell, or eventually, like the headsets will get to that point where it's a full body immersive experience. And that's incredible because I think that it also unlocks a world of education that a lot, many communities, specifically marginalized communities, but many communities and populations of people don't have access to.
Don MacPherson:
What you're talking about makes me think about how we can solve some other problems like intolerance in our country and the political chasm, because we've seen people become much more polarized toward the far left and toward the far right. Is this technology something that can help bring us together?
Morgan Mercer:
It's something that people are looking for. Actually being able to put somebody in the shoes of a prisoner or put somebody in the shoes of black teenager on the streets, in a very rural community, and actually allow somebody to walk those shoes or step into that and feel how it feels to be on the other side of the table, can create a shared sense of understanding or more empathy than currently exists, and can move the needle away. So, I have had beliefs that I don't currently hold. And the reason why my belief systems have changed has been because I've had some sort of personal experience with the problem that has caused me to question my views. And so, being able to create that at scale is unlocked by this technology because then you no longer have necessarily the limiting barriers of, the person sitting across the table doesn't look like me, or I know that their beliefs don't align, I'm not going to listen.
Don MacPherson:
Is there a risk that virtual reality will be the next technology addiction?
Morgan Mercer:
I think there's a risk with everything, but you have to look at who's building it. The book I would recommend that you read, and it's one of my favorite ones, is Hooked, and it's on the behavioral psychology of addictive and habit-forming technology products. There's a lot of behavioral psychology that goes into any technology design, right? Because that's what you're doing, is you're looking at how a user's interacting with your technology, and then you're optimizing for outputs. So, you're saying, “Okay, if we put this here, then this person will retain this information if we do this first, and they're more likely to complete the scenario.” That can be beneficial when it comes to learning outcomes, but it's not beneficial when it comes to trying to… Especially if your monetization model or the ways that you retain your users come from frequency of use, come from how frequently viewed, etc. That's inherently not beneficial.
And so, I think it really comes down to looking at who is building the technology and how we're building it. Because I think that's a risk with any type of technology, but I wouldn't say it's based on the technology necessarily. I would say it's based on humans and the way that we're wired and just cognitively how we perceive and interact with the world around us. Because you have addictions with substances as well. You have addictions with… There are so many different types of addictions we could explore. So, the answer is yes. Then the follow-up answer to that is we just need to be very cognizant in not building that into our technology and not building that into our monetization models, etc.
Don MacPherson:
I'll just add two other things; parental oversight and self-awareness. Parents can't be slapping a VR headset on a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old, and then allow them to be immersed in it for two, three, four hours a day. That's not in their best interest.
Morgan Mercer:
Yeah, but rolling out things like you have on computers or on TVs. I remember my mom used to do this for us growing up because I would always play video games and computer games all the time for hours. And she would be like, “Okay, parental control settings, you can only play for an hour a day.” And I’d be like…
Don MacPherson:
There you go.
Morgan Mercer:
“This sucks. But I'm sure we'll see it for VR.
Don MacPherson:
Yeah. Well, and you can run a company now.
Morgan Mercer:
Exactly. I know, right? I'm happy she did it. It made me read instead.
Don MacPherson:
So, Morgan, where can people learn more about you and about Vantage Point?
Morgan Mercer:
So, our website is www.tryvantagepoint.com, and my Twitter is @the, T-H-E, Morgan, M-O-R-G-A-N, Mercer, M-E-R-C-E-R.
Don MacPherson:
Okay, fantastic. And just a point of clarification, try is spelled T-R-Y.
Morgan Mercer:
Yes.
Don MacPherson:
Okay, fantastic. Morgan, thank you for being a genius.
Morgan Mercer:
Thank you for having me.
Don MacPherson:
Thank you for listening to 12 Geniuses. Thanks also to the amazing team that makes this show possible: Devon McGrath is our production assistant; Brian Bierbaum is our research and historical consultant; Toby, Tony, Jay, and the rest of the team at GL Productions in London make sure the sound and editing are top-notch. To learn how 12 Geniuses can prepare leaders for a rapidly changing business world influenced by shifting demographics, new technologies, and innovative business models, please go to 12geniuses.com.