Responding to Microaggressions at Work

I recently came across an interview of Michèle Ruffault, an executive coach and corporate trainer who created a bootcamp called “Muscle ta répartie”, in English, “build your comeback muscle” to help people find the right response to teasing, off-colour jokes, repeated interruptions or corrections, and any remark that is in fact a microaggression. Drawing on her interview, this article sets out what is at play in these situations, and some first steps for dealing with them, whether we are the target or a witness.

A microaggression is a brief, everyday remark, question or gesture, sometimes unintended, sometimes meant as humour or even as a compliment, that conveys a demeaning message to someone because of their gender, origin, religion, age, disability or sexual orientation. Repeated and left unaddressed, microaggressions build an hostile environment. Naming a remark early is what keeps an hostile environment from forming.

Having an inclusion policy does not remove the risk of microaggressions

Violence at work is neither marginal nor localized. The first global survey on the subject (ILO, 2022, covering around 125,000 people in 121 countries) established that more than one employed person in five has faced at least one form of violence or harassment during their working life. And three victims in five have experienced it more than once. The most widespread form is psychological, and it can hide behind off-colour jokes and repeated interruptions or corrections. Microaggressions fall at this end of the spectrum of violence: taken in isolation, they may be deemed insignificant and therefore ignored, unreported and unrecorded.

Microaggressions affect people on every ground: gender, origin, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation and the climate. In recent years, the climate seems to be becoming harsher as equality advances. The pattern looks paradoxical: the more ground equality gains, the more hostility surfaces. Research on status threat explains it: part of the majority experiences another group’s progress as a loss of its own standing, and it is that perceived loss, not the progress itself, that feeds the reaction. Polling institutes call it a backlash: the more visible the people concerned become, the more hostility surfaces.

Should we conclude that inclusion policies are failing? No. An inclusion policy reduces the risk of violence but it does not eliminate it and if microaggression persists, we may as well be prepared for it.

What happens in the moment

In her interview, Michèle Ruffault describes three mechanisms that combine to prevent an immediate reaction when we face microaggression. First, emotional latency: anger, embarrassment and surprise overlap, and it takes several seconds to identify what we feel before we can put it into words. Then freezing, which stops the reaction outright. Finally, the silence of those around us: out of an instinctive loyalty to the group, no one wants to break the apparent equilibrium, and that collective silence locks down the voice of the person targeted.

What a remark lasting a few seconds costs

The first cost is borne by the person targeted, and it does not end with the incident: rumination, withdrawal, constant vigilance, loss of self-esteem. One victim in two subjected to demeaning remarks tells no one, most often out of concern for their reputation or from a conviction that it would achieve nothing. The person who names a remark is also often seen as rigid or oversensitive, and that cost weighs more heavily when they belong to the targeted group.

The second cost is borne by the witnesses. Studies have shown that their creative and task performance, along with their willingness to help others, drops after a microaggression. Hearing an inappropriate remark affects everyone present, not only the person targeted.

Why an immediate reaction has a lasting effect

For the person targeted: reacting does not undo the remark, but it limits rumination and self-doubt (was I overreacting?) and can bring the episode to a close, because a reaction confirms that something did happen.

For the witnesses: in a room where a remark passes without reaction, everyone draws the same conclusion: the others find it acceptable. Each believes they are the only one who is uncomfortable, and that shared misreading turns what may be nobody’s view into an apparent collective norm. A single voice signalling disapproval is enough to break the mechanism.

For the person who made the remark: in many cases, being challenged creates the discomfort of noticing a gap between one’s self-image and what one has just said. That dissonance is useful, because someone challenged once subsequently produces fewer stereotyped responses. A remark that is named once recurs less often, whereas silence teaches no one anything.

Building a repertoire of responses

Reacting under pressure cannot be improvised: it is a reflex, acquired through repetition, out loud, on real situations. Michèle Ruffault suggests that if only one phrase were to be remembered, it would be “What do you mean by that?”, a way of signalling disagreement without breaking the relationship.

Michèle Ruffault offers a broader set of strategies, such as:

• saying stop;
• reversing the roles or exaggerating the situation until the logic of the remark collapses;
• when facing repeated interruptions or corrections, inviting the speaker to carry on — turned into an instruction, the behaviour often loses much of its force.

The aim is to defuse the situation and to move out of powerlessness.

Allies: an effective lever

When someone outside the targeted group speaks up, two things change. Their intervention is judged more credible because they have no personal stake in it, and they pay a lower social price: a man who names a sexist remark, an unaffected colleague who cuts across a homophobic joke, will not be seen as oversensitive. Yet those with the greatest power to correct are the ones who use it least.

Certain psychological objections can hold intervention back:

“It is not my place.” — the more witnesses there are, the less responsible each one feels. Yet intervening is part of everyone’s role, and first of all the manager’s, whose silence sets precedent for the team.

“I am not sure it really counts as discrimination.” — yet there is no need to give a legal label to discrimination in order to say that we are not comfortable with what has just been said.

“I would not know what to say.” — the phrases suggested above work just as well for allies, provided they address the behaviour rather than the person, and without speaking on behalf of the person targeted.

What the organisation has to make possible

In practice: small-group practice sessions, aimed first at managers, built on real anonymised situations, and open to those directly concerned as well as to witnesses.

In closing

An inclusion policy does not resolve every situation that has to be faced. Fifteen people around a table, an inappropriate remark, eyes turning away: training those people is how we stop leaving the weight on one.