I wanted to follow up on this though I don't know if anyone will hear it.
This past week, our small team had brought in an executive coach that works with the material from Crucial Conversations. A wiki summary was circulated around. When I read it, I knew it applied to what was going on with our team as well as personal relationships.
Crucial conversations are moments when opinions vary, the stakes are high, and emotions run strong. Being able to have crucial conversations and handle them well allows someone to be effective, influential, and helps out the team and community tremendously. The follow-on book is called Crucial Accountability, which teaches how to deal with people who breaks promises and violates expectations.
So I stand by what I said about the cynical view of "Corporate Confidential". The thesis of "corporate confidential" is that corporaions want to fire someone using legal means because the real reasons is not legal. it might sound like a case of corporate greed and that is true to some extent. In addition, I think people are -not- having those crucial conversations. It is easier to plot a way to ease someone out than to have the crucial conversation about what is really going on.
Taking that frame with Coraline's story: if seems to me neither Corolaine, nor the github manager was able to have crucial conversations. In some ways, Coraline admitted to it in her blog post.
I also wonder if Github's earlier trouble -- what with the controversies, were also a series of crucial conversations that wete not held, or they were handled badly. They tried to fix it by hiring activists, but then, the crucial conversations and the shared meaning that includes social justice did not get discussed.
Finally: I think perhaps Coraline might benefit from skills in crucial conversations, as far as her activism goals.
I have sone friends for whom SJW rubs them the wrong way -- because it adds fuel to the fire and increases conflict. (Ironic, being that most of my friends who feel this way are committed martial artists and explore violence with each other). While crucial conversations is not a pancea, there are often some deep meaning held by both social activists and social conservatives.
I have always felt that Code of Conducts as imperfect substitutes for what we really want. I think people (generally speaking), deep down, want to speak their truths while getting along, even when disagreeing, when stakes are high, and emotions run strong.