The Kanye West Adidas Fiasco: A Cautionary Tale Unveiling Two Essential Leadership Lessons

Kanye West's treatment of Adidas employees goes beyond the bounds of ethical behavior – and I'm putting it lightly, VERY lightly. This serves as a glaring example for all leaders on what NOT to do if they aim for a people-first culture that prioritizes well-being and mental health.

So, just how bad was Kanye's treatment of Adidas employees? The media has exposed the blatant anti-Semitism, emotional abuse, and sexual harassment he subjected them to. But, a recent New York Times article spills the beans even more, drawing from interviews with current and former Adidas employees and digging into undisclosed emails, conversations, and other documents that further reveal just how bad it was. Now, how long did leaders let this treatment of their employees continue? For nearly a damn decade.

So what can we learn from this fiasco? There are two crucial lessons here that I want to spotlight.

Lesson #1 Toxicity Knows No Bounds in Professional Relationships

There is no shortage of cautionary tales that emphasize the importance of fostering positive dynamics and respect among employees and company leaders. It decreases things like stress, burnout, and frustration while elevating harmonious work environments, enhanced collaboration, and general health and happiness at work. What’s overlooked and not nearly talked about enough, however, is the role that external people—clients, partners, collaborators, and customers—play in this equation. They can harm employees' mental and emotional health just as much if not more than co-workers, team members, and managers. A study by Inc and Go found that 60% of employees have quit a job due to not tolerating toxic clients. 

It didn’t matter if these employees at Adidas had a solid bond and rapport with their team, a person they worked with regularly bullied and berated them and worse. Kanye’s grotesque behaviors included making Adidas executives watch porn during a meeting, telling a manager who was Jewish he should kiss a picture of Hitler every day, and constant verbal lash outs.

The ability of clients and customers to lead you to burnout and despair is something I am all too familiar with from more than one of my previous jobs, but one client in particular made our jobs a nightmare. She had unreasonable demands, would put down our work and our people, call and email at the late hours of the evening and wee hours of the morning. She was my kryptonite and added to my ill-being at work far worse than any of my colleagues. 

One critical takeaway at Motives Met we have from our research is that well-being at work is co-created, it happens when individuals, work peers, and leaders show up for themselves and each other in meaningful ways to protect the human needs that are vital for our best work lives, work relationships, and workplaces. We use “work peers,” not team members or co-workers, very purposefully here for this reason because this encompasses those clients, those partners like Kanye West, that have the capacity to bolster or undermine an individual's ability to thrive and a business's ability to thrive. 

Toxic clients will also cost you more than they make you in the long run. By Adidas leaders allowing Kanye’s bad behavior not only was it destructive to their employees' mental health, but also their business's health. They finally had no choice but to sever ties with Kanye, but the damage was done financially, as well as what it meant for their brand reputation.

*Side note- If you haven’t read my article about Co-Creating Well-being at Work: We All Need to Give a Shit We Don’t Need to Love One Another, you should dive into that here. 

Toxicity is potent from the people you work with, period. If you want a people-first culture then you need to put your people first, not your clients. Toxic behavior should never be tolerated. 

Lesson #2 Purposeful Perks Help, Not Fake Fixes 

The Adidas team was trying to keep it together amidst the constant chaos, but leadership came to the rescue by slapping on Band-Aids when the wounds needed stitches. The New York Times article stated, “The Yeezy team adopted a strategy it likened to firefighting: rotating people on and off the front lines of dealing with the artist.” Do you want to know what the company did to help their employees? “Assigned a human resources official to the group, gave each new hire a subscription to a meditation app, and gathered the staff regularly for something akin to group therapy.” These types of surface-level bandages do not heal when there are deeper work wounds. Temporary relief is not equivalent to true healing. I’m all for meditation apps– I'm a certified meditation teacher published on apps myself – but they won't magically solve Kanye-level problems. Is offering mental health resources akin to therapy a benefit when your job is the reason you need the therapy? It sure isn’t. 

Many companies resort to offering perks and short-term fixes in an attempt to patch up cultural issues they face with their employees — like free yoga classes, a fun team outing, motivational speakers, or those so-called “mental health days.” I remember when I worked at a company with a masseuse on site and they gave everyone a free monthly massage. In terms of shiny perks, it was freaking awesome…at first. But as time went on it didn’t really feel all that awesome when you had the massage booked on your calendar but had so much work to do the thought of going to the massage and taking the hour out of your day made your stress increase rather than decrease. Did they really “care” about my well-being and stress at this job if I felt like having a panic attack at the thought of stepping away from my computer for an hour to go to my massage?

Another “benefit” of this company was the free lunches they brought in every day. But that also fell flat. There never seemed to be enough to go around, the food was often only okay, employees didn’t find it to be a big benefit, and to some, it wasn’t a benefit at all. One of my co-workers would rant about the fact they wanted to chain us to our computers all day and not even give us the luxury of a nice walk leaving the office to grab lunch. 

Offering free yoga or massages when people have no time to attend them isn’t a perk. Giving wellness app subscriptions that won’t rid someone of the stress from their micromanaging manager or horrific client isn’t going to work. Celebrating pride week but working with a client who is vocally anti-LGBQT, or recognizing Juneteenth as a paid holiday but only as a symbol while doing nothing substantive to support DEI or to rectify pay inequity isn’t going to create real change—and your employees know it.

Added bonuses and small benefits actually can support the health and happiness of employees but only if they are meaningful. So what makes them meaningful? Two things. 

1. It’s not a fake fix but an added benefit. If there is a problem and you are trying to use a perk or quick fix to solve it, that is not going to work. These things should reinforce and elevate positive aspects of your workplace.  A subscription to a meditation app should amplify your support for employees to have healthy stress at work, not to try and fix it when they don’t have it. 

1. It’s something employees actually want. What money and resources are you spending on catered lunches, company outings, wellness tech apps, different programs, holiday parties, or free classes? Which of those actually matters to your people? It sounds simple, but ask your employees what they want and what they value. Simple doesn’t mean it often happens. At my previous company if they had asked us how much we valued the catered lunches they would have found ehhh not so much. That was a lot of money and time for the office manager to put into something employees didn’t care that much about. It's about investing time and resources where they matter most to create a workplace culture that truly aligns with employee values and needs.

It Doesn't Have to Be This Way

The Kanye West situation is undoubtedly extreme so I dearly hope you don’t see your workplace or culture akin to what was going on at Adidas, but these types of offenses can quietly creep into work cultures leading to a “people-last” mentality rather than a “people-first” one. It's essential to be attuned to the signs and committed to upholding a culture that places its people at the forefront. 

WORK LIFE WELL-LIVED BOOK CLUB 📚🔥

HIDDEN POTENTIAL - Adam Grant has published numerous bestsellers, including Originals, Give and Take, Option B, and Think Again. His newest book Hidden Potential is of no suprise another fantastic read. The heart of his message in the book is that we can elevate ourselves and others to new heights. Innate advantages and natural talent can lead us to overlook what is possible for us to achieve. He says, "People who make major strides are rarely freaks of nature. They're usually freaks of nurture." In typic Grant fashion, he uses fascinating case studies and scientific research as the underpinnings to his message. Here is a great podcast interview he did with Ryan Holiday from The Daily Stoic.

RISE OF THE READER - Want to retain and apply more of the information you read so it can have a bigger impact on your life? Nick Hutchison 's book Rise of the Reader was written to help you do just that. Having read over 400 personal development books Hutchison wanted to develop a framework to help people better apply the wise words they read. Part 1 of the book focuses on how to become a Rising Reader and Part 2 dives into habits that Hutchison has implemented from all this knowledge that could help you.

WISE WORDS & SHAREWORTHY INSIGHTS 🙌🏻

• This article shares some sobering stats that reinforce the loneliness epidemic many Americans find themselves in today. 8% of Americans say they have no close friends and 38% say they have 5 or more. Hanne Collins who co-authored a study on the importance of talking to strangers in everyday life says, "Essentially, the idea is that the more diverse your social portfolio, the happier you are and the higher your well-being." Feelings of loneliness are also higher at work than ever before, let this be a dose of inspiration to find a small way to interact and connect with someone you typically wouldn't today!
• If you are a people leader who wants some tips to start revamping your culture in 2024 Hebba Youssef gives you a great place to start with the 5 culture pillars from her Highlights from Culture Can't Wait Workshop. I attended an online version of her workshop two weeks ago which was an incredibly valuable roadmap to work from.

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