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I'm your host, Danny M. Lavery, and with me in the studio this week is W. Kamau Bell,

a stand-up comedian, director, and author, executive producers, and is the host of the Emmy Award-winning docu-series, United Shades of America. He's also the director of a new Showtime docu series called We Need to Talk About Cosby. Welcome to the show, Kamau. It's so nice to see you again. Yeah, thanks, Danny. Good to see you, too. Thanks for having me. Yeah, well, we'll just get right into it. I will start off by reading our first letter where the subject is betrayed boss.

Dun dun dun. This one is the longest one by far, and it's also, it goes places. So just, you know, prepare yourself accordingly.

All right. I recently got promoted and became the manager for a team that is currently negotiating for a union contract.

Before this promotion, I would have been part of that bargaining unit, and I helped lay a lot of

the groundwork to start the unionization process. I'm happy they're unionizing. Part of the impetus for

unionization was a lack of support and direction at work. So when I got promoted, my boss and I made

sure to create work

plans with concrete goals and quarterly feedback and evaluation points, none of which had been

present before. We've been practicing this more structured approach for about three months,

and everyone seemed to be thriving. Everyone's work was improving, and I felt good.

Last week, I was totally shocked when I learned in a meeting with my boss and HR that my team

had written them in email talking about all the ways I was a toxic boss and horrible leader.

I was completely aghast, as was HR, my boss, and several other colleagues who had only heard

positive reviews about how I was

supporting the team until this point. My boss and HR met with my team later this week,

then met with me again separately to discuss their concerns. I found out that about one-third

of the things my team said were not true. Another third was related to issues no one had

ever elevated to me before, and the other

third were unpopular decisions I'd had to make in the company's best interests that had my own

...