Belonging at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Belonging at Work with Dr. Beth Kaplan

Fitting in fails…

Shrinking yourself to fit in is out. Standing in your truth is in. We spoke with belonging expert, and author of Braving the Workplace, Dr. Beth Kaplan to talk about why the old advice to “just fit in” is outdated—and honestly, damaging. We get into identity, inclusion, and how to stop molding yourself to a culture that was never built for you in the first place. Because real belonging doesn’t ask you to disappear—it asks you to show up.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

What does belonging mean to you personally in three words Don't sacrifice yourself.

Speaker 2: 0:07

Oh shit, that's good, that's good, it's good, it's good hey friend.

Speaker 3: 0:24

Hey, mel, how are you? I'm good, how are you doing? Hey, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Yeah, a couple of months ago Enzo figured out that when you whisper to Alexa, she whispers back. Well, this weekend we found out that if you ask Alexa to fart, she does and she has.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Yes, she has a whole canon of various farts, that she will fart on demand for you, which is incredible. And now I know what to teach my six-year-old nephew when I visit Florida in a few months.

Speaker 3: 0:55

You're welcome. I give you that gift. I give you that gift.

Speaker 2: 0:58

I appreciate it. Yeah, that was my Saturday. How was your weekend?

Speaker 3: 1:02

It was lovely. Thank you, it was so nice and sunny. Here I'm just enjoying spring, but I'm in the thick of wanting to throw everything out of my house. I just get in that mood of get a dumpster, let's throw it all out.

Speaker 2: 1:15

Yeah, that always feels good when you do that.

Speaker 3: 1:18

And then, four months later, you're like wait, where the hell is that? Where did that sweater go? Where did that sweater go? Well, friends, we're so excited because we're launching our episode with Dr Beth Kaplan, who is a global expert in belonging, and she is on a mission to improve belonging in the workplace in general in the world, and she joined us to talk about it. Francesca, what did you think about this episode?

Speaker 2: 1:44

Yeah, there were a lot of pieces of this episode that felt very personal, like I have felt what she had been talking about and I've also felt when I haven't.

Speaker 1: 1:55

I also felt just validated and really appreciated gaining some new insights and tools that I can take with me to help my own feeling of belonging but help other feelings of belonging as well.

Speaker 2: 2:08

Yeah, she was so good and gracious about offering small but really impactful things that everybody can do, whether you're an employee, a manager or, honestly, you're leading a company. Yeah so it doesn't have to be big, Doesn't it? Small things big difference Small things.

Speaker 1: 2:23

Yeah, it's Well everyone here's Dr Beth Kaplan.

Speaker 1: 2:46

Friends, we are super excited to have with us today Dr Beth Kaplan. Beth helps companies create a culture of belonging. She's also interested in how workplace trauma impacts our well-being and our future of work, and she's been recognized as a world-leading expert on belonging by the University of Pennsylvania and she's collaborating with them to develop a groundbreaking tool to measure belonging. She is currently the global head of leader development and enablement at Dassault Systems. Lastly, she is an author and her book Braving the Workplace will be coming out soon.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Beth, so lovely to have you here with us at your work. Friends, welcome. Thank you so much. It's great to be with you. Yeah, tell us what is belonging. How do you define belonging? So, belonging is the innate desire to be part of something larger than ourselves, without sacrificing who we are. So often I get the question of what's more important, the first part of that second sentence or the second, and they're both equally as important, right? So we've all had this overwhelming desire to be social, to be part of something, but if it comes at the cost of who we are, it's not real belonging. I felt that. I think I felt that before, francesca. Have you felt that before?

Speaker 2: 4:01

Yeah, I literally just got chills when you said that, even though I like I've heard you say that before, beth. But then when you said it again, I'm like, oh shit, that's so true. Yes, I felt it.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Yeah, the opposite of belonging is really fitting in trying to change who you are for other people. Yeah, and it never feels good when you try to force that. Ever, never. Why does this matter so much in life? It clearly matters, I think. What did they say? Community is actually more important than exercise in terms of life expectancy, right. Why does it matter so much in the workplace specifically? So it matters for so many reasons and the true reality of this one is that it extends beyond the workplace. We work so much more than any other generation.

Speaker 1: 4:45

You could debate that in history, when people used to have to hunt for their food maybe a little bit different, but at the same time, the reality in this one is that when you're happier, you're more productive. When you're able to connect with the world and feel like you can be yourself in any situation, you're going to feel that way. It gives you coping mechanisms. The serotonin alone is so healthy for us. When we don't have that, or where we feel isolated or excluded or any of the things, or like we're giving up a part of ourselves, it has very negative real-world consequences for us, for our mental, our physical, sociological well-being. Now, at the same time, it also takes a toll on everything in the workplace, from retention to all of the different measurements that you can come up with around satisfaction, but it's a real bottom line killer. When people feel like they don't belong, they either stay and they're unproductive which costs companies money, or they leave abruptly, which really kills your recruiting, and then, at the same time, when they're not productive, you lose business. You lose everything there. So the reality is that it hits all parts of the spectrum. You're obviously extremely passionate about this work.

Speaker 1: 5:56

What got you started? I think it's been with me all along. I think most of us would say that, right, a lot of people will come to me and say that everyone feels like a belonging researcher or everyone feels like a belonging storyteller because it's really rooted in our DNA. Right, it's part of everything we do. So I'm no different and for me, I had an experience in the workplace that really prompted me to evaluate how I look at myself. Was I being true to myself, and if I felt like I belonged or not? I'll keep it real.

Speaker 1: 6:26

The eventual realization was no. I didn't feel like I was being any of those things to myself, but instead of backing out and leaving, I doubled down. I made things so much harder for myself. So the second I figured that someone didn't like me who happened to be my boss at the time. It really hurt physically, right. So I think at the time it was way pre-pandemic and it was a stage where people weren't talking about things like this no loud quitting on LinkedIn, right. Or there was no quiet quitting where you could do what you had to do just to get the job done at the end of the day. So for me, I really wanted those gold stars from a boss who was never going to give them and I put myself in such harm's way that I was contemplating suicide.

Speaker 3: 7:11

That's true.

Speaker 1: 7:12

And when I told said manager, he ignored me. Wow yeah. So that was a trigger for me to get out. And not everyone's as lucky. You're not able just to pick up and leave when you want to, because there's this little thing called livelihood. Our jobs support us. So for me, I was able to make the decision that I need to leave, and it took me a good I would say eight months to a year to actually go. Yeah, I get it. What is that saying you can't win over people who are committed to misunderstanding you or not accepting you? And especially, I can only speak for myself as a perpetual people pleaser, a recovering people pleaser. It's natural, it's human nature to want to win people over when you feel like, oh, this person doesn't like me, why not, and what can I do about it?

Speaker 2: 7:57

And sometimes there's nothing you can do about it, but it does really impact you Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 8:02

And the sad part there's so many sad parts. The saddest part was I was trying desperately to win someone over who I didn't really respect. Yeah, I wouldn't take advice from him. Why was I taking criticism? Yeah, and it forced me to really look at myself. Look outside of the workplace. I was working 60 to 80 hours a week. I was losing friendships outside of work because people gave up trying to get together with me. I was doing things that were harmful, losing sleep. Hair was falling out. I was gaining weight and it was only until he ignored me, formally ignored my cries for help, that I knew I needed to leave.

Speaker 2: 8:39

I'm so sorry that happened to you. I just think it's really beautiful to see someone turning something that is so painful into something that is so powerful what you're doing to this work so thank you for that. I'm sure there are thousands of people that have felt very similar to you in terms of feeling like they didn't belong, that they were trying to assimilate into clipper culture, assimilate into the way a leader needed them to act to only not have that be reciprocated. You've been doing this work and studying this work, so you took that situation and then you went super deep in this. Yes, like a leading expert on belonging, I am wondering if we can talk about what are some of those common barriers or challenges people face in the workplace as it relates to belonging. What is that? What is that looking like for a lot of people?

Speaker 1: 9:28

I think it looks very different across the board. Right, there's a lot of diversity conversations that go around this, so when I comment, it's probably going to be a little more main sweeping. It'll hit everyone. I think one of the biggest barriers that we have is this internal talk track that we have. Right, there's this story we tell ourselves, and it's not always a realistic story. When we feel bad about ourselves, we beat ourselves up pretty badly. I think that's a really common barrier that I hear from people.

Speaker 1: 9:56

A lot of times the blame that you have is shifted onto you, from you, because you don't know where else to take it. Back in the day, I always say that back in the day it was HR, you'd go to HR. But the definition of HR has shifted, so when people have problems in the workplace they don't know where to go. You would logically think your manager, but that's not always a possibility, right? If we think about it, there are unequal playing fields. You and your managers are not equal. That's a reality. So speaking truth to power is really hard, and I think we're at a tipping point where people have been speaking truth to power and we haven't seen it go very well. So I think one of the biggest barriers are our leaders in the workplace and getting them acclimated to what it looks like. When we talk about trauma-informed workplace, so the trauma-informed workplace is really where you see things in the workplace that affect your mental and your physical health. We talk a lot about psychological safety, right? So when we don't feel safe in our environment and we're witnessing things that we need to either make just or justify on the company's behalf, that can become trauma-informed. For us is just one example, really. But who are about that? So a few things, not to disparage managers completely, but here's the reality. Have either of you ever had a manager that doubled as a psychologist? No, probably not. That's common, but from the pandemic and on, I believe that managers are being asked to take on way more, including the mental stability and health of their employees. Yeah, there's a lot of check-ins and things that managers are not able to control.

Speaker 1: 11:35

People come into the workplace with a lot of different backgrounds. Some come in and they are happy, healthy, raring and ready to go, and others unfortunately have to fake it till they get there. That's why concepts like family in the workplace are really hard. How many of you have heard anyone in the workplace ever say, oh, but we're like a family, oh, that's a red flag. It's a red flag because here's the reality. You can't fire your family. I would love to fire some of my family members. That's just not what happens. And most families are dysfunctional. Most are dysfunctional.

Speaker 1: 12:09

But when you equate family in the workplace to your personal life, who, which role do you think your boss plays in that? Right? A mom and dad? Yeah, very so. People really pay a lot of stock in that. Where some are like, no, I get it Clearly, that's not my familial ties. Others put a big point of this is me, this is who I am, and their identities start to get taken over by the workplace. So it's not I'm Beth, the mom of two. It is I'm Beth and I work at this company and this is my job.

Speaker 2: 12:41

It's been interesting watching as people are getting laid off. Yes, it's been interesting watching as people are getting laid off and they're getting laid off from companies that they have been with for five, 10, 15 plus years. And one of the things that when Mel and I talk to folks because we're on calls all the time with people when they get laid off, it is a grieving process A lot of times a deep grieving process because they did associate and identify so hard not only with the title that they had but with the company.

Speaker 2: 13:14

Because, I will argue that I think a lot of companies have positioned themselves as. You're part of this brand, you're part of this culture, you're lucky to be here, right, when you think about the safety net of your family. If your family were to disown you, you'd feel very similarly, and so I think there's this grief around, quite honestly, having that be ripped from you. And if you felt a deep sense of belonging and then all of a sudden you got laid off too, that does excuse my French. It feels like a huge mindfuck for a lot of people. Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 13:47

And for a long time that was very taboo to talk about.

Speaker 1: 13:50

It's just the reality. Trauma is trauma. You don't need to be in the fields fighting to experience PTSD. There's a lot of different ways it occurs. Workplace PTSD is a very real thing, so a lot of the people I coach and I talk to are very anxious to talk to me about it because they believe that their trauma is not as important as other forms of trauma. Trauma can really be as small as a sadness you experience and as large as something physically happening to you in the workplace. That spectrum is just so huge.

Speaker 1: 14:24

I have one person that I talked to recently who had a real hard time identifying the first time that they experienced trauma, and what we were able to bring it back to was their five-year anniversary Came and went and no one recognized it. At the same time, everyone else on that team got recognized. No, that wasn't trauma. They experienced A lot of sadness that led them into this really unproductive zone where they unfortunately, they started to put up with more that came their way. You would think it might be the opposite, but they really just were trying again to get those gold stars from their manager who they thought didn't care about them.

Speaker 1: 15:03

And what could I have done wrong? In reality, that's something the manager probably forgot. It's sad, right. Maybe the workday alert didn't go off, who knows? And that's just one of the examples. And that was a spiral that kept going and going and then the trauma really occurred when they were out of sync with their manager. And then topics of resilience came up and instead of digging into the deep roots of what was going on in the workplace, resilience was dumped on the employee base. You need to put up with these things right.

Speaker 2: 15:35

but I find this interesting too, because when I think about belonging, it was like diversity and inclusion, then it was diversity, equity, inclusion, and then it was diversity, equity, inclusion and belongings. Yes, and a lot of the examples you've been giving are right around an employee and their manager, or an employee to employee. Yet sometimes in organizations it seems like we're putting belonging at this corporate level. Yes, there's a distance, there's a distance, and I'm curious about your thoughts on belonging in these big corporate initiatives versus belonging the way we do.

Speaker 1: 16:10

So I can break it into two things. One, yeah, belonging is not all or nothing. That's a really big common misconception. You can belong to part of something and not the whole. You may feel like you belong to the company and your team but not to your manager. Or you may feel like you belong to that manager and your team but not the company. You could swap it in and out, and that's why I think ERGs are especially fantastic and troublesome at the same time, because you feel fantastic usually in those groups and they are highly beneficial for you to really be able to identify and connect with people. However, that being said, when they don't connect back to the corporate initiative or the company doesn't do anything about the struggles of these ERGs, that's a problem, right, People have a harsher or a more thwarted sense of belonging, which means a lack of belonging. Another is that belonging is not DEI, and that's probably one of the biggest.

Speaker 1: 17:06

You asked me before I might change my answer. Dei is a barrier at times to belonging because when you ask people what belonging is in the corporate world, they now say D, E and I, and they're all very important topics. They're just very different. But I would challenge you to go to any corporate report out there that says report on DEIB, anything that has a belonging. And if you can find me one metric on belonging, I'd be very surprised. It's just not the same. They're sisters, not twins at times. How are they?

Speaker 2: 17:35

measuring it? What are the typical? Sorry, I should know this and I don't.

Speaker 1: 17:39

No, it's very hard to measure belonging, so that's why I'm working with the University of Pennsylvania to create a tool around that. But no, belonging is seen as something subjective and until we're able to make it more objective, it is very difficult, unlike diversity, which is typically done through representation, but I would challenge that. I love the topic of diversity, but I really am into diversity of thought and mind. I think it's incredibly important when we're talking about representation as well, so it's very different in that sense.

Speaker 2: 18:09

Yeah, there's a lot of work to be done there right. A lot of amazing work has been done and the journey continues, absolutely, I hope it doesn't stop you too, beth.

Speaker 1: 18:18

I'd it doesn't stop you too, beth. I'd love to hear more about the work that you're doing with the University of Pennsylvania, the tool that you are working on with them, sure. So a lot of the work I do is around how we construct our sense of belonging, understanding what the roots of that are, whether it's personality or it's how you make decisions. And when I was doing my dissertation, my goodness, a few years back, one of the things we determined is that people make decisions one of three ways for themselves, for the company or for a combination of both. So, as you can guess, the healthiest combination is when you have everything at once. So most people with a true sense of belonging have that combination. When we do it just for the company, it's typically what we call sacrificial belonging. Right, we have to give something up for it. We all know the sacrifices in the workplace the ones that miss their PTO to better the company, or the ones that are missing games to produce those reports. So the other thing is, if it's just for you, there's a few different ways you look at that, but it's not always the right way to do things. So what I've done with the University of Pennsylvania is we've developed a tool that looks to see how people make their decisions around belonging, and so what we're doing is really taking a look and working with different companies to see how the reports are coming out, if it's predicting people's propensity to leave companies or if it's predicting their propensity to thrive, based on the way they construct their sense of belonging. It's really interesting. What have you learned so far with the companies that you've worked with? Were there any ah-ha's that you were like, oh, that was unexpected, or anything that just reinforced what you thought? We've learned a couple of different things. A lot of the time it's not actually been what's through the tool, but it's really through the interview process about the societal norms of the company. So personality makes a very big difference. If you are a company that builds itself upon extroverts and you are an introvert in the company, it's going to be a lot harder for you to progress. Likewise, if you're in an introverted company with introverted leaders and you are an extrovert, it's also going to feel like you are just square round. It doesn't work that way. So I think what we've learned is that companies need to pay attention to what type of employees they have and making sure that everyone can survive and thrive.

Speaker 1: 20:57

Francesca, and I talk about this often that in the workplace, the responsibility of a lot of these things are on the individual, the team and the organization. So I'd love to cover all three from your perspective and the work that you've done. Yeah, from an organization standpoint, what are some steps that organizations can take to create that culture of belonging where people are thriving? There's a lot of ways I can answer this. I think one of the things they need to do is look at their policies. That's the first thing. They need to make it a more equitable playing field.

Speaker 1: 21:27

I think that most of us can agree that belonging is typically an authenticity measured against a very specific type of worker in the workplace. It's usually white male, that's the best way to describe it. The other thing I would say, on top of policies, is making sure that you do not have a culture of imposed belonging right so everyone belongs here. That's not the case and it makes people feel really bad.

Speaker 1: 21:51

There's this concept of duck syndrome. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but no, please tell us more. So think about a little duck floating along the river. You probably met like a brisk pace. In reality, that duck is working hard to paddle its legs to look that calm and easy. And a lot of the times the workplace imposing belonging or saying everyone should feel this way because we make everyone feel included or like they should have a sense of belonging makes people feel really uneasy about themselves and when that happens it produces the sense of belonging, uncertainty, right, I don't know if it's me or the company, and let's just say you are with people that are not being honest around you or worse, you've got the corporate cheerleaders. You're not necessarily going to be like hey, francesca, I know you go to every happy hour, but do you feel like you sometimes don't belong here? So I think that's one of the things that we do in the workplace as a corporation that needs to be reconsidered.

Speaker 2: 22:48

I tell you I've probably been listening to way too much Taylor Swift lately, but there is definitely this sense of betrayal sometimes, or even companies misrepresenting themselves and they're like, oh, everyone belongs here. We're such a fun culture when you look at literally the marketing of how some of these companies present themselves. Yes, and the expectation people have right, that dissonance when people don't experience it or they feel like they have the duck syndrome. It's got to be exhausting for people.

Speaker 1: 23:16

It is exhausting. And that's not to say that companies shouldn't promote a sense of belonging. But not everyone belongs here. Yeah, I think it's a culture we have. Yeah, it's like being more authentic, even in their own advertising to say we strive to foster that environment and consistently work towards achieving it, which acknowledges that it doesn't exist 100% of the time. It's a constant effort. I think that's more authentic than what some of the messaging is usually Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 23:47

And you had mentioned the fact that what should companies and the corporate level do, maybe versus teams? Yes, I'm a corporation that's looking to foster a stronger sense of belonging. I'm going to invest a belonging at the team level or the org level because, especially these bigger companies, that's where belonging is really taken out and brought into daylight, because the corporate vision and values they always get a little altered as you go down right. Different leaders live those values differently. Organizations reflect that. So taking a look at what my organization looks like and trying to create the best possible culture, the healthiest possible culture, that's what companies can do is really acknowledge and give that autonomy to their leaders at the org level, and then that also makes it a safer space for leaders at the team level to be able to do that as well. What can leaders do in terms of creating those moments, really checking in with their people around, how they're feeling in the workplace? What are some? Something someone can implement tomorrow, right, and just start doing if they're not doing anything today? So one of my favorite things to tell leaders is to really start to know their people. That doesn't mean you know where they live and what their backyard looks like, but it means knowing what's important to them. And one of the best, easiest things that any leaders out there listening can do is they can ask their employees what they liked about their last manager and what they didn't like, because that's really important I'm pretty sure we're talking about current managers, past manager and what they didn't like, because that's really important. I'm pretty sure we're talking about current managers.

Speaker 1: 25:22

The reality is we all take our past managers with us, typically up to three. So that means your favorite manager you take them with you. Your least favorite manager you take them with you and you are measuring that current leader that you're with against those great and not so great leaders. So if you're out there and you're a leader, you're going to want to say what did you like that they did. What didn't you like? And you're going to learn so much this year I asked my team those questions. I usually update it because not everyone feels the same after a year or remembers it the same. But I had said what do you like that your last leader did?

Speaker 1: 25:56

And someone had said they kept consistent meetings so they didn't move my one-on-ones, and that made me feel really good because it gave me anxiety every time I had to reschedule and I was guilty. I was one of those people that moved them around, so I stopped doing that. And another thing that someone said that they didn't like was being praised publicly. Accepting that kudos was hard for them in public, but they really did appreciate it in a one-on-one setting when you were giving very specific feedback of what they did. Well, those are just two tips that are really helpful. At least I find I love to hear it just checking in what are your needs specifically and really personalizing it versus kind of spreading it like peanut butter as if it works for everybody, just because you think that's the right thing to do.

Speaker 1: 26:42

Absolutely. It makes me think of that lawsuit that someone had when their birthday was recognized in the workplace but they didn't want their birthday recognized, and I think that's a perfect example. I know there was a lot of jokes that came with that lawsuit, but I was like that's so valid though. That's taking care of people and understanding what they do and don't want and paying attention to that Absolutely. What's interesting about that story with the employee that didn't want a public praise? He happens to be very publicly admired, so I just assumed that this is something he was comfortable with, and he was not, and ever since we changed the way we give him feedback and praise, the whole relationship has been so much more positive.

Speaker 2: 27:24

Yeah, I love the idea of the ghost, the blasted past that we all bring, because that's so freaking true. It's so true and that question of what did you love and what didn't you like is so informative because it's so personal and it's so emotional for people too.

Speaker 1: 27:44

So emotional. I actually talked to almost all of my past managers and so it's also just a good idea to keep in touch and sometimes keep it real. He likes to tell me when maybe sometimes I'm being a little more dramatic because she's got really great frame of reference for it. Sometimes I'm being a little more dramatic because she's got really great frame of reference for it. So you know, it's not a bad idea. It doesn't mean that you have to be best friends with your bosses. Obviously, your work friends' podcasts would tell you you're not going to be best friends with everyone, and nor should you. Yeah, yeah, I think getting to know your employees is super, super important. And knowing how they are as a unit if I haven't said that already, but understanding what your package deal looks like, that's really important. Knowing my boss, knowing why I stop work at 5.30 every day and then why I may go back on it 10, is important to me. I don't want to be seen as a workaholic, but at the same time, it's my comfort level and I also don't want to miss the time while my kids are awake. I dug out it should be completely acceptable and it is, but it's probably because we had that conversation and that transparency really goes both ways. I love that.

Speaker 1: 28:47

I love to talk about employees, because leaders are in there with their people. It gets into one-on-ones and then a team level, but they're not always in all of the stuff happening with the individual employees that kind of peer-to-peer interaction and what goes on there. And sometimes for folks, leaders are a huge impact to their experience and their day-to-day, but so are their colleagues right, and sometimes those peer-to-peer relationships can really make or break that sense of belonging as well. What can individuals do to foster belonging in the workplace? So I would say boundaries are a fantastic place to start, because boundaries are two things that we can control. We can't control other people how they react to our boundaries and we can't set boundaries for others. So I always like to say that communication is kindness in this regard, and allowing people to understand you a little bit better than they may by understanding what your boundaries are and why you hold firm to them, also gives them insight into your values and what's important to you. What can someone do when they're really struggling with feeling that sense of belonging, either on their team? What can they do if they're really struggling to find that?

Speaker 1: 30:06

My first piece of advice I give everyone is to understand if the situation is real or if it's a story they're telling themselves. Our internal narrative is extremely powerful. It is and unfortunately it's usually less positive that we want it to be. I really wish that we were having a conversation where we're talking about someone that had just so much faith in themselves and that they were talking about their narrative. Oh, my goodness, I just kicked butt on that demo, or that's typically not what happens, and there's a lot of anxiety and uncertainty. So I usually tell people, aside from looking at the story we're telling ourselves and making sure that it's realistic, it's also maybe doing a gut check, but against your own mantras in life. So for me, I can share the story that I will typically over-index on things. So I try to hold myself accountable to doing what someone's asked me to do and sometimes nothing more, which is really hard for me. And if I'm really not sure about that, I might go to a peer and say did you hear it? The same way, I heard this request.

Speaker 1: 31:09

Sometimes that makes a breeding ground to open up a little differently with people and it also cuts the drama down, because you don't want to just have that friend that you commiserate with at work and that's real easy to get into that trap. If you have another person, it's the drama triangle, so it just keeps going and going. We want to make sure that when we pick co-workers that become our friends in the office, that it's people we can trust and that you typically want to limit any of the difficult conversation within that person that you trust. Personally, I love to be friends with everyone, but when it comes to people that I really will bank on, I usually maybe pick one person that maybe knows a little bit more drama about me than others yeah, someone who can also help you check yourself if needed. Right and honest yeah, is that true? Just asking, is that really true? That's right. I couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1: 32:07

There's a huge push in workplaces around bringing your authentic self. How can folks balance that need for individuality with their desire to fit in so they can be authentically them and bring and maintain that individuality while also feeling that sense of belonging? So I think the first step in doing that is understanding your values and what's important to you. So when you make decisions, you're indexing against them. Let's just say you notice bad behavior in the room.

Speaker 1: 32:33

You have Black colleagues that are not being heard, and diversity is a huge value to you, equity is a big value to you, and amplification If that's something that is going to keep you up at night, you need to speak up. I mean, let me just say that to me that is a huge value, so to me that is inherently doing the right thing. But, that being said, if that's going to happen just because other people are not amplifying their voices, it is part of my value system that I would need to be the one that stands up and says Mel just said that I really, or I love how Mel just told us that we are going to use the vending machine on the fourth floor?

Speaker 1: 33:12

I don't know, I have no good examples. This often happens to women right In meetings, where you need to step in and say that was a great point made by so-and-so. Yeah, that's right. And so I think understanding what your values are and I don't like the negative metaphors but understanding what a hill we're dying on is for us and what's not Not everything has to be a battle, right, so there are a lot of us that have the sense of justice in us and understanding what battles we should be fighting, and not If it's going to keep you up at night and it's going to eat at your soul because you've just betrayed yourself.

Speaker 1: 33:46

It's worth speaking up. Yeah, If not, one of the tricks I do is I typically hold three coins in my pocket and when I'm in a meeting, I make sure not to spend all three at once and not to speak more than that, because it's going to be really hard for me to tailor back. And so giving yourself strategies when you know you may be in a tough situation really key in the workplace. Yeah, I like that, and the three coins in your pocket is a nice reminder for folks. That's a very simple tactic to use.

Speaker 1: 34:16

It's also sensory, if you think about it. Yeah, I like that. I am wondering about different ways of working. Obviously, covid really blew up how we work, which is fantastic in so many ways, and now you have returned to office and people who are in the office and you have these hybrid working environments, and some are still 100% remote. Would you approach ways to foster belonging differently, based on the modality of how people are working? So COVID was terrible, but one of the things we got out of it is this ability to see people beyond the screen, and I think that's really important. I've always been a remote employee, so I knew I was to people. I was just sitting in this box here and then, when COVID happened, everyone was put in that position and I think it made people reevaluate where people work from and the fact that it didn't really matter. I will tell you that there is this concept of place belongingness, and place belongingness really sits with the fact that if it feels like home, it can be linked to a place. I've never been in a corporate headquarters where it's felt like home. No one serves me coffee, so no baristas at my house. That would be lovely, like sometimes it happens in the workplace and that's a luxury.

Speaker 1: 35:34

I think that people have a misconception that you need to be in an office to feel a sense of belonging, and I don't believe that's accurate and the research tells us it's not true. What does the research say about that? Because you hear all of these big organizations. A huge part of their argument for return to office is it's going to foster belonging. We've lost belonging and it feels like that's such a false narrative. What does the research say? The research says that unless it feels like home, it doesn't necessarily need to be placed belongingness. That being said, do I love to get together with my colleagues? I do, I'm one of those people that does, but that is because I'm an ambivert that leads towards the extrovert side. So I get so much energy from other people. Yeah, doers, but they just they get their stimulus from other places and that's okay. So while I do believe that people build a great sense of community while they're in the office I do it doesn't necessarily have to be done that way. And I'll tell you, almost all of my team and my organization that I manage is remote. We get along fantastic. We don't always agree, we love disagreeing, we love the debate, but it doesn't break our sense of belonging to be remote. I do think there are certain jobs where that collaboration in person is important, right, but I just happen to be in a space where it's not as firm and we believe that working from the office could also mean you're at a client or other places where you are set up and need to have those interactions, but, no, it does not give you a stronger sense of longing to be in an office.

Speaker 1: 37:17

We have, I think, what? Four, now maybe five generations in the workplace, which impacts so many things. We talk about individualization in their needs and that personalization. How do generational differences and especially in the time we're in now, like? How does that impact belonging in the workplace? So we have a lot of generations at once, as you mentioned, right, you've got the boomers, who really will challenge less when it comes to management and authority, because your job and your boss are sacred in a sense, and you've got the Gen Xers, who are still a little more likely to please I'm a Gen Xer, but at the same time, we'll take far less to get it done and we're not necessarily the purpose-driven generation that is currently in the work, coming up in the workplace where they've been taught that they can bring their authentic selves to work and they should bold people to standards that are different than maybe the millennials that came before them, that a little bit more different change in the way that we work. So I think all of those generations together learn from one another.

Speaker 1: 38:27

I think in the beginning it felt a little problematic, but I think it's forcing people out of their comfort zone, which helps everyone grow just a lot differently than we have in the past.

Speaker 1: 38:37

I would go as far as to say that the next generation will be probably Generation T, which is all around transition and how we deal with the world and look at it differently. So I honestly think all of this is bringing phenomenal diversity of thought that didn't exist necessarily before. I couldn't agree more. It just seems like it's a really good conversation that seems to be happening among everybody about how to make work better together Absolutely, and these were things we weren't talking about. So it is very interesting. We're also getting into different things that we didn't before when it comes to these generations. Like, we have grandparents now in the workplace and if you think about it before, people would retire early than they do now. So you didn't have that frame of reference, you have people working longer than they ever have and these shifts in generation and family responsibility are really shaping a different way that we look at the workplace.

Speaker 2: 39:33

I'm personally completely for it. Outside of like humans being humans, there's no reason why we shouldn't have been striving for a very deep sense of belonging all along. It's exciting to see this evolve, especially over the last, I'd say, five years, where it's been a big part of this discussion. I do want to talk about where is this going, but before I ask you that and I really appreciate having your insights in this because you're so researched on it, You're a practitioner of this I feel like you're the best person to ask this question and I'm going to ask you to give a grade Grade scale A, B, C, D, F, right Corporate America how well do organizations in corporate America foster belonging?

Speaker 1: 40:16

In America B minus.

Speaker 2: 40:21

B minus. Rationale for the great. Rationale for the great.

Speaker 1: 40:25

Because a B is positive but depending on how you look at it, some people think it's really negative in this cultural perfectionism that we have and others are completely satisfied by it. I thought about dropping it down, but the C being average, I think I still think it's a bit above average because the awareness layer is there. I don't talk to people and have to talk about why belonging is important anymore If you're just accusing to people about what it is and how we got to where we are with it. So I'd say solid.

Speaker 2: 40:58

B minus.

Speaker 1: 40:59

I like that answer.

Speaker 2: 41:00

I like that answer. I feel like most employees would answer that too.

Speaker 1: 41:04

I'd agree. I usually think that people are going to answer lower and they don't. I think a lot of it also is because people are nervous to tell the truth. They are, yeah, nervously trying to get back to their employer.

Speaker 2: 41:16

I also am wondering, because there's such a morphing of our values towards work too, I wonder if people are taking the pressure off of organizations to be everything to them. Now I'm looking at this more transactually, or I'm looking at this as a Mel. I'm sorry, I'm going to use this analogy again. I'm not looking at you as someone I want to marry. I'm looking at you as someone I want to have a good time with tonight.

Speaker 1: 41:37

So it's like the pressure's off a little bit, my hope is because people realize they don't have to get their sense of belonging from work. Yeah, so we have this concept of dissimilated belonging, where you don't necessarily need to be a cultural ambassador. Some people just want to do their jobs and go home. Yeah, that has to be okay. We have to make that okay and I think this new generation does that, yeah, in a sense for us. So I want to say that's becoming a bit more mainstream, that people don't need to get their satisfaction and their purpose from work. Yeah, that's the generation I think that we'll see come in as well. It's so healthy, that's such a new healthy outlook. We'll see come in as well. It's so healthy, that's such a new healthy outlook.

Speaker 1: 42:13

Because we're all Gen X on this call, you know, like that was a transition I think we probably all made over time. But it's nice to see that people are not moving away from putting their whole identity into the work Absolutely. And then there's these companies that are shifting their values to be really about the work they're doing and not necessarily the destinations for belonging, which is huge. The company I work for, I have to say I'm proud because we really do look at powering smarter treatments for patients, and so, if you really break that down, that's a phenomenal aspiration and we really work very hard to it and we really work very hard to it. You would never say in our values that we have to feel a certain way or do a certain thing or act the way to get there, and for us that takes a lot of pressure off of things, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 43:01

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:02

I also think it's an accurate representation. Yeah, this is my thing. Can we get back to accurate representation? I'm not judging you on what you're saying you are. What I'm asking you to do is be honest about who you are so you give an accurate representation. That's my play. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. All right, so this is exciting. Mel and I were talking about this the other day, because I don't know about you, beth, but you feel the energy shifting, especially this year around work around speed. This year around work around speed, around change, around everything. And belonging has made wonderful progress in terms of educating people about value, what it is, and I'm curious about, when we look at the next five years, how do you see the concept of belonging evolve? How do you see the needs for employees and organizations evolve? What does the next five years of this work look like?

Speaker 1: 43:55

What I hope it looks like, I should say, is that it is a place where people don't have to sacrifice who they are to be themselves. I think part of braving the workplace is being yourself every day in a world that tells you to be something else. So I'm hoping that the workplace in five years is more representative of your towns and the people on the streets. That's a really aspirational goal I have for the workplace, and I also hope that people can understand themselves a little better and don't feel as pressured to be all of the things all of the shoulds, the coulds and woods that the rest of the world would like us to be.

Speaker 2: 44:33

I love that I love that you talked about how leaders can create a sense of belonging. I'm curious about making teams more representative of our work environment. They're more representatives of the way that our towns look like. Is there anything that you would have that a manager could do, a leader could do, to say I really want to make sure that I can start to achieve that now.

Speaker 1: 44:53

I think it's looking at your team and the diversity on your team. Are people in your meetings nodding their heads or are they arguing comfortably with you? Are they debating? Do they speak up or are they just laughing at your corny jokes? I think that's the things I listen to at least. I think it's important to really be able to be in a team that communicates dissent.

Speaker 3: 45:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 45:17

I think it's also important to share experiences with one another. You're not going to share everything, and nor is it appropriate to share everything in the workplace, but there's certain life moments that we all have, and being able to comfortably speak to them at the appropriate level of detail is really important, and I think that's why people feel such a pull to go back to the office, because you do those things without thinking about them. We always talk around about the water cooler and talking about the latest episode of whatever you watch, but it goes deeper than that. It really does. It's a little harder to hide your emotions in an office yeah, absolutely, it's not very acceptable, and that's it really does. It's a little harder to hide your emotions in an office yeah, absolutely, very acceptable. And that's what people miss. I think they miss that sense of camaraderie, and we don't necessarily need to be a person for that. We just need to understand how to break down barriers that are preventing us from doing that.

Speaker 3: 46:04

Yeah, love it, love it.

Speaker 2: 46:31

Rapid round.

Speaker 1: 46:32

Yes, we're going to do rapid round. I promise this is painless, okay, and it's just possible. It's meant to be fun. Some of our best conversation happens here and the goal is to answer pretty quickly, like your very first thought that comes to mind. And if you want to expound upon it, absolutely you can, so we'll leave that up to you. And if you want to expound upon it, absolutely you can, so we'll leave that up to you. Sound good, perfect, okay. What is the best belonging initiative you've seen so far? The best belonging initiatives I've seen so far is through Brene Brown, who talks about braving the wilderness and the ability to be yourself and the comfort and bravery to be yourself. What does belonging mean to you personally in three words Don't sacrifice yourself.

Speaker 3: 47:23

Oh shit.

Speaker 2: 47:23

That's good, it's good, it's good. I see merch, beth. I see a lot of merch happening.

Speaker 1: 47:30

What are the top three factors that make a community and we see work as another kind of community feel inclusive? Inclusive is what other people allow for you to be, versus belonging is what you decide for yourself, okay. So if I'm talking about inclusive, I would say it's transparency, I would say it's care, and care is a really big spectrum, right? Care is thoughtfulness and it's also speaking your name in a room of opportunity. And care can also be boundaries, and maybe I would go with boundaries, now that we're talking about that as well. I think inclusive, having that level of boundaries, promotes all the things we just spoke about. And with that and that, because that was inclusiveness, now flip it with belonging. So what are the top three factors that make a community feel like others belong? Individuality, like others belong, individuality I'm going to go with care, because we know care is the number one influence that a manager can do to make their employees feel like they belong. And trust I like it. Okay, trusting ourselves and trusting others yeah, the trusting. Trusting yourself first, of course, so important, but it's also trusting others too, in that everyone starts with positive intent. That's right.

Speaker 1: 48:55

Yeah, if you could recommend one book, movie, article on this topic of belonging for someone, something that's deeply resonated with you and you're like I need you to see that, read that, listen to that. What would you recommend to someone today? It's a really tough one. Bell Hooks has a lot of phenomenal topics around belonging. Maya Angelou is probably my idol when it comes to this conversation, because she presented belonging in the best, truest way. Belonging to nothing and everything at the same time is just magical. When you can be that free to belong to nothing, you belong to everything. So I'm going to go with bell hooks and Maya Angelou. I love it. That's really powerful. When you belong to nothing, you belong to everything. That's right. If you could have every company do just one thing differently tomorrow, what would that be? Get to know their employees and what matters to them. How about?

Speaker 2: 50:02

leaders the same and individuals be.

Speaker 1: 50:11

If I could have one wand and I would wave it around, it would be for people to be kinder to themselves.

Speaker 1: 50:15

It really would be.

Speaker 1: 50:16

I think we put a lot of harsh, in harsh words, harsh feelings out there.

Speaker 1: 50:22

A lot of it just creates this crazy level of uncertainty and anxiety and then, a lot of the times, the exclusive nature of that is isolating and stressful, and that's a lot of the times we keep it to ourselves until it just boils over and you either explode or, unfortunately, all of the physical ramifications come into play, because we know that this becomes physically painful when we feel like we have a thwarted sense of belonging and it's unfortunate that belonging is an antecedent to suicide. When we feel like we have a thwarted sense of belonging and it's unfortunate that belonging is an antecedent to suicide. When we feel like the world is better off without us or we find that we don't believe we're making a difference for ourselves and others. So I would love to see people be kinder to themselves overall. I think that's such a really good message. I'll share my best friend if I'm like down on myself, which I think we're all guilty of it trying to get better at it, but it's the first.

Speaker 1: 51:17

Of course, you're your own worst critic. My best friend will say hey, don't talk about my friend like that. We just stop. So it's just little things like when you're talking about yourself, be like hey, don't talk about you like that. I think it's good. I think that Thank you so much for this and for your authenticity and for sharing all of this good research with us and tips with us on how to have better belonging at work, and we cannot wait to read your book when it comes out soon. Thank you, and thank you for the phenomenal work you're doing on this podcast. I bet you people tune in and they just love it because you both seem like you're friends with the podcast guests. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3: 52:07

Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.

Mindful Leadership

Your Work Friends Podcast: Mindful Leadership with Aurora Myers and Carissa Ricci

Emails flying. Deadlines looming. Your Slack is a war zone. But what if you could lead through it without burning out? Aurora Myers and Carissa Ricci are here to help! We’re talking mindful leadership—the real kind. No fluffy mantras or toxic positivity—just practical ways to stay grounded, focused, and human when everything around you feels like a mess.

This compelling episode dives into the essence of mindful leadership in the workplace. Our guests share their journey and expertise on integrating mindfulness and mental health practices into corporate culture, emphasizing the significance of showing up as your full self at work. By embracing self-awareness, leaders can harness their best selves, fostering healthier and more effective team dynamics.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

And what I wish somebody would have told me is just sit your butt down and just feel and just practice, because you are in your body and you know it's best for you.

Speaker 2: 0:09

Boom. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 4: 0:11

I'm going to put like five exclamation points after that.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Friends. Mel and I talk to a lot of people every week and really uncover what's happening with them at work. On the same token, what was really interesting is when we look at our analytics around, what people search for when they're searching our pod or when they find our pod, it's all around the same type of themes, right, mel? It's like how do I get through this work? Schmutz.

Speaker 3: 0:53

Yeah, it's. My day is hard. I'm dealing with politics, I'm dealing with changes, I'm dealing with tough team situations, project situations. How do I get through it?

Speaker 2: 1:05

Yeah, it's how do I get through it? How do I get through today, now, this minute, this stress? And so Mel and I called up Chris Arici and Aurora Myers. They are experts in what's called mindful leadership, and if you don't know what mindful leadership is, it's really about understanding ourselves and our own nervous systems and our physiological reactions to stress, because when you have stress, whether or not you recognize it, you're having a reaction physically, mentally, emotionally. We have them, and what mindful leadership is trying to do is allow you to understand your own operating model so you can use that data to inform how you want to show up and then show up in a really beautiful way, because when you understand how you show up and react to stress, you're going to be a better version of yourself.

Speaker 3: 1:54

I couldn't agree more, and I feel like in this episode, carissa and Aurora gave so many tangible and tactical tips that you can take with you every single day Stuff you can implement in the next five minutes.

Speaker 2: 2:09

Listen, chris and Aura do this as their life's work. They have a company called Ignite where they're uncovering and helping people ignite their own mindful leadership style, but with us they really shared. What do I do in the minutes in the small movements today? What do I do as an employee? What do I do in the minutes in the small movements today? What do I do as an employee? What do I do as a leader? And then, how do I really work to establish a better understanding of my own operating model? Well, with that here, it is our conversation with Carissa and Aurora about mindful leadership. Friends, we're so stoked to have you first of all, just like being around both of you, so much a good energy and a good juju. But what I'm going to talk about your backgrounds? Um, obviously both of you have deep mindful leadership practices and you also have really interesting backgrounds in terms of how you got here. So I'm wondering if you could start by telling us what's your journey to where you are today.

Speaker 1: 3:16

I started getting into the mindfulness and yoga space when I was 17 years old and it's been incredibly helpful for my mental health, and I saw a need to infuse all of this good stuff movement in your body, working with all of the messy thoughts in your brain in corporate culture, in a place where I feel like all of that stuff is not either prevalent or taken seriously, and so I wanted to take what I had learned and bring it to a place where people could use it the most to de-stress and feel better and really invest in themselves over time, and that's what inspired me to get into all of this Right environment to do it too. What about you?

Speaker 2: 3:54

Carissa.

Speaker 4: 3:55

Yeah, for me, I bounced around from the academic environments corporate environments. I would say the bulk of my experience has been in corporate and I have seen examples of really amazing and incredible leadership and not so stellar leadership and everything in between and those environments where you feel like you're allowed to bring your humanity to work versus those where you feel like you have to check part of yourself at the door. And I think seeing all of those different examples of what it looks like on a team when you're engaging with different types of leaders really intrigued me. And what does that look like from a health standpoint and mental health awareness is something that has been really important to me and mental health in the workplace and what does it look like to be able to show up to work and feel like you can bring your full self? So for me, getting to this place has been wanting to bring some of those healthier practices to teams across the corporate environment where we can make the workplace feel better for people.

Speaker 3: 4:54

I would love to hear from you both how do you define mindful leadership?

Speaker 1: 4:58

It's such a nuanced but fascinating topic.

Speaker 1: 5:02

The way that I like to think about it is we all have these operating instructions for ourselves that help us figure out what triggers our stress response cycle and how we can show up to be the best version of ourselves in as many situations as possible, both personally and professionally. And the goal of mindful leadership is to figure out what are our personal operating instructions. How does that show up in these professional settings? When we're in community, when we're in conversation and relationship with others, how can we use that data to inform the way we show up? And then, on the flip side, how can we work with other people who have different operating instructions and meet them with empathy and curiosity and kindness, when we're all coming at a situation from different perspectives and whatnot? So it's really like understanding ourselves and our own nervous systems and our physiological reactions to stress. So that way, when we're in those conversations that feel messy or we don't quite know the answers to them, we can feel a little bit more grounded and less pulled or pushed from this place of internal stress.

Speaker 3: 6:06

Why do you think this is so critical in the workplace?

Speaker 4: 6:09

Aurora and I often talk about, like it starts with us as the leader and if I can't hold space for my stuff, how can I hold space for that of other people?

Speaker 4: 6:18

So, as Aurora was talking about those operating instructions and the physiology of it, moving from a place where it's less reactive and more intentional is really, really important, because we are in a high stress environment Most of the time. We are being pulled in a million different directions and how can I tap into what's happening within myself? So there's, there has to be that willingness there to first open yourself up to okay, I'm going to explore this and then, secondly, raising that awareness of oh, this is the physiological response that happens when I'm triggered and this is how I can move forward with that. One of the reasons why it's so important is that, in those moments where you would traditionally be more reactive, it gives you an opportunity to pause and rethink the way that you approach things and can have a really incredible impact on your teams If they start to see you showing up in a different way and you coming from a more grounded place, a more centered place, a place of authenticity. You're role modeling that for your team.

Speaker 3: 7:17

Yeah, I think that's really important and we've seen the shift. I've personally seen a shift over the last 20 years on leaders being more introspective before showing up for their teams and spending a little more time there. Why do you think this is so important right now? Why is this so important for the future of work?

Speaker 1: 7:36

In my experience of working with teams is that so often there's this interest in mindfulness and mindful leadership, but sometimes it can happen in these vacuums within certain groups of leaders and then they don't have the tools and resources to take that and carry that forward to their teams. So that's one of the things that we've also recognized that we would like to change about. The future of work is not just sitting down at the beginning of a team meeting for five minutes and breathing and feeling really good and then going eight hours straight and just like not being able to maintain any information because you're just so tired and exhausted, but really infusing it as much as possible into the spaces where people need it most and giving the leaders the tools that they need to help their team do the same their team do the same.

Speaker 3: 8:26

That makes sense. It's interesting because when you first start to hear something like mindful leadership in certain workplaces that some people feel, oh, this is too woo-woo, is this too touchy-feely, what does that exactly mean? But it's clear from what you're saying this is really for everyone, right? So this?

Speaker 4: 8:40

is for everybody, whether or not you actually lead in the formal sense that, oh, I have direct reports in the system, so I'm a leader. That's not what we're saying here. We're saying that you are showing up as a leader. You're showing up as a leader in your communities, with your friends, with the people in your life. There are all of these different facets in which you show up as a leader and, yes, one of the lenses is if you lead people at work. But really, this mindful leadership practice and idea can be infused throughout your life, no matter what your work life looks like.

Speaker 3: 9:09

Yeah, I think it's such an important call out to say leadership does not equal a title. It shows up in so many different ways, so I just love the work you're doing.

Speaker 2: 9:18

And Mel, to your good point too. I know a lot of folks might feel like, oh, is mindful leadership, woo-woo. But quite honestly, there's a lot of benefit for someone really understanding their operating model, right, their operating system, to understand how they're going to react, how they're going to react in stressful situations, how they're going to react when they're excited, how they're going to react in front of their teams. Like to really be able to check themselves, because I think we've all worked for someone where you're like man, you need some therapy, like we've all right, probably not, probably not.

Speaker 4: 9:50

Oh, 100% Right.

Speaker 2: 9:52

Or you're like in a conference room with someone where they're just they're going in fuego or they're really reacting so poorly and the impact for the team, the impact for the work, is slowing it down, it's making people feel really disengaged, and that all costs time, that all costs money, and so I think this idea of really starting to understand you, your operating system, and then how you can take that and show up as your best self through mindful leadership, is rad. When we talked earlier, one of the things you were talking about is this doesn't have to be these big leaps of things, right. This is something that can start small, small things. And I'm curious how can someone really start small in mindful leadership, start small in understanding their operating system? Let's start with employees. How can employees start to pull into a practice of mindful leadership?

Speaker 1: 10:43

When we do talk about mindfulness, it can feel disconnected from our real life experiences and the stressors that are going on.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Sometimes we assume, in order to feel good, I need to go off to a 10 day meditation retreat, or I need to quit my job or I need to change my life in some way. But the purpose of these practices is truly to learn how to do it in the middle of the messiness, and so I think one of the best things that someone can do in the middle of a work context is figure out what works best for them to regulate their nervous system. And that can look like anything. For some people it could look like breathing. For others it could look like finding some movement. For somebody like myself who doesn't like sitting still, sometimes I need like a hardcore workout before I feel relaxed and then I can do breath work. It's truly figuring out what helps you feel more calm so you can recognize what that operating model is telling you, so you can get out of fight or flight and show up to that situation from a place that's more grounded. That's probably my number one tip Regulate your nervous system.

Speaker 2: 11:43

It's so funny Whenever I get really up in my anxiety I feel it in my gums, like I can feel it in my neck and in my gums, and I have learned to do a box breathing, just to like one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and that calms me down because it is it's. I need something now that's not a Xanax, because we can't take those during the workday, so like yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:04

And that is so huge is like noticing where it is showing up in your body. A lot of times people are like I'm stressed, but they can't quite tell where they feel that. Do you have a stomach ache? Are your shoulders lifting up? And that's a lot of that mind body connection that we teach in yoga and mindful movement. That is really helpful.

Speaker 4: 12:22

Yeah, I would piggyback onto that and say that I have noticed that when I do notice, even just the noticing in and of itself, like oh, my chest is tight or oh, my throat feels it just the noticing, it can actually help relieve some of that tension. Which is the irony of it is that even in the noticing it can help release some of those places of tension. The other thing that I would add, as far as a small thing, once you get that physiological response and I'm going to quote Ted Lasso, quoting Walt Whitman here, but the be curious and not judgmental, yeah, Be aware I'm a Ted fan.

Speaker 4: 12:55

It might come up again later, I don't know, but there's this line that he quotes by Walt Whitman be curious, not judgmental. And I feel like so often we do that outward right, we share that curiosity with other people, but do we do that with ourselves? So I feel like that. For my own personal mindfulness journey has been one of the biggest hurdles to jump over is when I feel or notice that tension in my body, I go right to judgment Like, oh, Chrissy, you're anxious again, why is your body doing this? And so the other small habits that I've gotten into the practice of is recognizing when that happens and going oh, you're in judgment, You're judging yourself for being X, Y, Z.

Speaker 4: 13:34

How do you move into curiosity and go oh, what is your body trying to tell you right now, as opposed to body, why are you doing this to me right now? That's another little, little mindset shift and tweak that you can make when you find yourself in those moments is being kind and compassionate to yourself, which is really difficult. I don't know anyone else, but like that self-flagellation of like, oh my gosh, I'm having another moment where my body's freaking out and I'm feeling anxious and I'm and shifting from that to well, why is that happening. Let me dig under the surface and ask some compassionate questions about why that might be happening with me right now.

Speaker 2: 14:07

Yeah, I think so much of the time there's this archetype of leadership that is still very, very prevalent that we all have to show up and be Shackleton and have no emotions about things. Right, You're cool, calm and collected all the time. Personally, when I felt like holy shit, I'm flipping out right now, Like I am full on flipping out, I think all of us have had moments where we're angry, we're anxious, we're frightened at work or there's something happening For me. I feel like I should be able to handle this. Why is my body reacting this way? I should be able to just brush it off. So, on top of feeling it, I feel shame, honestly, because I'm not Shackleton, but what I hear you saying, Chris, is don't shame, just notice it. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4: 14:49

And understanding that initial judgment is normal. It happens. It's that initial knee-jerk reaction to when that, and again going back to the small wins, is reducing the amount of time between when you notice you're judging yourself and then shifting into curiosity instead. So really celebrate those wins, even if it feels like, well, I went right to judgment again and then, guess what, you're still in judgment. So it's like trying to get more quickly from the oh, I'm judging myself to let me get curious about this and implement the things that they do know, like box breathing or other things to regulate what's happening.

Speaker 2: 15:21

Yeah, what about managers? Again, I'm looking for those small wins. I'm leading a team, I am trying to shorten that time between judgment and curiosity and really notice when I'm having those triggers for myself and at the same time I'm leading a team. And are there different moves that I can make or pull into as a manager?

Speaker 4: 15:43

One of the most powerful things you can do is really just be transparent with your team and say, hey, this is something I'm working on.

Speaker 4: 15:50

And again this goes back to there has to be a willingness to be vulnerable and there has to be a willingness to to show up to your team and say this is what I'm working on and ask them for feedback on how things are feeling within their team, really source that information from them Like, how is this feeling? Know that I'm working on these things and then open up the conversation, because even just talking about some of this stuff is going to be new for teams and I think it not only will help your team feel like they're allowed to talk about it, but they'll feel empowered when they see you role modeling. That to say, hey, like I don't have this figured out, this is something I'm working on. Maybe this is something we can work on together as a team. So opening that door can help people feel like they're a part of the process. It can help build that psychological safety to be able to have some of those conversations on how you want to move forward as a mindful team with a mindful leader.

Speaker 1: 16:46

I could not have said that better myself. Literally perfect thing I could add on to that is the accountability piece when you're receiving feedback, being open to that and creating the space, like you said, for your team to feel safe in providing you feedback. One of the things that I do because I know personally I'm always afraid of feedback is I'll try to beat my insecurity to the punch and ask for it first. So if you can create that environment and say this is something that I'm working on in my personal mindfulness practice, it's something that I want to bring to the team, but I'm not quite there yet. Can you let me know if I'm falling short? Can you let me know if I can do better? And just creating that connection, like Carissa said, I think is huge and different and not normal, as I'm thinking about the interactions that you have with your team.

Speaker 4: 17:31

One of the other ways that managers can show up in that space is allowing for silence. And going back to what we were talking about with holding space for other people. Specifically, in this instance, if you're having a one-on-one conversation with a team member and you are in a conversation where maybe your team member brings up something that is uncomfortable or does make you feel or does trigger you, that's an opportunity for you as a leader, as a manager, to tap into some of those practices that you have around. How am I going to show up and self-manage what's happening with me while also being able to hold space for another human who is in this moment? Because, as humans, we're designed to run from discomfort, we don't like sitting in the muck of things, and so how do we, as leaders and managers, sit in that space with another human and do that? Because that is an incredible gift to be able to give someone else. How do we lean into those moments where it's like, ooh, this is sticky, this is uncomfortable, this isn't normal for me, and I think one of the most powerful things I've ever had anyone say to me was when I was going through a really difficult time and I now use this with other people that I care about in my life where they said, I can't fix it for you, I can't take away what you're going through, but I can sit with you in it, and I remember feeling so relieved.

Speaker 4: 18:41

I've had other people who said, oh, don't cry, we'll figure it out, or they're trying to put the bandaid on it for me and I just needed to be in that moment, and so there is such relief when you're on the receiving end of that. I will just sit with you in it. And that ability to be able to hold that space and that discomfort with someone else is so powerful and can create such a deep and meaningful connection. So I would say, as a manager, that's one of the things that is most important to work on. It's difficult to sit in silence sometimes. I'm a highly empathic person. I want to help, I want to fix, so that's a lot of self-management that happens in those moments.

Speaker 2: 19:17

It seems like it's a good opportunity for that curiosity too. Mel and I joke about this. We don't know if it's like a trauma response or not, but we will be the first one with the really ill-timed joke when things get uncomfortable. You know it's not appropriate. You know, yeah, things make us uncomfortable, but it's interesting. There have been many times when I've been leading teams where you're having a conversation. It's uncomfortable. It might be uncomfortable because they're sharing feedback about me that makes me feel uncomfortable, like I failed them or something it might be that they're sharing something really deeply personal and it's outside the bounds of work.

Speaker 2: 19:56

Maybe it's inside the bounds of work but it's getting mucky to your point. And when we have these initial reactions which might feel like failure or feel like discomfort, to pull into that curiosity and be like, okay, you're feeling this, francesca, don't tell the joke or francesca, don't make it right, be here and be okay with the silence of things, because I love that idea of giving someone the gift of your time, your ears and your silence it reminded me of way, way, way back when I first graduated from college and I was going into teaching and so I got my teaching credentials and in one of the classes the professor said after you ask a question, wait six seconds before you say anything else.

Speaker 4: 20:35

And I thought, oh, six seconds, it's not a big deal. And then they said we're going to set the timer for six seconds. We're all going to sit here in silence. So you know what that feels like, and they did that and you could literally feel it was like people's skin is like skin crawlingly, like just, it was so uncomfortable. We got to seconds four, five and six and it was so interesting to me how, in my mind, I was like, oh, six seconds isn't that big of a deal. But especially when you're in a conversation that feels emotionally charged or it has some depth to it, that silence can feel really heavy. So, being able to embrace it instead of run from it and sit in it, I've been amazed at what comes out in the silence.

Speaker 3: 21:14

We do a 10 second rule in facilitation with the same thing and it's a good break Once you get used to it.

Speaker 4: 21:20

Those first few times are a little they're awkward, a little intense they are yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:26

And they are. I will always be like okay, I'm giving the obligatory 10 seconds now because that's the way I manage.

Speaker 4: 21:34

By the way, I love this. I love that you shared that you have this urge to tell inappropriate jokes. It's bad, it's so hard it's.

Speaker 2: 21:41

So I'm like oh God and it's my, it's so hard it's so I'm like oh god, and it's. My husband does this too and I realize it's a way to ease the tension, it's a way to bring levity and sometimes I'm wondering is that for me? I'm trying to do it for the group, but I'm trying to do it for me too, because I get uncomfortable with the silence.

Speaker 4: 22:02

A hundred percent. Yeah, there's this moment of am I doing it to ease my discomfort or am I doing it to ease theirs?

Speaker 1: 22:25

you know point in time where we decide am I going to tell the joke or am I going to try to sit with this discomfort? One of the phrases that I find really helpful in my personal practice comes from Brene Brown, but it's this phrase of the story I'm telling myself is and if we can get curious and lean into like wait, what is going on in my mind? Am I feeling incompetent? Am I feeling awkward or insecure? What's going on internally and how is that going to impact what I say or do is a huge part of the practice, and probably one of the hardest parts is when you're doing it in real time, versus when you're sitting and feeling great and there's no messy conversation in front of you. You're just relaxing.

Speaker 2: 22:59

Yeah, yeah. Is it valuable to do like a post-mortem on that? Let's say, I completely biffed the conversation and I was just Jerry Seinfeld-ing it through the whole thing. Is there value in being like, wow, I really just did that and why did I do that? Or do you feel like the real value is stopping yourself in the muck?

Speaker 1: 23:17

So Carissa mentioned, the more we practice and the more we do this, the quicker we get at recognizing what's going on in the moment. So I like to think of it as this bell curve, where at the very beginning you have the stimulus so say it's silent and that causes anxiety, and then you have a very short amount of time where you get to decide what your response is, and then maybe your reaction is to tell the joke, and then we watch as whatever happens happens. The more we practice mindfulness, the quicker we are going to understand in the moment when the thing is happening. Oh, it's happening. Like how do I want to choose my response this time? But most often what happens is that we realize it afterwards. Like you said, the postmortem check-in is great because then we can think oh okay, I want to do something different next time. Both are good. It's just harder to do in the moment if we're not practicing in the container of quiet or doing that post work of understanding how we showed up in the situation.

Speaker 2: 24:31

We talked about the small stuff. What if people want to really establish a practice of mindful leadership where they're living with this intention, at work and at home, their laser focused on knowing how their operating system works and how they can show up in the most constructive way? How do people get into establishing a deeper, mindful leadership practice.

Speaker 4: 24:51

This kind of harkens back to what we were talking about earlier noticing where the tension is in my body For me and establishing a longer term practice. That's been the most effective way, that the most effective entry point for me is noticing what's happening physiologically with me, because it's easier for me than going straight to like what am I feeling right now? So I noticed, oh, my body's feeling weird. Okay, what is that telling me? There's something happening here, and so then I can get into more of the. Oh. Now I'm going to pull on those techniques that I like box breathing or four, seven, eight breathing, or I'm going to lay on my stomach because that helps, like pressure on your stomach helps downregulate your nervous system.

Speaker 4: 25:27

There are things that I've learned from Aurora Thank you, aurora over the years that have helped me. I'm like, okay, this might look funny, but I'm going to lay on my stomach in my office for five minutes. There are things that I've implemented that have helped me when I noticed that getting into curiosity, using those things that I know work for me and then becoming more consistent with them as I can. Everyone's different, everyone's going to have a different entry point, a different way of doing it that's going to work for them. Really, it's about finding what works for you. Again, back to curiosity. What does work for you as you look at your life and your past, as you try to establish new habits or new ways of being? What's most effective? What works for one person isn't always going to work for the other, but for me that's been the most effective way.

Speaker 1: 26:14

I see two definitions of mindfulness One, which is the classic definition from Jon Kabat-Zinn, where he says it's paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally Lots of hard things to do all at once combined.

Speaker 1: 26:27

And then the other one that I'm familiar with is to do anything artfully and with intention, is to be mindful, and so, like Carissa said, everyone's entry point can be different and I think part of the mindset piece around that is. A lot of times we look at mindfulness or meditation and think well, I can't sit still or like my back hurts or my legs hurt when I cross my legs, so I'm not a good meditator. I don't like to do yoga because I'm not flexible. Maybe you like going on a walk or eating lunch without looking at your phone, or playing with your kid. It could be so many different ways that you could create that sense of grounding and calm in your body. It doesn't have to look like anything specific or make sense to anybody else, and staying committed to that and exploring what feels good and playing around with different practices and not worrying about whether or not you're doing anything right or wrong is probably the best thing you can do in the long run to commit to something long-term.

Speaker 2: 27:22

Yeah, I love this concept of figuring out what's really going to enable you to strengthen your ability to connect with other people. For those folks that have never really entered into yoga or don't even know what we're talking about when we're talking about box breathing, what do you all typically recommend people start with or try?

Speaker 1: 27:39

Any type of movement in your body that feels good, anything that helps you feel more open and relaxed and stretched out or alive or energized, whatever you're going for. That's one bucket. And then what Carissa talked about is the opposite of that is stillness. Movement is one thing, stillness another. That could be sitting, that could be lying down, it could be moving very slowly on a walk, it could be listening to a guided meditation, lots of different things, but those are the two ways in which I would attack complicated spheres.

Speaker 4: 28:12

I love, aurora, what you said about it doesn't have to look a certain way, Because when I very first started years and years ago, I did feel like I had to be sitting on a pillow like that and I had to meditate like 60 minutes a day.

Speaker 4: 28:21

It was just so unattainable. But then I started to realize that any moment where I'm fully present is a mindful moment. It could be I'm eating lunch and instead of scrolling through my phone or being distracted by all sorts of thoughts, like I'm paying attention to how the food tastes, what the texture of the food is, I'm actually enjoying and being present. When I'm in a conversation with someone, I'm fully there, phone is away, I'm not focused on anything other than that person. When I started to do that, I realized how much of my life I wasn't fully present. So mindfulness can happen in a split second and just enjoying the smells, sights, sounds. The conversation of the person that's in front of you doesn't have to be like Aurora says, doesn't have to be sitting on a pillow in a certain position with your mind completely blank.

Speaker 2: 29:04

That's, that's. Yeah, that's kind of impossible. I'm like I've never, ever, never.

Speaker 1: 29:11

If you know how to do that, let me know, but I don't know how to do that.

Speaker 2: 29:14

Exactly. It's funny, especially during COVID Chrissy. You and I met during the pandemic and I'll tell you that's where I really started pay attention to what's my body feeling and how am I reacting to it, and what I've realized over the last few years, to the very good point, around movement and stillness and looking at those two dichotomies. When I have anxiety or when I'm angry, I have to go for a walk, I have to walk my dog and I'm walking down the street and that helps me. But when I'm incredibly nervous or I even feel fear, I have to be still.

Speaker 2: 29:51

That's been a lot of years trying to suss out like what do you need? Based on what your body is telling you, I know when I need stillness. I know when I need walking. It is not good for me, when I'm fearful for me, to do activity that will actually exacerbate it for me. So it's been interesting figuring that out. I don't think I ever put the two and two together until you said stillness and movement, but I'm realizing I do that For folks that want to read up more about this, go into this a little bit more deeply what resources have you felt are really good?

Speaker 1: 30:19

So here's the thing because I've been teaching for so many years and I see so many students and I myself have gone through the experience of starting off thinking I needed to do it a certain way in order to get it right and be perfect.

Speaker 1: 30:32

The one thing I ask people to do is just trust their own bodies and practice in their own way and see what that feels like Like.

Speaker 1: 30:41

You can ask me questions about alignment and all this other stuff, but I really try to emphasize that the all of that is secondary to your own experience, and the priority of the practice is awareness of sensation, awareness of what's going on in the body and the mind and how the mind reacts to what's going on in the body. Learning to sit in stillness and discomfort and the way the shape looks is not that important, and so I don't necessarily point people to like a book or a video, because I used to ask those questions who do I read? What classes do I take? And what I wish somebody would have told me is just sit your butt down and just feel and just practice, because you are in your body and you know it's best for you, and I want people to feel empowered to teach themselves as much as possible, instead of feeling like I need somebody else to tell me how to do it Right.

Speaker 2: 31:38

Boom. Yeah, I love that, I love that.

Speaker 4: 31:41

Yeah, I'm going to put like five exclamation points after that. Whatever you're feeling, five exclamation points after that.

Speaker 2: 31:47

Whatever you're feeling, there's no value on that. You're just feeling it right. But being honest with your honest, I guess, or being able to recognize that and understand how you need to personalize for yourself, is huge.

Speaker 1: 32:00

Yeah, it's all trial and error. There isn't a book or a. If there was one, I would have figured it out by now. But I think it just takes time and just your own practice and experience. That means the most.

Speaker 1: 32:13

I use this phrase of balance between effort and ease and only you can decide and figure out where that is.

Speaker 1: 32:20

So, for instance, if you're pushing yourself into a pose or a movement that feels tight, pushing yourself into a pose or a movement that feels tight or you feel uncomfortable in it, is that discomfort or is that pain? I don't know, because I don't have the experience of sensation in your body. So you get to figure that out and then you get to choose. Am I going to move into it? Is that going to serve me and create space in my body more today by shifting into this discomfort? Or is it actually more productive to back off, which feels like I'm not doing as much and it feels less productive? And then all these stories come up. I should be doing X, y, z, and that's really the whole point of the mindful movement practice is to teach us how our minds are reacting to a specific stimulus, so that way, when we step off of our mats. We notice that pattern more often in the middle of a conversation that's heated of our mats.

Speaker 2: 33:07

We notice that pattern more often in the middle of a conversation that's heated. You know what I'm doing in my head while you're. I'm like stillness, movement, the ease, discomfort I'm like. Is there like a X Y axis here I'm trying to plot?

Speaker 4: 33:16

I'm like I'm like oh, my God, francesca stop.

Speaker 2: 33:25

You know I'm a visual learner too, friend, but I'm like this is fascinating.

Speaker 3: 33:28

I love all of this advice and the personalization behind it, because it feels so much more attainable. That leads me to the typical challenges you both see when you're trying to share this with others, or what you've heard comes up for others, and I know we spoke earlier about one of those challenges for individuals, for example, is the ability to have self-compassion instead of beating themselves up. What other typical challenges do you see people having when trying to practice mindful leadership and how do they overcome it?

Speaker 4: 33:58

One of the questions that I think is often asked is this going to be worth it? Especially when we are in a results driven like my values tied to my productivity that type of culture. It can be difficult for people to understand that when you slow down and you take the time to dig into this stuff, this actually can accelerate a lot of other things that you're trying to accelerate much more easily than the way that you're trying to push this rock up a hill.

Speaker 1: 34:25

It's such a long game and the results are both personal and they're also communal, and some of them are more immediate, like downregulation of the nervous system, and some of them are much more long-term. Like we got through this project without wanting to. Like we got along while we were doing this. Like this project, that was really difficult. The other aspect that we were talking about the awkwardness of not knowing how to bring this forward to teams. Let's say, somebody has been using the Headspace app for a year and they're really into mindfulness and meditation and they want to bring it to their team, but they're not quite sure.

Speaker 1: 34:57

Well, I'm not a teacher. Like I barely know this stuff. I still struggle with it. How are people going to think of me or perceive me if I try to introduce this? Or are they going to think it's weird? There are all these questions and there aren't a lot of resources around supporting leaders and letting them know that the journey of mindful leadership doesn't really have a playbook. There is no guidebook right now, and that's what Carissa and I are trying to figure out how to share with people. You get to create your own path for yourself and your team. It doesn't have to look like anything that you've ever seen before. It can be something totally different than any work environment you've ever had and giving people that permission to come up with it for themselves. So I think there's that fear and insecurity of I love this, but what do I do?

Speaker 3: 35:39

with it. I love that. The concept though similar to individual personalization. When you're doing this with your team, you're creating that playbook together and what works for the team. It's all about personalization throughout Carissa. You had mentioned that statement where's the ROI, when am I going to see results? Et cetera. How do you answer that when that question comes up within organizations?

Speaker 4: 36:01

There is data to back up that a human-centric work design actually does lower the amount of employee fatigue, it increases their likelihood to stay and it increases productivity. There is science behind this. There is data behind this. I think it's that mindset shift of saying woo, woo, or is this actually going to move the needle for my team and so for teams that get hung up on that part, coming in with the science behind and the data behind why this is important can be really helpful in helping them shift course and at least give it a try. What's the harm in trying it for a little bit and then see what happens? Our philosophy give it a go, see what happens, what's the worst that could happen?

Speaker 1: 36:41

And it doesn't have to be an entire overhaul of the complete system. It could be those little changes and just testing things out.

Speaker 3: 36:47

Test and learn.

Speaker 2: 36:48

I'm a fan, you know what's interesting is, when we do a lot of executive development in organizations, their training and development budget. A large chunk of it, let me just say this, is on executive development. It's getting very personalized development opportunities to, I'd say, the top 100 people in your organization. And one of the biggest things that we work on are the things that set people back. It's the things that they haven't checked in their operating system, that they need to in order to be more empathic, more effective, a better team leader, and if people can get into this practice earlier, they're not going to have such a hurdle if they get up into those upper echelons, because this is the stuff that can really hold people back a lot of times if they haven't checked themselves and their reactions to things.

Speaker 4: 37:36

We've all seen the laundry list of leadership skills and competencies and they are important, right? You need to be able to communicate vision and purpose, you need to be able to think strategically and all of that vision and purpose, you need to be able to think strategically, and all of that. And if you don't have those deeply human skills, that ability to lead from a mindful place, then you're limiting yourself so significantly.

Speaker 2: 37:54

I think about the way a lot of organizations run. They have things like pulse surveys or engagement scores, right, we have things like manager development, training and capabilities. These practices are things that can be surveyed for, assessed. They could be written into trainings where we're teaching people how to do this. This is absolutely something that could be operationalized within the way organizations currently operate.

Speaker 4: 38:22

Yeah, when we think about specifically manager development and we think about the conversation guides that we put out for managers in different scenarios and those are great and how do we take those to the next level, like, here's some questions that you can ask and ways that you can be curious, but then also, what does it look like like we talked about earlier to hold space for those more difficult conversations? How do you show up in those moments? Are we preparing our leaders to do that? So I think there are ways to infuse that into development programs and prepare leaders to be able to show up in those moments in the ways that we would hope that they would.

Speaker 3: 38:52

One of the best meetings I ever attended was somebody who held an afternoon meeting. That was going to be two hours after everyone was coming off of half a day of other back-to-back meetings and they started it with a simple breathing exercise for everyone to level set, let go of everything that they've done. And it changed the attitudes in that call, where people were more present, they contributed more and they were willing to participate. It was normal, it didn't feel weird and it was great.

Speaker 4: 39:23

We've all been in those meetings too, where you come in and it's oh, icebreaker, tell us one interesting thing about you. And everyone rolls their eyes and it's like, oh my gosh, there are different ways. So I love that, mel, that you're talking about different ways to open meetings, because are other things you can do as well to create that transparency, whether it's, you know, just sharing, hey, this is the reality that we're in. Let's just be real about where we're at. There's this realness in humanity that I feel like is lost sometimes, and there's a way that I've seen meetings opened that have been tell us one challenge and one win from this last week, and it doesn't have to be work-related and just being able to share openly, as opposed to tell us one interesting thing about yourself, but in a non-threatening way.

Speaker 4: 40:02

People can share as much as they want. They have the ability to set those boundaries. But there's also we're opening the door to humanity a little bit by saying let's check in and see how you're doing. And, by the way, like when we were in the pandemic, I was leading this one meeting and I kicked it off by like hey, by the way, I know the whole world's on fire out there and so let's not pretend that it's not, let's just acknowledge that, and you could see shoulders come down and people like, oh, thank goodness we're acknowledging this as opposed to just coming into this meeting and getting right to it and let's get after the goals. So there are lots of little ways that we can show up and make it easier to bring our full selves to work.

Speaker 3: 40:36

I will say the best icebreaker I ever heard was what's the least interesting thing about you. So it took the pressure off of the most interesting thing, it's like, I like peanut butter and fluff sandwiches. Who the hell cares?

Speaker 2: 41:05

Is everyone ready for rapid round? Yeah, yeah, okay. So, friends, with all of our guests, we like to do the thing called rapid round. It's meant to be fun, ask you a few questions, provide some short answers, but I will tell you, this is where we typically get some of our best conversations as well. So if we want to go a little bit deeper, we can. Are you ready to play rapid round? I'm ready. Ready to go a little bit deeper? We can. Are you ready to play Rapid Round? I'm ready. Ready to go? Okay, who is a leader you really admire?

Speaker 1: 41:33

my yoga teacher I met when I was 17 years old. I walked into his studio, met him for the first time and he is just absolutely incredible because less than a month later, I emailed about 30 different studios asking for a work tree partnership, because I was 17 at the time, I didn't have a job and I couldn't afford $25 yoga classes in San Francisco. And so he said yes, he'd only met me that one time. He gave me the keys to his studio and said come clean whenever you can take whatever classes you want, and literally this one person changed the entire course of my life and trajectory of my life. Because of him, I am where I am today and I am talking to you all and sharing my passion for movement and mindfulness, and it's all his fault.

Speaker 2: 42:13

Yeah, I love it. I love it. We're grateful for him, then that's awesome.

Speaker 4: 42:19

For me. I've had a few in my life, so it was hard to pick one, but I can share the attributes of those leaders with you, because I think they all shared a common thing, and that was that it's exactly what we've been talking about. They made me feel like a human first. They made me feel empowered to bring my whole self to work. They made me feel like I was valued for more than what I could just produce, and inspired me and believed in me beyond what I felt like I could do. I mean, I feel like that's. The other thing is that they were always so, so great at seeing that potential in me when I didn't see it in myself, and allowing me the freedom to try things, and they held space for me. It's like what we were talking about they held space.

Speaker 2: 43:03

Yeah, it's funny. We were just talking to Alan Whitman, who is the CEO, and he was talking about being able to see the X factor in people and put them in different positions and that idea that somebody believing in you is such a big deal for folks. So I love the connectivity to that in mindful leadership we talked about. So much of mindful leadership is happening in the muck and so I want to give some muck scenarios and see how would you handle this from a mindful leadership perspective. Is there a mindful way to handle office drama?

Speaker 4: 43:38

drama. That falls into two different buckets for me. One is there's the run of the mill office drama, right, which is the we all know what that is. And there's that level where it hits like that toxicity though, where it's like, okay, this is a very unhealthy place to be. We'll go with the extreme.

Speaker 4: 43:49

First, if we're in that really highly toxic work environment from a mindful place, some of those coping mechanisms and skills and things that we've talked about there are others in addition that can be used, but those can help you manage through that and so you can get yourself into a healthier place. So I think about all those ways that you can physiologically balance yourself and also get some perspective. Right, okay, this is happening. How do I emotionally detach a bit and keep myself where I need to be? And then, when you have the run of the mill office drama similar thing you might not be trying to get yourself necessarily out of the situation, like you would be in a more toxic environment, but again, leaning on those skills, the breathing techniques, the different things to help keep your body healthier, safer, during that.

Speaker 4: 44:31

And there's also a level of tapping into that curiosity again. Right, that, okay, what is actually happening here? How am I feeling about what's happening here? What's going on? And then I am leading people and I'm in that scenario. How do I navigate those difficult conversations? Because some leaders, when they encounter office drama, will be like, well, okay, they'll figure it out or I'm gonna let that just unfold or happen. But I think if you're leading from a more mindful place, you are going to be leaning into those uncomfortable conversations. You are going to be self-regulating and working through some of that to try and figure out how to get your team to a healthier place.

Speaker 2: 45:05

That's tough too, because sometimes, as a leader, you don't want to deal with it. But being able to notice when you're realizing, oh, you're getting into a cadence, as opposed to leaning in where you really need to lean in and regulate. Yeah, that makes sense. I'll tell you, we're having an uptick in people getting yelled at at work.

Speaker 4: 45:28

And I'm curious is it a different answer for how you would handle getting yelled at From the perspective of, like I'm the person being yelled at. Yeah, like it's a?

Speaker 2: 45:33

really emotionally charged situation and you are getting yelled at. Yes.

Speaker 4: 45:43

Yeah Well, I think for me, if I was to put myself in that scenario, I would absolutely be paying attention to what's going on in my body. I know I would be having a reaction in my body for sure. There's also a place where you can detach a little bit and realize and recognize oh, this is probably not about me. What else is going on here For me? I will get sucked into that. I'm highly empathic. I'm going to be like, oh my God, I am a horrible person. What have I done that has made them want to yell at me?

Speaker 4: 46:07

But to get to a place where you can realize, okay, this is probably not about me, how do I regulate in the moment, like breathing, and then because potentially that could become an unsafe situation, like if we're talking verbally abusive how do I then remove myself from the situation and say what statement am I going to use to say, okay, I hear you, I see that you're upset. I need to remove myself from the situation right now and go regulate myself. You take care of whatever you need to take care of. And then, if it gets to that place of toxic behavior, abusive behavior, get to a place where you're grounded and then do that post-mortem look at what happened, what level is that, and then what action do I need to take?

Speaker 1: 46:47

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:48

I love the idea of taking these mindful leadership principles and noticing how are you feeling, and giving yourself and everybody does have the permission to detach and remove yourself from those situations too. A lot of times, that's probably the healthiest outcome for both parties. If someone is yelling at you at work, they're not regulated period, so it's probably best for everybody to go to their corners and chill for a little bit. Okay, well, one of the things that we were curious about is how do you define success? And maybe we can take this from two ways. How do you define success in terms of your practice with mindful leadership? And then does that answer change in terms of how you define success in life?

Speaker 1: 47:25

For me, it's the same and related to what I said earlier about figuring out what works best for you.

Speaker 1: 47:31

A lot of what I've been trying to do over the years is figure out how to undo these external definitions of success and all of these rules that I've internalized about who I am supposed to be or how I am supposed to show up, versus what's actually going on and what I feel, and understanding that the gap between who I am now and who I would like to be in the future is not a character flaw or some kind of thing I need to fix about myself in order to become more worthy or deserving.

Speaker 1: 48:02

I am worthy now in all of the success that I have accumulated and the things that I would like to do with my life. And that is a struggle to remember that and feel that because, like Carissa said, I'm also always moving and wanting to do and serve and create, and when I am not doing or serving or creating, I feel not productive. And so a big part of success to me is figuring out how to undo those thoughts inside and then sink more into stillness and less less doing and more being, and finding gratitude for what I do have right in front of me versus seeking constantly.

Speaker 2: 48:45

Yeah, that's tough. That's just as tough as the blank space in your head, I think. I think that's changes too, like what you really really really want at 25 is very different than what you really really want at 45. Right, like, different than what you really really want at 45, right Like it's it's, it's a that's tough.

Speaker 4: 49:00

I had a similar experience to Aurora, where, when you're younger, you have these ideas about what success looks like and what you want to attain or be or do, and so I feel like these last five years in particular have been about undoing that, and that is a lot of rewriting narratives and expectations and programming of what you feel like you should be, or who you feel like you should be and what you shouldn't you be going for that beach house and the fancy car and all of those ideas of success that have been shown to us from a young age. It's been about unbecoming and then stepping into becoming who I want to be, and for me it is deep connections with other human beings. It gives me so much energy Doing work like this with Aurora. That makes me feel like I'm actually helping to bring healing to the world, bring joy to the world, help people have a space that feels safe to explore what's real for them. That brings me so much joy and energy.

Speaker 4: 49:56

And then I have a big chunk of my identity, too is around exploring and curiosity and wanting to travel. I want to craft a life for myself that I feel like is authentic to me, where I can do those things where I can connect with humans, I can do meaningful work and I can have adventures, explore the world, meet new people, have new experiences. And I think ties in to the way that I practice mindfulness, which is letting go of all of the expectations that I've carried for myself for so long and allowing myself to explore new things and try new things and find what works for me, regardless of if it works for anybody else, and being okay with that.

Speaker 2: 50:35

Last one Do you have a life philosophy, like in one sentence Mine is do the thing that scares you the most.

Speaker 1: 50:42

Keep pushing out of your comfort zone and doing the things that allow you to grow and become the best version of yourself. So you're leaning into that discomfort huh, oh, like literally, if it's uncomfortable, I raise my hand and I'll go do it, no matter how uncomfortable it is. Yeah, that's my thing. I'm like yes, sign me up. If I'm scared of it, I'm in.

Speaker 4: 51:04

You're my hero. Aurora, like that is. That is pretty awesome. Mine actually. Funnily enough, it came from years ago. I was taking a yoga class from Aurora and she asked us to set an intention for the practice and I have carried this forward and this is my life philosophy it's be here now. It's a good one.

Speaker 1: 51:28

I love that. I didn't know that oh, really aww are we all having a moment?

Speaker 2: 51:35

I feel like Mel and I are witnessing.

Speaker 3: 51:36

I'm going to cry.

Speaker 2: 51:37

It's so nice it's so nice, Are we all having a moment? I feel like Mel and I are witnessing so nice. Friends, what's next for you? What's? What's the rest of the year looking like in terms of taking your, your practice forward and to the people?

Speaker 4: 51:51

We are going to be offering some workshops where people can join us and virtual workshops on all sorts of different topics around mindful leadership, so that people can come check it out. Whether you've dabbled in mindfulness practices before or not, whether you're just curious, we're going to offer some sessions for you to come and check out and then later in the year we will be offering a retreat all about mindful leadership and finding your unique mindful leadership style. Ooh, in person. I'm very excited about In person. That was going to be in person, yes.

Speaker 2: 52:26

Ooh, where are we doing this? Paducah, kentucky, do we have it?

Speaker 1: 52:31

Oregon, so it's great for anyone who's local and it's a beautiful property, it's a working regenerative farm and it's just this place where you go and I don't know if you've ever been somewhere where you immediately feel a sense of calm and ease and everything just feels like. But for some reason this place has that vibe and it's so relaxing and we want to create a space where people can practice these things and feel good in their bodies and have time to relax and de-stress, but also learn about these practices in community and not feel like they have to figure it out on their own.

Speaker 2: 53:09

Carissa, thank you so much for joining us today. It was really a pleasure and a delight.

Speaker 1: 53:14

Thank you so much for having us.

Speaker 2: 53:16

Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.

Jerks at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Jerks at Work with Dr. Tessa West

Jerks are everywhere…

The micromanager. The drama queen. The sly saboteur. Toxic coworkers come in all forms—and they’re not just annoying, they’re disruptive. Ever wondered how to handle that gaslighter or micromanager in your office? Well, we’re exploring these challenging workplace dynamics with Dr. Tessa West, a psychology professor at NYU and author of "Jerks at Work."

In this episode, Dr. West shares her journey from the high-end retail world to academia, offering practical advice and engaging anecdotes that illuminate the complex nature of dealing with difficult colleagues. We unpack how to deal with jerks at work without sacrificing your sanity, success, or standards. You'll walk away with actionable strategies to not only survive but thrive in your professional environment.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Every jerk I've talked to, because I've been brought in by a lot of companies to do de-jerkifying coaching and most of these people are actually like lovely, and you're like I was expecting a monster and I'm just getting a sad person who is shocked.

Speaker 2: 0:15

The worst kind of thing.

Speaker 3: 0:28

Mel, what's going on? Hey, y'all have a heat wave.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Yeah, we have a heat wave. Yesterday we had an advisory for the air quality. Always a fun alert to get. Fantastic Remember when New York City, though, was in the wildfires last year, you know yeah, I happened to not be home during that time, but my husband sent me pictures. The sky was just completely orange over here, so it's just wild, ah fun with climate change.

Speaker 3: 0:55

Fun with climate change, yeah, good times, yeah. Well, speaking of New York City, we talked to someone from New York City, didn't we? We?

Speaker 2: 1:02

did, we did, we did. We spoke to Tessa West, who is a professor at NYU, and we wanted to get down on the topic of work, jerkery all the jerks at work.

Speaker 3: 1:18

Yeah, this is something that I'll tell you. One of the big themes coming out of a lot of our conversations and a lot of our work, especially on the pod, is how do I deal with these people at work that we will broadly categorize as jerks? The on the pod is how do I deal with these people at work that we will broadly categorize as jerks the gaslighters, the credit stealers, the micromanagers, all the jerks that we deal with. And so we called up Dr Tessa West. She is a professor of psychology at NYU. As Mel mentioned, she's also a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. Mel mentioned, she's also a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. She has written two books One she just dropped that's very cool called Job Therapy Finding Work that Works For you, and the other, mel. What is it? Jerks at Work, jerks at Work. Dr Tessa West has literally written the book about jerks at work, the type of jerks you meet. What do you do about them? What did you?

Speaker 2: 2:06

think about this episode, Mel. I really loved it because I think we've all been jerks at work. I don't think anyone's immune to being a jerk. I think it's on a spectrum, like we say, with a number of other things. But we've all been there. We've either been one or we've experienced it, or both. It's really insightful to think through what that looks like, how that shows up and how you can deal with it.

Speaker 3: 2:28

Loved everything that Tessa walked us through in terms of the types of jerks. What do you do about it? Stick around for the round Robin, because she absolutely gave the best one-liner for how you respond to someone being a jerk that I've ever heard in my life. I'm getting it embroidered on a pillow Awesome, yeah, it's awesome.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Well, with that, here's Tessa. Welcome, Tessa, to the your Work Friends podcast. Tell us your story. How did you get into what you do?

Speaker 1: 3:06

I'm a psychology professor at New York University and I study uncomfortable social interactions. So everything from feedback conversations with your boss to having an uncomfortable interaction in the doctor's office to working with an international group of people on a team and I've been doing this for 20 some odd years. I actually got started really studying this kind of topic of how we handle uncomfortable interactions and how they play out at work by working in retail myself and selling men's shoes at Nordstrom. I have an academic life but a non-academic path to get there, and I think if anyone's ever worked retail high-end retail in downtown Santa Barbara was where I worked. That is just the sort of perfect breeding ground for all difficult people jerks at work, status climbers, customer stealers, all that juicy stuff. I joined a lab at the same time at UC Santa Barbara. That did nothing but put people in these horrifically uncomfortable situations where you're interacting with someone who is giving you dirty looks while you give a speech on why you're a good friend. I was actually the person who gave the dirty looks.

Speaker 1: 4:15

That was my job, and so I learned academically how to study these things and study the physiology underlying people's stress they're under the skin responses while living it out in my own life working in retail, and eventually brought these worlds together to study these topics in the workplace. In the last maybe five to 10 years I've really focused on those really difficult moments we have at work, trying to figure out why we're stressed, why stress threads from one person to another and what we can do about it. And so now I have a good 30 some odd years experience uncovering all the difficult things people go through in the workplace.

Speaker 2: 4:51

One. Anyone who's been in retail myself included, also in shoes, I will add that is a very interesting experience. If you've been in any sort of customer service facing role, I'm sure you've had to have the most insane conversations. So I love that. I know, francesca, and I hear often from people am I a jerk at work one, and how do I deal with jerks at work? Which inspired us to reach out to you because we saw that you wrote a whole book on jerks at work and now job therapy. So in your study I love that you won. Your job was to give people dirty looks Interesting experience.

Speaker 3: 5:28

Sorry, but I'm thinking about. First of all, I know the exact Nordstrom you worked out is the one down in, like the city center of Santa Barbara. Really, yes, I can't imagine like that clientele selling shoes, selling men's shoes, especially when you're a pretty woman as well 18.

Speaker 1: 5:45

I didn't know what I was doing at all.

Speaker 3: 5:48

The dynamics there and the idea of. I love how this started, with this idea of like, awkward dynamics. I'm just wondering how much of that started with either you feeling awkward or you feeling like this person is awkward. Was it a mutual thing or is it more of like? Why do I feel awkward in this situation?

Speaker 1: 6:04

I think at first it was very much. Why do I feel awkward? I'm in my own head a lot and I think there's a lot to play around with there. One.

Speaker 1: 6:12

I grew up in Riverside, california, which is not a fancy place. My dad was a construction worker. I was not used to interacting with these rich Montecito men who would come in and say I need shoes for my gardener and buy like $600 shoes. So there were all there's a lot of status cues going on. So one thing I ended up studying later on was how we have cross status interactions with people who are richer or poor than us or more educated, and how we leak out our social class and all these subtle ways. So I think one of the reasons why I found those interactions so uncomfortable is because I grew up very blue collar and now I'm at UC Santa Barbara selling shoes to this like rich, white, older male population and I was asked to do all kinds of really weird things. I got down on the ground and pet someone's poodle and let it lick my face while I was putting shoes on and I just thought to myself I guess this is just what you do.

Speaker 3: 7:03

I'm okay. I'm okay, this is normal.

Speaker 1: 7:06

This isn't degrading at all. Totally fine. Totally fine, I'm going to make $60. It'll be totally worth it off the sale.

Speaker 1: 7:12

So I think a lot of that awkwardness lived in my head. It came from a lack of understanding norms, not getting the hidden curriculum of how one ought to behave in front of wealthy people. I didn't get that kind of training. And was I awkward? I'm sure I was, but I think most of us walk around with a lot of it living in our heads, more so than it actually becoming a dyadic or interpersonal phenomenon, and I definitely. For me, I try to turn lemons into lemonade and try to make a whole career out of all that really uncomfortable shoe sales experience I had. But yes, I think that the awkwardness is layered on with social cues and status issues and gender dynamics. I was the only woman in whole shoe sales, like in the men's shoes. They never let women sell men's shoes. They had a bro culture. I was brought in because I worked in the store in Riverside where I was also the only woman and convinced them that I could hack it with these bros.

Speaker 3: 8:09

So there's a lot going on, yeah, but what a great story, because I don't think you're obviously not alone in this and not alone in the awkwardness, not alone in the figuring out how to work with people and what those dynamics can do, especially in a work environment.

Speaker 2: 8:22

What was one of the most surprising things that you learned through all of your work.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Yeah, I think one finding that I kept seeing over and over again and I learned this by studying physiology and behavior at the same time is that when we're the most uncomfortable and we could see this in the lab because we measured people's blood pressure so you would get those readings live and measure their heart rate when you're the most uncomfortable, when you're the most stressed, you're the nicest readings live and measure their heart rate.

Speaker 1: 8:45

When you're the most uncomfortable, when you're the most stressed, you're the nicest, most over the top version of yourself, and my colleague, wendy Menez started calling this brittle smiles effect. So like you're so great, this kind of high pitched voice over the top smiling, and what's fascinating is because you're feeling stressed. At the same time, the anxiety still comes out, but in these kind of like weird creepy ways where you smile but not with your eyes right, so you don't have a douche and smile. We have a kind of lower half of you is smiling or you're fidgeting and avoiding eye contact, but saying the right thing and so if you're on the receiving end of one of these things.

Speaker 1: 9:17

It's like the words coming out of the person's mouth are nice, they're supportive, but it's all oozing out through these anxious cues. And what we started realizing is there's the controllable behaviors what we say and then the ones that are difficult to control how we say it and those two often misalign and that can lead to very difficult communication between people. And even talking to your jerk at work, you're probably really nice to that person if you were to go up to them. And we see this in all kinds of contexts and it's a pretty universal phenomenon, also cross-culturally. It's not just in America. I've seen it in Abu Dhabi with people from 50 countries. They do the same thing. I think that's one of our more consistent tried and true findings we found.

Speaker 3: 9:56

That's fascinating.

Speaker 2: 9:59

That's so interesting because I think one. I know I've done that when I've had to present somewhere like the over nicety to people in the room. Oh my God, but it's so interesting, Just the body language that people exude. You can't hide the body language.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Yeah, you can't control it. If you tell people okay, take a deep breath, don't look anxious, it makes it way worse. We tried that. We even tried telling people your partner's not anxious. They just had a ton of coffee today, so they're a little fidgety, they're like anxious coffee, oh my God. No, it actually makes it worse. And then they see even more anxiety than is actually there. It's really hard to get rid of this. It's a super sticky phenomenon.

Speaker 3: 10:37

It's very difficult to undo you just wrote Job Therapy, which we're super stoked about, and in the book you talk about some of the sources people have in terms of the frustration with work is actually due to some of those interpersonal relationships. When I think about people looking at a job pivot or they're unhappy in their career or they're thinking this isn't working for me anymore a lot of times people think it's because I'm not doing the right job or I'm not at the right company, not necessarily about the people you're surrounding yourself with.

Speaker 1: 11:30

I think relationships are everything at work, and I mean that in a lot of ways. So one of the main things that turns on or off our work happiness is our interpersonal relationships with people, and that doesn't just include your boss or the people on your team. That includes the people that you see day in and day out. I think that even if you're an individual contributor and I hear this a lot I'm an individual contributor. I don't need relationships. Of course you do, we all do. It doesn't matter what the nature of your work is. Those dynamics are at play and we know social networking is an important part of the work process, but we don't really understand how. So that's another component is, in addition to the one-on-one interactions you have, where you learn new information. You learn the hidden curriculum. You figure out whether your kiss-up kick-downer has a widespread problem or if it's just you.

Speaker 1: 12:11

All of those things, those kind of sticky interpersonal issues, can really turn our stress on and off. And when it comes to exploring new jobs, people often think about it very structurally I want something hybrid, or I want to work in this new city, or I need a better compensation package. They don't think about the relationship part so much, even though that's actually one of the biggest predictors of what leads us to actually drift apart psychologically from our jobs is the change in interpersonal dynamics at work. But we don't focus on that. We focus on how much we're getting paid or whether we can get promoted. But those things matter, but not as much as those interpersonal relationships, and those relationships are key to doing complex things like developing a new career identity.

Speaker 1: 12:52

Like you can't do that by reading websites or taking courses to improve this and that skill. You really have to sit down for 15 minutes and talk to a stranger and say tell me what your day-to-day looks like. That's really how you develop clarity around things, like a new identity at work, and so I really encourage people even shy people, even awkward people, even people who are individual contributors to really embrace the relational component at work in lots of different ways, and I don't mean you need to be best friends with anyone at work. You can think about relationships in different ways of serving these different purposes, but they're absolutely essential to feeling good at work and feeling good about yourself. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:31

I've absolutely felt that right, especially when I've been in organizations for an extended period of time. Where you feel like you have the relationships, where you feel like you have the network, it's so much easier to get things done and, quite honestly, a lot of times, work is just so much more enjoyable. Yeah, but the thing we talk about a lot too in terms of career development or even getting promoted, is you have to have sponsors, you have to have a board of directors. People need to quote unquote know who you are. That doesn't just happen and that isn't typically just based on your great work. It has to deal with do people want to vouch for you? Do they like you? Do you have the relationship to your point?

Speaker 1: 14:06

Are they willing to expend social capital to?

Speaker 1: 14:09

stand up for you. You know we often don't think about how getting promoted, you know and I don't just mean like literally getting a new job title, but having someone in the room vouch for you is costly for them. You know, even if it's, even if you're good and everyone agrees you're wonderful, if they are going to put their neck out for you and argue that you should get promoted, that means that they can't do it for the next person. In academia, it's like every time the chair goes to the dean and asks for money for a person, that's one less person that they can then ask for the next time, because we have a zero-sum amount of stuff that we're working with and we have to think about. Are we earning these relationships that are helping us in the moment but also helping us build our careers out? And every recruiter, internal and external, that I talked to for this book said that they love developing relationships with people in different stages of their careers, because they will place the same person five times. It's like a real estate agent.

Speaker 1: 15:05

They will sell you a house five times over your life and it is essential for them to get to know you and know if you're going to actually stay in a job. Do they want to place you? Because they don't get a bonus if you don't stay for six months, and so they're going to place the person they know will stay because they stayed in the last thing they placed them in. And those kind of lifelong relationships are also essential for us just in terms of our whole kind of life career trajectory, and we often don't really think about those lifey relationships outside of our specific job context.

Speaker 3: 15:34

Yeah, and then you meet these people that have these massive networks of people and they're so much better off typically than people that don't. I see this a lot too. This is such a small microcosm of this, but when you see people get laid off and then all of a sudden they're starting their LinkedIn profile, or all of a sudden they're starting to reconnect back, and it's like you should have been doing this all along, or nurturing these relationships all along to have that network to fall back on, it's a very small example, but something we see all the time.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Oh yeah, like you don't maintain those relationships and you only turn to them when you're laid off or you blast your whole network one message Like please help me. Like without those interpersonal connections. It just feels like relationship spam and I think no one likes to feel like they're being spammed in any context, especially with someone they know Not at all my parents used to say like relationships are, it's like a garden, it's a reciprocal thing.

Speaker 3: 16:24

Right, you have to tend to them, you have to nurture them and you have to give to get. You can't have it be only when I need you. So nurturing those very strong relationships obviously huge, and also giving your data something that really makes meaningful careers. And then I'm wondering on the other side of it too, where what happens when those relationships turn out to be with people that are just dicks and I've had that experience too, where you're like you're a dick, you're a jerk. And I am curious about how not even neutral relationships, but adversarial, jerky relationships impact people's careers and what they think about their careers.

Speaker 1: 17:06

I think when we have these failed relationships, losses loom larger than gains and we can perseverate on a turned relationship. For years and years I've talked to people that were like I had a best friend and then he became my boss and then I overheard him talking about me in the bathroom and it killed me. I said when did that happen? 1987. I'm still thinking about it and that's normal. When we feel like someone betrays us, we really hang on to that and to the point where we maybe have a bit of a spotlight effect, where we think it's going to damage us more than it actually does and we start to get a little conspiratorial and thinking about how they can damage our networks and things like that.

Speaker 1: 17:46

One of the people I talk about in Jerks at Work is a gaslighter and they're like the masters of trying to damage your network. Right, they don't just go after you, they go after your reputation and by doing that they hit everyone. That's a node in your network. Most jerks we deal with have less power than we think they do. Even if they tell us they're full of power and full of status, a lot of it is more bark than bite, so you need to actually do the work to figure out if there's a real concern there about that reputational damage and then be proactive about not trash talking the person but just information gathering.

Speaker 1: 18:19

We often have this instinct of they're going out there saying bad things about me.

Speaker 1: 18:22

I'm going to go out there and correct that by saying bad things about them.

Speaker 1: 18:26

But stop and take a breath and think, ok, I'm just going to information gather and get the lay of the land of my own reputation so then I can correct it and not make it about them at all, even if the person deserves that kind of negative reputation.

Speaker 1: 18:39

You have to just be super careful with gossip because you just never know how it's going to be used in the future. And we all gossip and it serves an important purpose. But the retribution piece, the piece that the it inside of you really wants to go crazy, is where you just have to focus more on controlling the narrative around your own reputation, figuring out how white for the problem is, and then I'd say these relationships fail fast. If you are getting red flagged that this person is saying negative things or credit stealing or whatever, disengage as quickly as you can from that. We all have stories I have some of when I first started going too far into a relationship with someone who is weirdly competitive or had some other tick that just didn't align with me and letting that relationship stay for too long.

Speaker 1: 19:20

And I think that's where we get a little messed up at work. We think people need to be our best friends and sometimes you figure out they're not and just disengage. I think is key. But yeah, it can hurt. I still have my stories from 20 years ago I still think about so I think it's pretty normal.

Speaker 3: 19:35

I have a reoccurring dream about somebody and it's just like why won't this go away? I see your face.

Speaker 1: 19:44

I understand. I understand it's like an ex-boyfriend they got a weird breakup with and there was no closure, none.

Speaker 3: 19:51

Yeah, and I still. There's certain things. I can't listen to. A certain song You're just like oh, I am burned. You're like I can't. Nope, nope, nope, yeah, but taking away that power to your point around when you're in it, disengaging like you don't need to keep working at it. Disengage number one and number two.

Speaker 1: 20:17

Focus on your own PR and not bad-mouthing them, right, ie Taylor Swift trash-chakes itself out at some point, hopefully, or just be very strategic about the nature of the bad-mouthing. I'd say if you do go to HR, you want to bad-mouth, don't focus on your feelings about the nature of the bad mouthing. I'd say if you do go to HR, you want a bad mouth, don't focus on your feelings about the person or your kind of description of their personality. Focus on exactly what they've done. When I have conversations with leaders about difficult people, I'll say something like okay, I'm going to tell you what happened, and if I start to editorialize this a little bit, just let me know, because I don't mean to. And then followed by we had this meeting and this is what was said, leaving my emotions aside and I don't use words like they're untrustworthy or they're disrespectful. Those are very eye of the beholder and not everyone's going to agree with you about what those things look like. So I just described the behaviors and then it makes me look like a more mature person.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Stick to the facts. But all goes back to the golden rule right Is like focus on yourself.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Don't worry about others. I'm curious, why do people show up like this? I'm a firm believer that most people who are jerks don't actually know it, because it harms them a lot to not have solid networks and good reputations. I'm dealing with a jerk right now at work and we just got some feedback about the people who report to her and it's all pretty terrible and she's been here for a long time and I asked her closest colleague what's going on. He goes oh, no one tells her. No one's ever told this person what's going on and I said why not? Because she gets a little scary and defensive.

Speaker 1: 21:41

So it's like one sign that this is going to involve some conflict or a little bit of social finesse to maneuver around and everyone's like, no, thank you, they're not getting rewarded for giving her this feedback. They don't win. She's powerful. So they could actually lose social capital. And I think most of us walk into those conversations thinking I could lose a lot if this goes poorly. And what am I gaining really by being honest with this person?

Speaker 1: 22:04

And most feedback is delivered pretty poorly and it takes the form of what I just mentioned. It's things like you're not trustworthy or you're disrespectful and no one really knows what. Some of them are out to draw blood, but I think most of them aren't. They just aren't very socially perceptive either. They don't pick up on cues that maybe, like other people, are unhappy with them. Every jerk I've talked to because I've been brought in by a lot of companies to do de-jerkifying coaching and most of these people are actually like lovely and you're like I was expecting a monster and I'm just getting a sad person who is shocked the worst kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Yeah, we talk about that all the time how the feedback just doesn't happen. Renee Brown's clear as kind is for a good reason and real time, and not just those big words, as you mentioned, but like actionable things that they can truly address, like clear feedback that's actionable, not just feelings. What's the worst kind of jerk that you've seen in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 23:16

The one that causes the most psychological damage, I would say, is the gaslighter.

Speaker 1: 23:21

And that is a word that like took on its own. It had its own moment. It's very much in the zeitgeist, but those are people who are lying with the intent to deceive on a pretty big scale and they socially isolate their victims. And so a lot of the people who've been gaslit. It's been going on for a very long time. They've been cut off from their social networks and also it's not always in the form of an insult, or you're not good enough or you're going to feel a lot of it's fiery feedback.

Speaker 1: 23:48

You're a special person. I'm only bringing in one member from the team to know about the super secret mission that we're on together. Before you know it, you've stolen company secrets and general counsel's at your door, but you had no idea. You thought you were a part of a super special secret mission. So I think people have a complicated emotional reaction to being gaslit, partly because there's a guilt that they have done some unethical things, that they felt silly, that they were talked into, and then they have no idea what other people actually think of them and who they can trust to to get an understanding of their reputation and they feel very lost and many of them, because of that, have so much trauma that they don't trust anyone ever again in any workplace. So for these folks this is really a traumatic experience. I think it's fairly rare to run into a true gaslighter. It's different than someone who lies, but that is a very damaging one.

Speaker 2: 24:40

Yeah, I've experienced that before, francesca, you have too, I think. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 24:45

Do you think a gaslighter is like pathological?

Speaker 1: 24:47

Yeah, I think it's like access to personality disorder stuff. I think it's a lot of these are contextually based.

Speaker 1: 24:56

Jerks can be bred at work, but I feel like you have to have a special combination of some dark triad traits or whatever to really thrive, because and a lot of these gaslighters are quite good at their job- and they're very powerful and they're well-connected and they know how to frame up themselves to be protected from whatever they've asked you to do in aiding and abetting, and they usually walk out with pretty clean reputations at the end of the day and that's very frustrating for people. There's not like a sense of procedural justice.

Speaker 3: 25:29

One thing I've been having a hard time, and I am someone that is there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women. That is my thing, and so it pains me to say this, because this is just my observation. What I have been trying to suss out, though, is most of the gaslighters I have met have been women, typically, I'd say 40 plus. I know there can be male gaslighters that are 18 years old like that, so that's fact right. What I've been trying to suss out, though, is how much of that type of behavior has been the world that they've grown up in and had to fight for and compete for in a male dominated world, yada, yada versus the pure pathology. And then where's the line where it's no, this is just who they are versus this is what they've been bred to?

Speaker 3: 26:10

do that's hard sometimes for me to suss out.

Speaker 1: 26:14

There's a lot of research on queen bee syndrome and things like that right, so you get these women in male dominated fields, and I'd also say that discrimination against women is there are no gender differences in who actually does it, and so people are like women shouldn't be discriminating against women. They do just as much as men do.

Speaker 1: 26:33

There are almost no documented kind of gender of the perceiver effects, meaning the person who does it. But when women do it, it stands out, it's much more salient and it also often takes more of a social aggression form, because the way women tend to be aggressive is much more sort of convoluted and social. And it starts when we're six years old and we learn these tactics of aggression through. Little boys hit each other, little girls gossip about each other, and there's a developmental trajectory of how we learn to be successfully aggressive that we can then take to work and the queen bees the women who've made it in these male-dominated fields. They have often suffered quite a lot. That they think earns them the right to then behave the same way. I have had a very similar experience where the people who I felt discriminated against me the most were more senior women who felt like they went through the gauntlet. It's now my turn and I need to just suck it up.

Speaker 1: 27:27

So there's a lot of kind of stereotypes about what one ought to do as a woman, when you're allowed to have babies, how you're supposed to behave and dress and no one's ever told me how to dress, except for other women showing up in job interviews. So I do think there's like a special dynamic that I think happens there with these women who have succeeded in these male dominated places.

Speaker 3: 27:47

Yeah, I like the term queen bee though, because I think that gives a nice frame for that, because it's hard Sometimes it's hard to assess. You talked about the gaslighter. In your book you write about other types of jerks at work and I'm wondering if you could give us a bit of this survey. What are the other types of jerks people meet at work?

Speaker 1: 28:05

My favorite is the kiss-up kick-downer, and this book is actually based on someone I worked with at Nordstrom's. This is why I love this person. They are very good at their job and they're super socially savvy, and so they're high on what we call status acuity. They can read the room. They can walk into a room and tell you who has status, who has respect and admiration and who doesn't. They can walk into a room and tell you who has status, who has respect and admiration and who doesn't. They can figure that out pretty quickly. So the boss tends to love them. They tend to be top performers, and if you are to complain that they are mistreating you so they kick down people at their level or beneath, you're going to get a lot of eye rolls and you're just jealous, and so they're very clever and savvy and Machiavellian and are able to get ahead through these kind of tricksy ways. They're very careful about who they gossip to and about, and they only do it in a very strategic way. And so if you have a workplace with a hierarchy which every workplace does these individuals tend to be very good at climbing up that hierarchy and then reading who has the status within that hierarchy. So that's my favorite.

Speaker 1: 29:04

I think some of the more straightforward ones are like the credit stealer who we are all probably pretty familiar with, and this person is also savvy. They tend to actually they don't just steal all their credit, they'll give you public credit for certain things so that when you then go complain it's much easier for them to say what am I talking about? I just gave them this whole speech publicly about all the hard work they've done. So credit stealers have a bulldozer type in my book as well. So this is a person who takes over meetings and agendas. They can usually work power structures behind the scenes, so you have a lot of things that end in an impasse and you're not quite sure why or what's happening, and these can all be team members.

Speaker 1: 29:43

And then I have two types of bosses. I have the micromanager, who I think most of us are familiar with, those insecure bosses that oversee all your work and they tend to do a lot but not get anything done. And then the neglectful boss, who, ironically, tends to also be a micromanager. So that's usually one person who oscillates between micromanagement and neglect. While they're micromanaging you, they're neglecting someone else, and so the neglect really gets operationalized as ignore, ignore, show up at the 11th hour, top-down control, change everything. Everyone freaks out, has a stress response and then they leave again for six months. So they go back and forth. So micromanager and neglectful boss are two people, but often one person.

Speaker 1: 30:27

And then the gaslighter who we just talked about.

Speaker 2: 30:37

I feel like I've encountered all of those in my career At the same time, sometimes all in one. I'm curious do you think every employee has been a jerk at work?

Speaker 1: 30:51

Yeah, if you've worked long enough, you are a jerk. We all have our own Achilles heel. We all have the worst version of ourselves that we can bring to work. And maybe that's a person who gets jealous and insecure and so it gets lashy outie. Or my son would say you're lashy outie. Or it's someone who feels like they need massive certainty and they're not getting it from their boss and so they hover over your Google page as you're working and they call you and you have to hide under your desk. I think we all have that version of us. When we get stressed and anxious, and some of us, that instinct is to try to overpower, to get that internal sense of control. Some of us disengage completely and become neglectful, and then some of us just have an inner instinct to be a little bit Machiavellian.

Speaker 1: 31:36

It's what we've seen, If you work in a law firm, anyone who's made partner probably is a little bit on that Machiavellian scale and thinks it's okay to kick down to climb ahead. And I think the key is just knowing what that ugliest version of you is on the inside so that you can then not make it go away but put steps in place structurally to prevent that person from coming out. But I do think we all have our inner jerk and that can be a different person at different stages of your career as well.

Speaker 1: 32:03

When you're more or less secure in a role versus completely overwhelmed, but plenty of security psychologically. But I'm a cynical person and I study the dark side of human nature and put people through really egregious social interactions to bring out the ugly version, because the nice version is not so interesting for me. But yes, I do think most of us have some inner jerk.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Yeah, I think it makes sense. Right, we're human beings, you show up that way. But I think, to your point, it's the self-awareness that's so critical, just knowing what that is what can come out. So how do you tame that, focusing on that? For employees, specifically, what are some of the ways that they can identify a jerk? Because, as you mentioned, there are covert jerks. They might not even realize that person's a jerk. And then there are some in your face jerks. One of my favorite things that you say is work jerkery, right, is this an environment full of work jerkery or not? Starting in the interview process, can they start to see that?

Speaker 1: 33:00

Yeah, I used to study first impressions. What can we get from the first 30 seconds? And actually thin slices of human behavior are actually pretty accurate predictors of the future. One thing is most work jerkery shows up a little bit ambiguous. In fact it is rare to say they're prejudiced. You don't you got to add up all these behavioral cues and then blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 33:27

Work jerks are a little bit like that, where you're going to have maybe a gut instinct that there's an ambiguous situation that could go either way. The first thing I tell people is do not just trust your instincts, that you can magically read what's going on in someone's mind simply by looking at their nonverbal behavior. I've done a lot of research on interpersonal accuracy and what it really takes to know what someone's thinking or feeling, and there is no magical thing. You simply have to ask, and in the case of work jerks or in an interview, you need to ask around. You need to ask networks of people. I think if you're interviewing for a job, you want to ask at stage two or three of the interview to not just talk to the hiring manager or your boss but to talk to their team members and to talk to people who've cycled out of their team at some point. You want to gather as much information as you can by people who have what's called non-overlapping social information, so they're not always in the same room at the same time with the person. They've known them at different time points in that person's career. They've known them at different jobs or on different teams and look for the signal and the noise there.

Speaker 1: 34:31

Don't trust your instinct based on what they say or their nonverbal behavior or whatever. Base it on data that you can collect. We aren't great at information gathering in an interview stage because we want to impress so badly that we just try to put our best foot forward and say the right things. But once you get far enough in the process, you should feel confident enough to ask for other connections of people and people who know those people to gain that kind of like reputational map of the individual.

Speaker 1: 34:53

What you're looking for is like cross situational consistency across these 15 different interactions, across these 15 people. When they're stressed, they do X, when they're relaxed, they do Y. And you need as much data as you can get because any one person could have a weird experience, and so you're just looking for some consistent patterns of behavior. But really don't trust your instinct. I think that's where most of us go wrong is oh, I saw them give me side eye, or they looked bored. I think they're a jerk. No, none of that stuff is actually predictive. Gather information from the networks of people in the interviews.

Speaker 2: 35:23

Okay.

Speaker 3: 35:25

Yeah, all of us with a resting bitch face appreciate that answer.

Speaker 1: 35:28

Thank you, I have an RBF. There's a science behind the RBF, folks. If your upper lip turns down when your elastic mind does, that gives you RBF. That's the magical ingredient, and so do we want to assume that everyone with a downturned upper lip is a bitch?

Speaker 2: 35:42

No, we do not. I was in a meeting once and I had a leader IME as I was presenting like fix your face.

Speaker 1: 35:49

I'm like what? That's not cool, that is bad behavior.

Speaker 2: 35:53

Yeah, I'm like I don't even know what's wrong with my face. I can't see it so cool, not helpful, yeah. Okay, I'm curious psychologically because you even mentioned something earlier. Some folks might not even ever recover from the damage that this does to them. Like, what are the long-term psychological impacts on the individual, but even teams and organizations? What happens when there's a culture of, like, jerk culture?

Speaker 1: 36:22

Yeah, I think people learn what it takes to get ahead, and the smart ones will do it, and so jerk cultures, beget jerk cultures. If a place is a place where jerks can thrive, then they will hire and they will stay there and they won't ever cycle out because nobody wants to recruit them outside of that place. And this happens with a lot of high performing jerks. There's a reason why snakes in suits is a phenomenon that we actually talk about that you get high up enough you become a little bit of a psychopath. That's not true for every organization, but it's really hard to correct an organizational cultural reputation. That can take years, and you can even wipe everyone out of the organization that was a jerk and hire a new, and it will still take forever.

Speaker 1: 37:05

We know from the science of social network and reputation spread that removing those people with a negative reputation actually does very little to change what people think of the network as a whole. And if you can think of organizations that have had Title IX issues or Me Too issues, simply getting rid of those people isn't sufficient. And it's because people know that firing is easy, but actually promoting from within and proving that you don't breed that is hard and that takes years and years. And a lot of organizations went through this with me too. They just fired all those executives that sent those nasty text messages or sexually harassed women or whatever.

Speaker 1: 37:49

That seems like too easy of a solution to most people. They think, well, why did that person get away with it for 20 years? I don't care that you're firing them now. And there's a bit of a moral licensing effect that happens. Okay, now you feel like you got rid of them. Now you're going to really go crazy because you checked off the box right, like you're feeling good about yourself, morality wise. So I think there is damage that can last years and decades. And to the individual, they're just going to be super sensitive for looking for anything that is similar to their past, jerk and even incidental similarities that have nothing to do with it or are going to cue them up. I've talked to people who go to the same hairdresser. I can't trust that person.

Speaker 1: 38:23

Or they're wearing a similar jacket or they went to the same university or are trained by the same manager 20 years ago. Incidental similarities loom large for us and we often see correlation and inferred causation from that, and so people will start to get a little bit too triggery with those things and it can really hold them back right. Or they develop lay theories about why that person treated them in a certain way that are not ever really tested or explored. But we just have our theories and then we believe them and they're idiosyncratic and we stick to them, and I think that can really lead us astray as well.

Speaker 3: 38:57

What do you do? What do you do if you have that person? Let's take my example. I have a reoccurring dream about this dumb person. I know what do I do you?

Speaker 1: 39:04

don't have any closure in that relationship. Did it just end one? I have this with like exes. It just ended one day and you never saw them. You never did the exit interview where you said all the things or it's really hard to let go of these. Like the social psychologists would call this a goal incompletion.

Speaker 3: 39:39

You didn't complete the goal of ending the relationship, and so it's this kind of subtle, incomplete goal that you have, like never jumping off a high dive, and so you're just going to perseverate on it, or it's going to like sneak into your subconscious every once in a while, and that's true for all things that we don't complete.

Speaker 3: 39:46

Should you call them up? Who is this? I don't even know who this is. No, it's super fair. Super fair, I think, even just knowing, look, it's going to pop in. That's it. Let's just know what's going to happen.

Speaker 1: 39:51

I still dream about, like people from sixth grade that I feel like I didn't have like closure on, and that's normal. It's actually totally normal. It doesn't mean that this person is still haunting you in any meaningful way. It just means that there was something incomplete that you are not able to fully move on from because you just didn't finish the goal of ending that relationship in some kind of formalized way. And that's how most relationship ends. I think that's like just how relationships are. We don't usually have some kind of light switch that goes off where it's done. It's just like a lot of ambivalence, a lot of feelings that go up and down, and then eventually we move on. But what does move on me? I don't. Yeah, it means you're still dreaming about the person, but you're functional, so it's nice.

Speaker 3: 40:34

A thousand percent. I'm glad I'm not the only one, though, so I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 40:37

Just write them a letter saying all the things you need to say and throw it into a fire and release it.

Speaker 1: 40:43

She's going to be dreaming about the fire and talk to the fire to get the letter back Will be a worse nightmare than it started as.

Speaker 2: 40:52

Okay, scratch that All right. So with say, you're in a new job, it's the first 90 days and you're like, oh shit, I thought I did my due diligence in the interview process. I talked to people but it is clear no one gave me the real story here. What can people do? What do you do to protect yourself if you start to identify work-jerkery happening?

Speaker 1: 41:19

I think, first off, a lot of people try to go at this alone. They think that the negative treatment happens in a vacuum. And I think I've done a lot of research on what it's like to be a newcomer at work and newcomer status and the newcomer hump, and knowing what that hump is will help you strategize of what to do next. The first thing is, when you're a newcomer and you experience this, you assume that everyone around you knows it's happening and they don't care. And so first you actually need to test that assumption. Probably people don't know what's happening because they're in their own world. There's not actually an awareness of what you're up to and how you're being treated by other people, even if it happens in a meeting. Most of us spend most of our time in meetings rehearsing what we want to say next, and we almost never pay attention to what other people are actually saying. So we can remember what we said and when we were interrupted. But if you were to say, hey, mel, did you interrupt your buddy Tom, or when was he interrupted? You'd be like I don't know. All I know is when I was interrupted. So I feel like we have these spotlight effects on ourselves, so you need to break that a little bit and actually break that assumption that everyone knows what's happening except for you.

Speaker 1: 42:26

There's also a lot about norms in the workplace and hidden norms and things like that you probably aren't aware of, and so the best thing to do to learn about norms of treatment of people at work is to take what's implicit and make it explicit and just explicitly ask about how people ought to be treated.

Speaker 1: 42:41

And that sounds silly and dumb, but there could be a culture of sarcasm here or a culture of treating each other a little roughly. That is just does not sit with you well and you need to know if you're being mistreated or if this is just a normative way people act around here. I remember in academia we make people go through this like terrible two day interview process and there's a job talk that's an hour long and in some microcultures you can interrupt every three seconds and that's a good sign. It shows engagement and others. If you interrupt every three seconds, that means you're done, that means they hated the talk, and so we often have these little microcultures at work that we assume are bigger and more industry-wide than they actually are, so people could be assuming that you understand a norm that you don't because it's weirder and more idiosyncratic than they even realize.

Speaker 1: 43:28

And this is even true for jargon at work. People assume everyone in an industry uses jargon. Jargon is team-based. The five people are using the same weird words. So you want to just test your assumptions around that If it is widespread and everyone agrees it's okay behavior and you don't like that, that's your red flag. You are not going to change the whole organization and get them to all behave differently. So those are like the two key pieces of this job is probably not going to work out for you.

Speaker 1: 43:53

Widespread and everyone's okay with it, not okay with it not widespread, then you have hope. Then you can proactively work with your network or your boss or whatever. But almost everyone assumes behavior is both more widespread and more acceptable than probably others realize and they're shocked when they hear about it and a little bit surprised. So test those assumptions before you jump ship and start something else. But it is pretty normal to think you're hired into one culture and show up and get something different. I'll say all that with one major exception being. A huge problem that came up during COVID and still happening is engagement issues. You thought this would be a really engaged workplace where everyone was on board and they were active and they were in, and then you show up and like literally no one is there. That is a really tough kind of cultural level of disengagement or neglect. That is hard to fix and I wouldn't try to take that particular issue on.

Speaker 2: 44:44

What if it's your boss in those first 90 days?

Speaker 1: 44:48

Yeah, you can talk to other team members to see how they're being treated. But my favorite lay of the land networking reality check tactic for bosses is you don't want to go to your boss's boss, you want to go up and over. You want to find people who know your boss, who are at the same level as them, and so they can give you insight into this treatment. No-transcript, I have all these kinds of like little tricksy rules based on marital therapy of how to do it. But before you're even there, you want to know oh, is this what all middle managers do, or is this just mine? Going two levels up is a little bit difficult, but up and over at their level in the network is useful to just get feedback from other bosses who have a similar role as yours.

Speaker 2: 46:00

I really like that because then you're comparing and you have data to compare it against, and it isn't just the assumption that your boss is the problem, so to speak. Not saying their behavior is great if it's common either.

Speaker 1: 46:13

But yeah, but you want to know. I think when people are like, how do I know if the jerk problem is too much, I, my first question is how widespread is it? How culturally normative is it? Are they hiding their behavior Cause they know it's bad, which is a good sign for you, because that means this organization doesn't actually like it. It's so scary to deal with, but that's a good sign that it's not just the whole well has been poisoned, it's just this one person. And is it OK to give any kind of feedback to bosses and some organizations? They have a very tight hierarchy and it's completely unacceptable to ever have a real conversation with your boss that is not just about your own career path and your own performance, but about theirs. So you want a place that actually does like bite-sized, normal conversation, organic feedback across all levels.

Speaker 2: 46:59

I know we're talking about like how leaders can manage this one-on-one with folks on their team. But what do they do if they see that the team is developing this culture of jerkery together? What can they do to address it without killing?

Speaker 1: 47:15

morale on the team or trust within the team. I think you know I teach this little program called the tricky situations, and it's just a bunch of these workplace dynamics and one of them is I actually give people an example of a situation like this where you think you know who the jerk is. Bob is constantly taking on the work of senior people. It seems like there's a free rider problem at work. Why is Bob doing everyone's work, even though he's the most junior person? How do you deal with this potential free ride problem? And half the people will come to me and say, oh, clearly these senior people are taking advantage of Bob and they're offloading work. And the other half will say, oh, I've had a lot of Bobs before. These are these go-getter junior people who steal the work of senior people in an effort to climb up, and they do this in a systematic way. And so we have our lay theories of who the actual jerk is in the situation. But we should probably test that out a little bit.

Speaker 1: 48:10

I don't love the idea of bringing people in one by one and interrogating them and asking them what's going on. I actually more like to keep track of the structure of things who's doing work and when Was this work you were assigned to do or not? Let's talk about the feedback interactions you're having and focus on the little behaviors and work together with everyone as a group. One-on-one meetings end up with conspiratorial thinking often, and sometimes you eventually have to get to that, especially if HR is involved. But you want to hear. You want your whole team to hear one message from you at the same time and not assuming that the jerk is the high status person or the low status person or you even know what's going on. So I'd say, like a lot of information gathering and put your stereotypes aside of what you think is happening before you do. But I do think that teams that there's a lot of structures and systems that we can put in place to prevent jerks and not allowing things like informal networking behind the scenes to pull levers of power good old boys club networking, things like that that used to work to get people's way and so far as we continue to reinforce that and we don't have real procedural justice around rules and decision making, I think we're in trouble.

Speaker 1: 49:15

And I'd also say for bosses and leaders, if you want to make a jerk free place and you want to prevent Machiavellianism and things like that on your teams. You need to lay out super clearly what the structure is for determining raises and promotions at your organization, down to things like certain bosses don't have the status and power to do it until they've been here for five years Really clear. And then I'd say the other thing is we need more failure pipeline data so that when we aren't promoted or when we're not succeeding, we're not bitter about it. We don't start to engage in kiss up, take down behavior to get ahead. We understand that it takes five times to get this promotion and we're only on time three or we know who our social comparison others are.

Speaker 1: 49:54

So there's procedural justice around decisions that don't often favor us, because what happens when people aren't getting ahead is that's when they turn to this jerk behavior to try to do whatever it takes. And transparency, I think, can move mountains with just explaining to people, even if they don't like the rules. If they understand them, they're less likely to turn to jerk behavior to get ahead, and that's usually where we see it actually to get their way to get ahead, to pull levers of power. That's where most people turn into jerks at work.

Speaker 2: 50:20

We can see that Francesca and I talk often about the power of transparency in the workplace, because you're removing the confusion for folks immediately and they don't have to fill in the blanks and suddenly they're in survival mode every single day because they don't know what the story is or they don't have clarity on the situation. So now it's just an unsafe environment. Do you think organizations are doing enough to address jerks at work?

Speaker 1: 50:45

No, they wait till the problem crops up and then they play whack-a-mole. There's not a lot of prevention. Think about this through the lens of healthcare. Right, we wait for the heart attack to happen and then it's time to lose weight. There's not a lot of prevention and early detection and conversations to see the early red flags, to see their warning signs, and I think that's just because most of us don't know, and often the early red flags are not what ends up being the problem later. Those early signs are not often perfectly aligned with what ends up getting you reported to HR. Anxiety and stress and feeling overwhelmed is often an early red flag of micromanagement. But that could be anything. So I don't think so. I think people talk about it a lot, but they don't do a lot to actually address the issue. One of the dark reasons why is because a lot of these jerks are high performers.

Speaker 3: 51:32

At the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 51:33

We are very much yoked to performance metrics and that if you have a board, they care about that. If you're publicly traded, that's what matters, Not nice people, not so-called soft skills. And so there's good reason for people to just say I don't care about all this stuff. I have to answer the board and if our numbers stay low, I don't care. That we have jerks, we can't afford this. Bring in the Machiavellian people who will bring our numbers back up. Sorry, that was a little bit dark.

Speaker 2: 52:00

We've seen it.

Speaker 3: 52:05

Yeah, I know, there's the whole Gary Veer chat. If your best-selling salesperson is a total asshole, go in and fire him tomorrow. No one's doing that, and you can absolutely do the long-term analysis of how much that is costing you by having someone be a jerk right Turnover and we know all the stats. But that's a long-term play and we live a quarter mile at a time in corporate America. Okay, all right, tessa, we do this with all our guests. It's called Rapid Round. They're quick, short answers. They're meant to be fun. Are you ready to play Tessa? Sure, okay, six questions, so no pressure. In your opinion, who's the biggest jerk of all time?

Speaker 1: 52:52

Donald Trump, is that basic?

Speaker 3: 52:56

Depends on who you talk to that guy. Oh, that guy.

Speaker 1: 53:02

Yeah, that guy. There's no redeeming qualities, there's just not.

Speaker 3: 53:07

I can't, I can't, I can't, can't, I can't, I can't believe I know, okay, yeah we're here again. We're here here we are here, we are, here, we are, and this is why I'm looking for eu citizenship. So, looking at property in italy, looking at property in spain, just in case shit hits the fan, there you go all right, I right, I have a Canadian husband.

Speaker 1: 53:27

I'm good, I'm covered.

Speaker 3: 53:30

Nice, excellent move, excellent. Toronto's looking really good these days. That's so funny.

Speaker 1: 53:38

What's the fastest way to identify a jerk in the workplace Ask around, just ask around. Don't trust your instincts. Gather data.

Speaker 3: 53:46

What's the best one-liner response to a jerk's rude comment?

Speaker 1: 53:50

When someone's rude to you and I wish I could go back and do this the last time someone did something awful to me that I just met I would say how many other people have you said that to?

Speaker 3: 53:59

Oh, I love that.

Speaker 1: 54:04

That's great. It's a good zinger and it really gives you the power back and makes it look like you're just judging them for the behavior. But you're not internalizing it. Oh, that is the shit.

Speaker 3: 54:16

How many people have you said that? To Just give me goosebumps. I'm like, oh, that's good.

Speaker 1: 54:19

That's very good I love that. I love that For more mean girl advice, come to me yeah.

Speaker 3: 54:26

So awesome. What's the best way to get subtle revenge on a workplace jerk without getting caught?

Speaker 2: 54:31

Does that just make you the jerk?

Speaker 1: 54:33

Yeah, this is an easy one, guys. You make friends with building maintenance and you either make sure their trash never gets taken out again or you make their office incredibly hot or incredibly cold. Attack the creature comforts. Those are actually what stresses us out the most at work, and the best way to get someone to quit a job is to move their office somewhere uncomfortable or take away their parking spot. Whoa, I know how to get people to retire. That won't retire. It's parking spot and inconvenience office and a faraway bathroom that's in a weird spot or an office next to the bathroom.

Speaker 1: 55:10

Either too close or too far.

Speaker 3: 55:14

It's so simple and so brilliant. Yeah, what's your biggest pet peeve when it comes to workplace behavior? What's the one thing you're just like? Come on.

Speaker 1: 55:22

Trash talking on social media Slack or email, but will hide from you in person. I hate it when people do that. If you're gonna do it, just own it. Just do it to my face it takes a special kind of spinelessness to do that read about me and then, yeah, not, but work right next to me as you're tweeting about me I know a place that will uh mail that person poo.

Speaker 3: 55:47

I will send you that address. Just trope load if you need that. Okay, if you could give just one piece of advice to someone dealing with a difficult coworker, what would it be?

Speaker 1: 55:57

You are not alone. You're probably the 500th victim of this particular person, so don't feel like you're being isolated. Most jerks actually isolate people and make them feel very alone and that there's something wrong with them. You're not. You are probably the 500th person on the receiving end of this jerk. The best thing you can do is ask around and figure out how many. But I think that sort of feeling stupid and alone is the shame that comes along with being victimized by jerks. That we often don't talk about, especially if you're new at work and you feel like you're being bullied.

Speaker 1: 56:29

It's like back in school. Why am I being bullied? It's not about you, it's about them.

Speaker 3: 56:34

Yeah, it's nice to frame it that way, because you can honestly almost get a little bit more objective about the situation and what you can do to get yourself into a healthier place, if you know that's what this person is like and it's not about you place. If you know that's what this person is like and it's not about you. It's been so lovely to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, this is so fun you guys are awesome.

Speaker 1: 57:00

I love the vibe of this. I feel like I need a drink of prosecco or something in my weird cubicle right now.

Speaker 2: 57:06

Delicious. Next time, next time, come back.

Speaker 3: 57:14

Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at friend@yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and, if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends and checkout yourworkfriends.com.

Speaker 2: 57:29

We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.

The Workplace Psychological Safety Act

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Workplace Psychological Safety Act with Vicki Courtemanche and Deb Falzoi

Micromanagement. Gaslighting. Constant chaos. Abusive work environments aren’t always loud—but they’re always harmful. In this episode, we’re breaking down what workplace abuse really looks like (hint: it’s not just yelling) and how to name it, navigate it, and end it. Because everyone deserves to work where safety, respect, and sanity aren’t negotiable.

In the US, do you have a right to a safe, psychologically safe workplace? 

Because, right now, there is no legislation protecting employees from toxic work environments. None. 

Join us for an eye-opening discussion with Deb Falzoi and Vicki Courtemanche, founders of the End Workplace Abuse initiative. 

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

The basic idea behind it is that we don't have protections from psychological abuse at work. If this bill passes into law, people will be able to sue their employers and or their individual perpetrators, Because right now, people who suffer from mistreatment at work will go to an employment lawyer and the employment lawyer will simply say I'm sorry this is happening to you, but there's nothing under the law that will protect you in this.

Speaker 2: 0:41

What's going on Mel?

Speaker 3: 0:43

Not much. I went to a fun little estate sale this past weekend and I got like a 1950s black leather clutch that is awesome for $5. So you know win-win. That was good.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Nice. I love estate sales. I love that kind of find right, yeah, yeah, especially all the vintage stuff. It was so well-made, a lot of it.

Speaker 3: 1:07

This thing is solid. I'm like oh, I can throw out my target bag.

Speaker 2: 1:12

That thing's going to last you a lifetime, you know.

Speaker 3: 1:15

Truly, just get a little conditioner on there, it's all good, it's all good.

Speaker 2: 1:19

How about you? Well, enzo got walkie talkies. Yeah, this morning I was washing my face in my bathroom. He's in the living room, which is a couple rooms away, and all of a sudden I hear him having a conversation with somebody else who's not in the house. There's no one else, oh, and so, yeah, learned that his walkie-talkies can pick up other conversations and he can talk to people, so we are now getting rid of said walkie-talkies. That is freaky. I I don't like that at all.

Speaker 3: 1:44

You know it's like some, like trucker named Jim on his CB. What's this?

Speaker 2: 1:50

And I was like what that's us yeah?

Speaker 3: 1:55

Oh God. Anyway, walkie talkies are the best, though.

Speaker 2: 1:58

Well, we had a really rad conversation with two women that are doing some pretty powerful work.

Speaker 3: 2:04

a really rad conversation with two women that are doing some pretty powerful work, absolutely. We met with Deb Falzoi and Vicky Courtemanche, who are two fearless women leading the End Workplace Abuse Initiative across the US, and they are working to introduce the Workplace Psychological Safety Act in 20 states by 2025. And they recently presented this in Massachusetts and Rhode Islands. They're still working to get them passed in those states and they have moved on to several other states as well, so there's a lot in the works here. Ultimately, bottom line is they're looking to establish psychologically safe workplaces and getting this into legislation so that employees have rights to go after employers who don't establish psychologically safe workplaces.

Speaker 2: 2:52

Yeah, I think the big thing here is that legal recourse if psychological abuse is happening and we know this happens. We know things like bullying and mobbing and systemic sabotage happen all the time and right now, for the most part, employees do not have legal recourse if that happens.

Speaker 3: 3:12

No, they don't. And I think you and I spoke about this and I thought you brought up an excellent point, Francesca where this is the new sexual harassment effort. Right, because, as you mentioned, 20 years ago, someone could have said you have a nice ass in the workplace and if you complained, what would the response usually be? Oh, get a sense of humor. And that quickly went away with sexual harassment protections. This just takes our protections to the next level, where you can no longer just abuse people in the workplace and get away with it. There's actual recourse here for the employee and man do? They have a lot of great resources on their website for folks. Yeah, if you're an individual or a team leader or a leader of an organization, we highly recommend you check out their site. We're gonna link to everything in the show notes. They have a ton of resources out there. They're also extremely accessible, so you can email them and reach out to them for consultation. And with that, here is how to end. Well, friends, we're super excited to uh meet today with the co-founders and representatives for end workplace abuse. Uh, and that's deborah falzoy and vicky Kordamanch.

Speaker 3: 4:44

Debra started Dignity Together and she was really focused on helping workers who feel stuck in toxic work cultures and those who are healing from toxic work cultures, and really the goal is to help people take back their life, take back their power. Debra also has a podcast called Screw the Hierarchy and I did listen to a few episodes which I loved, and it highlights personal stories and the impacts of abuse in the workplace. Deb and Vicki co-founded the End Workplace Abuse Organization and they co-authored the Workplace Psychological Safety Act. End Workplace Abuse is an organization leading really a collective movement which is advocating for psychological safety at work. They are citizen lobbyists for protective legislation and policies. They're helping to build leaders who campaign for abuse-free workplaces and they offer coaching and playbooks to do this, which we love, and they're here to collaborate with organizations to help advance workers' rights. So welcome Debra and Vicki. How are you both doing today?

Speaker 1: 5:52

Good Thanks so much for having us.

Speaker 3: 5:55

Yes, thank you Absolutely. Thanks for being here. Tell us a little bit how did end workplace abuse begin?

Speaker 1: 6:04

We both have lived experience with workplace abuse. We've worked on other legislative campaigns and we really wanted to put forth the strongest piece of legislation we could, while also walking the talk around how we organize in terms of creating a really collaborative environment, building as many leaders as we can in this movement, to create a national movement, because there are so many people affected by this who wanted to do something about it, and so we started. We got busy writing the Workplace Psychological Safety Act set up a lot of foundational things like the website. Psychological Safety Act set up a lot of foundational things like the website, talking points, documents, policies, norms to make sure our own culture is healthy and safe for people.

Speaker 4: 6:54

I'll just go a little bit before that, because we both have lived experience around this and she had been bullied in the workplace 10 years before me. I saw her postings on social media and she was actually the first other person that I met who had experienced workplace abuse and I was very sick when I came out. I had a lot of health issues and I wasn't really able to do much of anything. But the work that she was doing really gave me a lot of hope and it was probably about four or five months deep that we finally did meet up in person and as I continued to get better, started doing little things that she would ask and she's always good about that, always making room for everybody to step in and have a voice in this or help in it we kept getting like deeper and deeper, help in it.

Speaker 3: 7:42

We kept getting like deeper and deeper and, as Deb eloquently already said, we found ourselves in this space that we could do it differently than what we saw out there. I love it. It starts with one step right. Coming together and collaboratively is a really powerful story. Tell us more about the Workplace Psychological Safety Act. What is the? I know there's a. The bill is a lot of language, but what is the if you had to explain it to someone like they're five? What does it encompass?

Speaker 1: 8:11

The basic idea behind it is that we don't have protections from psychological abuse at work, so at a baseline it gives people legal recourse for what we call a toxic work environment that a reasonable person would deem toxic. Right now, the major source of protections that people have are anti-discrimination law and, looking at the history of that law, the courts really moved from looking at impact to looking at intent years later and it really watered down the strength of that law so that if you feel like you're the subject of racist or sexist ageist, ableist, any type of behavior that's protected under that law, then you still have to prove the intent of the perpetrator, and that sets a really high bar In looking at the way mistreatment works at work. We wanted to focus on the behaviors that happen and enough of a baseline rather than looking at someone's having a bad day at the office. Enough of a baseline to deem it a toxic work environment by a reasonable person, and that would actually give more protections to for everyone, but especially for women and people of color, who are disproportionately harmed by mistreatment at work.

Speaker 1: 9:42

If this law passes, or this bill passes into law, people will be able to sue their employers and or their individual perpetrators, because right now, people who suffer from mistreatment at work will go to an employment lawyer and the employment lawyer will simply say I'm sorry, this is happening to you, but there's nothing under the law that will protect you in this.

Speaker 1: 10:03

There's nothing to sue against. So we want to put that in place because it is such a prevalent tool that employers use against employees, often for speaking up about this behavior, and that's a huge piece that Vicky brought into. It is what's not just this workplace bullying phenomenon. It's that the employers at their level are ignoring these situations or retaliating against people because they want to avoid liability. So that's this and that's really the level where a lot of people feel betrayed by. We really focused, honed in on that aspect of it, because there's nobody holding the employers accountable for holding the bullies accountable. That's a major piece of the playbook that we thought was missing from not just other pieces of legislation, but from the messaging that really resonates with people to build this movement.

Speaker 2: 11:03

We do have anti-discrimination, and then there's this act as well. Can you give an example of where the laws that are in place now aren't cutting it for people that are bullying? For example, if someone's getting bullied by their manager, is that not covered by anti-discrimination right now?

Speaker 1: 11:23

It isn't, unless the person can prove that the reason for their mistreatment is because they're a member of a protected class, because they're of a certain race or because they're a woman or that sort of thing. The best example I can really give is if a bully is bullying everyone equally, then when everyone's suffering from harm, then there's really distinguished about even somebody in a protected class, about the way that they're being mistreated. I've heard people say, if you're like an equal opportunity jerk, like there's no legal recourse for that because the target's not being singled out because of their membership in a protected class.

Speaker 2: 12:07

It's interesting because we see this a lot, especially sometimes at the executive level. People are a equal opportunity jerk and we get the well, that's just working with executives. That's just what this is. This is the type of behavior that they have and it's like no, this is actually not healthy at all and not constructive at all, and right now, there's no legal recourse for that.

Speaker 4: 12:28

Yeah, because the norm, like you said, it's what people have just accepted nowadays that that's how people are going to act at that level.

Speaker 1: 12:36

Yeah, and we really want to implicate. You know people go to HR to report these situations often, but HR also often gets bullied because by the people they're reporting to. So this is really often a directive from the very top down, usually a culture issue, that there is that discriminatory impact on people who aren't in power typically. Basically.

Speaker 4: 13:01

I'd just like to add to we were very intentional when we used the terminology psychological safety, because we were trying to go at it a different way, because passing the law is still not even our greatest obstacle. Raising public awareness is still our greatest obstacle. So when you say workplace bullying, no one knows what you mean by that. They don't know what you really mean by that. They conjure up whatever they want in their mind from their own experience, but they don't understand really that it's a process of dehumanization and it's a process of traumatization. So we were very intentional because, as I said, we have the two bars. We're trying to pass law, but we're also trying to raise public awareness and that still is almost in the forefront. But when we use the term psychological abuse and psychological safety, that has resonated with people. Now everyone knows what we're talking about. Everyone understands what that is. It's taken off.

Speaker 3: 14:03

That's a great segue into my next question. Vicki, on the website I noticed you talk about an abuser playbook. What does it look like?

Speaker 1: 14:13

I think too, in terms of the playbook, what we're seeing is a lot of high performers affected by this. They pose a threat to someone in power who wants to reinforce their own power and control. Performer is weakened is very typical tactics for abuse, like false accusations, sabotage, verbal abuse. We see outright lies in performance reviews. We see withholding information from people, overloading unreasonably heavy workloads all sorts of different tactics that are designed by people in power because that power differential is so important to weaken their target, to dim their flame, basically. And so when the person starts to catch on and starts to feel devalued, a lot of times they internalize what's happening to them and so they end up subscribing to the narrative until they really catch on that these things are happening. They start to notice that they're feeling so devalued and demeaned all the time, and then when they finally go to report it to a higher up or HR, depending on who the perpetrator is if they go to their own boss or if the perpetrator is their boss that's when that sort of second level of betrayal can kick in and they realize the process just gets dragged out. You think that the company is going to care that there's some form of mistreatment happening and that it's in the way of their bottom line. But really oftentimes we see investigations never happening or they're inadequate investigations and then people try legal recourse and realize that the whole society isn't on their side because there's no law against this behavior which basically tells them the harm done to them is okay. It just adds layer upon layer of betrayal. It can be really hard. A lot of these ways of harming people can be done behind closed doors. It can be done through gossip and sabotage that people don't have any ideas happening until months, weeks or months later. So it can be really hard to see.

Speaker 1: 16:35

A lot of times, just sensing that the perpetrator has these power and control issues and that they're trying to reinforce that at every turn, instead of what I think of as a healthy relationship with a boss is like trying to flatten that hierarchy as much as possible and being a support and trying to figure out what their subordinates need.

Speaker 1: 17:03

There is that heavy layer of power and control with this. So I think when people start to see that for what it is and realize I know in my situation, when I saw that happening, my response was internalizing it and thinking well, I have to try harder then. And that really was the opposite of what going to help me, because that threatened the bully more. The abuse ramped up and had I been able to catch it more quickly, I think I would have been able to detach from it more easily and just say, okay, may have still gone to HR, may have still gone to the head doing the right thing, but the typical response is avoiding liability. That education piece is huge as to what is likely to happen, given the power structures and the system that the people in power have designed to maintain their own power.

Speaker 3: 18:35

So how can employees, or even employers, recognize that abuse is happening in the workplace? What do they need to look out for?

Speaker 1: 18:43

So when we just define even just basic psychological abuse, we're talking about a violation of an employee's inherent basic right to dignity. So this is severe or pervasive infliction of toxic or unethical words and or actions, whether they're intentional or unintentional, direct or indirect. These can also be omissions. They're directed in terms of creating the toxic work environment Bullying we call it employee to employee interpersonal abuse.

Speaker 4: 19:15

As Deb said, that was a big part of what we went after in the playbook and in the legislation was holding the employer accountable, and we use the word mobbing and what we mean by that is organizational bullying, so it's more the employer, it's representative employees to the employee. I've since learned, thanks to Jen Fraser who wrote the Bully Brain, another word and I use it more often now, and it's institutional complicity. That's good. Now that is clearer than mobbing. So we're learning as we go and I'm trying to use that terminology.

Speaker 1: 19:57

And then we see sabotage as a type of bullying. There's all sorts of different ways to even define bullying, but also to categorize types of bullying. But sabotage we've bucketed into things that are types of exclusion, so things like excluded from meetings and conversations that you should be involved with. This could be timely access to resources, information that you need to do your job, assignment of work. We've seen situations where people are not given information that they need to do work they've been assigned to, and then they get reprimanded for not completing the work, so they're basically being set up to fail. Unfairness falls into this. We talk about gaslighting, which is where the narrative gets twisted, so you believe you were made to be the problem. I'll call this crazy making too, where this can be micromanaging and inconsistent complying with rules. It could be a demotion or threatening of job loss without any cause. Inaccurate performance reviews that's a big one, especially when new management comes in and they want to hire their own people. They'll just start a paper trail, but it won't be accurate in order to push out the employee. It could be discounting work, taking credit for work, blocking requests for needed training or leave, increasing responsibilities without giving authority to complete the responsibilities, removing responsibilities with no explanation, unreasonably heavy workloads, underwork, consistently to the point where somebody feels useless, so they're not doing what they were promised would be they would be doing in that role. Unrealistic deadlines We've heard a lot of stories about people essentially like being set up to fail where they're given these ridiculously unrealistic deadlines that they can't meet. Favoritism is involved with this, where a lot of people have this separate set of rules because they're not in the in crowd. Vague reviews, accusations without any backup. We've heard of people having their equipment tampered with, their personal belongings tampered with, and then the last part of this is lack of clarity. So it can be really vague directions, deception around work, expectations, deadlines, reprimands without any ways to improve. Again, this isn't a bad day at the office. This is like the norm of how expectations are set and sort of thing. Like vicky said too.

Speaker 1: 22:46

When it comes to the bullying and the mobbing, the, a lot of people talk about mobbing as like group bullying essentially, and that can be part of the playbook too, where it starts with one-on-one person in power, person, a lesser role, and then that person in power creates this false narrative behind the scenes and gets other people to join into that false narrative, then a lot of times people side with that power out of fear of losing their own job.

Speaker 1: 23:19

And then, gradually too, the target can just feel so isolated, have no idea what's going on behind the scenes, but they're characterized in a way that they have no idea about and it's completely opposite of how they feel, believe that they're performing, or at least were performing, and then that's when that mobbing piece, as we're defining it with the institutional complicity it often escalates to that, because people feel trapped. They have no idea what to do, where to go, who will help them. And so when HR is training on anti-discrimination law and encouraging reports of mistreatment, they believe that going to HR will be the solution. But oftentimes HR will just be looking to see if there's any sort of valid complaint, if there's a legal liability, and they'll do some sort of risk assessment and decide should we just push this person out and avoid the liability? How much of a risk does this person pose?

Speaker 2: 24:23

Which is one of the reasons why you need a law like this right, because HR is going to go to the law, they're going to go to A what is legal, and then what's the liability for the organization, which is why you need this as a law, because if it's not, it's very gray. It can be very gray for HR. I have a question, though, about the bobbing piece, which is does it have to be, or even the bullying, or even the sabotage, does it have to be somebody in power?

Speaker 1: 24:50

Because I've seen this peer to peer, I've seen this as team members doing it to their leader. It can be lateral bullying and it can be upward bullying too. I think the most common is that downward bullying, but it can happen from any direction. I've heard of situations in all of those ways and to your point earlier too, I was going to say we have heard HR people say we need a tool, a law, to be able to hold these bullies accountable. So I think it will benefit HR to have this tool to actually do something about the bullying.

Speaker 4: 25:33

Their profession has really been called out this phenomenon, because the statistics say that at least 71% of our businesses don't do the right thing when this happens. So there's a lot of people out there who are either uncomfortable doing what they're told to do or there's lots of people out there who have left HR because they won't do that. It's sad because they're the flying monkeys of this. They're the ones who come out and make it happen. We pull back the layer even further than HR. We point to the legal department, whoever that legal head is. They are and this is funny, francesca, because you're saying they want a law, but really what they're doing is skirting the law by doing this. I've talked about this even if this law is passed, it's going to be like whack-a-mole with them, like they're going to pop up and try to do something else, because that's the way the legal departments function. Culture and operationalize HR will need to fundamentally shift.

Speaker 2: 26:45

There's so much culture change that will need to happen in organizations for organizations to be healthy enough for not having this happen. And I think back to like when anti-sexual harassment rolled out. I mean, sitting in our seats right now. No way in hell would you ever think that telling your administrative assistant that they have a nice ass is okay. That was okay 20 years ago, quite honestly. And now it's not. And we're still in this realm right now with bullying, with sabotage, with mobbingbing, where this stuff is still culturally, in a lot of places, tolerated. Okay, organizations are complicit.

Speaker 1: 27:25

I'm excited by this and then I also think it is a massive sea change, very similar to what sexual harassment was yeah, in fact, we try to model the bill on sexual harassment law, saying that like it's the work environment, like that hostile they're. They call it a hostile work environment, we're calling it toxic. It's the baseline and people don't need to prove psychological injury. But yeah, it is. It is going to be gradually this huge shift for employers and their work cultures.

Speaker 2: 27:59

I'm curious about with what you both are working on. Obviously you've done a tremendous amount to push this forward. What are some of the priority hot button issues that you're working on within the next three months? What's hot for you right now?

Speaker 1: 28:16

I mean, one of the biggest things is a Rhode Island the bill in Rhode Island. So we have two active bills, one in Massachusetts and one in Rhode Island, and we have just a couple more months in the session in Rhode Island. It just passed the Senate Labor Committee, it's on to a vote in the Senate floor, it'll move to the House Labor Committee and we're mobilizing people getting the message out there to take action, to write the house labor committee. So that's our biggest priority. We're still in the early days of even having formed our national teams and our teams of bill directors. We have about 20 new states that are working on getting legislation introduced in 2025. We're going to do another training to get more people on board. It's super energizing. Just the educational piece alone of this is huge and just the creativity coming out, the connections and coalition building people are doing.

Speaker 4: 29:19

If this passes in Rhode Island, this would be our first win of a law. We just have to have that under our belt. I can't tell you how many other legislators we've watched hearings around the country, and the first thing that the chairs ask is has this passed anyplace else? So we can't wait to say yes.

Speaker 1: 30:00

I want to ask, not if but when this gets passed in Rhode Island and when momentum picks up, what will employees be able to do? The big thing is to sue their employer for mistreatment that meets that baseline standard. Right now they don't have the ability to do that. It's not going to be this wave of the magic wand, like we've seen. Obviously, sexual harassment is still really prevalent, despite there being a lot against it. But the other piece is this is really about prevention. So the bill actually has a lot of language around what the employer can do to minimize their own liability from training and having a policy, which we know doesn't work in and of itself, but that as a start, in terms of trying to prevent this behavior, to having thorough investigations and then, when they do find that there was bullying happening, coaching, counseling, discipline. We want there to be an adequate addressing of this issue from start to finish, from educating and monitoring the work environment to actually holding bullies accountable.

Speaker 3: 31:04

You talk a lot about what organizations can do in terms of prevention, but what can team leaders do today? What can just teammates do today to help with that prevention in the workplace or be advocates for others if they're not the victim of it, but see it happening? What can they be doing?

Speaker 1: 31:24

It's a really tough situation for bystanders to be in because pretty much stuck between siding with the abuser and siding with the target, and if that abuser is their boss, then putting themselves in a situation to have to be the next target. Basically, we encourage people to speak out, but we know that there's risk, a lot of risk, in doing that. So I think even just telling the target, even private I saw this happen to you. I like to validate it for them and knowledge that they were harmed and that they're a human being and harm wasn't okay To just be there for set goals, help people understand that the vision and mission and the goals of their unit, even if there's a lot of toxic behavior coming down from the top.

Speaker 1: 32:33

What's a tough position for a manager to be in dealing with that and trying to change the culture of their own department. But I think that's the power that they have. How do you treat people as workers, as though they're adults and that they can control their jobs and that they have social support? And I think everything that we're supporting, including the Workplace Psychological Safety Act, just all goes back to that, in that if managers treat their subordinates like people, then not only will they be healthier, but their bottom lines will actually increase. I think the bottom line is just bringing the humanity back to the workplace, or to the workplace in the first place.

Speaker 3: 33:21

This has been just really wonderful and appreciate all of the tips and insights.

Speaker 4: 33:27

I just want to say thank you for this space because this is raising public awareness. So every time that this gets put out there on a podcast, or someone reposts the social media or wants to submit written testimony, it all counts.

Speaker 1: 33:44

One of the biggest parts of this work is that we're giving people hope who are otherwise feeling so trapped in what they're experiencing. It's important for people to know there is hope out there. We're both living proof that there is happiness on the other side of all of this and, with support and taking their own voices back, they can get there too, and collectively, no matter what happens. If we're speaking out together, then we're taking a stand for ourselves, and I think that's huge.

Speaker 3: 34:18

Love it Well. Thank you both so much for being here with us today. Appreciate you, Thank you.

Speaker 2: 34:23

Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.

The Talent Fueled Enterprise

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Talent Fueled Enterprise with Mike Ohata

You can build high-performing teams and create a workplace people actually want to be part of. Just ask Mike Ohata—Fortune 15 talent leader, author of The Talent-Fueled Enterprise, and the guy talent insiders call a badass. In this episode, Mike shares how to lead with care and results, why psychological safety drives performance, and how to stop treating people like capital.

From the future of AI to why simplicity beats scale, we unpack what soulful leadership looks like in today’s world—and why it’s not just possible, but essential. If you’re ready to fuel your org with both head and heart, this one’s for you.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

It just takes a dimension of courage. And I remember one CEO kept saying the most simplistic message. He goes if we get our culture right, the rest will come. We'll win in the marketplace, we'll win clients, we'll sell bigger projects. And you could feel it. He knew in his soul what the values were. He knew in his spirit what he was after and what he saw. And you go like, yeah, I get it.

Speaker 2: 0:28

What's going on, Mel?

Speaker 3: 1:00

Not much. I feel super energized. I belong to this community, through Culture First, that hosts co-working days in the city. I just love it so much. Not to speak for you, but like me, we kind of thrive on like hive togetherness of collaborating and brainstorming. So I just get a lot of energy out of just leaving my house and sitting in a space with other people who are getting shit done and then being able to connect and ask questions. So it felt good today I did that in the city. What about you? Nice?

Speaker 2: 1:14

And by the city you mean New.

Speaker 3: 1:16

York, I mean New York. Yeah, yeah, sorry everyone.

Speaker 2: 1:18

Yeah, I got to say I don't think I have prepared myself as a parent around sports. I did not grow up playing sports Like we were in like ceramics camp and dance and piano. That's what I did. I didn't really play sports, yeah. But my son is super into sports. My husband played soccer in college. Like they're into sports. I was not prepared for the amount of practices and such like. Just for soccer, just for soccer. And he's in first grade. They have practices on Monday, games on Saturday and then this weekend there was a jamboree like a fundraiser.

Speaker 2: 1:56

I'm like this is three days three days, three days out of the week, dedicated to soccer wait until he gets into middle school and high school.

Speaker 3: 2:06

That'd be five days a week, and then you'll have a pasta dinner to raise money. I was not prepared. Oh, I know what to get you now as a gift I have lawn chairs, I do have not a lawn, not a lawn chair, not a lawn chair like one of those pop-up tents.

Speaker 2: 2:19

What do we do? What do you hell?

Speaker 3: 2:20

yeah, the pop-up tent for outside, so. So when it starts raining, you could just zip yourself in.

Speaker 2: 2:26

It has a little window Like a little drive-thru window Like what here's your snacks. Yeah, it has a little window that you can look through, you're nice and cozy. Throw Clif Bars out of it. Yes, please get me that. That's funny, that's funny Okay. That's funny, that's funny Okay.

Speaker 3: 2:41

Oh man, yeah, you're going to be busy, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Well, we had a pretty rad discussion with Mike Ohata, didn't we?

Speaker 3: 3:02

We did. Yeah, yeah, mike Ohata joined us. He's a talent executive and strategic advisor. He's worked for organizations like Microsoft and KPMG and he's the author of the Talent-Fueled Enterprise. We read the book. It was awesome, and then we got to talk to him about it.

Speaker 2: 3:11

And we think there's a lot of good knowledge nuggets for folks to take away from this conversation. The book is written and geared towards. If you're the head of HR, the head of learning and development, if you're a CEO, right, it's looking at strategically what do you want to do to make sure that your enterprise is really garnering the full potential of everybody that works there? Right? Listen, if you are in those roles, it's a must read, absolutely, but that's not really why we wanted to have Mike on. It feels like there's this conversation happening in the ether, especially around anything HR or people related that it's very polarized.

Speaker 3: 3:40

Oh, it is right now. I read something yesterday around you're not strategic. If you're a bleeding heart HR person, take some issue with these types of comments, because I think something that you and I talk about often, and something that Mike emphasized, was this need for balance, the balance of caring for people and your bottom line and how you can bring those two things together in a really effective way.

Speaker 2: 4:09

Where work and where goodness really gets done is in trying to find the common ground, is in trying to figure out what is the balance between to your very good points, profit and being really good to your people, or really understanding how you can maximize the potential of your people, and we highly recommend Mike's book With us. He walked through how can anybody, whether you're a manager, a leader of an organization, really fuel your organization with not only talent but with soul as well, and gave some really really practical advice, and it was just a fun conversation.

Speaker 3: 4:43

And, side note, there's a lot of great movie quotes and tiebacks in this book, but this is a great conversation and with that, here's Mike Ohata. Mike, we are so excited to have you with your work, friends, today, and you've written the talent-fueled enterprise, which is focusing on how businesses can thrive by really focusing in on their talent, and we'd love to start off with what inspires you to write this book having me.

Speaker 1: 5:25

I'm really excited and I'm looking forward to our conversation. I've had the fortune in coming out of professional services and the firm I work is. There's this age where you time out and you're asked to retire. In that, just this notion of being able to be liberated from your organization, the stepping back, stepping away, getting out of the organization, has allowed to really share all the things that you'd like to work on. But you don't always have the opportunity to work on and also just get up all those kind of pent up feelings and thoughts around what could have been, could be and why can't we get to them in your careers.

Speaker 1: 5:56

It's really hard sometimes to get things done because we're constrained in these systems and these are of these organizations. The other part of the inspiration it sounds super corny, but it really is the people you work with right. It's the employees in our particular firm and the partners as well. But the people are really inspiring because, at the end of the day, they are the potential right and they are the engine of the organization. And you got to step back and go. I love that we do the work that we do in HR and talent and learning, because we love the people and we want to see what we can do for them and see what they become.

Speaker 3: 6:30

So that was my starting point on how I got inspired love of people and the value of them in the workplace, and how we can make it better. Why is talent such a crucial element in a company's success? Can you explain it to our listeners, like they're five? Why?

Speaker 1: 6:52

is that the case? Talent is just one of those words we use to talk about the people in our businesses, in our organizations, and it is the word of the day. It's become a little bit of the slogan of the day too, but it also shows the recognition that people really do matter for businesses. The broader question, though, that really comes up from that is so what do you do about it? We're talking about talent because we're trying to find a better way to talk about employees, about employees. There is this kind of deep felt in our values and so forth and our feelings that people really do matter Really. They are the heart and soul of the organization, but then the organization keeps churning on doing what it's always done, and so I think it's really important for all of us to understand is that, collectively, we're all here at this place around really needing to understand how to think about talent differently?

Speaker 1: 7:46

And the other thought that goes through my mind and why it's so important, is for the last 23 plus years we've had this notion around talent as a scarce thing. We have this mindset of scarcity and we talk about the war for talent all the time. There's a lot of relevance to those models around like looking at sort of high potential, high performance, et cetera, but it's an incomplete view, and so the challenge that I've kept coming across is that if we're all looking for the same people, the same resource, the same talent, that just doesn't compute, because we're surrounded by all these people and you know this story right Like we've hired the best people and then you wind forward and go, we can't find the right talent. And I'm just how does that even work? What happened along the way? It really begins to speak to this condition around, this philosophy or this point of view that says there's only a handful of good people out there, and I'm just like that's not really a way to live, it's not a sustainable way to live.

Speaker 3: 8:39

And so, in this current framework around you know leaders talking about talent and it's super important for us to realize is that there's a vast wealth of potential in the organization. That starts with understanding all employees and creating sort of opportunities for all of us. I like the shift in the mindset right, Because every employee that you hire, you hired them because you believed that they have this high potential. So where does that change? There's a real opportunity here to support them and their continued growth and potential.

Speaker 1: 9:09

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 9:10

In the book there was a theme that really resonated with me throughout. You mentioned that the talent strategy mindset that inherently values the human and the concept of I see you is super important. How can leaders and orgs show their talent, that they truly see them?

Speaker 1: 9:28

That's tough. I say it's tough because it's really easy to say do this and do that, but it's really kind of a set of practices that we all pick up every day. It's the simple things from around. You spend time regularly with your teams, with your people. You stop to say hello. It doesn't have to be super formal, but do you actually have a way, a practice, to understand what do people really want to get out of work? What do they want to get out of the job? What do they really desire a year from now, two years from now? Is it the model of performance that drives the business outcomes that drives those questions, or is it a real interest and curiosity in the manager or leader that's going to say I just want to know what's going on, but a lot of it's just connecting and building community.

Speaker 3: 10:12

Yeah, it makes me think of the real need to build psychological safety. So if a senior leader is asking what you're up to, the initial response isn't oh, am I in trouble? But more of they're coming from a place of curiosity.

Speaker 1: 10:24

Yeah, yeah. Isn't that a telling statement when people say, well, am I in trouble? Because they feel like they're not safe or they may be at risk.

Speaker 3: 10:32

Yeah, you also talk about how orgs often refer to employees as resources and the workforce as human capital, which is ultimately dehumanizing right, because it's not seeing people for who they are as humans. What changes would you recommend orgs make in regards to how they refer to their talent to bring back that humanity in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 10:57

Yeah, in general, there's nothing really wrong with the words right and selves. They're just words, and they're just words. Come and go. Really, what's going on here from a theory perspective, is just around. People are watching all day long what leaders are doing. They're watching all day long what the practices, the lived experience of the organization is, and so I think what's really important is you can use words like workforce or human capital, but really the fundamental thing is, what do people see you do? So like, for example, the really common one in which is tough and there's no easy solution or answer around this.

Speaker 1: 11:31

We have this need for a business outcome, but we're not making our plan, and I think I've heard you folks talk about this and then but you're, so what do you do when you have too many people? So the typical thing that often happens is we downsize the workforce or we right-size it, so to speak. Right, and we go through that riffing process. And I love the story that you folks talked about on taking that long view, that long game with people, that behavior and set of actions around. Taking that long view communicates so much to the organization on how you think about people and where they matter, so much to the organization on how you think about people and where they matter.

Speaker 1: 12:08

Now, at the end of the day, people get it. If we're run, like during the great recession, if we're not making it like we've got to make a choice here, but the point there is just in like how transparently clear about it. Leaders often spend so much time getting all spun up over the right words and they lost the opportunity to connect with people and I've had so many employees over the years. Someone was like I want to appreciate it. You just tell me how it is. It doesn't have to be pretty, but at least I don't have to guess what you actually need.

Speaker 1: 12:33

And I think that's what's at stake here. Now, the flip side of it, since we're HR professionals, is that there's this whole kind of HR label thing that we have to go through to make sure we say the right things. I think you can still do that. You just can't get too spun up with ourselves.

Speaker 3: 12:48

A couple of our other guests in line, I think, with this collective thinking of it's okay to be transparent. Even if you're following all the compliance, you can still connect on a human to human level. One of our guests had mentioned, for example, his approach was hey, you're not going to like this, I absolutely don't like it, and it's okay to acknowledge like for lack of a better word, so I apologize the turd in the room, so let's acknowledge it together and get through it together, but to your good point, making sure we're continuing to connect on a humanity level that these are people.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Yeah, One of the stories I remember is that I did have to reduce the number of people, and there's one particular team that got impacted and I just broke down crying, talking to them. The director like called me up after just said but I really appreciate it, but you also got to do your job and it was really just an amazing moment where you know she and the team appreciated the humanity, but you got a job to do, so Get on with it too. Back to the balance, right.

Speaker 2: 13:48

You know, it strikes me, though, the idea of being seen. You talk about people being developed holistically as well, but when we look at HR, I don't think it's set up to do that. We're set up to do more of the compliance, more of the block and tackle. When you look at the amount of funding HR teams get, it's such a small percentage of the overall funding of the organization. It's not a knock on HR leaders at all, because I think HR leaders have the best intentions. They're trying to do the best they can with what they have. There's a lot going on, yeah, and part of me wonders and I'd love to get your take on it in order to really set up or operationalize being seen, holistic development, looking at talent differently, do we have to secede from the union Meaning compliance goes over here to legal and then talent becomes a different beast in and of itself, almost like the human team or the product innovation team? We need to separate in order to really do this, or can we still go the way we're going?

Speaker 1: 14:51

Yeah, we have like this classic mindset around either or right, we have the compliance engine, all the process-based kind of work we're like the people shoveling coal in the coal fuel engine or train and we're just heads down, we just got to keep this thing moving. We're doing that work all day long and then we think, or it'd be really great if we could be focused on the people, and the reality is they're all integrated right. So then it's a matter of how you do the process work, and that's really easy to say conceptually or theoretically, but it really is. It's around how do you combine the two? So, for example, we know empathy is one of those kind of capabilities that bring the two together right. Authenticity, transparency, and when you think about those, we're all talking about those human kind of attributes that actually make us who we are. And that's the heart of it, because people get the engine part of it. There is compliance stuff that happened. There are processes we have to run. It's just that whether or not we still feel like the processes have a soul in it.

Speaker 1: 15:50

So, for example, this is one thing in one of my past jobs is I remember writing just said you know what, like it'd be really great to get transparency around what the corporation has budgeted for bonuses, because you say it's zero to 15%, but we budget it for six, right? So we're here and I'm giving a performance review and the person got 7% and they feel like they're a failure because it's not 15. 7% compared to 6% is actually pretty decent looking right In a scheme of things, I said. And then I'm talking to a professional, an employee, that's looking for $2,000 and because they're going to build a cedar deck in their backyard and they just want to buy the materials but they're going to do the labor and that money means a lot to the individual, but we don't have a way to talk about what the sort of the constraints of the system say.

Speaker 1: 16:42

Wind forward, that organization actually started saying, like here's what we think your bonus is going to be based on, what we can plan for, and you're up or down from that. Now everybody goes oh, I can live with that, but that's a place where you have the constraints of the process and the system. That needs the rigor of the financial model that's, allocating a set amount of resources and a transparency approach that allows people to then understand. Now I have a better idea of where I match up right now. Different conversation. Whether or not they like the evaluation or the assessment, that takes a lot of stress out of it and takes a lot of anxiety out of the process.

Speaker 2: 17:19

I love what you said about the soul. We have to put soul back into some of these processes Benefits, comps, conversation, even layoffs. Right, you can have soul, you can see people in those. When you see this done really well, how do the leaders or the organizations really truly view their people?

Speaker 1: 17:39

So what I generally see in organizations is that most leaders have a good concept of what they're after in terms of goodness.

Speaker 1: 17:49

They have the right concepts in place, so the messaging is right, but what they don't realize is that they themselves, the organizations, the functions, are stuck in the system of the organization and they haven't figured out how to disrupt that sort of state or to change that slowly over time.

Speaker 1: 18:05

So then we're in this place of messaging over here Because it sounds really great, but operating over here all day long, and that's the part when you look at it saying, hey, we love people, you got to go right. That's the kind of stuff that creates that dissonance in the organization. So what really has to happen is we have to talk about what the constraints are. We have to talk about what we're trying to balance out in the organization, and I think that's where I think again, our professors, our employees, they get it, they understand it, they appreciate things really, really deeply. The other kind of funny thing I think about if it really created connection and community, you would know what people feel like they need to be seen and to be understood, versus kind of stalking on fishbowl to see what kind of throwing shades going on. I do think organizations understand it at some level and they have great mechanisms, councils and so forth, pulse surveys and all that. But again, are we enamored with the process and the activity or do we really want to know what's going on?

Speaker 2: 19:06

The older I get, I will tell you. I think so much comes down to fundamentals like basics 25 years ago or something. Somebody wrote that book, everything I Needed to Know. I Learned in Kindergarten and it's this just idea of, yes, connect with people, talk to people, ask them what they need, ask them what they want. A lot of times people get really fearful of doing that because they don't know if someone's going to ask them for something they can't give or they don't know how to be perfect in that dialogue or conversation. But all they really need to do is start with care. People feel that when you start with care I get that from you, mike that you give care, energy, you give very big care, thank you. I want to talk about this idea of developing people holistically, especially when we're talking about AI. Mel and I were just talking about Klarna, for example, who they're going to lay off. What was that, mel? Like 85% of their business.

Speaker 3: 20:19

They just laid off a bunch of folks, got down to half their workforce and I believe they're hoping to get down further within the next year.

Speaker 2: 20:26

Yes, there's two energies that are happening in the world. I'm getting very woo-woo, forgive me, but right, there's this one energy of scarcity. Oh my gosh, ai is going to take jobs. We're going to start seeing a lot of organizations making big moves around completely replace humans with AI, and then you even wrote about this in the book too. Then we're looking at people who want to augment. What does that look like when this AI conversation is happening, where we can look at it as scarcity or we can look at it as augmentation? If I'm a Jane Doe employee, what does it look like in an AI world to be developed holistically?

Speaker 1: 21:03

Yeah. So there's a couple of things. One is, when it comes to AI in particular, I get the sense that a lot of business leaders feel like there's one really good question to ask around how do we adopt AI? And I think that's a question. I think it's not even the best question. I think it's a starting question and I think the exercise that we all need to take is what are the next 5, 10, 17 questions to ask around AI and the implications for the organization.

Speaker 1: 21:37

When I think about it and I step back, we've been surrounded by computer technology, computing technology, innovation for a long time. We keep talking about the speed and the disruption for decades now, and there's a point that says we're not really talking about anything new here. So what's really going on here? So the part of it says to me we should get over it in some way and then start thinking what is the intersection of AI and humans? That's one of the really key questions.

Speaker 1: 22:04

Holistically, it's going to be really around coming back again to these fundamentalists around what does it mean to actually see the employee as a person? And I actually think the answer for that really depends on the organization. That it is because different organizations are doing different things right and there's different kinds of labor and different kinds of work, and holistically might mean that we need to do things that are fun. That celebration is actually a really key part of our culture, so we may do that. Other things may be. I need the latest science, I need the latest technical knowledge and I need you to help me to get there, because that's super valuable to me as the profession that I'm in.

Speaker 3: 22:42

That's one of it.

Speaker 1: 22:42

There's a number of levers that we can use to think about seeing people holistically, but one of them is going to come down to is what are we trying to achieve with our people? And just having clarity about that. You don't have to be all things to all people, but having clarity about what we're trying to accomplish, I think, is super, super important. For example, if we think that it's really important to have a really great hiring process, let's say, focus on skills, understand really what skills you need and what the skills are in the marketplace. If you really think it's important for your organization to train and to develop those skills, then train them. If you think that retaining people is important to the organization and you want your people to understand that, then create some kind of mobility, not because you have to react to their need, but because it's really important to be thoughtful around how they're engaged across the whole organization.

Speaker 1: 23:33

The other thing in convincing people holistically is we often start off with the most basic set of needs. So where do we go when we want to make sure that you know your value? We start off with benefits and compensation, right, and you take math instead of hierarchy of needs. We're talking about things that address our abilities to make sure we have health care, that we can buy food, that we can buy shelter, rent an apartment, buy a home, and then we understand but miss sort of those kind of self-actualization things.

Speaker 1: 24:03

The things that people desire more and this gets back to the holistic thing is that people want to develop. They want to grow on some level, and that's beyond just training, because training is about skills. But there's this other appetite or other need, so to develop, they want to grow on some level, and that's beyond just training, because training is about skills, but there's this other appetite or other need, so to speak, that actually goes beyond that. And that's where I think the opportunity is to see people holistically is really understand well, what are you after Beyond kind of the work gig you got and the pay you get? What do you want out of life? Right, and the answer is going to really vary depending on the organization and the people who go into that organization. But I think the truism that we see in the research shows this and Gardner talks about this, right, and they talk about the human deal is that people are looking for a very different set of things than what people were looking at 20 years ago, for sure.

Speaker 2: 24:48

Yeah, I think about this a lot. What does the future organization need to look like in order to do this? What are some of the big ticket structural changes that would need to happen in order for this to be the employee experience?

Speaker 1: 25:03

Philosophically, the first thing that's going to happen is a mindset shift in leaders Leaders Okay, Because actually I think the structural shift will follow this ability to imagine what things could look like. So, for example, people talk a lot about workforce planning and that can mean a lot of different things. For a lot of organizations it just means resource management. But what has it happened? Or what needs to happen if you want to get structural changes around how you recruit, how you create opportunities for people is you actually have to imagine. There is a model out there, for example is that if we get people that have the right attributes and we can develop those attributes and then we can develop the skills, we can actually create a workforce that has greater agility, for example. But today's practice is keeping most of us grounded in buying today's skills and then getting all kind of worked up around tomorrow's skills. So then we get into this hyper motion around that we need to do training and rapid upskilling and we got a whole set of terms for those kinds of activities and they're all OK. They're all the OK responses and good responses. But can you imagine a system where everybody believes in the ecosystem of work? It says I may only have it for a year to three years and then you're going to move on, because people do. We know there's a lot of research that shows this, but that actually has huge implications for how we develop people.

Speaker 1: 26:25

The question for all of us is can we actually develop people in a way knowing that they're going to leave? Because if we do that, there's a whole bunch of structural changes have to happen. Like we have to rethink the work. What does it mean to have work that's being operated or executed by people who aren't there all for a long time? And we know there are certain industries, say like logistics, call centers, where, like they know what turnover looks like and so they actually have had to come up with a work model. So the work gets structured in a way that kind of fits that demographic pattern. But that's the kind of structure thing I think could potentially take place much more broadly in corporate America. It's hard to move because there's a lot of moving parts, there's a lot of day-to-day operating results that we need to deliver, and I think you can do both. You can find those areas where you can begin to slowly shift.

Speaker 2: 27:12

It's interesting I think this was in Ashley's book. This idea of an organization would be a state, a team would be a neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 27:21

It did.

Speaker 2: 27:21

And that you're much more likely to make change at the neighborhood level. And there's responsibility I would say responsibility to your very good point around the neighborhood level and I know that Mel and I wanted to talk about. What are some things that we can do at the enterprise level, at the team level, at the individual level.

Speaker 1: 27:43

Yeah, so it's a great analogy. I'll start because if you take that notion it goes right back to that idea around is the team, is the learning unit. It is also where community and connection is most tangible. So one of the things that has to happen is how do you bring that level of tangible community and connection as you go up the organization? It's what has to happen.

Speaker 1: 28:08

It's a really tough thing to say do this and it all magically happened. The really basic question that the executive team has to ask is what do we want to accomplish with our people that's going to make us a better organization tomorrow and it integrates well with the business outcomes that we're accountable for. That sounds tactical, but I would tell you that is a really hard thing to answer. When leaders can answer that and get it down to one or two things and you know what happens when one or two things comes like to seven to 13. No, really, what's like the one or two things you're going to do that actually moves your people In what direction do you want to move in?

Speaker 2: 28:49

I've been thinking a lot lately about this idea of simplicity, because when I've seen organizations do this really well, they're not doing 15 things in shallow depth. They're doing one, two, maybe three things and they're going really hard on them in terms of yes, campaign and strat and funding them, but also in process, in the way that we build workflows, the way that we talk and the language that we use, all around these things to the point where their employees can talk about it and they know it and they feel it. It's very hard to do with 10 things.

Speaker 1: 29:24

This is going to sound harsh, and it's not meant to be harsh, but it feels more like an observation. But we tend to not focus on the one or two things because I think it actually takes a lot of courage to do. It does, and it doesn't mean that leaders are feeling less powerful or sinful, it just takes a dimension of courage. And I remember one CEO who just said we kept saying and to your point is the most simplistic message. He goes if we get our culture right, the rest will come Like we'll win in the marketplace, we'll win clients, we'll sell bigger projects. And you could, just you could feel it Like he, just he knew in his soul what the values were, he knew in his spirit, like what he was after and what he saw. And you, just you go. Yeah, I get it, you didn't get spun up on what are we on now? Like 7A of the nine point strategy, on the five year plan that gets revised every six months. It wasn't known sounding like that. It was just like this really simple view of the world.

Speaker 3: 30:24

I have a question.

Speaker 1: 30:25

Sure.

Speaker 3: 30:26

How do we crack this nut? Because I feel like we hear this story consistently, that there's a need even for the CEO, to have courage. But if you're leading the organization, why do you need to have courage? You can say, no, this is how we want to do it. So what's preventing leaders from taking that stand as a collective and saying, yeah, we're all in on this, we don't need to have courage because this is what we believe, so it's not. Again. I keep feeling this, even at the leadership level, the C-suite level, this lack of psychological safety to say this is what we need and this is what we should focus on. What makes it so challenging for people to take a hard stance.

Speaker 1: 31:10

My theory around this is that organizations as systems have different or varying permissions.

Speaker 3: 31:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:16

So some organization will give a lot of permission to its leaders to have courage around how they want to drive and how they want to lead, and other organizations don't.

Speaker 1: 31:26

And I think the leaders who prosper in whatever organization they are, I think they figured out right one way or the other, either consciously, with lots of self-awareness, or they just found what was comfortable and found a way to prosper in the environment they're in. But what I would say to any leader at any level that if you're not feeling that sort of integration of yourself and your values with the organization's values, then it's something to question and to think about. Dear colleague john blumberg writes about this around the return on integrity and he talks a lot about personal values actually have to really align with the organizational values and that's a journey. But I would say sometimes what happens is that leaders are like all of us, get caught up in the systems that we're in and so they only have, or feel like they only have, certain permission to go a certain way. The transformational leader not meaning about creating transformation organization, but the leader who's transforming themselves will find a path. They'll find a way to rise above that, to transcend them.

Speaker 3: 32:29

It's just so interesting even to hear that there are certain organizations that still don't value that perspective in this day and age, with all of the research that shows when you commit to your people, you will see business results. I think I ask every guest why do you think that is? Why do you think there are still some organizations that don't see the value?

Speaker 1: 32:54

Why do you think that is? Why do you think there are still some organizations that don't see the value? It comes down again to this view around what matters most. Right in its simplest terms. And if you're someone who's wired by power and you're wired by money, and that's what gets you excited and energized, that's what gets you energized and you're going to operate that way. If you're wired a little bit differently, then you have different set of priorities and actions. And here's the thing that I think we know theoretically in all our leadership development, research and so forth is that it takes a diversity of leaders to make it happen, but most organizations tend to put in place a leader who looks just like everybody else, because that is the ethos of the system. That is what we value in the system is that we value making money, we value power, we value the political game or what have you. And again, not all organizations are wired that way. That's one pattern.

Speaker 3: 33:45

Yeah, what advice would you give to that leader that has a mismatch with their organization but they want to try to make a dent in a positive direction? What advice would you give to that person?

Speaker 1: 33:59

Yeah, I love American landscape portrait, like just because there's this notion that humans are really small and the landscape of kind of the continent was just so daunting. And without getting into sort of the historical politics around, who was here first? Because I appreciate that discussion very much but built into the psyche, I think, of what we do sometimes is around this notion around that it could be lonely, right, you could be out there foraging your way. But what's so exciting about it, I think, for the leader who's up for this, is that you can be in the worst set of circumstances and have the best time of your life Because you have this authority to tell the story that you want to tell, to cram the path or kind of create the path that you have.

Speaker 1: 34:45

And I think what the irony of this statement is that there are a whole lot of people watching, taking notes and maybe following along at the same time and I think every organization, as homogenous as it might feel, there's this huge diversity of potential in people that actually see this and want something more. That's what's so amazing is that you could be in a really tough situation, but the arc and the joy is freeing out a path through all of that, even if you don't get to the change that you would like to have gotten to. Is the change the goal or is the journey? It's the destination of the journey more important, but I would say the journey is more important Totally makes me wonder.

Speaker 2: 35:25

Just an offshoot point I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I'm on a journey myself. This idea of work because so much of work has been around quarter by quarter results, revenue, shareholder return, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's profit driven. Yeah, point blank Done. One of the things that I'm excited about AI is that it's going to force conversations around. How do we view people, how do we think about augmenting people and enable them to do their best work? Because all the other administrative schmutz could be taken care of. There's so many opportunities for those discussions. I'm optimistic about it. With what's happening in the ether, can we swing the pendulum from everything has to be around profit and rev a little bit over to people and balance it more?

Speaker 1: 36:11

Yeah, but again, we're not on either end of the pole right.

Speaker 2: 36:14

We can't be, we shouldn't be.

Speaker 1: 36:16

We're somewhere that we're trying to figure out what the balance is of both of these things, and we all live and benefit from being in a capitalist society. So, whether or not people want to admit it, we're all capitalists at some level, and that's an okay thing. The question you're on is then again, like where you're getting to is what is the balance for that, for how we think about people? So back to the ai. The question is how do we redesign work? What's tomorrow's work? Because we know tomorrow's work isn't going to be today's work. But if we only think about replacing today's work with ai and automation, we can miss the question.

Speaker 1: 36:52

Yeah, so we do that and we should be asking okay, what are we doing tomorrow? It's not today. And that part's really exciting because, look, if you look back around for these analogies, if you look back around when you had horse-drawn carriages moving people around, just think of all the technology changes that are taking place we're going to find a way. And I think, through all of this, what's really exciting is this talent discussion has come to the foreground, because we all recognize that people are really a critical part of the equation and while we think that there's slogans or initiatives to talk about workforce planning or kind of talent and culture and different things like that. And all those things indicate is that we understand there's a new equation, that we have. That part gives me a lot of hope.

Speaker 3: 37:57

This is our favorite part, Mike.

Speaker 1: 38:00

Yep, okay, I'm prepared. The fun part is.

Speaker 3: 38:03

You hopefully don't need to be so it's just a group of questions. Yes, no one word answers or a longer answer. If you're like this needs a longer response, that's totally fine. That's some of our best conversation, but we'll just go through the series and the point is first thing that pops in mind. If that sounds good, sure, okay, what are you currently reading, or I'll say listening, in case you're a fan of audiobooks.

Speaker 1: 38:28

Yeah, I am a reader because I just I absorb it sticks a little bit better. There's two things I'm currently reading. One is it's the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory by Tim Alberta. I don't know if you know this book, but it's about the Christian nationalist movement and how it's taking place. It's a long read about halfway through but it's a really fascinating bit of journalism that he's done. The other one is by a friend and colleague. It's called Leading to Greatness, by Jim Reed, who was the CHRO of Rogers in Toronto.

Speaker 3: 38:55

What song is on repeat for you? Oh?

Speaker 1: 38:59

I got two. One is a young artist named Jalen Nwunda, it's called I think it's called Come Around and Love Me, and the other one is an older one. It's a jazz tune. It's by Stan Getz and Oscar Peterson. It's called Tour's End.

Speaker 3: 39:11

Many people feel their companies don't care about their growth. From your experience, what are the top two signs that a company genuinely invests in its employees? So, like you're interviewing, you're researching, you're talking to people, what are the two big giveaways that they're truly investing in their employees?

Speaker 1: 39:31

Yeah, the way I think about this or feel about this is twofold. One is you'll hear and see an excitement and that the employees see a connection around what they're doing in their day job with who they are. The subtext of that is, or the vision that you may get a sense of is and who they're becoming Right, one which is related to excitement word, but you have this real sort of palpable sense of energy around that they're actually learning and growing, that their job is not just a job but it's actually a building block along those lines around where they want to get to. It could be career and it could be beyond career.

Speaker 3: 40:11

I love that. The thought of like their face lights up, because we've all seen that right, when you've had an interview and you ask someone about their experience, you can really you see the shift, someone who truly loves it. Okay, ai, the big elephant in the room. Ai and how it's going to impact people. What's the one thing an employee can do today to avoid being left in the dust and stay relevant? What's one thing they should just do if nothing else.

Speaker 1: 40:39

Okay. So there's a tactical thing If you're organizing, or two tactical things. If your organization's got like LinkedIn Learning, for example, or you could go on the web or what have you, you need to learn fundamentals about AI. Go and do that, it's great. The other thing, what I would do, is it's available, but use Copilot, use ChatGPT and integrate it into what you do in your day-to-day and you'll soon find out, at least in this kind of the large language model stuff. There's just so much opportunity for how it can enhance your work process and how you use your time and energy to get work done. And there's this whole thing around that. Microsoft puts out research around work, and one of the things he said, one of the skills to learn, is how you do delegation, ai delegation, which is basically how you prompt AI right, and especially in this sort of co-pilot context, and I thought that was so interesting, because they're learning how to get the answer that they feel like they're looking for by getting the right prompt.

Speaker 3: 41:39

Microsoft does offer really cool ongoing education for folks on AI, so highly recommend it for anyone. There, you go, yeah, okay. What's one thing that's giving you a lot of joy these days?

Speaker 1: 41:52

Oh, my goodness, wow. There's a lot of things, but I'm a little bit of a fitness kind of person. I have this routine every morning that I do core exercises for 30 to 40 minutes and while it's not always comfortable for me, it brings me a lot of joy because I see the reward of the habit that I've worked on. So that's probably one thing that's top of mind.

Speaker 3: 42:13

Nice, I like it. Who's a leader you really admire?

Speaker 1: 42:17

Okay. So I don't know if I have a leader that I really admire, and the reason being is that I think leaders are situational. The qualities of leaders depend on the situation they're in. That said, I'll give you an example of a leader that I do admire in the situation that he's in, and that's President Volodymyr Zelensky and what he's doing to keep Ukraine together and fight the war. Would I ask President Zelensky to run the transformation around our AI strategy for an organization? Don't know, don't know. It's a different set of capabilities, different situations. For me it's like a multiple answer, but I think there's a lot of leaders in a lot of levels. They have really fantastic qualities.

Speaker 2: 42:57

Mike, it was so great to talk with you today.

Speaker 1: 42:58

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited and I enjoyed the privilege of being able to share my thoughts and feelings with you.

Speaker 3: 43:10

Hey friends, this episode of your Work Friends was hosted by Francesca Ranieri and myself, Mel Plett.

Speaker 2: 43:16

This episode was produced and edited by Mel Plett and myself, Francesca Ranieri.

Speaker 3: 43:22

Our theme music is by Pink Zebra and you can follow us over on all of our social media platforms Instagram, tiktok, youtube and, if you're so inclined, joined us over on LinkedIn in our large and growing community, and you can email us at friend@yourworkfriends.com, or visit us on yourworkfriends.com. Also, folks, please like, subscribe and leave a review. If you enjoyed this episode, and if you really enjoyed it, please share with a work friend or two. Thanks friends, thanks friends.

Trauma-Informed Leadership

Your Work Friends Podcast: Trauma-Informed Leadership with Deborah Lee

Safety builds trust…

And leaders shape the spaces we work in. In an era where employee wellbeing is paramount, leaders are increasingly recognizing the need for more compassionate and psychologically safe work environments. 

But what if I told you that over 80% of people globally have experienced some form of trauma? This statistic, underscores the urgent need for trauma-informed leadership in our workplaces. With guest expert Deborah Lee, we unpack what trauma-informed leadership means, why it matters, and how to lead in a way that heals—not harms.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone building trust, culture, or change, and for any leader wanting to create healthy workplaces.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Statistics show that over 80% of people have been through some kind of trauma globally, so none of us will ever be able to really escape trauma. Once you've lived a life, you've gone through trauma, and that informs how we perform at work. It informs how we show up at work and even as a leader, it informs how you lead.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Hi friends, hey Mel, hey Debra, what's going on?

Speaker 1: 0:39

I'm having the time of my life talking to the both of you right now, so really excited. We get that a lot. We get that a lot.

Speaker 2: 0:44

We get that a lot Same Listener friends.

Speaker 3: 0:48

with us today is Deborah Lee. She is the founder of Creature A and they specialize in creating mindful and trauma-informed workplaces, and we are super excited to learn from Deborah today all about embodied leadership and trauma-informed workplace leadership. So, debra, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that lovely introduction, mel. I'm really excited to be talking with the both of you today, happy to share in any way that I can.

Speaker 3: 1:18

Let's dive right in. We would love to hear a little more about your personal journey here. How did you get into trauma-informed care and a focus on embodied leadership?

Speaker 1: 1:28

Yeah, just to share my personal journey. I walked out of an abusive relationship in 2021. And when I went to the various institutions that you would normally expect to get support and help like law enforcement, hospital, even church institutions I just found that people weren't really understanding the gravity of the situation or dealing with it with the urgency that was required, and oftentimes I felt like there were real gaps that were met and issues around like justice and support and people were really understanding what was at stake. And even then, the main people that I got help from ultimately were people who had a lot of experience in the area of trauma, for example, a social worker who has witnessed a lot of these sorts of cases of domestic violence, and she could actually break down to me what were some of the processes involved. And then, when I understood a lot of these dynamics were about power and about control. That's when my eyes were open and I was able to have a really clearer picture of how to move forward with my life. And then, in the process of it, I could use that lens, understand why people relate it to other people a certain way, for example in a conversation, why people might just, for example, not even address the questions that's raised or move on to another subject or be dismissive or use jokes or sarcasm to deflect, and I did a lot of research around emotional abuse. I did a lot of research around trauma and one of the books that really changed my life was the book the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, who is a psychiatrist who has been on the forefront of trauma for over 30 years. He's treated all sorts of patients with any number of mental health issues, from bipolar disorder to borderline personality disorder and major depressive episodes, and one of the things that really left a very deep impression on me is that a lot of the common core roots of all of these mental health disorders is the fact that all of them have what you call complex post-traumatic stress disorder. So this is a bit different from the classic PTSD, as you know, like maybe you get into an accident and then you lose a limb and then your life is forever changed.

Speaker 1: 3:53

Cptsd is something that arises within relationship and in these relationships where there's an imbalance of power, there's often abuse or emotional neglect, often abuse or emotional neglect. And a lot of this starts in your early childhood and it's shaped by your caregivers and how you relate to them, the coping mechanisms you developed as a child to be able to survive in an environment that maybe was abusive or was emotionally neglectful, and this has an impact on how you relate to others in life and your attachment styles later on as an adult, and even the choices that you make. Neuroscience has shown that it actually has a real and felt impact on your brain functioning, so you can think about how that affects the prefrontal cortex, how a person makes decisions and even things like who they get attached to, how they find a life partner, for example, and so reading this book really helped me understand myself, my own life trajectory, and it also helped me understand what it means to be cut off from a sense of embodied living, what it means to be cut off from the messages that your body is signaling to you, because it's so easy to intellectualize and just live up here. When, as a child, you were filled with anxiety and anguish right in an environment that was unstable or chaotic and nobody was there to address it for you, nobody was there to help you make sense of it. So you learn to cut it off, and this is what Bessel van der Kolk talks about in his book. They get.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Survivors of complex post-traumatic stress disorder get so used to these unremitting signals of anxiety and distress from a very young age, and because they don't have any other option, they can't pick and choose their caregivers or pluck themselves out of an environment that is destructive or filled with chaos and abuse. They don't get that choice right. So what they have to do at the end of the day is learn to dissociate, and so you develop those coping mechanisms, and it's very helpful for when you're a kid and you just need to survive. But as an adult it could mean that you become like dismissive, cut off, not in touch with your, your feelings, emotionally tone, deaf to yourself, and even in your relationships at work or even within intimate relationships, you develop trauma based responses and you might be familiar with fight, flight, freeze, and then there's also fawn right, that's another one, and then the two that are like more emergent, discovered by the National Institute for Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine. Expounds upon is Attached, cry for Help, and then the final one is Collapse and Submit. So a lot of these ways that people behave.

Speaker 1: 6:41

If you really trace it back over time and look at their trauma map, it's rooted a lot in unresolved things that happened in the past, and the key thing to note is that, even though you may have gone through a lot of abuse when you're a kid, you could still be very high functioning, you could still really perform in life.

Speaker 1: 7:01

But what might happen to you at one point is that something happens there are a few things that could happen to you, something life-changing or you have a trigger and then suddenly you start to unravel, and then that's when people are forced in many ways to confront their own trauma, to confront their own unresolved issues from the past.

Speaker 1: 7:21

And so that brought me to a space of wanting to. First of all, my experience as an abuse survivor and going through the various institutions and seeing the gaps there. That's what got me asking questions. And then, when I understood the mind-body connection, when I read the Body Keeps the Score, is when I really realized, hey, this is a very valuable roadmap for others to have, not just to support other people, but even to understand their own selves, because I think the tendency for a lot of people is just to end up finding fault with themselves and like blaming themselves and beating themselves up, which you know it's not very helpful, and, at the end of the day, until you can extend a kindness to yourself, it's actually very hard to extend that same kindness to other people in a meaningful way.

Speaker 3: 8:07

Yeah, I'm really sorry that you experienced something like that. What inspired you, I guess, to take what you learned about yourself and that understanding and bring that into the workplace?

Speaker 1: 8:22

I think once you go through something like that, you can't unsee it, Things through a very different lens, and then you understand power dynamics. In a way there's a before and after, when you are in a position where you have been traumatized by an intimate partner, and then you see how the systems reinforce injustice around it and how the truth gets completely obfuscated at times. You realize once you see, you see it I started to see things in a way that maybe a lot of people miss. And then you see this playing out at workplaces and then you understand whoa hostile and you would not expect that, even in a corporate setting. And I just realized that whatever you're not dealing with in your personal life, it will spill out into your work life. As much as you might try to like put your mask up, it finds its way to seep out.

Speaker 1: 9:13

And I realized that, at the end of the day, what people seek at work is still human connection, and that is what creates more productive workplaces. I hesitate to use that word productive, because I don't want people to just focus on that as the bottom line. But at the end of the day, like when there's a culture of collaboration, when there's a culture of trust and safety, psychological safety, and when people are able to feel free to bring their whole selves to work. Once those foundations are set in place, it actually creates a much, much healthier workplace where people actually look forward to going to work, because you're not going to work to be a machine. You're going to work because you want to feel a sense of meaning, enjoyment in what you do and connection with other people on your team, and so a trauma-informed workplace will equip you to be able to have those key fundamentals and to be able to connect with your co-workers in a way that's meaningful and enjoyable.

Speaker 3: 10:10

Yeah, we talk about that all the time.

Speaker 2: 10:12

I feel like we have this really old archetype of power because, to your point, a lot of abusive relationships.

Speaker 2: 10:18

The dynamic is about power and the way we leverage power, the way we embody power at work, the archetype of the leader as control and command, and I know obviously we have a lot more definitions of leadership now. I get that. But the way organizations are structured, the ways of working around organizations and, quite honestly, even what we promote in organizations around people that come across as confident, strong, by any means necessarily like those things still are incented. And so it's an interesting discussion on power, because I feel like there's still very much an old archetype of power living, breathing foundationally in corporate America. It's evolving. It's not every place, I get it, but it's still pretty old school.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Yeah, I think it's hard to run away from that. I think in all human relations, even if you look at animals, there's always some kind of hierarchy. You look at apes, chimpanzees, you see how the hierarchy it's almost intrinsic. My company is called Creature Ray, by the way. I named it Creature Ray because I wanted to capture the nuances around how people are.

Speaker 1: 11:25

We're social animals and in some ways conditioned to behave like that. It's like survival of the fittest. But then also the social element means that as humans, as a more highly evolved species, we look for something more than just that kind of old school power structure that animals have. We look for connection, we look for authenticity, we look for meaning and purpose, and that's what differentiates us from a chip right, a chip just interested only in where its next meal is coming from or who it's going to mate with. But as human beings there's something deeper than that, and I think that's where we're talking about a trauma-informed workplace where we understand that we're not just here to work, but we're also here because we're seeking ways of relating to each other. That is effective for the work, but it also is meaningful for us as human beings.

Speaker 3: 12:17

Yeah, how did your experiences really shape your understanding of leadership in the workplace, the power dynamics that we're going through, what made you focus in the leadership space specifically when I started doing?

Speaker 1: 12:32

a lot of research around abuses, around organizational culture, around workplace bullying, around just even gaslighting and psychopathic behavior. That's when I realized, hey, hey, there needs to be. Number one a very clear understanding of trauma, what it is, trauma-informed care, as well as like policies and guidelines as to how to support people. Number one we've been through that within the workplace, because statistics show that over 80 percent of people have been through some kind of trauma globally. So none of us will ever be able to really escape trauma.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Once you've lived a life, you've gone through trauma. And that informs how we perform at work. It informs how we show up at work and even as a leader, it informs how you lead. So if you went through all these things yourself and you're like I earned my stripes this way and you never work through how, in some ways, it shaped and maybe even traumatized you, then you're going to be like I'm going to inflict that on other people. You may not consciously think that, but that's what you're going to act out right until and until and unless you work through your own stuff or you gain the awareness around what trauma informed care is, what trauma is, maybe drawn out your own trauma map and understand the mind-body connection. Practice good self-care. It's really hard for you to show up as a leader. That is not course, especially if that's how you were groomed into becoming a leader.

Speaker 3: 14:00

Yeah, I am a huge proponent of therapy. Therapy is good for everyone, especially when you hear statistics like 80% of people globally have experienced some level of trauma and there's always. I know this seems like a cliche quote that gets passed around all the time, but it's like being aware of everyone's going through something. But there's real impact there, because I think to your point. When you're in psychologically unsafe environments in the workplace, you're consistently being re-traumatized.

Speaker 1: 14:28

And the real danger is not being able to identify it.

Speaker 3: 14:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:32

Like when you're so stuck in it it's hard for you to even see it, and then you might even start blaming yourself or internalizing it. One of the key ways that even in the legal profession right like how they train a lot of these young, bright-eyed lawyers is inculcate into them a sense of you're never good enough. But they don't tell you that straight out, but they set the bar like here, and then when you reach it for it, it's a sense that keeps getting reinforced and then it's almost like brainwashing.

Speaker 3: 14:58

The goalposts constantly move and then they're always questioning their abilities. Like you see that in so many different work environments, and it's almost like an emotional abuse that happens over and over. We hear it often, francesca, you and I just covered some headlines recently where it was talking about there's that right to disconnect law that's been passed in some global locations, but the US is considering it, or they're at least watching it very closely, because people have said it's like a badge of honor to be in burnout to get to where they are, but it's those environments that continue to perpetuate this. You're not good enough. You need to work harder. You need to work 80-hour weeks to succeed.

Speaker 2: 15:42

It's just not sustainable, and we're seeing it with the well-being numbers. We've been following well-being numbers for a while. Well-being just keeps dropping and dropping and dropping. There's a lot of factors to that. But to your very good point, debra, if you have leaders that don't understand how to not re-traumatize people constantly, it's not going to get any better. There's no safety net.

Speaker 1: 16:05

And how do they not re-traumatize people unless they themselves, on some level, have worked through their own trauma?

Speaker 3: 16:08

yeah, yeah gotta do the work can you explain what embodied leadership means in simple terms? Explain it to us like we're five. What are the characteristics of an embodied leader?

Speaker 1: 16:31

So basically an embodied leader is somebody who is aware of the mind-body connection and has done the work and gotten the psychoeducation around that, who takes care of himself and shows up at work with presence and authenticity. I don't know if that's simple enough for a five-year-old maybe a very smart five-year-old.

Speaker 3: 16:55

It's one of my favorite subreddits. Explained to me like I'm five, I just think, okay, if you can do that, it's a great way to say it. That was great.

Speaker 1: 17:03

I really highly recommend, if you're a leader, to do the work, because you're going to have so much impact on the team, the teams that you lead, the clients that you meet and just everybody that comes into your sphere.

Speaker 2: 17:16

There's a statistic that the person that has the most impact on your mental health is most likely not your spouse. It's your manager.

Speaker 1: 17:22

Yes, yes, and I have seen that your boss has the biggest impact on your mental health, and it is absolutely true.

Speaker 1: 17:29

I can tell you from personal experience that that's definitely true and it really shapes the way that you show up at work. It really shapes your values even because, at the end of the day, a lot of us just want to do a good job right. A lot of us want to show up in the best way that we can with good work ethic. We want to please our bosses right. If their values are like very different from yours, if their style of leadership is coercive, your psyche is going to take a beating.

Speaker 3: 18:00

Think about the statement that's commonplace, that is really sad is, and even the memes and jokes. You see it all the time like memes and jokes about oh I've got the Sunday scaries. I'm ready for the day when that doesn't exist anymore for people in the workplace.

Speaker 2: 18:15

The thing that makes me really nervous, when leaders haven't done the work to your great point, when they don't operate with trauma-informed care. These people have your livelihood on the line because their evaluation of your performance, of how you show up, is directly tied to your salary, your benefits sometimes, and so it can feel there's so much at stake on this one person and on this one relationship. And if that's not trauma-informed, or if that person's not handling that with care, woof. So what is trauma-informed? Or if that person's not handling that with care woof. So what is trauma-informed care, especially as a manager? What is it?

Speaker 1: 18:52

Trauma-informed care is basically understanding that most of us have some kind of trauma and understanding that sometimes, especially when we're in a situation where there's a lot of stress or there are triggers involved, that we might act out our trauma. So what does that mean? It means that you might respond in any one of those six ways that I mentioned earlier Fight, flight, freeze, fawn attach, cry for help, collapse and submit the ones that all of us know about. Fight flight, freeze, yeah. And I think that as human beings, on a very kind of day-to-day basis, relational level, we recognize that we can intuit at times, like without, maybe on a non-verbal basis, like when somebody is in freeze, yeah, yeah, maybe over a phone call, when somebody is just completely silent, you're like hello, are you there, is everything okay? So that you can't see there's that element where the nonverbal effect is not there. So trauma informed care just basically provides you a framework for relating to people in a way where you don't immediately start associating behavior with character or what's wrong with you, so to speak, as to what happened to you, right? So it's not saying that we need to know your entire life history or we need to know intimate details, but we want to know in the present what's triggering you, what is making it hard for you to show up fully, for example, to just be present or to ask questions that show that you're engaged and leaning into the work.

Speaker 1: 20:33

So if somebody's not doing that, instead of just saying oh, she's lazy, or like she's not good enough for this role, or she's being passive, aggressive or whatever story you want to attach to their behavior, go beyond that. Dig a little deeper. Create some level of psychological safety and connection and vulnerability right. Show up as a leader for your team. If you can show some degree of vulnerability, your team is going to respond to that. And just now you mentioned the old school way of leadership, right? So people in many ways led to believe that you cannot show vulnerability as a leader, but studies have shown that what promotes connection, what promotes a sense of workplace well-being, is when leaders are able to to have good boundaries but at the same time, have some vulnerability, so that you're not just that strong leader who has everything in place and uses coercive means to get everybody into action, but you're showing up as a real, authentic person, and that's what people connect with, that's what people resonate with, that's what people relate to.

Speaker 2: 21:45

One of the things I think about a lot is just being genuinely interested in what your team is about. What motivates them to your very good point. What does their life look like? Again, you don't need their whole history, but maybe you need to know they're a single mom, or they're caring for a parent with Alzheimer's, or they're neurodivergent and whatever it is. Genuinely being curious, not as to your point, not assuming that if they're acting a certain way that they're bad, but maybe something else is going on. And then digging deeper, I love that idea. Yeah, you mentioned the fight or flight, the phrase. I think we know what. Those are. Right, those are the ones we already know. But I'm curious about fawn collapse and submit and it's a touch cry right A touch cry for help.

Speaker 2: 22:24

Yeah, what does fun look like? Because when I hear that I'm like doing this, I'm like I see that sometimes where you see people like playing with their hair constantly in meeting. Is that what are those three look like? Because I don't know if I know.

Speaker 1: 22:37

That's funny. I love that you shared about that. I can see why you would think that. So, basically, fun is as his name suggests. It's like fawning behavior. It sounds a bit playful, but essentially fawning behavior.

Speaker 1: 22:49

It sounds a bit playful, but essentially fawning means you are in some ways overextending your boundaries and pushing yourself into the background to accommodate somebody else, like you're trying to win somebody's favor. A little bit different from fight, flight, freeze, because that's mediated more by the amygdala, which is the like this emotional center in your brain, and that's very um, visceral. It'sygdala, which is like this emotional center in your brain, and that's very visceral. It's a very visceral reaction. But fawn is actually more mediated by the prefrontal cortex, so there's a lot of even strategy that goes into it.

Speaker 1: 23:17

I love that you brought that up about the hair, because over the centuries it's been shown that women, because of, in many ways, our weakest stature physically I'm talking about physically just we have less muscle mass than men and so we've had to find ways to protect ourselves. And so then that's what a lot of women have over the centuries, used fawning as a strategy to cope within a very patriarchal system, not to say that men don't do it too, because men do it. There's usually an imbalance of power when people fawn right, because a lot of bosses respond to that.

Speaker 2: 23:54

Oh yeah, because it can feel good. Right, yes, yeah, you're coming over to their side. What about collapse and submit? What is that?

Speaker 1: 24:01

So collapse and submit is when you basically just fold over every single time, right, like anytime. Anybody says anything. There's no pushback, there's no accountability, there's no kind of like negotiation, there are no hard conversations, but it's just okay. Okay, sure. Sure, it's a bit different from Fawn, right? So Fawn is a little bit more like there's some strategy to it, where you're thinking actively, what is this person like? You're anticipating his needs like, you're planning almost your moves like five steps ahead. There's a lot of thinking that goes into it. Where you're like, and also in intuiting, you know the other person's needs ahead of yours, right. But collapse and submit is just, basically, if you can think of folding, you just keep folding. In a card game, for example, you don't play a card, you just fold. Yeah, that sounds exhausting, yeah, it's. It's like you've given up you've given up, basically.

Speaker 1: 24:56

You've basically given up, so that that is collapse and submit, and then yeah, that's a cry yeah, yeah, attach, cry for help, so that if you can think of a baby and how babies are like so vulnerable because of their neediness and the helplessness they engender, like extra care and protection from good care from caregivers that actually take the job seriously. Obviously, if it gets to a point where there's too much of that, it can cause burnout in a relationship, right, and it can damage the relationship in the person that is defaulting to that trauma response. It can lead to them losing a sense of self as well, because what happens is learned helplessness, right? So instead of being able to have the presence of mind, to give yourself space to come back to yourself and then think through the problem and then think about how you're going to engage people, what resources you need, who you're going to ask for help for, to think about it in like a calm and like maybe more pragmatic way. But if your default is just to attach to somebody and cry to them for help, then you develop a pattern of learned helplessness over time.

Speaker 1: 25:57

And this can even be within intimate relationships. It can be within professional relationships, right, where one person's always like more than happy to help, more than happy to be the voice of reason, more than happy to be the savior, so to speak. Right, and then the other person is oh, I need your help, and there's nothing wrong with asking for help. I just want to underline that. But if it's become to the point where it's learned helplessness, then that's when you're talking more about this trauma response of attached cry for help I had someone in my life that their father was massively abusive throughout their entire life and their trauma response was absolutely freeze, anytime there was massive conflict, just freeze, literally, physically, vocally.

Speaker 2: 26:42

It was like, yeah, I am. I'm curious if that was always going to be their trauma response, no matter what. So if you have, your trauma response is like the one you always go to, or do people have different trauma responses for different situations?

Speaker 1: 26:57

Yeah, so you can actually have more than one type of default trauma. I do have a boundaries PDF like an embody and boundaries PDF to give away that people can access through a link If they sign up.

Speaker 1: 27:10

They can get it delivered into the inbox. I actually, in that PDF, elaborate more on the symptoms of each bucket of trauma responses. And to your question about your friend who tended to default to freeze, she might actually have other trauma responses as well, but maybe it just didn't manifest in those times that you were with her in her family. It might have been a lot more adaptive for her to just freeze up and so that might have been her, her default. But all I have to say is that a lot of it is just conditioning and how we learn to adapt in an environment. Right. A lot of it is survival. What trauma response works best for that specific environment?

Speaker 1: 27:52

In very combative environments, fight is going to be the trauma response that comes out. Where you're very active, you're very quick to hit back hard, you're very vocal. So that's your developed trauma response. But also consider that the role that you play within the family of origin affects how you cope with conflict. Right. So it's like in families there are sometimes what you call the black sheep or the peacemaker, the golden child, and all of these categories, frameworks for thinking about your trauma response, can shape the various tools that you lean on in order to survive the way that your nervous system adapts and adjusts to survive in that kind of environment.

Speaker 2: 28:36

We know that this is how people might react and they might react in multiple situations. We also know that, to your very good point, 80% of people have some sort of trauma response that they're coming to the workplace with. What do managers need to look out for when we're looking at trauma in terms of the signs here? What should they be looking out for? To be more of an embodied leader or have that trauma response?

Speaker 1: 28:59

So one of the things that you want to look out for is like startle reflexes. So let's say, if you like, come up to your employee and then he or she's very jumpy and they're like that right, or they look checked out, or they're not performing up to the usual standard, they've lost a spark. These are all indicators that they're not their usual selves. Right, you hired them for a reason. Hopefully you had a face-to-face interview at least, and then that's the persona they presented. Yes, I agree, you get to know them better. A reason Hopefully you had a face-to-face interview at least, and then that's the persona they presented. Yes, I agree, you get to know them better over time. But at the same time, there's a baseline self that they bring to work and if they are moving beyond or away from that and not performing up to standard, they're not showing up in the way that you expect and you're asking questions.

Speaker 1: 29:47

It's important to engage your employee. It's important to make time for them. It's important to make them feel safe enough to approach you with their concerns, because they don't have all the answers. There might be other employees in the workplace that's bullying them or making it hard for them to get the job done? Are you, as a boss, creating enough psychological safety as to where they feel like they can confide in you without being branded as a troublemaker and sometimes as a boss? You also have to be a bit more of a coach, and that says to coach them up to that standard and tell them very clearly this is what I expect from you. Let me know if there are things that you need my help on, or if you just have questions or the issues that you're dealing with that I can advocate for you in any way I would. Your employee just needs to know that you have their back. You're not going to throw them under the bus. That is one of the key things that the employees want to feel.

Speaker 2: 30:47

Sometimes it feels as a leader and as a manager. It can feel so complex what you need to do to manage teams and you need to be this perfect person, but at the end of the day, it sounds like what they really need is to feel safe.

Speaker 1: 30:59

Yeah, psychological safety is key, and then obviously, from there we can branch it out to how do you create that psychological safety, right? So we talk about emotional intelligence, and then this brings up somatic intelligence as well, where, if you've done the work and if you're self-aware, there's a mind-body connection. So then you're more aware of how you show up, you're more aware of, hey, when I'm communicating, how do I look? Right, because, like 70% of our communication is nonverbal. So I could be saying all this stuff, but if I look a certain way, people are like not sure if I'm gonna reach out to her.

Speaker 1: 31:34

So a lot of things are contingent on you being, as a leader, aware of the mind-body connection, aware of what self-care looks like, aware of good boundaries and how to lead with a style of leadership that engenders that sense of psychological safety. And part of that is also understanding that every employee is different. There's no cut and paste formula like communication styles, like some people need a more like directive simple, succinct and clear way of communicating, and then some people might respond to a more relational way of communicating. And then some people might respond to a more relational way of communicating. And I'm not saying that you have to be like this magician to read and intuit all these things, but the interesting thing is that once you are able to be more connected within yourself on an intuitive level, you will find that the connection on an individual basis is something that flows naturally.

Speaker 2: 32:26

Yeah, it's not's honestly just be interested in your employees figure this stuff out, have the trust in their relationship Anybody that's ever worked for me. I am absolutely not the perfect person, but one of the things I always hope people feel is that sense of trust and safety and I think if you engender that with people genuinely and you genuinely care for people, you can biff so hard on stuff and they will forgive you for it because they know ultimately the important stuff you did yeah, exactly, and in fact, just because you biff on people, it doesn't mean that's bad, in fact, because because people appreciate honest feedback and people know that they're not perfect.

Speaker 1: 33:06

Nobody wants to just be recognized for this one side of who they are. That's like saccharine. We don't want that. We're whole people and we all have nice and nasty sides. So when somebody can embrace that in us and call it out even or try to hold us accountable, we actually feel loved On a very deep level. There's a sense of being known and seen and accepted. So that's something that I don't think that, as leaders, we should shy away from.

Speaker 3: 33:42

I'd love to talk about who's getting this right. There are workplaces who are focusing on this. In your experience, what are some examples of companies that are excelling in trauma-informed care and embodied leadership?

Speaker 1: 33:56

They may not use the words trauma-informed care or even embodied leadership. There are definitely companies that do lead with a focus on mental wellness and they do promote psychological safety and an environment where you can be open. They promote mental health days off where you just take a day to disconnect because you need it for your mental health. They provide employee assistant programs which are comprehensive and trauma-informed, sometimes like they're trauma-informed interventions. So the companies that immediately come to mind are definitely Google, and then also Salesforce and then Mel. This is where we met which is Culture.

Speaker 1: 34:36

First I just love Culture.

Speaker 3: 34:38

First it's not fun for them.

Speaker 1: 34:40

But I'm just sharing from my perspective that when I show up there, it's always welcoming People are always sensitive and it just creates an environment where real relationships can be formed, where it's not about, oh, let's just put up a work front, and it's not about just discussions and transactional relationships. It's about actual relationship and that's where real mental wellness comes. Like you're talking about, let's say, if you have a trauma history, right, and all you knew in the past was like abuse or like emotional neglect and so on and so forth, right, what can change that? Being in an environment like culture first, for example, yeah, where people show up authentically, where you're, if you welcome, you feel met and you feel like there's potential like for deeper relationships and yeah. So these are some of the companies that come to mind when you talk about, uh, trauma-informed and psychologically safe workplaces I love the again.

Speaker 3: 35:37

Not a formal plug for culture first, but yes, that's where we met and they're awesome and I'm a good example of that is so funny and this, the slack group that we're a part of with that group is such one. It's an excellent community for anyone who's interested in joining and I have not been active in Slack for a few weeks because of another project and someone from Culture First reached out to see if I was okay, which is super nice, I'm like there's a ton of people in here, but okay, yeah, like just it's the little extra step, right.

Speaker 1: 36:05

Just as an example of something like that and that's how I just wanted to add to that, mel, because it brought up something so bessel vender coat actually said is one of his most famous quotes is like trauma is not being seen, heard or felt.

Speaker 1: 36:16

Right, obviously, many different types of definitions, but that's to me one of the most succinct ways to express what it feels like to live in an environment where you're this ongoing trauma. You just never acknowledged your emotional needs and never met, and it's like you're not seen, you're not heard, you're not felt, and in our generation, children were literally meant to be seen and not heard. Brought up that way, when there's a certain amount of, like, emotional neglect and trauma that comes with that, where you're not given the tools to process certain things that happen to you. And so even that little gesture where somebody from culture first reached out to you and said, hey, just checked in with you, are you okay? It's acknowledging, yeah, that hey, I just want to know if you're okay, like what's going on, and that they see you, they noticed you, and that speaks volumes. There's a small gesture, but it speaks volumes 100.

Speaker 3: 37:11

And then to your statement. I'm like wait is all of gen x and millennials. Are we just all 100 percent tremendous and trump dies from rvc? Did not heard it's the woke generation.

Speaker 1: 37:23

When you're woke, you're just you. You're gonna say say stuff. You're going to say stuff, 100%.

Speaker 3: 37:27

So our generation's working to break the cycle right. Yeah, yeah. What role? Obviously, francesca and I both come from talent development backgrounds and leadership development. What role does continuous education and training play in building and sustaining trauma-informed workplaces?

Speaker 1: 37:47

In the realm of continuous education and training, one of the key things that I can think about is raising awareness around what trauma-informed care is, what trauma is, creating that language. Speak around it right so that people are able to bring that into work and be more cognizant of it. Even when I talk about somatics, a lot of people don't know what that is. When you're able to bring that into the working vocabulary and help people understand, hey, I'm having back pain here. A lot of our physical ailments are not just isolated. A lot of them are rooted in relational issues that were never resolved, or like psychological just psychological issues that come about as, or like psychological just psychological issues that come about as a result of things that are happening in within relationship or things that happen to you that you never were able to process. Just to give you a little picture, for example, in my own personal life, like I struggle with depression for throughout my marriage, I struggle with ibs irritable bowel syndrome for the entirety of my marriage and I also struggled with insomnia throughout my marriage, like for 10 years, and I tried many times to do whatever I could to get out of all these things and to deal with it within three months of walking out of that destructive marriage. All of it just went away. Naturally, I tried so hard to get off antidepressants, you know, for 10 years and I couldn't. So that, I think, speaks volumes about the impact that all of these unresolved issues, relationally or unprocessed emotions and traumas has on the body. Why I totally believe the body does keep the score. It's sending you messages. And when you're able to develop within the workplace a shared understanding of what, for example, something like somatics is, what, for example, body sensations are Like. When you feel like a pain here, what is it Left in your left chest? That's heartbreak oftentimes. Or when you feel a lump here in your throat, what's that? It could be that maybe you're feeling sad, or that there's stuff that you want to say that you've held back for so long you've had to silence yourself and that accumulates here. There's a pain that comes up. So once people are more cognizant of, hey, your body is sending you messages. It's not just all on your head. There's an actual, real and felt impact of these occurrences within relationship or within your life. Traumatic experiences you've been through that accumulate within the body Once you're able to create a shared understanding and create more awareness around how these things can be managed or dealt with or how people can be supported through these things, through these traumas, then it creates a more open and compassionate workplace where people don't feel like they have to wear masks all the time in order to survive, but they can actually be open and they can actually ask for help and be vulnerable and people can show up for each other, where you can even be silly, like talking about Slack.

Speaker 1: 40:40

I wrote in my other life I'm a mermaid, and I was just being playful at that time. My second singer-songwriter album I shared earlier I'm a musician too is called Mermaid, and it documents my journey out of that relationship. I did a lot of healing through just composing music, writing out my thoughts into lyric, and so the mermaid symbolizes freedom, it symbolizes death, breaking free, and so then I just wrote that, and then somebody responded and she was like, hey, you should check out the mermaid festival yes, it's so fun.

Speaker 3: 41:11

I've been in it twice. I did the parade.

Speaker 1: 41:14

Wait, okay, I will send you pictures after this recording, francesca, I was like what which?

Speaker 3: 41:21

I've been in the parade twice. When I lived in new york city annually, I used to go and with my friends and we were in the mermaid parade.

Speaker 1: 41:30

Yes, and it's so fun. I haven't gone for it yet because I think it had recently just passed by and I was still in New Jersey at a time, but I'm just going to definitely attend it next year. And, yeah, it's nice that people acknowledge these little quirks and little bits for attention in some ways, so it's like people respond to that and if you connect it, yeah, yeah it's fun little community it truly, with the body keeping the score.

Speaker 3: 41:52

I remember I once left a really toxic work environment and within the first week, the first thing I did is I booked a deep tissue massage. It first of all, I felt like I just had lumps on my shoulders and the woman was like, oh my God, is this hurting you? I was like, yes, in the best way possible, get it out of here. And then I took the hardest sleep, for it felt like 48 hours I just everything was releasing and within three months I did not have any of that pain, the body pain.

Speaker 3: 42:30

So it's just so relatable Like how it really does show up for you Question for both of you, and it might.

Speaker 2: 42:37

I tend to like to simplify things, distill them down and really be simple, but I'm wondering if and I've never thought about this way but does all this come down to? As a person, as a leader, like you need to feel, be felt, seen and heard yourself. What does that look like for you? Have you done the work to do that and then be able to feel, see and hear the people around you? Does it all come down to do it for yourself and then do it for other people?

Speaker 1: 43:06

Yeah. So that's a really great point that you raise Francesca, because ultimately, at the end of the day, you can't give to others what you don't give to yourself. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:15

You can fake it a little bit, but I don't think you really can.

Speaker 1: 43:18

Yeah, it builds up after a while. If all you're doing is putting up a mask, you're just going to be rolling around in resentment. Yeah, be rolling around in resentment and you're going to feel like burnt out and you're going to be pissed. When that, you can try to hide that, but like it's just going to seep out and it's going to be experienced on a felt level. What should leaders?

Speaker 3: 43:37

know what's one step, if they do nothing else, that someone can take tomorrow to start to really practice this embodied leadership and start to build more trauma awareness within the workplace. What's one thing that they can implement?

Speaker 1: 43:58

I definitely think that the first thing that I would start with is reflection and I know that might be a little bit off center for the fact that we've been talking about trauma-informed care all the while, but giving yourself that space to reflect, it actually helps you to come back to your body. It helps, in some ways, your body to catch up with your mind, or vice versa as well, because sometimes the body often knows things ahead of time and then it takes a while for the mind to register it. So, when you give yourself space and time to reflect, maybe take the time off, go on like a trip, something that's not agenda-based, right, where you give yourself that space and time to reflect, and then you'll be able to think maybe, oh, how have I been responding in this situation? Are there certain patterns, in a way that I relate, and then from there you can think about what you want for your team or what you want for yourself as a leader, and then look at the various options available to you.

Speaker 1: 44:54

Or should I talk to my boss, for example? Should I talk? Should I engage a therapist or coach? Or should I call up a good friend or read a book, like all these things? There are a multitude of ways to be an effective leader, to be more trauma-informed, but if it's just another list thing on a list of things to do, it's good. You're not going to show up with presence and authenticity. You're going to be like let's just get it done now and it's not going to be authentic. It's not going to come from a place of being fed. So give yourself that space and the time to reflect on where you are, who you are and where you want to go.

Speaker 3: 45:31

Reflection. I feel like it's such a missed opportunity for everybody because the environment, the world we live in today. It can be easy to not take that time, so it's a good reminder. That's the place to start Debra. We like to close out every episode with Rapid Round. It's yes, no one word answers usually, but feel free to give more if you're like this warrants more. So.

Speaker 1: 46:07

I'm going to give it to you. Are you ready? Yes, I'm excited.

Speaker 3: 46:09

Okay. Is it possible for every workplace to become trauma informed?

Speaker 1: 46:16

Yes, I do think it's possible, because ultimately, being trauma informed is just being more aware about your humanity and how you can connect to other humans in a way that is meaningful and how you can connect to other humans in a way that is meaningful.

Speaker 3: 46:31

Yeah, you hear that folks Pay attention to humanity at work.

Speaker 1: 46:36

Should trauma-informed care be a mandatory part of leadership training? I wouldn't want to go as far as to say it's mandatory. One of the key tenets of trauma-informed care is choice. So I think ultimately people have to be able to opt into that. But I do think that if people understood the benefits of trauma-informed care and how it leads to a more cohesive and innovative workplace where people feel safe and it's more fun, it's more engaging, it's just a more positive environment to be in. And how can you get the most out of your time at work? You're going to spend like 40 to 80 hours of time at a place working on something. Don't you want it to be enjoyable? Don't you want it to be meaningful and engaging? So those are the key benefits of trauma-informed care, and then add to that productivity, and there you have your answer.

Speaker 3: 47:19

Yeah, what I'm hearing is it's a good high opt-in if you can do it Strongly encouraged. I'm not saying it's required or mandatory, but Are leaders who practice embodied leadership more successful in retaining talent? 100%, yes, okay, and what is your go-to leadership practice to nurture embodied leadership?

Speaker 1: 47:47

go-to leadership practice to nurture embodied leadership. So just now I mentioned reflection, so that's a key part of my life. Every morning when I wake up, I craft out some time for myself half an hour to sometimes even an hour to spend time on just spiritual material, a devotional that I read. I'm big in my faith, so I spend time on doing things that feed my spirit, feed my soul. Music is a big part of that too. Writing, journaling those are all practices that I keep so that I can, in many ways, stay sane in a world where you're like so many things are constantly vying for your attention and then you have to keep prioritizing things. That's definitely one thing that I would recommend to leaders.

Speaker 1: 48:25

I think regular therapy, regular coaching sessions that's also really helpful, and there are so many resources and tools out there, books you can read it's really important to stay connected. As a person, I'm an introvert, right, I can spend hours on end on my own, but it's actually not really healthy to isolate yourself for long periods of time, because being around other people actually does help you in some ways to come back to yourself. After this podcast, I know I'm going to be energized to do other things, so that that's been my experience talking to people, having some conversations, having another part of my mind opened up, like it gives me inspiration to do more. It gives me the impetus to move forward because that engagement itself is a set, gives me a sense of meaning and purpose I just so appreciate you joining us to talk about this.

Speaker 1: 49:19

Oh yeah, I know I really loved chatting with you guys and I just love the vibe. You guys really keep it real and that's really what's needed. But especially when you talk about, like corporate life, because oftentimes people feel like, oh, I can't say this, I can't do this, and it's just. You keep it real and I think it's so important.

Speaker 3: 49:37

Thanks, hey, friends, this episode of your Work Friends was hosted by Francesca Ranieri and myself, mel Platt.

Speaker 2: 49:44

This episode was produced and edited by Mel Plett and myself, Francesca Ranieri.

Speaker 3: 49:49

Our theme music is by Pink Zebra and you can follow us over on all of our social media platforms Instagram, tiktok, youtube and, if you're so inclined, join us over on LinkedIn in our large and growing community, and you can email us at friend at your work, friendscom, or visit us on yourworkfriends.com. Also, folks, please like, subscribe and leave a review. If you enjoyed this episode, and if you really enjoyed it, please share with a work friend or two. Thanks, thank you.

Crisis Communications

Your Work Friends Podcast: Crisis Communications with Anne Marie Squeo

Crisis doesn’t wait…

One wrong message can tank your reputation. One delayed response can cost you trust. When the pressure’s on and the spotlight’s burning, do you know what to say?

In this episode of Your Work Friends, we dive into the art and science of crisis communications with expert Anne-Marie Squeo. From understanding what qualifies as a crisis to mastering the first 24 hours, this conversation is packed with actionable insights for leaders, teams, and anyone navigating turbulent times. We’re giving you the playbook for crisis communications—so you don’t freeze when everything falls apart.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

But it wasn't three hours later, when I was getting my car to drive to work, that I got an urgent phone call that the blimp was about to crash and it was rush hour. It was Pennsylvania I-95 was in its path. I was like, oh, jesus Christ going on mel what's up?

Speaker 3: 0:32

what's up? Um, I have good news, you have good news, I like it. You know, I do starting uh, next week the sun sets at 5 pm oh.

Speaker 2: 0:43

Oh, my gosh, I'm telling you during the winter nuts, nuts, winter nuts. What, what is on my mind During the winter nuts? With my sweaty balls, during the winter months, I become a bear. I am just like oh, it's 7 o'clock, I'm going to get my jams. It is not good, listen same.

Speaker 3: 1:05

It has been getting dark at like around, like November-ish December. It starts getting dark at 3 pm. It's unacceptable. Is it 11? I have my slippers on, oh my gosh. Well, we were incredibly lucky to sit down with Anne-Marie Sgueo today, who is an expert in crisis communications. She is the CEO and founder of Proofpoint Communications. She's a strategic branding communications and crisis PR maven. She's also a Pulitzer winning business journalist, and two words to describe her battle proven. What did you take away from this conversation?

Speaker 2: 1:51

I love crisis communications. I think it's just a fascinating topic about how companies and how people respond to crisis, and there was a lot that Anne-Marie shared that looked really under the hood around how this all works within organizations, how decisions are made and, honestly, what good looks like. That I did not know and I think is really, really eye-opening for anybody listening. What did you think, mel?

Speaker 3: 2:18

Absolutely agree. If you're a leader in an organization, you're going to find this episode extremely useful and helpful. She gave some pretty clear tips on. This is how you show up and this is how you pull through and come together. So with that, here's Anne-Marie we are so excited to have you join us today on your Work Friends, and I'm going to jump right in with a headline that came out from Axios and I want to get your thoughts. They said CEOs are enjoying a hot speech. Winter, when we're speaking out in outrageous ways, carries no cost and we know recently we saw the UnitedHealthcare CEO not really dealing well with critical crisis and Mark Zuckerberg's comments on the Joe Rogan podcast on how that's impacting meta. What are your thoughts on that statement?

Speaker 1: 3:24

podcast on how that's impacting meta. What are your thoughts on that statement? There's always a cost. The question is how you're measuring it. We'll go back to United Healthcare.

Speaker 1: 3:36

I think Zuck's comments are, frankly, just bizarre and I keep wondering what his wife thinks. But a lot of my friends have gone off threads. They've gone off Instagram and closed their Facebook accounts. There's a critical piece to this in terms of has no cost, right.

Speaker 1: 3:51

One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is, you know, when Jeff Bezos pisses us all off and you know, we're like I'm not using Amazon anymore. I'm just I'm not, and I tried this. Actually I tried this for a couple of months last year and it's really hard. So if you're addicted to the product or service and you have been for the last five years then it's probably unlikely you're going to get unaddicted. But if it's more marginal in your existence, so the Washington Post subscription, that is like the eighth thing I read any day. I can live without that Right. So I mean, I think that it's going to be hard for CEOs to say there's no cost, because for some it might appear that way because their product or service is so essential to our lives that most of us can't imagine we'd be punishing ourselves if we cut it off. But if you don't fall in that category and most people don't then there are going to be repercussions for doing things that piss off 50% or more of your customers, subscribers, whatever.

Speaker 3: 5:03

Yeah, I think Francesca and I were talking about this before the session and one of the things we both agreed on was there's maybe five people, I think Francesca you said, who have a few money to be able to not have a cost to their statements.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Yeah, I mean again, most CEOs, I think, measure the cost financially. But bad reputations have bad financial implications and they might not happen immediately. But one thing that I think that is a mid-term kind of outcome of, say, meta's CEO's comments is you're already seeing blue sky and all these competitors come up and they're going to get better. Just like threads stepped in to pick up where Twitter X left off, someone's going to step in and pick up where both of those guys left off and run away with it. And the eyeballs and the advertising money Don't count too soon. I wouldn't count my chickens before they're hatched, because it might not be that the next three months are impacted, but the next 12 months may well be as alternatives come to bear.

Speaker 2: 6:12

It's so fun to watch. There's, I imagine, in your area, someone's always in crisis and, to your very good point, you started this by saying going through the Trump administration, every organization is going to be in crisis because of all the change that's going on. And I'm curious about how do you define either like a PR crisis or crisis communications? For those that don't know about this topic, what is it?

Speaker 1: 6:34

Oh, this is a great question because, you know, I've definitely worked places where the CEO or senior leaders thought everything was a crisis, you know.

Speaker 1: 6:45

So if we're not included in a story, it's a crisis, and if we are included in a negative story, it's a crisis, and you know, I think that all of us in the industry have to kind of set a barometer for what actually requires a crisis response, and that's an important conversation and level setting that needs to happen in every organization, because if you, the communications team, are not aligned or at least educating your leaders about what makes the cut for when we're going into crisis mode, you will spend your entire day and night and weekends fighting fires that are not important and you'll never get to the good stuff and the important stuff.

Speaker 1: 7:31

So I think, if it's a real crisis, francesca, I think it's got real reputational and financial implications for a company and business implications. So you are a railroad company and your railroad went off the tracks in Ohio and potentially poisoned an entire community with toxic things that came out of the cars. You've got a crisis and it's going to potentially result in regulatory repercussions, punitive government, punitive repercussions, lawsuits, environmental related issues. That is a legitimate crisis. I would say things that no one's going to be talking about in 24 or 48 hours, not a crisis. So I think, by definition, a crisis is going to be longer than 48 hours. You may feel like it's a crisis in the moment, but if it's going away and no one's going to remember it in a year, it wasn't a crisis.

Speaker 2: 8:31

I'm curious about that timing right, I mean within 48 hours. If no one's going to be talking about it, it's not a crisis. I'm curious on the other aspect of that because, especially with social media, the first 24 hours of a crisis, or that after something happens, the train derails and spills chemicals, the LA wildfires are happening, UnitedHealthcare CEO gets shot, the BP oil spill that first 24 hours seems like it's so critical. And then, especially with social media, the speed of which information gets put out into the ether. How important is the first 24 hours If you've identified that this is in fact a crisis? How important is that first 24 hours as an organization?

Speaker 1: 9:16

It's very important to establish trust and confidence in whatever comes next. I think the challenge of the first 24 hours in some of these situations is you don't really know a lot in that first 24 hours, right, whether it's an oil spill, a plane crash, a derailment, a cyber attack, I mean there's some stuff you know, but there's so very much that you do not know and you won't know for a while. But you have to establish the kind of connected tissue that you're going to need in this situation and whether you're going to be viewed as someone who's withholding information or going to be forthcoming when you can be information or going to be forthcoming when you can be. And the challenge, of course, in social media things tend to move much more quickly. You know, like years ago, right, like you know, we didn't know when there was a crisis until the news came out the next day. So I mean, you guys might be too young to remember that, but I mean now everything's like people might know about it on social media before even the company is aware that something happened. So it creates both benefits and detriments in any crisis situation because on the pro side, you can use social media to find out, so you can be listening all the time, and so if people start talking about something, you know about it before it becomes a wildfire and you can disseminate information more broadly more quickly because of it. But so can dis and misinformation get disseminated more quickly, and now you don't just have a crisis of the underlying event, you have a crisis that you're trying to contain information that's actually inaccurate about the underlying event, and so it has definitely made the job of a communications team, a crisis PR team and a leadership team exponentially harder, because you've got all these moving pieces and you can't afford to wait. And yet you can't afford to be too detailed either, because you might be issuing a detail in the first to make it up 10 hours turns out not to be true, and now you've got to go back and correct.

Speaker 1: 11:39

Now you've started to break trust right, and we started with first. We want to establish that we are going to be a trustworthy communicator in this situation. You know, the wildfires are sort of an interesting example where I've got a lot of friends who live in LA. Many have been evacuated. Luckily nobody's lost their home yet that I know of. But every single one of them said the communications have been God awful and you saw it in some of these press interviews that they were doing where fire chief was dissing the mayor and the mayor didn't know and she's smiling. Meanwhile, people's homes are burning down and I'm thinking I wouldn't trust this crowd at all, especially if my life and my family's life was in danger.

Speaker 1: 12:24

So that's really that first 24 hours. I think we all recognize you might not know enough, but you've got to establish that I'm going to be a trusted partner with you in this endeavor. That feeling is something that's either going to help long-term in managing this crisis or it's going to hurt you long-term in attempting to manage the crisis. So that getting the right spokesperson out there, having a transparent and trustworthy demeanor, not hiding facts that are easily known from multiple sources but you're not willing to confirm it there's so many little things that end up adding up to that. How do people feel about us right now? And I think that's one of the key thing in the first day of any major crisis.

Speaker 2: 13:15

So much of this comes out to planning you had mentioned too earlier on. One of the things you want to do is establish what is a crisis, which I think is super important. So you're not chasing down the fact that you didn't get into Fast Company this month, right, like that's not a crisis. Dora, flying out of a Boeing Max right, that's a crisis.

Speaker 1: 13:36

I'm not sure Apple, in which case it was like great sales point because the phone dropped miles and still was working. That's hilarious.

Speaker 2: 13:44

It's so funny. I live in Portland, Oregon. The door of the Boeing Max landed in one of my neighbor's yards over yonder, so it was like a big like oh, he found the door. I'm like that is not what you want as a company. I'd love to open up the hood a little bit on who's behind these organizations. What's the command center look like for crisis communications? Who is determining what's a crisis? Who is determining at these organizations how to even respond, or who's going to be the spokesperson? What does that typically look like?

Speaker 1: 14:15

And it varies, right, it varies depending on the crisis, the company and the people. So if you've got, let's say, you're a big company and you have a crisis, then you know you undoubtedly have a senior comms person, a chief communications officer, a VP of communications, who's going to be point in theory on that if you let them and they often want to put their voice and their reaction into the situation and it can make it much harder to get to where you might need to be if that's the case. But your command center it's going to change depending on what the crisis is. So the two constants that I have seen in every crisis is comms and legal. We're always there.

Speaker 1: 15:06

Now, if it's a product thing, right, like if it's an airplane crash, the head of the Boeing commercial airplanes business is going to be involved. Probably the engineering folks and manufacturing folks are going to be involved. Legal is definitely involved. Comms is involved, Leadership is involved, but comms and legal are almost in every single crisis. If it's an employee event somebody was killed in the workplace and it's because of whatever reason, you know, hr is going to be involved. Right, it's a cyber attack Then your information security and your technology officer are going to be involved. So it's going to change depending on the crisis, but always should have communications and legal at the table. Looking at that working in lockstep and it's wonderful when that happens.

Speaker 2: 16:00

Yeah, especially because your comms people. That is their craft, that is their skill, and especially when you're the CEO or even if you're head of product or head of engineering. I think sometimes there might be too much of an emotional bias on some of those things.

Speaker 1: 16:14

If you're coming in I don't know if you've seen that, or- not, because, well, let's face it, a crisis is only a crisis because something didn't work right, something went wrong, someone was killed, a railroad went off the tracks, we were breached in a cyber attack, or a customer was breached in a cyber attack, so something didn't work right. It's never a crisis when everything's going well, so that's just going to ratchet up everybody's emotions. From a communication standpoint, it's important to understand that, because we're not actually going to be able to appropriately address this crisis if we don't understand where everyone's coming from, so that we can get them where we need to go. And so it could take a little while and that's the challenge, of course is that in most crises, time is of the essence, and yet you've got to somehow get people on this path with you so you could do the right thing instead of doing nothing, which is often most people's default position, which is let's just say nothing, or let's just say the bare minimum and leave it at that right.

Speaker 1: 17:27

One of the things that I thought was interesting Boeing had two plane crashes within a year and a half or so, and their statements were overly lawyered and ice cold. I mean, everybody uniformly looked at those statements and were like really, 346 people are dead in these two plane crashes and you're like basically thoughts and prayers, and yet you know there's a lot. You don't know when you have to put that statement out, you know could it have been pilot error.

Speaker 1: 18:02

Maybe it's not the airplane's fault. You don't want to overdo it, but you can't come across as being almost uncaring when people's lives were ended and many families globally were impacted by those two events.

Speaker 2: 18:19

It's interesting when you can feel where it's overly lawyered or sometimes it's overly emotional. The one I always remember from grad school is during the BP oil spill and the CEO made it all about himself, like, well, no one's suffering as much as I am and everyone's like you need to go away. This is not about you, but it.

Speaker 1: 18:39

Didn't his weekend plans get ruined or something?

Speaker 2: 18:42

Yes, and you're like I'm sorry, the Gulf of Mexico is completely under crude oil right now, but it seems like comms really is that, for lack of a better term almost like the adult in the room that's helping you strike the right balance for whatever the situation calls for.

Speaker 1: 18:58

You have to be the truth sayer in the room Like you have got to be the one who walks in the room and just says it, and it doesn't always make you very popular to do that. When I was at Xerox and I was the chief brand and comms officer, the pandemic hit. And you know, the week before everyone was told to send their employees home we had already sent our employees in Italy home Because, remember, italy was a really hot spot I went to the CEO and said we need to send everybody home and he was like are you nuts? And I was like no, I mean, have you not paid attention to the news? So we had a whole meeting and nobody else agreed with me. And the next day I had to go back to him and I was like so can we talk about sending everybody home? And he's like I thought we had a meeting about it yesterday. And I'm like, well, we did, but we came to the wrong answer, so we're going to let's have that conversation again. And so he said, okay, you got five minutes to go.

Speaker 1: 19:53

And I did, and he sent everybody home and he told employees in an all employee phone call, like you guys have Ann Marie to thank for me actually getting ahead of this issue. And the way he got ahead of the issue was me saying, like here's the thing. We don't even know what the deal is with this thing. All we know is it's very transmissible from human to human. You are going to send everybody home. So the question is do you want to send them home today and get ahead of being ordered to send everybody home and be perceived as a good leader, or do you want to wait until the government tells you to send everybody home and just do it then? Either way, you're doing it, so you just have to decide when you want to do it and wanted to do it ahead of time. So we sent everybody home and then the order came 48, 72 hours later. He got a lot of credit from our employees.

Speaker 2: 20:38

That's goodwill.

Speaker 1: 20:45

That of credit from our employees. That's goodwill. That's goodwill man. This guy cares about his people. You should have just taken the credit. That's my job is to give you credit and he was like no people should know how that went down. So for communicators, it requires a level of courage for any leader, but especially for a communicator, because there's we're probably the only ones in the room with no direct relationship to the cause of the event. We are probably the most objective person in the room. In a crisis, we have to stand strong and ask the questions and be unemotional and super calm and not accusatory, and just try to get people moving in the right direction.

Speaker 3: 21:38

When you think of essential elements, that communications teams or even if you're a leader right, what's a playbook to have in place to help you contain the crisis, when stuff pops up?

Speaker 1: 21:53

What are the key elements you would include in that? Yeah, it's funny. Playbooks are a thing. There are whole firms that will come in and build you a crisis playbook. I always think that's a hilarious notion.

Speaker 3: 22:06

Seems like it would be situation to situation. Right, it depends.

Speaker 1: 22:10

Right. You can't possibly be prepared for every possible. I mean, now listen, if you run a rail company, you can be prepared for a derailment, right.

Speaker 3: 22:18

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:19

Yeah, you got that the same thing with an airplane crash but for the most part, there's going to be stuff that happens that you never thought you were going to be involved with. So I'm not a big believer in playbooks.

Speaker 1: 22:31

In fact, at one company I worked at, I arrived my first week somebody came over and handed me like this three quarters of an inch thick crisis playbook and I was like really, and I put it in the drawer and I never, ever looked at it, and this was a company that had many crises during my tenure there but we never once related to the book, and I'll tell you, no CEO has ever asked me what does the police playbook say about how to handle this crisis?

Speaker 3: 23:02

Let's go through our manual.

Speaker 1: 23:05

It says, if an employee dies. So I am just a big believer in all the pre-work that makes it possible to successfully manage a crisis, a crisis. So hire really good people with diverse experiences, who may have handled various crises in different companies or at agencies or whatnot, and then let them tackle the problems when they start happening. Establish authority and trust with the leadership team, because it actually doesn't matter if you're in charge and you have a playbook. If the CEO doesn't trust you, you are not going to be able to influence the outcome of this crisis. Define what a crisis is. Who needs to sign off on the actions related to that crisis.

Speaker 1: 23:58

I'm just a really big believer in hire people with good judgment, great experience, different experience, and make sure that everything that you're doing up to the point of the crisis ensures that you have the authority and the trust and the seat at the table to influence and drive that discussion and that outcome, because otherwise you're just you're. You're just going to take it along for the ride. Don't be a passenger on this bus. Drive this bus.

Speaker 1: 24:26

We're really the only ones, as I said, that are sort of objective in this situation and have that external sensibility to understand what's happening outside the business so that we can bring that to whatever solution and communication strategy we're developing.

Speaker 3: 24:44

I think you make the best point is that the communications team is probably the most neutral party in any room when they're dealing with something like this. You just bring a different point of view, that and it takes out the emotions completely from it, which is needed. How do you manage those emotions up front if you're a comms person?

Speaker 1: 25:01

Listen and empathize with that person, because often all that person really needs is to emote. They need to get all that they're feeling out there and they're probably going to get to the right place. But if they don't have the space to do that, you're going to be bouncing up against it when you're trying to get them someplace else. So I do think that despite the fact that we are communicators because we are, in theory, better at communicating I think this is one of those very important situations where it's better to just listen to people and let them go through it If it's 20 minutes an hour whatever because they're probably going to talk themselves to exactly where you need them to be, or close to it, and then understand that those emotions are real.

Speaker 1: 25:50

If you're a CEO and say, like you're in a precarious position. Your company's not financially performing that well. There have been, you know, major recalls or something on your product and other things, and now a crisis hits. You're scared. That's your number one response is, even if you're not articulating it, there's like a knot in your stomach Like is this the thing that's going to push me out the door? What you need is a comms person who understands that. That that's your starting point, but here's where we need to go and actually, if we manage this crisis really well, it will elevate your standing instead of being the nail in your coffin.

Speaker 3: 26:31

That makes sense. One of the things that we talk about often is transparency and how transparent you can be, because we're always up against general counsel and their feedback as well around what you can and can't say. How do you balance transparency with the legal constraints that come up during a crisis?

Speaker 1: 26:51

I mean. The thing is, you don't want to build trust between the comms and legal team in the middle of a crisis, right? Because if it's not there, trust me it's not coming that week. So that's a relationship that is so absolutely essential. That comms legal relationship. I have never had a general counsel. Well, actually, once, once I had a general counsel and it was painful not to have that trusted relationship. But in every other role we were like attached to the hip because we understood there was going to be so many touch points where we were going to have to come to mutually agreeable decisions that we had to be on the same wavelength. And who can build the relationships that are going to allow you to influence the solutions, move quickly and do it with trust, because you can't build it in the middle of a crisis.

Speaker 3: 27:50

So say someone's day one on a new job. They were the new comms leader. How do they quickly because you have to get that buy-in between multiple departments as soon as a crisis comes up how do they quickly gain that trust from business leadership, from those department leads? What's the best way for them to build trust quickly?

Speaker 1: 28:12

I guess not screw it up, but I actually had this happen to me. I did have this happen to me. It was my first week at Lockheed Martin and a major military program. So I was on like day two or three a major military program. The Pentagon had changed the acquisition strategy and thrown everything into flux and I remember standing in the middle of my office thinking, jesus, what are we doing now? And I just like gathered all the people who needed to be in the room on this.

Speaker 1: 28:44

Even though I was the new person, I was like, okay, we have a crisis, we need to come up with a media statement, a media plan, at least for 24 hours, then we can regroup tomorrow, cause this was at like four o'clock in the afternoon, I pulled everybody together, we figured it out, we moved out the statement and it worked fine. And then the next day we got to work as a larger group on a plan. If you're new, like you're going to need to pull in the people who are there and use your best judgment. This is where the judgment piece comes in, because judgment isn't something that like appears. You can't go to Walmart, pick it up off a store shelf.

Speaker 3: 29:18

Yeah, agreed, well, I think it's one kudos to you, because, holy cow, day three, that's a big, that's a big thing to do.

Speaker 1: 29:25

In fact my email. They had misspelled my email, so my actual email at the company still wasn't working. So I was having to call people and be like can you just come to my office Because I can't email you, and we just had to move quickly, email you and we just had to move quickly. I actually love those.

Speaker 3: 29:43

What do you think? They're fun. I can see you easily doing fine under pressure. What do you? What do you think was your secret sauce in that moment, though? How did you get everyone to go along with what you?

Speaker 1: 29:55

staying calm. You know I had I'd written about the defense industry as a reporter, I had worked at a different defense company, I understood the subject, I understood what we were dealing with and so I could move really quickly If I hadn't. I think, at the end of the day, most of us know what the right thing is to do in the moment, and the harder part, as we've been talking about, is getting other people there, and so in this case I guess I got more latitude than somebody who was totally green would have gotten, because I was a known entity and people trusted me Right. Otherwise that trust would have to be developed over time.

Speaker 3: 30:36

Yeah, Like so. Trust truly is the secret sauce for it to be effective.

Speaker 1: 30:40

I think it is. I think it is.

Speaker 2: 30:41

Yeah, I'm very curious about one of the most unexpected crisis scenarios that you managed through. You don't have to name names, but is there any that comes to mind where you're like that was unexpected.

Speaker 1: 30:53

Yeah, actually A blimp, a blimp.

Speaker 2: 31:02

Like the Goodyear blimp, like the Goodyear blip.

Speaker 1: 31:05

When I was at Lockheed we had this prototype airship it's called the Hail Deep and we all got up at 3.30 am to watch this massive, massive it was like, I think, five football fields long airship takeoff from a dock in akron, ohio. It was beautiful dawn, lovely, but it wasn't three hours later, when I was getting my car to drive to work, that I got an urgent phone call that the blimp was was about to crash and it was rush hour. It was pennsylvania i-95 was in its path. I was like, oh, jesus Christ, so that was definitely a crisis. I mean, again, we had a plan for what would happen if we had issues with it, but it really looked like it was going to be a flawless test and it did not. It was not a flawless test and it ended up coming down in a wooded area very close to a beaver dam in Pennsylvania. The good news was we immediately dispatched a communicator to the beaver dam to answer all the local news press questions. So we basically it wasn't like a national news story, but certainly in the Philadelphia, ohio, pennsylvania area you know it was a couple of days of coverage of this massive airship that went down and, you know, working again by the before.

Speaker 1: 32:31

It took 10 minutes to get to the office. By the time I got into the office, we had all the necessary people on the phone. I'm like where's the airship? Like it was just like drilling the questions. Like, okay, I've dispatched this person, let's get this information written up, get it into that person's hands. They need to be on site. Reporters are going to come to the location. Blah, blah, blah. Work with the local authorities. We were seamless. I had everybody on an open line in my office for three hours. I was like, just come back and talk on the squawk box, I'm leaving the line open and so that's you know.

Speaker 1: 33:06

I mean, this is the stuff that happens in the middle of a crisis, you just have to stop doing everything else and just do this.

Speaker 2: 33:14

Well, which begs the point of not having a playbook, because I don't know if you're working at Lockheed Martin, you probably don't think you're going to have to deal with the National Beaver Society because the blip crashed in their dam. Do you know what I'm saying Like? But now here you are.

Speaker 3: 33:27

The ASPCA has got you on a speed dial. Yeah, I can't imagine.

Speaker 1: 33:32

Right, Like you cannot plan for every possible crisis trying to hurt the beavers no no beaver was killed. No beaver was hurt in the testing of the singer ship.

Speaker 2: 33:45

What do you know? If a crisis response was successful, what do you measure?

Speaker 1: 33:52

Nowadays, with social media, there are all kinds of tools that you can listen to how people are talking. So there's the qualitative and then the quantitative. On the qualitative side, you know if people are pissed off. You mentioned UnitedHealthcare earlier and I actually would love to go back to that, but it was pretty remarkable that a man was murdered and people were talking about how hot the assassin was and how people are feeling about your company when they're cheering for the murderer instead of being completely outraged about what happened.

Speaker 1: 34:46

And I would just say one thing I actually think that UnitedHealthcare is doing a very good job with this. So you know, yesterday was their earnings and their CEO of the parent company, United Health, talked about what's wrong with the healthcare system, and he also had an editorial in the New York Times a week or two after the murder happened that addressed it. Now it does beg the question as the nation's largest insurance company, what are you doing to solve the problem? So great that you're now acknowledging that there is a problem, but what are you doing to solve it, which I hope is the next piece for that? But I've seen them lean into this in a manner that I think is better than some companies do in these situations.

Speaker 3: 35:38

I have a quick question follow up for that, because with UnitedHealthcare, what I found interesting, just as an observer and someone consuming, they're getting out at front about acknowledging their role but then their actions seem to not align with their acknowledgement. So, for example, like an article came out yesterday about how they're one of the few insurance companies who are increasing I think it was cancer medication by over 1000% compared to other insurers, making it more expensive for their customers. So when you see like you see the CEO coming out and they're acknowledging it, partly responsible for the state of the healthcare system, but they haven't taken it to what should be the next level, you know as the nation's largest insurer.

Speaker 1: 36:44

Here are the things we're going to do differently, right, boom, boom, boom, boom, right, and and hopefully, fingers crossed that's their next piece, because otherwise, in a couple of months, this yes, it's broken and we're really sorry and we have to all do better is not going to play well with the vast majority of the public, because they're going to be like yeah, we heard that from you for six months now and you haven't done anything different.

Speaker 3: 37:10

It's the new thoughts and prayers.

Speaker 1: 37:12

Right. So I do think that that is always the challenge right, Even if your crisis communications response is great. Boeing had the same issue. Their issue was the problem with the manufacturing of these planes. That has come out and now gotten a lot of media coverage and government intervention and other things right. I often would say it's comms' job to like prepare the garden, fertilize the soil, make sure that it's an environment in which things can grow, but if things don't grow here, that's not my fault, that's your fault.

Speaker 2: 37:47

Can you tell a lot about a company's culture by how they respond in a crisis? Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 37:54

Yeah, absolutely. I mean because that response isn't coming out of nowhere. And if it does come out of nowhere, then it probably won't be trusted. Think about the insurance industry right now and these fires, I mean.

Speaker 1: 38:09

It's not a good scene and they had already cut off people's insurance policies, and I lived in California. Insurance was extraordinarily expensive to get and that was when you could even get it. Now you can't even get it in many places, and I wasn't in a fire zone, but at this point you don't really know what a fire zone is. It could be anywhere. So I think that the way in which these companies have approached their business will make them inherently trustworthy in this situation because of everything that led up to it. Now maybe somebody will step out and do the right thing.

Speaker 1: 38:44

Do the right thing has multiple implications because at the end of the day, many of these are publicly traded companies and they're mining their portfolio for risk and they only want to have a risk exposure of make it up 30%, 40%. So that means we can't cover any of these folks unless they pay this much more money, and that makes it prohibitively expensive and most people can't afford that. And so again, we get down to sort of a situation where, okay, if you're part of the problem, you're also part of the solution. So are you going to lead on this and try to figure out how we might be able to at least address this? So I saw on the news last night. People are hanging signs with QR codes to their GoFundMe pages in the front of their burnt houses in Pacific Palisades so that people driving by can just get to their QR card and give them money. That's terrible In this country, with the kind of money this country has, that anyone should have to have a GoFundMe page, especially if they had insurance.

Speaker 2: 39:51

Agreed. You mentioned that almost every company is going to be in crisis this year. I feel like the insurance companies are like they're in the hot seat. Buckle up.

Speaker 1: 40:01

That kid is going on trial, that man is going on trial for shooting the UnitedHealthcare CEO, and so will the healthcare industry, insurance industry, be on trial, because that is going to be part of that entire trial. There's two trials right now and if they got combined, you know, or maybe even three, if they bring federal charges they'll get combined into one trial. But make no mistake, he will be on trial, and so will the healthcare insurance industry.

Speaker 3: 40:36

I'd love to talk about advice that you personally might give to folks who are in a crisis, dealing with crisis, just based on your own experience. What's your go-to stress reliever? What do you do when you're in an active crisis situation?

Speaker 1: 40:55

when you're in an active crisis situation. Well, after the work, I would definitely have a glass of red wine During it. I mean, I think it's really important to just try to stay calm and clear and whatever you need to do, that is important Exercise or meditate or whatever it is for you. Exercise or meditate or whatever it is for you like. Being very calm and almost impersonal about the situation is really important when everyone else is flipping out.

Speaker 3: 41:26

So that's from a communication standpoint. If you're a leader, in one word, what's the most important quality a leader needs?

Speaker 1: 41:34

Judgment no question Judgment.

Speaker 3: 41:37

What is the best piece of crisis management advice that you've ever been given? Don't be afraid to ask the hard questions.

Speaker 1: 41:44

Often what happens in a crisis is not only are people afraid to ask the hard question, they're afraid to ask the follow-up to the hard question. Up to the hard question. But if you don't know everything that you need to know, your crisis is going to mushroom right, and you could have gotten ahead of it if you had just kept going down that line of questioning to get what else do? I need to know that we're not doing right so I can respond, because there's going to be a reporter calling me about this in less than 36 hours. So tell me everything now so I can get ready for it. So I think, ask the hard questions and ask the hard follow-up questions.

Speaker 3: 42:24

Almost like an attorney. Like I don't want any surprises here.

Speaker 1: 42:28

Yeah, I mean, that's the worst thing that any business can have is a surprise.

Speaker 3: 42:33

Okay, what are some or what's one crisis communication myth that you would like to debunk?

Speaker 1: 42:41

You don't need a playbook. You need courage, commitment and clarity, but you do not need a playbook.

Speaker 2: 42:47

All right, anne-marie, we like to get to know our guests on a more personal level, so I'm going to ask you some rapid round questions that are just light and easy. We just want to get to know you. Are you down? Okay, let's do it. All right, it's 2030.

Speaker 1: 43:04

What do you think work is going to look like? Well, I'm really hoping that the AI is doing all the mundane things and that we're down to a three day work week.

Speaker 2: 43:12

Yeah, I like the world.

Speaker 3: 43:12

We're here for it.

Speaker 2: 43:13

Painting. Yes, yes. What music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 1: 43:21

You know, I listen to such a bizarre blend of music. What was playing in my car just today? I was listening to a little John Legend a little while ago, nice, nice.

Speaker 2: 43:34

All right, all right. Do you know he started as a management consultant? I read that Isn't that wild yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:39

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:41

Listen, bain, or I think Bain or BCG. Yeah, it was one of the.

Speaker 2: 43:45

It was one of the MBBs, I thought. I know, mel and I come from Deloitte and everyone's always trying to oh no, it was Deloitte. I'm like it was not Deloitte. We like to claim everything. What are you reading?

Speaker 1: 43:57

I am reading Mel Robbins' Let them Theory.

Speaker 3: 44:02

What do?

Speaker 2: 44:02

you think it is a great way to start the year. Nice, that's a tough one, like that whole idea.

Speaker 1: 44:12

I think that would be. It's tough, right, and I was actually having a little mini meltdown about something last week and I was complaining to my husband and he was like, well, honey, what about? Let them, let them. I was like, oh my God, yes, right, perfect. Was it free yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:28

Yeah, yeah. Who do you really admire? I?

Speaker 1: 44:33

really admire Michelle Obama. I think that she is authentic, I think she has demonstrated really good judgment and I think she lives her values. You know, she's not afraid to live them, and I think that's like one of the most important things we can do, especially as women, and stop trying to contort ourselves into what everyone wants us to be and be who we want to be.

Speaker 3: 44:57

I recently someone on social media said that they're going to RSVP as Michelle Obama going forward when they say no to things and she's not showing up to anything anymore.

Speaker 2: 45:06

There's been all these great memes of her just like no, no, thank you, yeah, no, and I also love the fact that I don't need to give you a reason.

Speaker 3: 45:16

No explanation needed.

Speaker 1: 45:18

That actually is something that I have been over the last couple of years, trying to break the habit of right. Like I always feel like well, what are you going to tell them about why you're not going? And I'm like why do I have to tell them anything? Why does anyone need to know why I'm not doing something?

Speaker 3: 45:33

No is a full explanation.

Speaker 1: 45:35

Yeah, Right, but I wasn't raised like that and for most of my life I always was like I can't do that because I have these other and I'm like you know, nobody cares, Nobody. I'm making a bigger deal out of this than anyone else. No, I can't do it, Sorry, Next time. So I think that it's just. It is something that we have to practice in order to get comfortable with it.

Speaker 2: 45:56

Yeah, and it's definitely a muscle. I'm always like worried about everybody else's feelings and it's like no one gives a shit. You can either come or you can't, it's fine.

Speaker 1: 46:02

And also, at the end of the day, like it doesn't make you nice or not nice to do that, right, it's just, it just is.

Speaker 2: 46:10

Yeah, last one, a piece of advice you'd want everyone to know a piece of advice you'd want everyone to know.

Speaker 1: 46:20

I think it's important to understand who you are and then be the best version of that person. We all spend so much time trying to fit in to different scenarios and situations that we sometimes get so lost and then we're not the best version of anything. So no, we're not perfect. Figure out like what's where do you get your joy, what, what makes you unhappy? And then try to be the best version of the person. That is that, and don't worry about what everyone else thinks. You know, frankly, they're going to talk about you anyway. So you know like there's just really no point worrying about it.

Speaker 2: 46:59

Yeah, let them yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:01

I mean, we all have to get inspiration from places. I'm hoping that you know, as I keep reading this book, that it is very inspiring to remind myself that I have no control over what other people think. I only have control over what I think.

Speaker 2: 47:17

Yeah, yeah. And how you live your life and how you take your energy, you know or channel your energy I think that's such sage advice is to figure out who you are and then just try to be the best version of that, and that's it.

Speaker 1: 47:28

No one's asking for any more than that. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 47:33

Love it, love it.

Speaker 3: 47:35

Thanks guys. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagram. So please, please, join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please like, rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going.

Speaker 2: 48:21

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 48:23

All right, Take care, friends. Bye friends, Bye friends.

Belonging & Unhiding at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Belonging & Unhiding at Work with Dr. Beth Kaplan & Ruth Rathblott

At work, we tweak our tone, filter our stories, and sideline parts of ourselves to fit in—and it’s exhausting. In this live episode, we’re joined by Ruth Rathblott, TEDx speaker and bestselling author, and Dr. Beth Kaplan, researcher and author of Braving the Workplace, to talk about the hidden labor of self-editing and why it’s costing us more than we think.

We dig into the emotional toll of always managing perceptions, the difference between fitting in and belonging, and what it takes to create workplaces where people can show up without shrinking and hiding. Whether you’re leading teams or just trying to feel like yourself from 9 to 5, this conversation will hit home.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Most of us are hiding something about ourselves and it's exhausting and it's lonely and we come up with a narrative that we think we're the only ones.

Speaker 2: 0:23

Hello friends, I am Mel and this is your Work, friends, and with me is my co-host, francesca.

Speaker 3: 0:32

Hello.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Okay, great introduction. And today we are so lucky to have two amazing experts with us and we're talking about belonging and unhiding at work. We're going to dive into what belonging and unhiding mean, what they look like in action, why people hide, the true costs of hiding, how to incorporate strategies to nurture belonging and unhiding in the workplace, especially in this climate. And we're going to leave some room for some listener Q&A, and our experts are going to give us their bold predictions on the way out. So let me introduce these lovely folks. With us is Ruth Rothblatt. She is my mentor through the National Speakers Association, but she is also an esteemed TEDx speaker, executive coach, consultant, bestselling, author of three books Single-Handedly Learning to Unhide and Embrace Connection and Unhide and Seek Live your Best Life, do your Best Work. She also was published in Time everybody, so check that out. She's acknowledged for her expertise in unlocking individual and team potential and just all around rad human being.

Speaker 2: 1:42

And also with us is Dr Beth Kaplan. She is the author of Braving the Workplace, which officially launched today. Get this book, it's amazing. She has also been recognized as a must read by the Next Big Idea Club. She's a researcher, writer, thought leader. She's worked with organizations like Salesforce, the University of Pennsylvania, georgetown University and the Carnegie Foundation. She's also developing a groundbreaking belonging tool with the University of Pennsylvania, georgetown University and the Carnegie Foundation. She's also developing a groundbreaking belonging tool with the University of Pennsylvania which will measure belonging and propensity to thrive. Welcome to you both and thanks for joining us today. Thank you, great to be with you.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Yeah, thanks for having this. I'm excited for this conversation.

Speaker 2: 2:23

Yes, Very awesome. I'd love to jump in right away and just learning more about your personal stories, how you got started in this work, what inspired you to start this work. So tell me a little bit more about you guys. Beth, I'll start with you.

Speaker 4: 2:38

Sure so excited to be with all of you today. And, yes, it is launch day, so how exciting is that? Thank you so much for cheering me on. So, believe it or not, I didn't set out to study belonging. However, like most researchers who studied their own trauma, I set out to understand why so many people, myself included, felt like they had to prove their worth just to exist in certain spaces, and the more I researched, the clearer it became belonging. It's always about belonging, and belonging is so complex and everyone has their own definition. So, for me, my exciting gift to the world was redefining and being able to give new tools and a language to something that's a little bit more complex than most of us understand. So, to me, I look at belonging as the innate desire to be part of something larger than ourselves, without sacrificing who we are.

Speaker 2: 3:30

I like it. I like the. Let's not sacrifice ourselves for the greater good? Oh, absolutely. How about you, Ruth?

Speaker 1: 3:36

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in terms of what Beth was just saying that resonates so deeply. I also did not start out to talk about unhiding in my life. I probably was the furthest from wanting to do that, as someone who hid for 25 years a big part of myself. I actually started in the nonprofit space. I was a nonprofit leader and CEO who was focused on young people and helping them express themselves, helping them think about college access and college success, mentoring and education, and it wasn't until I was in a conversation about actually DEI that I started to realize I had been hiding a huge part of myself and I had not shared that with the world. I hadn't shared it with myself, so I had been.

Speaker 1: 4:26

I was born with a disability. I hadn't shared it with myself, so I had been. I was born with a disability. I was born with a limb difference and for your listeners that means I was born missing my left hand, part of my left hand, and when I was 13, I started tucking it in my pocket. When you go off to a new high school, I think some of us have those flashes of what high school can feel like, where it's oh, I have to fit in. Do I make friends? Am I going to get along with people? Who am I going to sit with at lunch? Like all those feelings of high school. And I started hiding at that time and didn't realize the impact it was having on how I was showing up, how I was connecting with people, and didn't even know there was a tool or a conversation or word that could help unhide.

Speaker 1: 5:10

And so that's where I've spent the last few years really delving into that research, delving into what was the process of unhiding and then finding out honestly, beth and Mel and Francesca, that most of us are hiding something about ourselves, and it's exhausting and it's lonely and we come up with a narrative that we think we're the only ones.

Speaker 2: 5:31

Yeah, I don't think we are. I think that's, ruth I, why I love what you're doing so much, because you can't have belonging without unhiding yourself too. So I'm so excited to talk about how these things align together. And yeah, I think we've all can relate to that feeling of not belonging through high school for sure, but some I used to joke often that corporate environments can often feel like high school, where there are certainly cliques or in groups and out groups and navigating political landmines and then, for various reasons, to fit into those groups, you change yourself. I tried to hide my New England accent, but someone called out the R that I add on idea, just little things like that. I think we all do things to try to hide who we are. But today is the purpose of today is like how do we get people comfortable with thinking about belonging differently and what that could look like and how to unhide themselves? So I appreciate it. I'm going to hand it over to Francesca. She's going to dive into how we define it. So thanks.

Speaker 3: 6:30

I think both of these topics are so important in and of themselves, and I know, beth, you started by talking about how belonging is this innate desire to be something or to be part of something bigger than ourselves, without sacrificing ourselves, yes, which I think is your contribution there is there without sacrificing ourselves, which is critical, right. And then I think the unhiding piece, too, I'm curious about just to ground ourselves on how both of these things show up at work, the belonging piece and the unhiding piece. And, beth, I guess we're taking your definition. Is there anything in addition to your core definition about how this shows up at work?

Speaker 4: 7:09

Yeah, there's a lot to say here, and what's really most interesting and probably most confusing to people is they think the opposite of belonging is exclusion. That's one of the biggest misconceptions in the workplace, when in reality, the opposite of belonging is fitting in. Misconceptions in the workplace when in reality the opposite of belonging is fitting in. And why I believe that with so much passion is because fitting in means giving up a part of yourself to be part of something else. Where belonging doesn't require you to give up who you are, it means being who you are right.

Speaker 4: 7:40

A lot of us in the workplace in particular will hide. A lot of us in the workplace in particular will hide, as we know, different parts. They may mask or they may cover or flat out just hide, and we think it's going to make us feel like we belong harder, and that's just not true. It never ends well. I think Ruth's story is so brilliant and so powerful because, a it's real, b all of us can relate to something. And C we understand it right. So I'm sure, ruth, for you all of this is advanced common sense, because you've been living with it forever. And for listeners out there, there's probably something that you feel that you're hiding as well, or you're trying so hard to fit in that you're sacrificing what makes you, and that's going to take a toll. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 8:30

Ruth, are you seeing that too, as you're looking at like on hiding at work too? How are you seeing this come to fruition for people?

Speaker 1: 8:36

Yeah, I think it's what and, beth, you started it so perfectly in terms of that sacrificing yourself part, because that's where it shows up. And I think the other piece that, francesca, you were intimating also is that need to be in corporate. And how is it, how are you fitting in? Because that's a piece that we're told often like we want you to be a good culture fit, we want you to fit in. So that means sometimes sacrificing a piece of yourself, right, or downplaying a piece of yourself or covering a piece of yourself, and for some it actually means to what you said, beth. It means hiding part of yourself, and that comes from we all have a need to want to be accepted right. There's the acceptance piece to this, and I think about it in terms of why I look at.

Speaker 1: 9:22

What's the underlying piece of that? It comes from a fear of rejection, a fear of judgment, a fear of Really. I had a friend recently who said to me I haven't shared part of my health diagnosis out loud because I'm afraid of being pitied. So there's that fear there too. A lot of this is wrapped up in shame, this idea of if I share this part of myself, someone will reject me, someone will judge me. Someone won't give me a promotion because of it. I won't be seen as a leader. I've had women even in 2025, who don't share that they have kids at work because they're afraid of someone saying they're into their motherhood, they care more about their kids. They're not really on track for promotion. So I'm not going to share that part. And that's sacrificing yourself. That is absolutely sacrificing yourself to fit in, to go home. So I do. I think about it, how it shows up.

Speaker 1: 10:18

I think the other piece I would add on is in the workplace. Many of us were taught a very old school mentality around leadership and a framework around leadership. We were taught that you're not supposed to share things about yourself. You're supposed to keep people at arm's length. You're supposed to be, not be vulnerable and not share challenges. You're supposed to be strong, and the definition of strong was the idea of a mask of armor around yourself. And so that plays in, because then that's how our employees see us. So then they can't make mistakes, either because they're afraid oh, I'm going to be, I'm going to upset them or I'm not going to. I need to be perfect. There's a full affection piece to unhiding yeah, oh go ahead, beth, sorry, no, I was just thinking about you.

Speaker 4: 11:03

made me think, ruth, about duck syndrome. Right, that's when you start to see certain things evolve like duck syndrome, where people make it look so effortless and then they're peddling their little feet so hard to keep up in the name of resilience at times or fitting in or all the things, and we're all hardwired for deep human connection, but there's something about us that makes us feel unworthy of it. That seems to feel like the universal work experience these days.

Speaker 3: 11:30

Which is totally nuts, because I think about the archetype of leadership, ruth, that you were talking about, and what it takes to get there, beth, in terms of the duck syndrome, and it feels like we've all grown up in this archetype of the sports leader, the coach or the war hero. Right, you have to be Shackleton or you have to be the freaking coach from Miracle on Ice. It's one of these two.

Speaker 3: 11:52

And when you unpack any of those things. Yes, they demonstrated these certain behaviors, but then, behind the scenes, they were masking shit too, and so this is all built on a farce from Get.

Speaker 4: 12:04

Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is you said something that caught my attention. We would like to mirror these performance coaches, but here's the thing Performance coaches are invested in their athletes' health and their well-being. Where they'll stop you if you're overdoing it or you're going to burn yourself out. Workplace rewards it. The more sweat and tears you put into it, you're getting promoted, girl. And the thing is it makes us want to work harder and we also think that our sacrifice will make us belong harder, and that's why sacrificial belonging makes sense to most people. It's giving up a part of yourself, consciously or subconsciously, for the greater good and, spoiler alert, it never works. Never. It doesn't make you feel any better.

Speaker 1: 12:48

No. And to add on to that too, I think there's a piece around. A symptom of it is also overachieving right or overcompensating. This need to keep the duck feet going, or sometimes even to loud yourself with in terms of this is how much I'm doing Like this is how much I'm constantly overachieving or overcompensating so that I get ahead, so that nobody will look at that other part of myself that I'm hiding in some ways, and also then I don't have to share it with anyone, I can overcompensate for it and it's exhausting when you think about psychological safety and its role in nurturing belonging or creating spaces where people can unhide.

Speaker 2: 13:43

What does that? What does good psychological safety look like in the workplace?

Speaker 4: 13:47

to support it it's a good question. I think psychological safety is the feeling of being safe, no matter what environment you are to be able to speak up to speak your truth, to speak truth to power, and I think it's all the things. The interesting thing is, in order to have a strong sense of belonging, psychological safety needs to be table stakes. It doesn't mean you'll necessarily have that sense of belonging or maybe this aspirational sense of belonging that you may be searching for, but you really can't go through the workplace feeling that belonging uncertainty, for example which is the silent killer and feel safe at the same time. Those thoughts don't exist together and most psychological safety is based on a positive. So when you're starting with a negative and you're trying to combat it with negative forces, like sacrifice or any thwarted feelings in general, it's going to end badly, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:44

It's funny when I speak, I often ask people, the organizer, I say what does success look like? When I finish the speech, what will?

Speaker 4: 14:53

it look like.

Speaker 1: 14:53

They say oh, there's an awareness raised that people will feel like they're digging into themselves but also their coworkers. And then one organizer said to me it would be great if everyone could unhide something. And I said absolutely not. And she said what do you mean? I said I'm not trying to create a Jerry Springer viral moment here with people. That's not the goal. I want people to feel safe. I said the only way that I will even consider doing this is if the leader, the CEO, goes first. And the organizer said that's never going to happen.

Speaker 1: 15:31

I said I know, so why would we expect others to unhide if it's not safe? Because I really spend a lot of time in my space thinking about how was I as a leader, when did I create that psychological safety for others? When did I model it myself in terms of creating that space? Because it is about leaders going first in terms of creating psychological safety, being vulnerable, creating that safe place. And I think the thing that I sorry I would just add on to this is the idea of sometimes we hide and it keeps people feeling comfortable and safe. Also, there is a payoff to hiding in terms of creating safety and psychological safety for others, sometimes because maybe it's too much, and so I think about it on both ends. Why do we hide? And then, how are those around us? How are we creating that safe, comfortable space for them?

Speaker 4: 16:25

Absolutely. I'm going to chime in because we do those things on purpose, because the hiding sometimes feels better than facing something head on that may feel really uncomfortable. I talk about this a lot in the book about the different disorders that are related to the workplace, and one of them happens to be avoidance disorder, and I would raise my hand and tell you that I'm amongst the worst, in fact, in a way that makes every leader that I've ever had feel better about me. There's sometimes when I've had leaders in the past I haven't maybe talked to them for a month or so and a one-on-one will come up and I'm like there's just too much to say and they're so busy. So I'll go to them and I'll cancel and I'll be like I don't have that much and you're busy, they love it. It's almost like it's addictive. The last leader I had that I said that and I did that with said to me you, just you're the best.

Speaker 4: 17:14

I can't understand how I got so lucky and, truthfully, what I had to force myself to the next time was to let her know that I was avoiding her and it was incredibly uncomfortable because she did nothing to warrant it. I need to also make that very clear it was on me. It was a story I was telling myself that she was too busy, that I wasn't as important, that she had bigger fish to fry. I could keep going and going, but the reality of the situation is that I was not comfortable communicating with her because so much time kept passing. So I'm sure there's other people out there that are listening. That may get that very well and, like I said, it's often rewarded because you're giving time back in someone's mind.

Speaker 2: 18:00

I think we've all been there, right when we're like, I just don't want to bother them, so I'm not going to ask. I'll suffer in silence over here it's fine, but death by a million, it's fine where the hell am I going with this Is where is the line Like?

Speaker 3: 18:26

if it's psychological safety, like a bell curve right when you want to create as much safety for people to feel like they're comfortable, but not too much safety where they're too comfortable. Does this make sense?

Speaker 4: 18:36

Yes, it does, because there's comfort, and then there's also self-awareness. A lot of times people ask me that all the time, is it safe to bring your authentic self to work? Yes, but you should not be in spots that you shouldn't be loyal, in spots that your brain can't get you out of. And it's the same thing with psychological safety. Knowing and being self-aware has to accompany it. It really does. There's things that are just not appropriate, and those are typically not necessarily related to your identity.

Speaker 2: 19:07

Or necessarily right for the workplace. That's right, yeah, when you think about a professional environment versus a personal environment.

Speaker 3: 19:15

Ruth, do you feel like you could bring your authentic self to work?

Speaker 1: 19:18

No, and I you know what. I don't even actually always advise it quite yet, because I think that we're not totally set up for it. I think that sometimes in the workplace we don't have the coaches and the supports and the leaders who are willing to go first and the support that it requires, because what it may mean to bring my authentic self to work if I'm someone and maybe it's one of your listeners as well is bringing my depression forward right.

Speaker 1: 19:44

That authentic self. It may mean the caretaking responsibilities that I have at home, that I'm afraid to tell somebody that because somebody is going to say, oh, you know what, you're more interested in taking care of your child or your parent or your child or somebody in your life, and so I'm not totally convinced that we're there yet. I would love that to be the North Star, where we could bring our best selves to work, because that's what I'm invested in is how do we bring our best selves to work? I will say, even with that though there's a caveat to me in terms of my work that I talk about strategic hiding that sometimes feels okay to hide part of yourself because it's not advantageous to whether you're in a lawsuit or you're in a negotiation or you're in something that bringing your authentic self would damage or hurt you in terms of that space. So I think about it as strategic hiding. How do we allow for ourselves to discern when we unhide, when we create that space for ourselves? Is it a safe environment?

Speaker 1: 20:48

I was at a speed dating thing recently and I was thinking about my hand and did it feel safe to share it with people in a seven minute cycle where you're going around and checking in. Did it feel safe in that moment? It's about having agency, about when do we choose to unhide, when do we choose to hide. So I get the choice of when do I share that out? And I think that's the same with any aspect, whether it's we hide parts of our past, whether it's we hide parts of our present, or even I've had people share that they hide parts of their dreams and aspirations. So it's that when do we share it so that we can feel supported? That's when I think about spreading, and how is it holding us back? What are some of?

Speaker 2: 21:30

the like signals that someone can look for or kind of pay attention for to or for in order to make those split decision thing, split decisions around whether it's safe to unhide, or what does that look like for both of you?

Speaker 4: 21:50

That's a really great question. So I, through the conversation, I was thinking about one of the types of belonging which is called dissimulated belonging, and it's confusing to people. Truthfully, dissimulated belonging is when you do feel a sense of belonging, but maybe not in the context you're in. Let's just say that Ruth is a phenomenal employee, but she's just not the corporate cheerleader and, by the way, she doesn't want to be and she's happy. But we all know the workplace wants corporate cheerleaders. We want everyone rolling out the drink cart for happy hour and we want everyone to be able to go after work. After you've just spent nine hours with your nearest and dearest and spend another five hours with them, and there's some people that get their purpose outside of work, which sounds blasphemous to some of us. So dissimulated belonging is a great example of people that are very happy with their sense of belonging, right, and they may just need to get out of there because why not? But it's never acceptable to say that right.

Speaker 4: 22:45

I hear time and time again there was a work event and I need to go work out after work, but I lied and I said I have to get home because my commute is too long and I'm going to pick up work when I get home and then everyone's like oh, that makes sense.

Speaker 4: 22:58

And why should we have to hide the fact that we don't necessarily want to be a workhorse, because that's what gets us promoted, or to be seen better in people's eyes. It's really sad when the state of the world is that that is a factor in promotion. I know you both know this very well. I think what we used to say in the early 2000s which makes me cringe every time is we would be at the promotion table with I don't know, it might've been like a 50 bucks. Then now it's two bucks or four bucks and we'd be like can you get a drink with him? Guys, remember that one or dissimulated belongers. They have a sense of belonging. It's just not in your workplace and, by the way, they don't feel bad about it. It's usually everyone around them and that's yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:46

I've also had the. They're accused of not really being in it. If they don't go to the happy hour, or it's like this. It's a, and then it becomes a culture fit issue. Oh, they don't really want it.

Speaker 4: 23:55

Some people also don't want to hang with their boss after work. Yeah, boss is not. It's never the most comfortable situation and it doesn't matter how close you are, because sometimes that's even harder in that right. So I think that's one great example of hiding that takes place. That's appropriate, because we're not all built the same and we all get different motivations, and most of us don't like to share when it's not work that it's their motivating factor.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Yeah, sometimes bosses don't want to go to the happy hour. Oh yeah, so I totally understand that, and sometimes they do, and then they're like nobody wants me here. But, I think the other piece to some of this is, as leaders and managers, we focus a lot on performance.

Speaker 1: 24:40

We focus on productivity and sometimes we forget about people Right, and we make a lot of assumptions about behavior rather than checking in, and so I'm a big proponent of what do those pause check-ins look like, right, when you first sit down with someone with your full agenda, how do you create space to find out how they are, how you can support them? How do you slow it down a little bit? Because I think again, I sometimes I own my leadership style for years. How do we slow it down a little bit so that we can have the conversation about how are you doing? How can I support you? What's going on?

Speaker 1: 25:16

I'm noticing some things in your work, just so people have a space, a safe space, to be able to talk about it, and that it's consistent, because there's definitely research out there. That's talking about consistency, and there's also research about I think I guess the first piece to all of this Francesca and Mel and Beth is naming it right. So we have to be able to name that. Hiding is universal. Most of us are doing it at some point.

Speaker 1: 25:39

What does it look like? How is it holding you back? Deloitte did a study 60% of people are hiding. Randstadt, the HR survey, did a survey recently that said that 68% of Gen Z the ones that have all the apps and all the social media that we think oh, they're out there all the time they talk about 68% of them are hiding and they don't trust their leaders to unhide too, so they just keep their noses down in their work and they're like I'll get through it. That is not existence, that is not freedom, that is not joy, that is not belonging.

Speaker 2: 26:10

It's got to be really bad for business too, when you think about it, right, because what are you missing out on by not nurturing these types of environments? I'm going to hand it over to Francesca to talk about that, because I'd love to hear about the cost.

Speaker 3: 26:24

Yeah, I'm going to start, I'm going to try to say I want to separate these two because I'm curious if there is a difference in the cost. And I'm going to start, ruth, with you, without a hiding piece of it what is the cost of hiding at work? And you can take that from the employee, from the org, from the manager. What's the cost?

Speaker 1: 26:39

Yeah, I think there's a personal cost and I think there's a professional cost. I like to split them. The personal cost is it's exhausting. It takes a toll on our mental and our physical health. That is a big piece of it. It is lonely in terms of you think you're the only one, so you sit there and you're like, oh, nobody's going to understand this. So there's this loneliness, isolation piece to it. And then there's also feeling disconnected. That's that belonging piece that I think Beth talks about and I want to even hear more and dig into that piece. So there's that personal piece.

Speaker 1: 27:10

And then from a professional piece, when we're hiding, we don't feel as engaged right Our company, even as leaders, we're not as engaged. We don't feel the same sense of loyalty to the company that we're working for. The retention suffers. That's a big piece of when you're hiding.

Speaker 1: 27:26

And then the last piece, which I think is probably one of the most critical pieces in terms of the bottom line of any business, is innovation. Innovation suffers when you are so sitting there worried about how much if somebody finds out this thing about me, or wow, I didn't go to the right school, or my education's not high enough, or my finances aren't what they're supposed to be, or my relationship status. It is preoccupying your mind that you don't get a chance to be as innovative and as creative as you need to be, and I can tell you, as someone who was born with a difference, I spent my life being creative, but when I hid that, that got taken away because I was so spent so much time in that other space of hiding, and so that retention, that engagement and that innovation are lacking, and even our leadership then lacks because we don't feel connected to our teams.

Speaker 3: 28:20

Yeah, and those are big costs and all things that are absolutely needed, right, yeah?

Speaker 4: 28:26

So I can tell you that employee engagement costs the US anywhere between $450 and $550 billion annually. That's pretty sad and crazy. And if we want to dive a little deeper, when it's loneliness driven or stress related in particular, it costs $154 billion annually are stress-related in particular, it costs $154 billion annually. That's just unbelievable. It feels like the things we're putting in place are really killing a fly with a hammer. There's nothing more to that, and a lot of the times these things could be fixed with just simple care. That's what's scary.

Speaker 4: 29:00

Employees that feel excluded are 50% more likely to leave than those who feel a strong sense of belonging. Okay, so we think about this. We think of belonging uncertainty, which I always call the silent killer, which leads to presenteeism, where employees are physically present, they're all mentally checked out, and there's so many varieties of disengagement when care costs us very little and I always say to people that feel like unhiding or belonging is a bit hokier because it has anything to do with emotions Then if you don't want to, if you want to look at it in a bottom lines numbers kind of game, then look at the disengagement and look how much it's costing you. We used to say something like it costs one to two times a person's salary and now they're estimating it's four times. Oh wow, because it goes beyond the onboarding and the retention, the recruiting and the different efforts. It cycles back to the top level vision and problems the company's face.

Speaker 3: 29:56

All those like the 2x, the 3x, the 4x numbers. I think what's interesting about those is one is that scales right. It scales from individual contributor up to exact right and I believe me, I've met disengaged C-level folks. This isn't just a manager or a frontline person, this is all the way to the top, which is massive. The other thing I'm curious about, too, is especially when you have a leader who's disengaged, a leader that doesn't feel like they belong, like that's got to cast a shadow in an organization. I just I can't. I cannot believe that you could have a disengaged leader or someone that doesn't feel like they belong or someone that feels like they're hiding, yet they're creating an organization that has that.

Speaker 4: 30:38

Do you see that? Yeah, it's in the research that I've done. What happens to the leader, and I will say this. So psychological safety does focus around the fact that the leader needs to build that safety, but what happens when the leader needs to build it for themselves?

Speaker 4: 30:52

I often feel like the workplace demands so much of leaders, and what about their safety? That being said, I know that the leaders are mostly causing the harm, so I'm not naive in that sense. But when leaders themselves don't feel a sense of belonging, it permeates in so many different ways, including a lot of armchair therapy. That happens with your subordinates who don't know what they're doing. And since people look to their leaders in times of change, yes, it's killing the innovation that Ruth talked about but it's also can be really soul crushing because, unfortunately, people think their leaders are better than them. They look to their leaders to know more than them, and that's just not always the case.

Speaker 4: 31:31

That's why, in truthfulness, we talked about leadership training. But I'll tell you, I'm one of those people that never received leadership training until I was like 10 to 15 years. In. Leaders are typically made, not born, that way, and so most of us were promoted because we were just really good at our jobs. So there's this unfair standard, and now, especially, most workplaces expect their leaders to have an element of psychology that we've never been trained for.

Speaker 3: 31:59

Yeah, nor do we have time for right. It's Mel and I are pulling the longitudinal data on, like the amount of direct reports managers have right now has almost doubled Like you have more to do. You have more resources or more direct reports, more on your plate, and now, all of a sudden, you need to be a therapist and maybe you went through manager training and you're not getting leadership training until you're a VP or an SVP or an EVP, so everyone in between is like fighting for themselves, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 32:29

And the workforce is changing too.

Speaker 1: 32:32

In terms of newer to the workforce, there is a level of transparency that they're demanding from leadership in a very interesting and intense way, really political correct here. That's a piece of it. And then also, you have, for the first time, one of the blessings of what came out of COVID is the opportunity to talk about mental health for the first time, especially as leaders, and honestly even owning it for themselves, right, and being able to talk about it. And yet how? To your point, leaders are required to do a lot right now and employees are demanding, and yet we have this old, this way that we were trained, if we did get training, or even if we just watched leaders ahead of us. In terms of that osmosis, training of this is the way leaders are supposed to be, and it hasn't caught up in terms of how and that's why, where I spend my time, even like you, beth, thinking about graduate schools, right, or even where that college is thinking about what do leaders need and what are they going to need in terms of this work?

Speaker 3: 33:33

And organizationally, how do we set up systems that they can actually operate within too? It's like the two different components of it for sure, right.

Speaker 4: 33:40

Think about all the return to work, all the things that leaders have to deal with. If you're a leader who works from home and then you have because you're in a remote office, then you have to enforce other people Right After. You've just talked about the fact of how great it is to have no commute or the things that you can get done or how you're supplementing that time with things that are healthy for you, and then you have to take that away from others.

Speaker 2: 34:03

It's pretty taxing things that are healthy for you and then you have to take that away from others.

Speaker 2: 34:07

It's pretty taxing. It's funny when we were coming out of COVID we had a friend share a story with us like the catalyst, as we started to talk about building this podcast, which the first episode idea officially was something like Gucci sweaters and lake house dreams, because I think our friend mentioned they were in an all handshands meeting about returning to office while the leader was in their second lake house talking about being at their lake house wearing a very expensive Gucci sweater and just not thinking about the impact on folks with what that does for their team. Love to hear what you can do as an individual, if, if you're a leader, or really what orgs should be doing. So we talked a little bit about individual right and what it means to bring your authentic self and how you can evaluate that. But what other advice would you give to individuals here who are struggling with hiding or struggling with belonging? What advice would you give or strategies to those individuals? Ruth, you want to go first.

Speaker 1: 35:29

No, you can go first. I definitely have a framework, so I'm ready for that.

Speaker 4: 35:33

So if we're talking about individuals, I like to say that you control the narrative. So everyone wants one-on-one time with their leaders. Build the agenda, make sure that you're taking control of that. I often say the exact same thing to leaders is that's your employees' time with you. So, while you may come into the meeting with at least like 15 checklist items you need to do because you need to report to someone else that's their time with you. Your job in that meeting is to meet them where they're at.

Speaker 4: 36:04

The number one thing that our employees want from leaders is care. Right, it's not, I wish. Every single time I hear this, people are like oh trust, oh respect, and it's always care. And care has a really large spectrum thoughtfulness, candor, advocacy. There's so many components to it. And when you tell, when you as an individual go to your manager and you're able to have a conversation with them about what it means to be successful in role, it also is a wake-up call for them to say what is successful as a leader, right, how are people going to want to follow me?

Speaker 4: 36:40

So I always say to individuals is to build the agenda and to make sure that your leaders are sticking with it. At the same time, leaders, when you're opening up your calls with people, the first thing on your mouth should be what can I do for you? What interference can I remove? And as you walk through that agenda with them, start to also remember what's important to that person. You need to get to know them outside of this little Zoom box here and you need to be able to know what's important. And that may be. You may be thinking to yourself I don't know what they do on the weekends and I don't know what's important to them, but that's not what I mean. What values do they have? What do they like about their jobs? And make sure at all costs that you do something that helps light them up.

Speaker 3: 37:23

Really huge.

Speaker 4: 37:24

You want to always make sure that you're doing things that show them that you know who they are, and that's really one of the biggest things that helps change our sense of longing in the workplace.

Speaker 1: 37:36

Ruth, yeah, and I think where Beth and I definitely overlap is that it's a choice, right. It's a powerful choice that you get to make, and I think that holds true with unhiding as well. And for me there's a four-step framework that I created in whether it's an individual, or I was just meeting with someone who inherited a really toxic quote, unquote team and I said try this framework. And so the first step is acknowledging it, right Only, like creating a space of awareness, like whether it's again as an individual or whether it's a leader or whether it's managing a team. It's the idea of acknowledge what's happening, like create awareness, and I, you can do that through journaling, you can do that through therapy, through meditation, through just taking a silent moment to be a little bit what I call self-centered, right, like centering on yourself and think about that space. The second piece to it is inviting someone in, and I imagine when I say that second step, somebody immediately comes to your mind, right, somebody, whether it's an HR leader, whether it's your manager, whether it's a coworker, whether it's a friend, to say, hey, here's what's happening. When that person came to me with a toxic work environment, I said what's beautiful about what you're doing is you're inviting each person in one-on-one, not making this a group, collective thing, but starting to talk about individual behavior, talking about inviting them in. Here's what I'm seeing, same with hiding how am I showing up? What am I holding back? How is hiding, holding me back and inviting that one person in that you can share that with? I imagine the people I think about as the cheat sheet is somebody who shows empathy, somebody who asks questions with kindness and curiosity, someone who's willing to reveal a little bit about themselves and share their own journey with you, someone who asks questions. That's the person I'd be looking for in that second step.

Speaker 1: 39:34

The third step, after you've acknowledged it and you've invited someone in, is about how do you then build community? And we've all seen those employee resource groups or business resource groups. They actually can If you step back. They have a lot of power because there's a shared experience in terms of people who have gone through them. There you can find meetups and community organizations, finding spaces where you don't feel so alone in this. These steps are small, but they're powerful.

Speaker 1: 40:04

And then the fourth step is scaring out your own journey so that somebody else can see themselves in you and they can start on their own journey of unhiding. They can start on their own journey. That same leader who said I have this toxic work environment, start on their own journey. That same leader who said I have this toxic work environment. I said, once you've gotten through a lot of it and gotten your team to the place they need to be, I can imagine and I would probably bet money on this, and I don't bet money easily but that there is another team within the organization that could use what you just did to their benefit in terms of creating their team and improving their team. So, sharing out that story so that somebody else can learn and start their own journey, and mapping it out, that's where I think about unhiding.

Speaker 2: 40:46

I think that's really powerful. And what you were just sharing actually made me think of Beth One identifying the one person to share it with. So I love Ruth like that. How do you identify that person? What are the markers? But then, beth, it made me think of your story with your boss. What, just bringing it back to that personal story, what gave you the courage to finally share, what made it safe for you the avoidance.

Speaker 4: 41:11

For me, what made it safe was probably less to do about her and more to do about me. I was just going, I was going out of my mind. I I'm so tired of being so nervous before every one-on-one, and I did wind up telling her that and she was like me. I'm the one who makes you nervous, and we had a great conversation around it. I'm like you make everyone nervous. She's like you've got thick skin and at the same time, maybe I didn't.

Speaker 4: 41:39

When it comes to her, and what she had told me which was really wonderful and showed me care, maybe not in the direction she was meaning it was that she sees me as a person that she wants to build thicker, even thicker skin with. So every single time I go to hide, she's going to stop me. So every single time I go to hide, she's going to stop me. And it's not because she wants to control me. It's because she really wants me to be a better version of myself, because I told her I need to be a better version. So she's not controlling me or making me be something I'm not. She's, in fact, bringing out a better part of me and let's be honest, isn't that why we all got into leadership?

Speaker 4: 42:15

Because you want to coach and grow people? I did for the money, yeah, because you love filling out a million forms. That's right. It just does it for you, but that's it, and I think what was really fascinating is that changed our entire dynamic. It really did. I think that most people weren't very honest with her and they were just yesing her and I think, out of everyone I've ever met, she's the last person you do that with and most of our leaders don't want to be. Yes, they really do want honesty from people, but her entire conversation that's just not always easy to do. Yeah, Scary.

Speaker 3: 42:51

The one thing I have always thought about as a leader is it's really those one-on-ones are so important and when you start moving them or canceling them, or if somebody starts canceling them with me, that's like a non-negotiable Like we are. This is your time, this is sacred time, Because I think that in and of itself shows care just to keep those consistent and keep those on the calendar. So it's meaningful to you as the leader as well.

Speaker 4: 43:20

Oh yeah, consistency is care. That's absolutely true. Honestly, one of my best and brightest I've ever had the fortune of leading said that to me. He said you give me such anxiety because you move meetings. And I know that you have valid reasons and I thought to myself oh my goodness, an excuse, no matter how many, how valid, is a bad book. And I've never moved that person's one-on-one, and it's been years and years and, by the way, we still talk about it. He still can't believe what the impact had and as a leader, I had no idea. So, leaders, if you're out there listening, don't change your one-on-one times as much as you can keep them consistent.

Speaker 1: 44:06

It means the world to people, yeah, and if you put your hand up to say I just need five minutes, go find the person after the five minutes so that they can know that you do want to see them and care about find them. Yeah, because I think we also. I think what you're also touching on, beth, is especially in the example you gave is sometimes we have that unreliable narrator in our head right that tells us that this person is this or I'm this to them, or like we don't, and we don't pause to check it out. We don't stop and get the actual this is a tough one actual, accurate information. Yes, I didn't add another A on there, but that's a piece of it is this unreliable narrator who is giving us false information, sometimes trying to keep us safe because, oh, maybe that boss was super scary at times or maybe you know what you weren't ready for a meeting, but it's the idea of yeah, how do we check out that unreliable narrator?

Speaker 2: 44:56

I always ask my coaching clients to ask themselves what evidence do I have to show this is true? What evidence do you have? And often when they pause to think about that, they're like you know what? I really don't have evidence to prove that. So it's such a just even that one question can help with that. I'd love to move to like organization-wide, because leaders will wait for the the last because they get dumped on everything. So, from an org standpoint because I do think it starts at the org level, they set the tone right. When you think about how organizations can implement either strategies or policy, workplace policies around, how we work around here, what are some things that they can do to better foster environments where people have greater belonging or can feel safe to unhide. What does that look like? Or what have you seen? That's good.

Speaker 4: 45:48

I would take a look at taking all the unwritten rules and writing them down. It's one of the first things I say. It's the easiest low-hanging fruit Things like PTO. It's the easiest low-hanging fruit Things like PTO, which is meant to de-stress people, stresses them out terribly. Oh, my goodness, I had three weeks before, but the second I take more than one week. Someone jumps all over me. There's so many things that just need a bit of clarification, because clear is kind. So all the unwritten rules and all the social contracts start breaking them and writing them down.

Speaker 1: 46:20

And I think I would add on to it unwritten rules and all the social contracts, start breaking them and writing them down, and I think I would add on to it, I guess, the thing that as you're talking about like organizations, though, are people right. So it's like leader. I do look at leaders and I do think about leadership, and I think it's a two-way street. If leaders are willing, if we're asking leaders to be vulnerable and do all these things, employees have to meet us also halfway, right, like it has to be. It's a two way street, and I do. I think that there's a space around training.

Speaker 1: 46:48

I do think that there's a space, like it's the dirty little secret that even most CEOs I know have executive coaches. Right, there's a reason for it, and yet they don't talk about it, because it's like the idea that, oh, you're weak if you have that, or you don't know what you're doing, and yet why is it such a dirty little secret? Why are people hiding it? Like it's that space of this is. Actually it's like people who go to therapy being like, oh, I don't want to talk about going to therapy, it actually makes you stronger. So we can start to normalize leadership, executive coaching and training and what those pieces and starting with people. That's why going back to colleges and education around leadership is so important, because that's that informs the organization, because an organization is just as a typically just a spreadsheet or a what do you call it A hierarchy and or building. It's actually who's in there and are they thinking about these topics that we're bringing up today?

Speaker 2: 47:42

Because they're critical. They really are. I agree with you. I think recently I think it was Culture Amp they put out an article, that famous quote oh, people don't leave organizations, they leave their direct managers. They did further research on that and found that even if you had the worst manager or the best manager in the world, you're more likely to leave if senior leadership doesn't model the behavior that supports leaders. So, like, when I think of like organization wide, I think of that like C-suite senior leadership team, that really it starts with them from the top. And I couldn't agree with you more, Ruth, about I wish coaching just started from the day you join through the day you leave as an alumni, Like it's just like therapy, like it just supports you to be better and to be better with other people.

Speaker 1: 48:27

And then sometimes isn't seen as it shouldn't be seen as a punishment, like you're not punished because you actually see an executive coach, or we recommend that. It's the idea of yeah, and I'm even I don't know if I'm totally even convinced that it's always about senior leadership. Sometimes it is. It's the training about how do we value the space. Yeah, I think there's a lot here to unpack.

Speaker 3: 48:49

I actually feel like, given what is going on in the world right now, I would arm every C-level executive with a coach, with a therapist, if they were ready for it and if they wanted it. But I do not understand how you can go through and lead an organization in these times and not need both of those services at least every three to six months. I really don't. Yeah, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Speaker 2: 49:25

Okay, we have a few listener Q&As and we have about nine minutes left. We'll get to that and then we'll close off on some bold predictions. How does that sound? Love it.

Speaker 3: 49:30

All right, francesca, I am great. We have four questions that came in. I will do my best to read them and then whoever would like to answer them. Fantastic, here we go. I've been told to bring my full self to work, but when I speak up or show more personality, I sometimes feel like it backfires. I worry about being judged or seen as unprofessional. How can I balance authenticity with workplace expectations?

Speaker 1: 49:52

I can try this one.

Speaker 1: 49:54

This is where I spend time. I do. I think it's about finding a culture fit in terms of your authentic self. Where will they value that space of you? And if they're not valuing it, I'm not saying you have to leave every job, but are there spaces within that organization that you can be your best self? Because I don't even know if it's.

Speaker 1: 50:12

Again, authentic is the right word. I think it's how do you bring your best self where you get the support you need? And if you're not getting it from a manager or your coworkers, are there other opportunities to find it? And have you asked? Have you gone through the process of asking?

Speaker 1: 50:26

And again, it's not trying to make it a viral moment, it's about trying to think about taking those small steps. So how can you get the support you need around that best self or where you need support? So it's I think about it as small steps and thinking about where are those safe environments where you can be vulnerable or where others are modeling that? And then leaning into those employee resource groups, leaning into the spaces or coworkers where you can and, if all else fails, find a new job. And I'm not saying that lightly, I am serious when I say it is find a culture fit where they do appreciate the different perspectives and different experiences that you bring, because that's the work. The North Star here is how do we create workplaces where they do value different experiences and different perspectives?

Speaker 3: 51:15

I also love that you said about asking too, because I think a lot of times people think it's just going to show up or arrive or be obvious, and so much of the time you have to do a little digging before you start looking. Potentially too, beth, anything to add to that?

Speaker 4: 51:30

I always say that if you're worried about the way you're coming across or the way you're showing up, ask advice or ask someone, one person that you trust, whether that's your leader or it's a trusted friend how am I showing up? Because I'm getting a little anxious when I say X, y or Z, do a little gut check, never hurts, yeah.

Speaker 3: 51:47

Yeah, love it. These are small, very doable things that can really have a very big impact. I love that. All right, I'm going to pull this over to you, beth, for the first one, because we're talking about belonging. My company talks a lot about belonging, but in practice it feels like only certain types of people truly fit in. I'm not sure if I'm being too sensitive or if there's a real issue. How can employees tell if a workplace genuinely supports authenticity, and what should they do if they don't feel safe being themselves? I'll start with you, beth.

Speaker 4: 52:16

Been there, done that. So I always like to say, when I talk about it a lot in the book, what does alignment look like, or misalignment? If a company is telling you that their biggest values are trust, respect and the color purple right, there's so many different things Are they wearing purple? Do they trust one another and they're respecting? So when it becomes lip service, that's when we all have that deep disconnect. So you have to really determine whether or not you feel that pull or you feel aligned to it.

Speaker 4: 52:47

If you're not feeling it there, then you really have some things to think about. Whether you're, you know, like when you become in an impasse, our first instinct is to quit. Right, but livelihood is tied to our jobs. That's not realistic for everyone and here's the problem If we don't resolve it within the last place we left, it's going to come with us to every other job.

Speaker 4: 53:08

Okay, so I talk a lot about some nasty bosses I've had in the past and I've talked about the fact that one still follows me. They do, he does, and I can't help it, and I've even made strides to reach out to him and it feels like I was kind to someone that punched me in the face, if that makes sense. So there's ways to do it that you feel that you are going with your gut and you're trusting yourself, but quitting is not one of them, unfortunately. In this situation, I would do a little bit more of a deeper analysis around what the fit looks like against your values and then, if it's not a fit, then I would slowly start to look, because if it's eroding your sense of self or your worth or your identity or your sense of mattering, those are all triggers that it is time to leave. You just need to do it in a time and a space that's going to make your life easier.

Speaker 3: 53:59

All right, I'm going to do one last question just for the sake of time here. Sure, let's get into politics. Just kidding, okay. With the current political climate and companies pulling back on DEI efforts which we know, sometimes belonging and hiding is lumped in there with DEI sometimes I've noticed a shift in how belonging and inclusion are talked about, or not talked about, at work. How should employees and leaders navigate these changes while still advocating for workplaces where everyone feels valued?

Speaker 4: 54:28

So my first bet is to stop shifting to belonging and I know that's really funny from a belonging researcher. But when we impose belonging, there's a whole lot of performance belonging that starts to happen. Right, and, by the way, corporations are not that creative. But when we impose belonging, there's a whole lot of performance belonging that starts to happen. Right, and, by the way, corporations are not that creative. If I hear one more you belong here slogan as the theme of 2025, because the thing is, it's not that easy and belonging is not something that others decide for you. That's inclusion.

Speaker 4: 54:54

So if you want to make it a more inclusive environment, I welcome it. If you want to tell people they belong, I caution you, because that is a beautiful sentiment, but it's not always the case. And then employees feel really bad or like it's just them or something's wrong with them and that's not the outcome we want for them, right? I don't think companies set out to ruin people's lives I don't but at the same time, those are the outcomes. So I personally think and I do have research that really pulls them apart from one another Diversity, equity, inclusion, equality they're all so important. Don't lump them together and don't call them belonging just because you want to really substitute for something that is being unfortunately torn away from people.

Speaker 3: 55:37

Yeah, that's a brilliant point, ruth. What would you add there?

Speaker 1: 55:41

Yeah, I would recognize that this is happening. I think that's a so I'm glad you asked the question because if it hadn't come up, I think that it impacts both the work that Beth and I do and also the work that you are doing, mel and Francesca. In terms of DEI specifically and I think that's it's funny I was on a panel a year ago and it was before a lot of this real serious backlash. There was beginning backlash that we've been feeling and people feeling excluded in some ways. What DEI didn't do well is it had some people feeling excluded from the conversation and there was a really powerful speaker that I was on the panel with and he said you know what?

Speaker 1: 56:17

I'm going to start calling it a humanity practice, because nobody can start to argue with that, and I thought that was really beautiful because we are all about humanity. We're about different. How do we start to again value those different perspectives and those different experiences from employees and to leaders and to the organization? How do we start to really create space for that? Because that is going to drive business, that is going to be the impact on innovation and creativity, that impacts retention and engagement. Those differences that we bring are actually the gifts that we have. So I know that DEI, quote, unquote is going away and this kind of falls into the last my bold prediction. But I'm going to these bold predictions.

Speaker 2: 57:22

I have some targeted questions first. So, ruth, I don't know if we'll get to it right away, but I want to save it, so we have to make time for that. Five years from now, guys are workplaces getting this right. What do you think?

Speaker 1: 57:39

Think about 2020 to 2025, right. What do you think? Think about 2020 to 2025, right, that's a five-year segment, right. What did we get right and what did we not? Based on a huge pandemic. So I think about culture that way too.

Speaker 4: 57:51

What are we going?

Speaker 1: 57:51

to oh, that's a tough one. I don't know. I don't. I think if you had asked me yeah, if you had asked us a month ago, maybe six weeks ago.

Speaker 1: 58:06

I'd be different. Maybe I don't. I think that there's going to be a. I think we are going to get it right, because I yeah, I'm going to be positive on this one, I'm going to own it, because I think there are enough of us that are upset and seeing what's happening and we've had a taste of what it can look like to value difference and what it can be like to feel like we are included. And I'm scared to say, beth, but we have a taste of it, right, so we can't go back. When you see something, you can't unsee it, and so we've seen a taste of what it is. And I think that there are enough of us that keep pushing the envelope and don't get scared, because that fear is real, even not wanting to sign up for a website and putting a fake address. I've been doing that lately because I'm scared of that, but I'm like, no, that's not the way we push forward. So I'm going to say, yes, we're on the road to getting it right.

Speaker 2: 58:57

I'm going to contact you in five years. No, what do you think?

Speaker 4: 59:02

Seth, I think it's going to require a lot of bravery, and I think bravery in the workplace is being yourself every day in a world that tells you to be someone else or something different. So I am one of the most positive people you're going to meet. It hurts me deeply to say that. I think it might get a little worse before it gets better, and what I hope that happens to Ruth's point is we all kick our own asses a little bit out there to make sure that we are the change. I'm not really a cliche person. It's all coming out in cliches, but the thing is. In order for us to really achieve that bravery, we have to stand in our own truth and we have to be able to pull together, because the thing is, we need to also acknowledge that we're in it together.

Speaker 4: 59:42

Yeah that's it. It does not win whether, when you, until you stop sacrificing who you are and you help the other people around you, do just the same thing.

Speaker 1: 59:51

Yeah, and that's really the goal of unhiding right Is standing in truth. That is truly it, because you can't really. We say we want to get to know people and accept them, but unless you fully know me, you can't accept me. That's part of the journey.

Speaker 2: 1:00:05

There's this sign in Key West. I saw it everywhere. It was like one humankind or something like that. But going back to your humanity point, ruth, it's yes. At the end of the day, we're all human beings, so how do we can just support each other at that level as like human beings? Okay, this is my second bold prediction question for you both. What's one radical change If you could wave a magic wand tomorrow? What's one radical change that you would have companies make? No small tweaks, only a bold move. What would that one thing be?

Speaker 4: 1:00:38

I'm going to say valuing diversity of thought.

Speaker 1: 1:00:42

Okay, I'm going to say having an unhiding manifesto that every organization, just like we did with other lenses of diversity, that we put up manifestos, that this one actually believes in the idea of valuing difference and allowing for that space and naming it, because, again, we can say all the things we want, unless we name it, it doesn't happen.

Speaker 2: 1:01:04

Okay, I want to now get back to Ruth. What's your bold prediction that you wanted to share?

Speaker 1: 1:01:12

I absolutely believe, given return to office, given the backlash with DEI, given where we are in terms of this conversation around belonging and inclusion and we have a workforce that's coming in demanding transparency I absolutely believe there is a new model of leadership that is right there, that we can grab onto and that we are building, because I don't think the leadership of yesterday works anymore and the one for the future is almost too far for us. What do we need right now? And to me, that's unhidden leadership. That is a new model of leadership and it's different than authentic leadership. It's different than bold leadership and all of the terms. It's the idea of how do you create space for others to be themselves, to be their best selves.

Speaker 2: 1:02:00

I like it.

Speaker 4: 1:02:01

Beth, what about you? What's your final bold? I wrote down, I wrote human-centric leadership.

Speaker 2: 1:02:04

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:02:05

We're on the same wavelength and I think it's because here's the thing. I do believe we are in a trauma-informed workplace. That's what the state of the workplace looks like, and for so long it's been so taboo. And talking about the trauma that people feel is just not enough. They feel like their trauma is less than, and that's just not the truth. And is it appropriate always to discuss all the trauma? No, not at all. But human centric leadership that is able to balance productivity with human need is really. Where is the prediction I think we're going to get to?

Speaker 2: 1:02:46

I hope we all start to just demand it more. So let's get there together. I appreciate you both so much. Thank you for joining us today. This was super helpful. We're going to sign off, but listen, I'm going to share our socials. You can find us on yourworkfriendscom. Also on this YouTube channel if you subscribe. We have a LinkedIn community If you're over on the professional side and you want to join the conversation over there. But you can also find us on Instagram and TikTok. You should definitely check out Ruth's books and you should definitely check out Dr Beth Kaplan's new book. They are awesome. You can follow them on LinkedIn and also on Instagram. We're tagging them and everything. So please go find them and follow them for more great advice in this area. And just thank you for joining us tonight and with that, francesca. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Speaker 3: 1:03:33

Just Beth and Ruth had a big publishing week. Beth, your book went out. Ruth, you went into time this week. This is big. We will post both of these, as Mel said, in our show notes. Read them. Required reading.

Speaker 4: 1:03:47

Thank you. Thank you both so much, and Ruth, you're brilliant, so thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:03:51

We're on the same page. I can't wait. We're in it together.

Speaker 4: 1:03:54

That's right.

Overcoming the Broken Rung

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Broken Rung with Lareina Yee

The Broken Rung isn’t just a metaphor—it’s the career barrier keeping women from advancing from day one. We sat down with Lareina Yee, Senior Partner at McKinsey and co-author of The Broken Rung, to talk about why fixing this early career promotion gap could close the gender equity gap in a single generation.

We cover the data, the hidden career tax women face, the power of experience capital, and why sponsorship—not mentorship—is the game-changer leaders need to embrace now. Whether you are navigating your own career or leading others, this is a must-listen playbook for how to advance, advocate, and unlock opportunity at every level.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm Mel Plett, talent strategist coach and someone who survived big law, big four and more than a few broken org charts. I'm Francesca.

Speaker 2: 0:07

I've led people strategy at Nike and Deloitte. I like my advice how I like my coffee strong and no bullshit.

Speaker 1: 0:11

We host your work, friends. The podcast that breaks work down, so you stay ahead.

Speaker 2: 0:15

We talk work stuff, the human stuff, the awkward messy, what the f*** is actually happening stuff. Each week we drop new episodes with real talk, smart guests, fresh insights and straight up advice. Hit play. We've got you Ahas and ahas and, yeah, the occasional F-bomb or two. We had a really interesting conversation, we did.

Speaker 1: 0:48

We were able to speak with Lorena Yee, one of the co-authors of the Broken Rung. Lorena is a senior partner at McKinsey Company and she advises companies on growth technology and transformation. She also co-founded the Women in the Workplace Study with leaninorg. That's what made us reach out to her, as we were fascinated. We covered that a few months ago in New Week New Headlines and then, obviously, the Broken Rung book came out and in that report they're highlighting all of the challenges that women are facing in corporate America.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Lorena also chairs McKinsey's Technology Council and hosts the podcast At the Edge, where she talks about technology trends. And then, beyond her professional role, she's a mom of three and she serves on the board of San Francisco's Ballet. But this was an awesome episode. She is talking about one of the earliest career barriers that women face, which is this broken rung and ways that we can overcome it together. In this book I think you and I both said it was covered cover to cover with yellow highlighter from all of the stats that we were reading- yeah, I ran out of highlighter while I was reading this book.

Speaker 2: 1:56

The thing for me is we've had the glass ceiling. We know pay parity is not there yet and probably won't be for our lifetime, and what was so interesting was this early career issue that they have really nailed on. Even if you're not early career, even if you're not a woman, the thing about this book is it is a playbook for how to get ahead in your career If you're a woman, if you're a man, if you're gender non-binary. This book is absolutely packed with how do you get ahead when you have everything against you, and it is a must read for anybody, especially in corporate America. We love talking with her. We focus a lot about women here, but I think it can apply to anybody.

Speaker 1: 2:42

One of the things that really stood out to me is this isn't just a playbook. If you're in your early career, it's identifying when this starts, but it is. It does give you information, no matter where you are, whether you're just starting out, you're in the messy middle or if you're like towards the end of in thinking about your next move. She gives you ways that you can think about how to level up. The other thing for me that was so interesting was the concept of if we were able to fix this broken rung at the start of a woman's career, then we could have parity in a generation versus 150 plus years. So that, to me, was super powerful. I'm just going to read a quote from the book Lorena mentioned was this is not just a women's issue, as you point out. It's an issue for our whole society and the global economy. So read the book, listen to the episode. Here's Lorena.

Speaker 2: 3:46

All right, loretta. For those of us that haven't heard about this concept of the broken run, I'm wondering if you can explain it to our listeners, like a five-year-old. What?

Speaker 3: 3:55

is the broken run. You start work, you landed the job and you find that pretty much men and women are pretty equal. When you look around the room, right, 48% women entering the corporate pipeline in the United States, for example, and similarly globally. But guess what? Time for the first promotion. And here's the rub For every 100 men who have the odds of getting that promotion, only 81 women see those same odds of advancement. And that's the broken rung. That very first step on the career ladder is broken and it comes up fast.

Speaker 2: 4:33

What was so interesting to me so much of the time we're thinking about women, advancement, we're thinking about it manager on up, how do we get people to a C-suite or a VP? Because it's happening at this manager level. We're not getting people into these upper echelons. And I thought what's so interesting about your research is that this is happening very early and if you don't nail it early or don't look at it early, it has this kind of compounding effect on your career. What about that keeps you up at night?

Speaker 3: 5:05

your career. What about that keeps you up at night? All of it. By focusing on the broken rung, I wouldn't want to take attention away from the fact that people will call that middle layer, francesca, like the messy middle, the frozen middle, that piece of it or the glass ceiling. Let's be clear that still exists, and whilst we've made progress in corporate America, as an example, when I founded Women in the Workplace, we were 19% women reporting to CEOs at the C-suite. Now we're at 29%, so we're really close to 30. So that's great, but we're all really good at math. That's not parity, that's not 50%, that doesn't represent the population. So we've got challenges across the whole talent pipeline or ladder, however you want to visualize it.

Speaker 3: 5:49

I think the challenge with the middle, though the math, is that you've already lost a lot of women, or they've gotten stuck or they're stalled. It's not entirely clear exactly what happens to all those women, because some of them don't leave the workforce altogether, but let's just say largely stalled and stuck. So you are already in the middle, dealing with probably something around 37% women. You're already dealing with a smaller population, trying to put it in slates, so you're just so many steps behind, and I do think to the early broken rung.

Speaker 3: 6:25

I do think it catches women by surprise and it may even happen and they didn't even realize it, because it's not like an exam where they publish the results. You don't know where you are on the curve and it may have been a delay by a year, six months, two years, or maybe you decided to go somewhere else and so some of these types of things may not be completely perceptible, but I think when you talk to women over the course of 20, 30 years in work and they think back, they're like huh. And when we look at the data year over year, it shows that same phenomenon. Maybe it's 84 women, maybe it's 81, maybe 79. It's bouncing around a little bit, but it's nowhere near parity.

Speaker 2: 7:06

I want to dive into that. Why that first promotion? Why is that so critical for people to really focus on?

Speaker 3: 7:15

There are a lot of things. One, if you just think of a merit-based view, you want to actually be rewarded for the work you do. So there's a simple thing. There's also financially. You're not just working to work for the benefit of society and you may feel very mission oriented, you may feel very purpose filled and you may feel incredible pride for what you do, but you're also there for your economic earnings. And to earn less through differences in promotion is another type of tax on top of a general phenomenon we see in terms of a wage disparity between women and men. It's another form. But the other thing is let's just think about a talented woman who, by and large women graduate at higher rates than men for undergraduate degrees and by and large, with higher GPAs. And so you've got a talented woman. She's doing all the right things and missing maybe by a year, maybe two or three years, that first promotion is missing her ability to reach her full professional potential, and careers in life are long and those delays have almost compound effects over time.

Speaker 2: 8:32

And we haven't even hit motherhood yet. This is the thing that I read in the book the idea of the motherhood tax, where we'll talk about it a little bit longer. But for every kid that someone has, they get taxed. More and more Theirathers get a bonus for having kids. It's phenomenal, it's absolutely phenomenal.

Speaker 3: 8:50

I mean, we've all been in the meeting where the mom is rushing to go to the soccer game and everyone's like okay, fine, maybe even non-event, not even like eyebrow raising. And then the guy is I've got to go. Same thing, I've got to go, I've got to get to the soccer game at 430. And people are like high five, you're amazing. And, by the way, do I think it's amazing that dad is leaving for the soccer game, a hundred percent, I'm just saying that. I equally think it's a high five moment for the woman to leave as well.

Speaker 1: 9:17

Yeah, it is. Eye roll for the woman oh, gotta go again. And then for the guy it's good for you, you're such a good dad. Yeah, you're a leader. You're a leader. I want to talk about experience capital. That was one of my favorite parts of the book because I agree it's totally needed. But can you share with our listeners what is experience capital?

Speaker 3: 9:40

What's that concept?

Speaker 3: 9:41

So the punchline is 50% of your lifetime earnings come from what you gain on the job, and the reason this is important is you look at many women and, as I mentioned earlier, women outperform in school, they graduate at higher rates, particularly in the United States, and oftentimes they're graduating with higher GPAs and so they have done the first part really well.

Speaker 3: 10:06

But when we just look at representation nevermind how the experience feels, which we have a lot of data on as well, it's women are not succeeding to their potential in the workplace, at least if you look at representation, right, and so the idea of experience capital is if you were really great at school, how do you apply what helped you be wonderful at school to managing intentionally your portfolio of experiences that drive both the economic outcomes for you, your livelihood, but also your professional opportunities, and so you think about choosing your major, choosing your classes, getting an A. How do you be purposeful in making those decisions, in accumulating the experiences that matter, not just the job in front of you, which certainly is important, but what is the accumulation of experience over time, and can you get it earlier? Because it pays to get it earlier often, and bigger.

Speaker 1: 11:13

Can you do that in a way that sets you up really well for a lifetime of work? One of the things that you called out that I really love too was, as part of gaining that experience capital, was making sure you gain some of that experience capital, unlike the P&L side of the house and like really being deep into the business. So for anyone listening, p&l, profit and loss, that's one example. But what are some of those examples of like business side? So, say you're, I have a very strong HR background, by the way, but to be in strategic HR, I had to get that experience pretty early. So how can folks who aren't traditionally like on that business side, how can they gain that very important business experience capital and what does that mean? How is it different when you think about the experience capital you do gain? How does that differently set them up financially down the road?

Speaker 3: 12:00

Sure, Well, let's take your career as an example, and I might be getting parts of that wrong, but you have a passion for HR and a lot of women will connect with work to where they feel purpose, where they feel talent and being an aspiring alley, which is a P&L role maybe sales, maybe product, maybe in a business unit. That experience GM. But it is to say that having that experience short long at some point will make you better at whatever you want to do. The other thing is if you aspire to be a CEO to the chip tracker idea, the pink chip one year we looked at it, 95% of the CEOs that year we looked at it all came from P&L. So like virtually impossible, very unlikely, that if you haven't had P&L experience and you realize, understandably, halfway through your career that you aspire to be a CEO, this is going to be a central part. So that's one experience. Another piece of experience capital is entrepreneurship and people think that's just being a founder and yes, that's amazing. Both of you have founded this. That's entrepreneurship. But I bet both of you also were entrepreneurs in the companies that you were in before and it's a huge skill that makes a difference. How do you take initiative, how do you lead? How do you invent Versus? Here's the thing that I was given and I've checked all the boxes, so entrepreneurship is a huge piece.

Speaker 3: 13:50

The other thing that we talk about is skill differentiation. We call that bold moves, and so if you look at one job to a next job and it could be within the same company right, You're doing different roles. Bold moves are where you do a 25% or more skill difference between your former job and your new job, and women who take two, three big bold moves over their career have outsized impact, both economically as well as their ability to progress. So there are more, but just maybe to pause, take a deep breath. There are a lot of things we can do that are super concrete that help us build experience capital. And if you're young in your career gosh, you got to build that early and often. And if you're a little older in your career you know me, or like middle age, think about the experience capital you need to maybe pivot or do something new or to expand even more opportunities. It's a huge piece.

Speaker 1: 14:47

I appreciate that because I think a lot of folks forget that you can have an entrepreneurial experience while you're in an organization. It's like looking for those project opportunities where you can gain that skill set. For somebody who might be more of an introvert I'm an ambivert right, so it takes a lot of effort to reach out for those experiences and that sort of thing. Maybe they don't have a flashy or visible role. What's a way that they can start to advocate for themselves, to begin to build that experience capital?

Speaker 3: 15:19

I think, first of all, you've got to play to your strengths. So you may see someone who's an extrovert, very charismatic, maybe an athlete, so she happens to play golf which tends to be helpful in a male world and you're not in all cases. She's out in the golf course and you're just like that's not me and first of all, good for her, she should go with all those strengths. But you're like that's not me and first of all, good for her, she should go with all the strengths, right. But you're like how do I meet other people if I'm different? So I think there's one thing which is to know yourself and build off your strengths.

Speaker 3: 15:54

I remember early in my career being in consulting. My strength was the data and the analysis that I was doing and part of the credibility was really just the work itself. But the work is a basis to have a conversation with others and a basis to build trust. And then you start maybe building a relationship and entrepreneurship is following up. I remember meeting just this amazing executive and I was like you're just so like you're a role model, and I didn't say that. But then I remember just keeping in touch with her over time. Not a ton, I was whatever, maybe 10 levels more junior to her, but I remember when I was leaving Asia, moving back to the US, she was the last person that I had kind of coffee with who was a client, before I left. You've got to do it in your own style, but I think you do need to be purposeful and, for those who are analytic, write it down. Write down who do you work with, who you have a connection and network with, who have you worked with before that you could rekindle. If you're kind of customer or client facing, or if you're supply chain facing, who's outside of your organization and also maybe people from school. So how do you think about building those networks? And just make sure that we know that women tend to have more narrow, more junior networks. Just make sure that over time it's not going to happen overnight, but over time you invest in building some more senior networks.

Speaker 3: 17:28

I know one guy that I talked to joined this nonprofit board and I invested my personal time and I spent time and had lunch with every single board member, all of which were at least a decade more advanced in their career than me, and I built this local network. He said so when you join a board, you join a nonprofit board. This is what you should do, and I was like I didn't even think about that. I'm so busy just trying to get through my day. It didn't occur to me to like schedule lunch with each person on the board, get to know them, build a relationship. And it was true. I looked at the list and I was like I am the most junior person from a professional person on this board, so there are lots of ways you can do it, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:10

I think it's. Yeah, finding your little avenue is going to be the most important. What works for you. I think folks sometimes can equate being outgoing as the folks who get the opportunity, but you don't have to fit that niche to get the same kind of experience capital you're talking about.

Speaker 3: 18:24

And some really senior people are quite introverted themselves, right? So that's not, you would find a connection.

Speaker 1: 18:34

Yeah, you'll find some kinsmanship in that, for sure. I wanted to talk about the sponsorship versus mentorship because something that really stood out to me in the Women in the Workplace report was that women are overly mentored and we're undersponsored significantly. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Speaker 3: 18:56

Yeah. So one thing is maybe just to define the difference, because sometimes I just feel like we don't have the facts to make the decision. So mentorship is Francesca, you're my mentor, I identify with you. You go to coffee. If I have a bad day or something didn't happen quite right on a project, you empathize and you give me some suggestions on how to think about it. But, mel, if you're my sponsor, you do everything Francesca does. But you also open windows and doors for me and that may be as explicit as you are actually putting me up for promotion, but it could be more everyday actions. Like Mel, you say Lorena, I know you've been working really hard on this. Why don't you come to the meeting and why don't you present? And I remember there's this really amazing sponsor we do a sponsor award at McKinsey and one of the winners.

Speaker 3: 19:54

There's this story that he faked a bloody nose because he knew that the client was like, wanted him to be there. He faked a bloody nose and he wants her to go so that the woman partner who is up for senior partner would present but also be seen as like super senior. It's like he was an actor. Everybody thought he had a bloody nose, medical reason to leave, but no bloody nose. He actually was just creating truly an opportunity for her to shine. By the way, she became one of the co-leaders of the client and all these great things happen.

Speaker 3: 20:29

You can do that on a Tuesday at four, on a Friday at nine. These are not hard things and so when you think about, and if you're senior and you're listening to this, how do you open doors and windows for others? But it can be very subtle things that help and it can be really being there in the moment to say this person should be on the slate and really helping you get promoted or keeping in touch with you and offering you an opportunity somewhere else. Women are just under-sponsored and maybe also it's not as clear how to develop sponsor relationships. But I think it's like women. If you put your mind to it, you can do it.

Speaker 1: 21:07

If you realize this is something that's as important as delivering your quota or whatever your MBOs are or OKRs, and you think about it as something you do a little bit every quarter over time you'll have a really powerful senior network something that stood out to me in the book was and I'm paraphrasing, but it was essentially the biggest issue with this broken rung is, once the first rung is broken, it just has this compounding sort of domino effect, right, because now there's less women at each stage to continue to sponsor other women up. But men can be sponsors too not trying to leave them out of the conversation, right? And the other powerful thing that you said in the book was that if we can repair this first rung, it'll help us repair all of the subsequent rungs, which could help us really fix this issue or bring parity within a generation, which is huge because that within one generation is 10 years versus 150 years. But how important is sponsorship, or what level of does sponsorship play, and the importance of fixing that first rung?

Speaker 3: 22:23

All of the above. So if 70% of the C-suite are men, then it's really important that men are sponsors in your network to percent women at the starting gate. And then we dropped down in the middle and the VP layers down to 38, et cetera, et cetera, and at the top for the SVP layers and the C-suite, we are at 29%. So it's almost like a math thing because you just have fewer women in the talent pool overall. So if I were to say I'd like to see equal men and women on the slate, that's actually something that is a little hard to accomplish because you actually have maybe a third, maybe 40% each level. You have fewer women. And so I think if we sometimes what we talk about for companies that are trying to work on this is you have a funnel, you need to have a pipe. So a really healthy company starts with a percentage of women and you would have that same percentage mirrored across all the talent levels. That would be really healthy.

Speaker 3: 23:47

Many years ago I met a tech company who was like it's just so hard, et cetera, et cetera. The classic we don't have engineers. But one thing we told them that really surprised them. I said you have a top beginning funnel problem. Yeah, you're at something.

Speaker 3: 24:00

I think they were maybe 38, 37% women at the entry, so that's not good, but interestingly enough, they had that pipe. I said so you're doing something right really well, which most of your peers are not, which is you're able to retain them. You do have a bit of a drop off at the top, but that's really amazing. So for you, if you actually could fix the entry level, you clearly have a culture that supports women in a very natural way. You are in great shape and they were like gosh. I thought we were going to have this meeting. You're going to be an awful report card and I said, yeah, I mean you're starting out ranks not so good, but actually there's some really good stuff there. For companies that want to change, you have to just take a look at your data and say, just as you would any kind of business problem, where would be the two or three most important interventions? Where, if I fix this, it would really change in one generation? And I think for companies who are very determined to do this, it's possible.

Speaker 1: 25:02

It's interesting too, speaking of what companies can do, because you mentioned, mckinsey has their sponsorship award, which I love to hear, and we've worked in talent forever, so you always hear about the mentorship program, but rarely do I hear about a formal sponsorship program. What have you seen work really well in terms of programs that support the sponsorship for this kind of success?

Speaker 3: 25:25

I think, a couple things. It's important to say that whilst women tend to feel over-mentored, under-sponsored, there are men who also feel this way. If you de-average it, maybe the men who don't have the classic archetypical attributes or men of color. So there can be, when you de-average, lots of people need this. So a couple of things. One is going from a spiritual agreement that sponsorship is a good idea to actually creating a program. So program means that you actually define mentorship, sponsorship. Program means that you actually track the data. For some you may actually hold them accountable, not like a quota, like you have to have X number of sponsor ease or mentors, but as part of how you think have to have X number of sponsorees or mentors, but as part of how you think of good leadership, as part of the equation. If you have the data, if you have the qualitative and what you value gets measured in some way.

Speaker 3: 26:19

So I'm not suggesting like a one for one. You only get promoted if you're a sponsor. We all know that and you all both know very well. Like when you think about leadership, there's a way that kind of goes into your reviews and potentially your compensation, your feedback, how you're viewed. I think you build it in yeah, you built it in a hundred percent and then you may have some programs that kind of activate it.

Speaker 3: 26:43

But I think you really commit to a culture of sponsorship, which the insane thing to me is it helps. It's like your classic all boats rise, everyone benefits everyone. And if there are women, as the human population will have, who are not good sponsors, it's good. They will, as leaders, learn to be good sponsors. Men will learn to be good sponsors and sometimes for men and I've seen this when they see their data and they realize they don't have a single woman that they sponsor, they will autocorrect that themselves. It's not like they woke up and said how can I not have any women as sponsors? Sometimes data is like an incredible amount of sunlight for people to do the right thing.

Speaker 2: 27:42

I want to talk about motherhood and navigating career transitions with motherhood. You mentioned in the book that motherhood could actually be a boost to your career, and it's not something we typically hear. Can you talk a little bit more about how it can boost your career?

Speaker 3: 27:58

Yeah, so that's not an easy thing. In the chapter we do really spend a bit of time on Claudia Goldman's Nobel Prize economist. We do want to make sure that a lot of the research that she's done gets proper understanding in terms of biases towards women and terms of a motherhood penalty and all of those things. With that said, it is hard. I think part of it was squeezing out and looking at stories where women can succeed inside of it and, for me, also a little bit of a search for the urban legend to see if it's true. So one of the stories that you saw was a woman.

Speaker 3: 28:38

The phrase that I've always used is make sure you pack a round trip ticket, not just to leave to go on parental leave, but also to come back and to come back with intention. Leave to go on parental leave, but also to come back and to come back with intention. Part of that would be building your network and thinking about your skills, moderating your time, all these types of things. And one of the stories in the book is a woman who was a rising star lawyer. As she had her first kid, she made the decision to actually be a full-time mom. She's an amazing mom raised three boys. 14 years into that, she exercised her round trip ticket. She went back and she did a reboarding program. Some companies, not all, offer this, but LinkedIn offered it. She got back into the workforce and is a rising star lawyer at LinkedIn and I just think this concept that we measure it in very zero one ways Okay, I had the baby, I'm having the baby, I take my paid maternity or parental leave, I come back. I think there are variations to make that work for you. So that's one story that I was very inspired by.

Speaker 3: 29:45

The other thing is would you use the policies as ingredients to bake your own cake, would you say? Look, in my company there's the parental leave and I see a lot of mostly dual career couples. We see a lot more of women and men under 40 are dual career, whereas baby boomers tend to be more like a single person leading the household. Let's use the woman and the partner's parental leave to maximize it. How do we, how do we go slow, go fast across that portfolio? Like really sharing with your partner the chutes and ladders of a career? We see also like how do you use some of the part-time? How to use rotations to kickstart your next bold move, like maybe you're like, okay, I'm going to do the thing that I really know how to do in an excellent way and I'm going to do it at 80%, but then actually, when my littlest one is in school, hits three, I'm going to take a bold move and I'm going to do this. Or, by the way, I'm going to actually invest in a bunch of technology skills and pilots and things because I'm going to make a bold move.

Speaker 3: 30:54

And these are just like excessive examples. How do you apply really intentional thinking to that time as opposed to gosh? This is just the discount time. And also back to the network point, I think and I don't think this is as much in the book, but I think having a peer network when you're a young mom at least for me personally I see you nodding, being able to call someone who was working full time, who had kids under 10, like me, and just to say I've had the hardest week in that time. I didn't need a sponsor, I didn't need a mentor, I just needed a friend to say, yeah, it's really hard with you.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Yeah, it's tough, right. I remember this is a little bit maybe TMI, but I always go there is. I remember I was at the point where I was breastfeeding and I was still working and shipping my milk back until it was really great about that, like freezing it and shipping it back home, which is amazing and lovely. But I remember just feeling touched out, vultured because I was getting it at work and I was literally having the call with her while my pump was going and I felt totally okay with it.

Speaker 3: 32:06

But she knew both of my lives and you really do need that, that feeling of someone gets you A little grace Like I think you have to set the pace of your own career versus expect others, and both of you have done that in your careers. But there may be times where you're like I'm going 60 miles an hour and by the way I've structured it and my expectations are that, and then there are times I'm doubling down and going super fast and I'm going to do a bold move and a this and a that, and so I don't. I don't think it's a linear climb and actually when we look at men who are very successful underneath it, it wasn't so I just. When we look at men who are very successful underneath it, it wasn't so I just I think it's. We try. Sometimes perfection can be the enemy of progress. That phrase and maybe redefine what perfection is.

Speaker 3: 32:58

At certain moments of your career, I took a really long first parental leave and I was really fortunate to be in a dual career situation so I could afford to. But I was really young, I wasn't even 30 yet and I really I just wanted to learn how to be a mom for a while. I wanted to take nine months off and at that time paid leave was not six weeks, single digits or something like that that's also betting on yourself and taking a risk. It's saying I'm confident that when I'm ready to go back, that job will be there and I may have missed something. But I actually, as a gift not just to my child but also to myself, would like to learn how to be a mom for a bit and enjoy it.

Speaker 2: 33:47

The beautiful thing about the book, though, is it does give you the playbook, for if you're going to make those choices which are totally great to make that there are other moves you can make that won't make that choice, just like a lifelong decision to write. I feel like this idea of these are your options, these are the ways you can put it in sixth gear, pull it down to third gear, make a right turn, make a left turn and create a beautiful career for yourself and a great life too, because I feel like I'm not saying you can balance everything all the time and have everything you want, but you can sure as hell be way more intentional about it and get to where you want to go in a way that maybe was linear to your point.

Speaker 3: 34:34

And some of those basics matter. I remember we talk about negotiation. People always think negotiation is just your pay, by the way, women tend not to negotiate. So, hi, pro tip, do negotiate. But negotiation is also other types of things.

Speaker 3: 34:46

So I remember because we didn't have at the time this was 22 years ago we didn't have the type of programs and I was actually not even in the United States, and so I remember talking to the office manager and saying look, I know that this isn't the typical thing, but I'd really like to take nine months, maybe more off, but I actually am super committed to coming back and I will stay in touch. And when I came back, they were like that's hard and consulting, and you were flying out. And I said, look, just for my first thing, back for my first month, can you just help me do something local so that I just don't get straight on an airplane and whatever that is, I'll do it. Any industry, any team, that would be such a gift and that's part of negotiating how you come back. He said got it, let's do. That Turns out to the entrepreneurship we were working on something that became a huge local client and because I worked on it and worked really hard with all these other folks, some of which I didn't know already.

Speaker 3: 35:54

We actually had all these sort of. I had a year where I didn't get on the airplane, and part of it is a little bit of a little bit of luck, a little bit of negotiating, asking that's. That's a positive negotiation. I will work really hard, but could you help me not reduce travel just for a little bit, and then we'll sort it out. Just give me a sec to rebase. I'm still the person that you loved and valued before. I didn't think at the time. It takes courage to do that, but it does take some courage to have that conversation and you do need to work in an environment where that conversation would be received well, not to make too much of the example, but I do think in the book there are all these women who make it work in spite of, and so there's a lot of data, mel, as you mentioned, but for me I think the stories are just really inspirational about what are the tactical things they did to get from A to B.

Speaker 2: 36:49

Yeah, a lot of great moves. I think it's required reading, quite honestly, to think about how do you really own your career, and own your career as a woman? Just you got to read up.

Speaker 1: 37:00

You got to read up. Keeping it simple for our listeners, especially those who might be like am I already part of the broken rung? Do I need to address this? What's one thing they can do next week to get back on track?

Speaker 3: 37:16

reframe. You're not off track. You are always on track and there's always opportunity in front of you, and betting on yourself is always a good bet. So look ahead and what's your next move? Do you want to go to the power alley? Do you want to exercise entrepreneurship? Do you want to build in the skills that matter for the future, the 12 million occupations that we know will shift by 2030. Do you want to increase your network? Pick one, pick one, just pick one and get started.

Speaker 1: 37:53

I love that. I love that concept that you're never off track. You're never off track. Yeah, we're just all taking fun side quests.

Speaker 3: 38:04

How much you have already. Yeah, I, your portfolio just may look a little different than that guy next door to you, and that's okay. Really, what are you good at? What do you have? Where does that point you? And then start opening the windows and doors yourself. Go get people to help you. Yeah, I love it. You can do it.

Speaker 1: 38:28

What about leaders? If you're a leader leading a team and this is information new and for maybe it's new information for somebody listening today what's something that they can take away or start to do to analyze and make sure that they're being a good sponsor or they're recognizing that they might be holding people back. How can they support not holding them back or pushing them forward?

Speaker 3: 38:54

The first thing is to maybe just mark a couple of like a piece of data or story that that honestly struck you very authentically. Doesn't need to be many, just one or two. And I would go share that with a man and a woman on your team and just say I was reading this since stopped me in my tracks. What do you think? Do you think we have a fair workplace? Do you feel the opportunities are the same? And the man might say I feel over-mentored, under-sponsored. You're like that's good feedback, but pro tip, does any of this resonate with you? I just start with that. Just start locally, in your own community and neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 39:40

Starting the conversation. Let's just have the conversation.

Speaker 3: 39:50

Yeah, and I think the other thing a leader can de-risk what feel like high stakes conversations, and opening to have the conversation, to listen, to learn, is huge. There's a story of a woman who was in the creative arts. She was in performing arts in New York and she had an underlying mindset that if you are creative it's okay to be disorganized, because that kind of comes with being creative. And she didn't even know that this was an underlying mindset. But she was super disorganized and she had her baby a couple months old and for women who remember or who have had babies in that early stage, there's very few windows. If you live in New York City, you can get that baby outside and take the baby for a walk before the baby needs to eat and nap. And so she missed the whole window because she was so disorganized. She was like, oh my God, where's the diapers? Where's this, where's that? She missed the window and she was so disorganized she's like, oh my God, where's the diapers? Where's this, where's that? She missed the window. And then the baby's crying and she describes and I've talked to her about this also personally she describes looking at this wonderful child's face and saying, kiddo, this isn't going to work.

Speaker 3: 40:53

So not only that's a point of deep failure, like I think for me.

Speaker 3: 40:57

I'm like, oh my god, I would have been in a ball and tears and like that just sounds awful and we've all been there.

Speaker 3: 41:04

Anyway, the reason I mentioned this is because it's a very relatable moment. But from that moment, not only does she become really good at organizing, she builds a business to organize other executives, both men and women. She writes two New York Times bestseller books or more, and she has this whole career where she actually helps people with their operating models, with their leadership. But it starts with the wedge of what was a point of failure became a point of strength, became a point of building a business, became a point of giving to others and helping others not organize how they get their walks for their babies, but like thinking about how the softer skills help you be a better leader, the full set of softer skills. And she's no longer in performing arts, she's in corporate America and I just I also just wanted to share that sometimes both men and women are so afraid to make a mistake and there's a lot in the zeitgeist about that. But I do think you never know, like, how do you take that in as a pivot point to something else we'll run on.

Speaker 1: 42:26

I'm gonna start with some high-level questions. They can be one word responses, or one sentence, two sentences, whatever you feel most confident with, but the whole point is just to get your immediate reaction to the question. Okay, ready to dive in, ready? Okay, it's 2030. What's work going to look like? It will be AI powered. Okay, what's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see disappear for good? Bias, thank you. What's the greatest opportunity that most organizations are missing out on right now?

Speaker 3: 42:57

Women, young women, even better answer.

Speaker 1: 43:02

What music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 3: 43:05

Oh, I really like Bruno Mars and his collaborations, many of which are women artists, but I do really love the collaborations.

Speaker 1: 43:13

I like his new stuff too. It's like fun, yeah, so good. What are you reading, and that could be physically reading or listening to an audio book right now?

Speaker 3: 43:25

I am obsessed with AI podcasts, so yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:29

What's your favorite AI podcast? What do you recommend?

Speaker 3: 43:32

Oh, I really like no Priors and Training Data from Sequoia and the Possible podcast. And of course, I think everyone in tech listens to Hard Fork. I'd be remiss not to mention Hard Fork, but that's kind of obvious.

Speaker 2: 43:47

Love that.

Speaker 1: 43:50

Perfect, who do?

Speaker 3: 43:54

you really admire the 11% women CEOs of the world Each and every one of them. For everything that they're doing and for being a pioneer Awesome.

Speaker 1: 44:07

We recommend all the time on this podcast that people start to follow. I'm sure you do, but the organization Pink Chip that's tracking all of the global female CEOs and their success. So, yeah, any chance I can to plug it, I like to bring it back up. Good plug. Yeah, what's a piece of advice you want everyone to know?

Speaker 3: 44:26

Build your networks make sure they're powerful networks and people who are going to be your personal board of directors. I love that.

Speaker 1: 44:34

All right. Last thing, where can listeners follow? You stay abreast of all of the goodness and new research that you have coming out on this topic. What's the what's the best? Obviously, read the book. We're going to link to that but how can they continue to stay informed beyond reading the book?

Speaker 3: 44:53

All of our gender and research. On mckinseycom, you can search under my name or just search under the topics. We have 10 years of women in the workplace, so there's a lot of data in there. And I'm on LinkedIn and I've been trying to be better at posting thoughts and sharing things that are interesting. You all can give me the feedback. You're like, nah, it's not really working, but it'd be good if you were more. But I'm focused on LinkedIn me the feedback. You're like nah, it's not really working, but it'd be good if you were more but I'm focused on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 45:26

This has been so lovely. Lorena, thank you for joining us. Oh, thank you. Both Appreciate you. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra, and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

The Work of Your Life

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Work of Your Life with Joan Burke

Culture isn’t a checkbox, it’s the secret weapon behind every high-performing organization. Join HR visionary Joan Burke as she unveils her ‘Work of Your Life’ blueprint from DocuSign to Responsys, showing you how to transform managers into master coaches, ignite engagement, and make retention your ultimate growth engine.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

So if you really care about the success of your organization, if you care about revenue, then you got to care about the people who are leading the organization and your talent. It is a no-brainer.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome to your Work. Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel, and we're breaking down work so you get ahead. For those of you that don't know, every year, mel and I sit down and think about what are the topics that we want to talk about, and then we think about the guests we want, and we're always looking for people that are actively in it. They're either a really deep subject matter expert, they're on the line in the seat doing the role and they're really able to think about how you get some of this stuff done. So we can always make work better, and one of the things that we were always wondering about are how do you create these cultures where people feel like they can really do their best work? And that brought us to Joan Burke.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Joan, if you don't know, her is just a real deal CHRO. She is now a board member, she's an advisor. She's been a chief people officer at places like DocuSign, marketo Responses. She's been a CHRO at small companies, major companies, in multiple different industries. She's been there, she's done that and she's been able to create these cultures where people can do the work of their lives, and we wanted to talk to her about how she did that. What did you think of this conversation, mel?

Speaker 3: 1:34

I loved it because as an HR person lifelong HR person like Joan I really appreciate the hard line that she took in every interview, which was she's human-centered and it's human first and if that doesn't align then it's not the right fit for her. And because of that alignment she's been able to go in and build these beautiful workplaces. I'm just really inspired by the legacy she leaves behind and the message it leaves for others.

Speaker 2: 1:59

It takes a whole village to create a culture where people feel like they can do the work of their lives. Joan gives you the playbook for how she did this, what needed to be in play at DocuSign, at Responsys. She's. Also gave us some tips If you're not in these types of companies, what you can do yourselves to create the work of your life and if you're interviewing, what you can look for and some questions you can ask to see if a company is going to enable you to do the work of your life. This conversation, to me, was just fantastic. Joan's the real deal, and with that, here's Joan.

Speaker 3: 2:41

At DocuSign, you really created something super special, right? It was a culture where that employee experience enabled a lot of folks to, as you call it, do the work of their lives. In today's environment, things are changing. How do you make the business case to do that today?

Speaker 1: 3:02

So the business case is the same as the business case was when we did it in DocuSign. I joined them in 2017. Even though it's an employer's market, the best talent always has options. You should never walk away from that or feel as though I have to prioritize revenue. I have to prioritize this and I don't have time or this isn't important. It is as important now as it was when we were doing it.

Speaker 1: 3:26

Now, when we were doing it hyper competitive, the market was crazy. Everybody's trying to get good talent. Now. I would say it's important to do that because you need to keep your good talent. The pendulum will swing. It will go from being an employer's market to being an employee's market at some point in time, and the companies that invest in their people now, when that happens, they're not going to see them walking out the door. They're going to have an increase in retention and I think it's a false narrative to say it's an either or. If you're going to prioritize a business, you're going to prioritize people. So it's absolutely as important now as it was seven years ago, when the market was very different than it is today.

Speaker 3: 4:07

Francesca and I often say people fuel your business. So absolutely Both are so super important right Well, at the end of the day, if you think about it, revenue happens because you've got great talent.

Speaker 1: 4:17

These things do not happen on their own. It always is people that are responsible for that success in organizations, always.

Speaker 3: 4:24

Oh, and they're the base of the business.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Yeah, so you have a very good point. I think the thing that won't change is that people want to be able to do work and do the good work and to do the work of their lives. I don't think that's going to change. I really don't that intrinsic need want desire. At DocuSign. That was what you were really striving for people to have is had some great partnerships in the leadership team there.

Speaker 1: 5:08

Certainly Dan Springer, the CEO, scott Ulrich, who was initially the CMO, became the COO. These are people who totally got it and we thought really long and hard about how do we differentiate DocuSign and so candidate is going to be looking at a number of different companies. What is going to make them want to come to DocuSign? If a candidate is going to be looking at a number of different companies, what is going to make them want to come to DocuSign versus go to Adobe, go to Google? How do we make sure, also, that the values that we stood for authentically DocuSign and not ones that you could go to any website and pick up the words and they're fine, but there's nothing special about it? This is where the working life came in. This is what we said. People, as you just said, francesca, people want to do great work. Employees do not come to work to do a crappy job. They don't. They don't come to work to do a boring job. They come to work because they want to succeed, they want to contribute and they want to do a great job. So we thought, looking back, when people view their career, what we hoped is that people would say donkey, sign. That's where I did the work of my life. This was a marketing thing, because Scott is a great marketer. We intentionally didn't say the best work of your life, because you don't need best. It's like the work of your life. That vacation I had the time of my life, so we had to operationalize it. We had to bring it to life and we talked about it as being actually really important and, in many ways, a personal statement. I, joe, wouldn't know what one of my employees' work of their life was until I spent time with them and we understood how we were going to help that person get there and what were the opportunities, what was the development? And then, when it came time to do our low engagement surveys, one of the questions we always ask is are you doing the work of your life? If you're not doing the work of your life, what do you need from the company? What do you need from your manager to do the work of your life? We put it into self-evaluations. We put it into feedback. It was an employment brand for us. Your recruiters are going to go to job fairs, they're going to have a booth, they're going to have a banner. It might as well be something cool that makes some sense, and it did. Our recruiters would say people would go by and say, whoa, work your Life, what's that all about?

Speaker 1: 7:18

There were a lot of components to the work of your life. We also invested very heavily in our managers in terms of developing and training them. We had a work your life management program that was based on four pillars. That were pillars that we believe were unique to DocuSign, that we want to help be our managers. So it was very real and I'll give you an example. I was on LinkedIn the other day and there's a woman who I hired, probably about six months before I left DocuSign day, and there's a woman who I hired probably about six months before I left DocuSign. She just left now. So we're talking three years ago. She was talking about going into the organization, but when she was talking about DocuSign, she said I did the work of my life. So I thought, wow, it stuck. It stuck, at least for people who were there. I think when we created that program, the work your life starts up.

Speaker 2: 8:04

That, to me, is a real test. It's one of the real tests of how do you have a brand that you know sticks, and one is just people using the language, which is huge. And what I love about the work you did, whenever I think about a brand and thinking about if you're going to say we want you to be able to do the work of your life no-transcript DocuSign stood for, which is an environment and the climate.

Speaker 1: 8:59

And we say DocuSign helps people, it saves paper, paper saves trees. So we're all about DocuSign for forests. And I would talk to candidates and I could see the excitement, enthusiasm when I would say let me tell you what we're about, let me tell you about this work you're doing, let me tell you how much we care about the environment in the world. There were a lot of really great components of the DocuSign culture that kind of came together in a way that I think made people feel really good about the organization. And one of the things you might ask is how did you know that it really delivered results for the company? And I think it's hard to take up one program and say, okay, I could connect the dots and this is the exact revenue we got from this because of that. But I can tell you that every time we did anything around this, anytime we talked about the work-year life and when we would fortunately for us get great reviews from our employees on Glassdoor, we saw an incredible spike in the number of resumes that were coming in. People want to work for a company that they feel good about.

Speaker 1: 10:02

Dan Springer is the CEO. His approval rating on Glassdoor was 98. We were always in like the top 15 companies in technology. That's how we can say it made a difference because our employees cared about writing great reviews, and those are the only reviews we cared about. Docusend was not a pay-to-play company. We were not going to ever be informed. We were never going to pay to be part of some sort of a best place to work. That's what we felt the real value was.

Speaker 2: 10:30

That's what our employees really said. Yeah, out of curiosity, the day-to-day feel like the vibe. I am very much on vibes lately, joan, when you think about the vibe at Dacusign when the work of your life was hitting on all pistons After launch.

Speaker 1: 10:50

It's embedded in the DNA. What did it feel like, just as a leader and an employee? Once they got it and that was a more from an employee communication perspective we would do mid-year feedback sessions. So it wasn't about evaluations, it was just feedback, and they were having conversations with their managers and we would really target those disingenuous about work your life, figure out whether this is working for people. So there was some excitement, enthusiasm. We went into a pandemic and the world changed overnight in March of 2020. Now, I would say, because we had built such a foundation with our employees about caring about them, about their development, about work your life, we were able to carry that through during the pandemic.

Speaker 1: 11:32

For any sheep people officer, I will tell you that in that 47-year career I had the hardest work I ever did was running a people organization during the pandemic. Yeah, trying to figure out how do we best support our employees through their mental health, through daycare. Hiring managers get comfortable around hiring people over Zoom, where they're like I never hired somebody I didn't meet in person. You better do it because somebody else is going to hire them. So I think we took the same level of care during that period.

Speaker 1: 12:04

It looked a little different. It was around support. There was a lot of different things we did to help our employees be successful and it paid off, I would say, in states. So the work shifted a bit and I used to say the companies that are win when this pandemic is over are the companies where the employees feel really good and felt very taken care of during that period. And DocuSign did it. And the reason why DocuSign did it it was a leadership team that actually believed that this was ultimately what's good for the employees. It's going to be good for the company.

Speaker 2: 12:38

Yeah, it sounds like, even in, I would say, a crisis situation, which COVID, especially in HR it was. I'm just going to say bonkers, absolutely bonkers. Right, but I love the fact that lens to enable people to do the work of your life, to truly care for people. It sounds like you're making decisions through that lens. It didn't change just because we were going through a very traumatic time.

Speaker 1: 13:00

You feel like you turned the volume up on that care during that time turned it up and we saw the feedback that we got in our employee engagement surveys, which we did at least two a year or more. The last survey that we did, we got 6,000 comments in that survey 6,000 comments and Dan and I would read every single one of those comments. He'd read them. I was going to read them. There was no way I was not going to be a patient animal reading those comments. But they actually produce so much more richness than really just the raw data and we heard people talk about how well they felt supported by their manager, and not just from a corporate perspective, and not just the programs and the benefits that we put in place, which were all new.

Speaker 1: 13:47

During that period we were able to really pressure test that the work we were doing and the decisions we were making and the investments we were making in again these benefits and trying to make it easy for people to take care of their kids and work from home and have Zoom and parents who were ill, and it was thank you, Francesca. It was a bonkers period, there's no other word for it. And then, if you think about it, we went from that to the great resignation right which can I say something that lasted about 15 minutes, Like really that was done and now the pendulum has swollen completely the other way. So one of the things I would say is think about the time you're in and what you need to do, but know that things change and can change very quickly. You don't abandon all the things that matter to you, that are important to your organization, just because you can and you can.

Speaker 2: 14:46

Out of curiosity, how important is it to have your peer group, the CMO, the CTO, any of the C's your CEO or your board? How important is it to have them on board when you're trying to make these kind of decisions and, probably more importantly, stick to the plan when shit's hitting the fan? How important is that so?

Speaker 1: 15:05

well, I critical. If the only people who are enthused about these programs that are willing to keep them alive, as the HR team, that's doomed, it's just never going to work. But having that consistency when the shit hits the fan, you're still not going to walk away from your principles and your values as an organization. You're still going to invest in employees, you're still going to care about the development, you're still going to give them feedback. You cannot do that without the leadership involved. The reason why I think we were so successful at DocuSign is because Dan was so authentic in both belief in these programs and talked about it. We did all hands meetings every quarter and during COVID we did a lot more of them just to make sure we stayed connected to people. He never abandoned the things that were like the pillars of who we were as an organization.

Speaker 3: 16:04

You've done this several times over now DocuSign. You did this at Responsys. What was the secret sauce? You have to have the CEO.

Speaker 1: 16:11

If you don't have the CEO, then it's going to be lips of risk, because that's who people look to, that's their coming to door, that's where they're getting their insight and their messaging. And it has to be authentic. It cannot be lips of risk because people see through falsehoods and I always say the most important leadership is authentic leadership. It's be who you are and with all those organizations I've had really authentic leaders who would speak to the programs, who would talk about the importance of employees in the team and helping them be successful. It worked. But if you don't have that, I would say it's running uphill Everything dies If HR is running it.

Speaker 3: 16:49

you have to have that buy-in. Let's say your CEO is a skeptic. How do you fight through that skepticism?

Speaker 1: 16:57

You kind of build a business case right and the business case is talent drives success. It just does. And even in a bad job market, which we're in right now, the best talent always has options, always has options, how bad it is, they always do. So if you really care about the successful organization, if you care about revenue, then you got to care about the people who are leading the organization and your talent. It is a no-brainer in some ways. And here's what I am excited about.

Speaker 1: 17:25

I feel like in many organizations and particularly I'm working with some VCs they get it, they totally get it, and where a lot in the past you might say, oh VCs, I don't want their portfolio companies to spend a lot of money on marketing and HR, I'm seeing VCs actually pushing their portfolio companies and these are companies of maybe $30 to $50 million of revenue to hire that cheap people officer sooner than a lot of founders are ready to do, because founders, by the most part, they don't want to spend money. So I am extremely encouraged about that. I'm also seeing a lot of enthusiasm for people going to these smaller private companies and not so much like the big companies the Googles, the Metas that people went to. They're feeling like they're getting an opportunity to really be very hands-on, to be part of a successful organization, to see where their contribution is actually making a difference on a daily basis, with less bureaucracy, maybe less politics. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity for people to seek out these smaller private organizations.

Speaker 3: 18:34

I coach a lot of folks who are being impacted by layoffs right now, so I'm seeing that trend as well. Even if they came from these big megas, they're looking at smaller orgs where they can actually feel the impact that they have. So that's tracking. When you think of pushback on budgets, we hear a lot around. Budgets are tightening up with everything that's happening with AI. Leadership's very focused on short-term results. Someone making the business case. What advice would you give to them?

Speaker 1: 18:59

I would say that the Work of your Life program at DocSign it was not a heavy investment at all. These were things we were already doing. We're already doing performance reviews. We were already doing employee engagement surveys. We already cared about what people felt on Glassdoor. We were already going to job fairs. It's not true that these things cost a lot of money. Get that off the table. Just say it's bullshit. Right here there is investment, for sure is when you're investing in developing people and particularly leaders. So when we created the Work your Life Management Program, that was an investment. We again decided that it was really extremely important to us to have great managers in the company. We needed to put together programs, we needed to design them, we needed to facilitate them. So there were certain places where you may be able to say, okay, I'm going to cut back a little bit on this one and maybe use some different approaches where I don't spend quite the same money, but caring about your corporate culture, being articulate about your corporate culture and reinforcing your corporate culture it doesn't cost money.

Speaker 3: 20:02

Those human components, those day-to-day interactions. That's free. You can change that tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 20:09

One of the things that we did at DocuSign is we had a mentor program and everybody wanted mentors, right. So we're like, all right, how are we going to make this, operationalize this and make this make sense? And we realized, when you ask somebody to be your mentor, it's a big deal right, and it's time this is going to take. But one of the things that we did, which is like a skinny version of a mentor program, is we said anybody will go and have a cup of coffee with you Half hour Well, great. So if somebody called me up and said, john, I was watching the all-hands meeting last month, I think you did a great job with the presentation. I'm really trying to work out skills. Can we have a cup of coffee in half hour and just talk about that? It's like absolutely so. There are ways to just skivvy back certain programs and things that are less intense or maybe not so time consuming and not so expensive. You just gotta be a little bit thoughtful and creative about it.

Speaker 3: 20:59

If your budget's tight, what are the three areas? You'd say? This is where you double down.

Speaker 1: 21:05

It's really about helping grow people. Managers we always cared about how we help individual contributors grow and succeed too. But at the end of the day, if I had a dollar of investment, I'm going to put 75 cents of it against managers and 25 cents against the individual contributors, because I know that ultimately the value that those individual contributors are going to get is because they've got a better manager who cares about their development, who cares about their career, who thinks about not just job opportunities but actually assignments that are going to help them grow and develop. And I always say that the most powerful thing we can do to help people grow is put them, give them on-job assignments to see how they stretch, see how they grow. The investment you make on the individual contributor side pays off by really overinvesting, maybe in the managers.

Speaker 3: 21:51

I love to hear it because I was just at a conference where a room full of people, when we asked how many people invested in their manager's training and development, maybe 5% of the room raised their hand, which was really disheartening to see. So you heard it here, folks 75 cents for your managers.

Speaker 2: 22:09

It's nuts to me. I'm going to make a Catholic Italian reference here, but you can cut this. So in Italian cooking, a lot of dishes start with the trinity, which is the onion, the carrot and the celery. It is the substance that makes everything right, it's the base, mirepoix, if you will. And I always think the trinity of talent development is onboarding, manager development and coaching. If you had to pick three and manager development, you're very good. Point, joan, 75 cents of that, right. The biggest onion little bit of carrot, little bit of celery. The onion is the manager development. The data's there, the results are there. You could do absolutely no formal training whatsoever, but if you had an amazing manager, you're set.

Speaker 1: 22:54

I love that. I've never heard about the Trinity Battalion cooking. I'm going to use that. Seriously, no gosh, God, really no. We grew up Irish. My mother was Italian. That's great.

Speaker 2: 23:04

There you go, there you go. We're big fans. We're big fans. Let's say you're an employee, you don't have this. What can somebody do as an individual contributor, no matter what their circumstance? Create the work of their life for themselves.

Speaker 1: 23:16

Oh man, that's a tough one. Yeah, I know they're not in a powerful position to be able to do that, which many people are not. Sometimes I say find it elsewhere, and I'm not saying leave your job right. For some people it might be leave your job, but for many others that's unrealistic. It just is not the right market for people to do that.

Speaker 1: 23:39

But find your tribe right. Find the people who are like-minded, who have the same sets of values. Find that network where, through connection and through conversations and through learnings about how people are dealing with those challenges inside their organizations, that you can take back for yourself to be able to say I'm not getting from my company, but I am getting what I need from this group of people up there. One of the things that's difficult is developing a network is hard, it takes a lot of work, but it can be so rewarding. I remember during the pandemic I had this network of about 20 chief people officers and we met every week for like just an hour and it was the good, bad and the ugly advice in terms of the thing that was working, the things that weren't working. It was so important, it was so powerful that if you don't have that if you can find a way to create that, I'm just, I have just always thought that could be incredibly rewarding to just have whatever mind appears.

Speaker 2: 24:44

It's interesting to see what other people are doing commiserate on the good, bad and ugly, because that's every job. There's always things. There's something so important about being part of a community. Just like, you're not alone in this, no matter what stage you are in your career, because there's a lot of human messy feelings that go along with every single stage in your career.

Speaker 1: 25:02

Absolutely. I could go into depth with DiWalt on this call about those crappy jobs I had and how hard they were and the lesson I learned and how I hoped during that period. And that's like experiences, right. The other thing I would say is you can create a network of people who have similar values at you but are at different stages of their career, so have seen the work and experienced it and can look back and say, all right, let me tell you, when I was in my 30s, the world was different, but a lot of the experiences and the challenges that you have there's definitely similarities. So here's how I cultivate people for all different generations and I think you'll find it very worthwhile. Best advice.

Speaker 2: 25:48

Curious about. On the flip of this, where you're interviewing for a company, what are the tells? What are the tells that say this is a great culture, this is a culture that's going to support you in doing the work of your life? Are there tells people can see from the outside?

Speaker 1: 26:02

There are. You want to make sure that it's not just the recruiters who are telling you that story. Their job is to serve a certain organization. You need to drill down. So when you're talking to an organization and hopefully having a number of different interviews with people so you get a good sense of that company and some of them would be peers, some of them would be a manager is that you're paying very good attention to what they're saying and you're actually teasing out from them whether or not what you're hearing from these recruiters if in fact they're real McCoy.

Speaker 1: 26:30

And then you check out Glassdoor, you check out Blind, you look at what people are saying inside the organization to know whether it's for real or whether it is just give talk. So you got to do your own homework and it does help, as I said, if you know your why and you can actually articulate your why, to have the people sitting across from you, from the company, explain why your why is either going to work or not work in this company. You should put them on the spot a little bit in a nice kind of way. That's how you tease this out, right.

Speaker 3: 27:02

What were some of your go-to questions? To tease it out.

Speaker 1: 27:05

Well, I think the biggest thing would be to say tell me what people three layers down this organization are saying about this company. Tell me what you're hearing from your teams. And if I was to just go around right now and go from desk to desk and just kind of casually stop and ask people questions what is it like to work here? What would they tell me? Would they tell it to? What would they say? And ask those questions and say what are your employee engagement scores? What are people saying about the employee experience here? Have you seen progress or are things going backwards? So it's just doing a lot of due diligence and interviewing the people in the company as much as they're interviewing you with you.

Speaker 3: 27:53

There's what you ask in the interview, but then there's what really happened when you get there on day one, your first 90 days in a company. How do you further tease this out? Like, how do you figure out who are the secret decision makers? What are the things that are going to make it a better experience? What are your questions in those first 90 to help you?

Speaker 1: 28:08

Who are the savvy insiders? You got to figure them out and some of that is asking. Again, it's asking a lot of people, a lot of questions and owning your own onboarding right. So it isn't just I'm the manager, here's the playbook, you have the free people to talk to. It's like all right. I got to drill down even more. I want to speak with these four people over here. I want to know more about what's going on in the IT department, not relying on a routine onboarding process, but create something for yourself that's robust.

Speaker 1: 28:43

And I would also say, as an insider from Chief People Officer perspective, onboarding is so important. Those first 90 days, those first six months, it's how you show up, because you want to know what's going on, but you want people to know you. My mother used to say it's not who you know, it's who knows you that matters. And that's really right, mom, that's what I would do. I would be really thoughtful about who I wanted to meet with and just make it happen. Just make it happen. And people don't say no, they really don't, you're new to the organization, they want to meet the new person.

Speaker 2: 29:17

I'll tell you I have a few regrets looking back on my career, A few. There's times where I'm like I should not have handled that the way I did I did. Life goes on. You learn right, you live, you learn. But one of the red thread regrets or if I could do it over again is I wish I would have done what you just suggested, which was get out there and meet people, Ask for the coffee, Get a habit of just asking for the coffee. Even when I was an individual contributor, I wish I would have done that, because it makes it so much more easy and enjoyable to get work done.

Speaker 1: 29:50

Absolutely, absolutely. That is part of working your life right. It's just feeling like you're part of an organization that you're connected to. Connections are so important. At the end of the day, we look back and say, did I feel like I made a difference here and who are the people that I can look and say, oh my God, look at the tribe. I was able to be part of that built up, part of something. Completely agree with you, francesca. Very important.

Speaker 3: 30:11

What you created super valuable and, I think, unfortunately a lot of ways, unique, and I hope you get to a place where this is more the standard and not the exception. How can we get there?

Speaker 1: 30:23

Back to what I was saying earlier about the pendulum swinging.

Speaker 1: 30:26

People and leaders could be mindful of the fact that things are going to change and the companies that continue to be committed throughout a sluggish job market and challenging competitive environment, they stay true to who they are. They're the ones who are going to win at the end of the day. They're the ones who are not going to lose their talent. Let's think about this. On the other side, all of those law firms that capitulated to the administration and actually in many ways destroyed their brand, hurt their culture and their values, and they've had some of their top lawyers who are walking out the door saying I'm not going to be part of this Law students who got out of law school. They don't want to interview with those organizations. So there's a big price to pay for abandoning what managed you as an organization just because you can or because the times are tough. In fact, when the times are tough is when you really need to double down and just be even more vigilant about what matters to you and how you want to run your organization.

Speaker 3: 31:41

Joan, are you up for some rapid round questions?

Speaker 1: 31:46

I am ready.

Speaker 3: 31:48

This can be one word answers. This can be as long as you'd like to take it, but really quick. Whatever comes to top of mind, Okay jumping in. It's 2030. What's your prediction about what work looks like?

Speaker 1: 32:03

One exciting thing is, I think we're all going to have AI agents who are going to be reading our emails for us and making our travel plans and maybe scheduling our doctor's appointments. So those are things I'm super excited about. But I want to answer that question by saying here's what I hope. I hope that by 2030, the human-centered jobs are more valued and are higher compensated, and by that I mean the teachers, the EMTs, the caregivers, the therapists. I hope that AI will have helped automate so much of the roles that can be automated that we will really see the need for these people to be doing the great job that they do. That's my hope. I like that.

Speaker 3: 32:46

That's a good one. What is one?

Speaker 1: 32:51

thing about corporate culture that you'd like to just see die already. Personality assessments, color, myers-briggs Dis I like to see them all go far away. I believe that they label people, and I have seen them do more damage inside an organization than them.

Speaker 3: 33:08

I agree with you. I think they're fun and it's interesting if it's like personal introspection. But too often they can be weaponized and people make them their whole personality when that's not the intent.

Speaker 1: 33:19

Let me just tell you I was talking to somebody who was leaving the organization and they were looking for their next role. We were talking and they said they did colors in their organization. This person said every single person on the HR leadership team was a red. So that kind of said you're not a red, you're probably not going to be on the HR leadership team. Anyway, that is a bugaboo of mine which I've actually had for some time.

Speaker 3: 33:39

Okay, what is the greatest opportunity that orgs are actually missing out on?

Speaker 1: 33:45

So I think it's cross-functional data. Data exists in silos inside organizations. First of all, we know it's not pristine and I think part of this whole going to AI is going to be like cleaning up data and making it good. But if companies can use the power of cross-functional information, they're going to be able to streamline decision-making, become way more efficient as organizations.

Speaker 3: 34:12

How many times have we all worked in an organization and found out three other departments are working on a similar project Exactly? A little more personal. What's on your playlist right now? What music are you listening to?

Speaker 1: 34:24

So I'm listening to a guy named Leif Volderweck Okay, check him out. One of his songs I really like Transatlantic Flight. I also love Kim Petraeus. She does a version of the old Kate Bush song Running Up that Hill, and if you like that song and there's many different versions of it I would say check out her version of it and her video of doing it at Outside Lands in San Francisco in 2022. She's so cool and it's just completely joyful. And then I'm a big fan of Florence, yeah.

Speaker 3: 34:57

I love her. You did a really beautiful collaboration. Do you know the artist Blood Orange? Yes, have you heard her collaboration with him? I have not. So this is a great tip. Very good, put that in your as Francesca says, be in your bonnet for this weekend. Go look it up, it's really good. What are you reading right now?

Speaker 1: 35:16

It could be audiobook or old school pages, so I'm an old school pages person, so right now I'm reading the Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich person, so right now I'm reading the Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. I stopped on the Pulitzer, I think, in 2020. But I would say that the book that I've loved the most that I've read in the last eight months has been James by Percival Everett, and I would highly recommend that book.

Speaker 3: 35:36

What do you really admire? Could be personal, professional.

Speaker 1: 35:40

There's so many people in my life and historically I admire, but I'm going to pick one person Right now. I'm going to pick Laura Steinem. We need to stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us talking about and reporting on women's issues, on reproductive rights, on equal pay, on health care. And the thing I love about her, she's 91 years old. She's still with us. She absolutely never sold out. She's my shout out, she's my hero right now.

Speaker 3: 36:15

What's one piece of advice that you've received, or just something that's your personal piece of advice that you want someone to know you would give everybody today?

Speaker 1: 36:24

If I could pick a couple, because there's career and then there's personal. So if I think about career advice, I want to say careers are long. Mine was very long, was 47 years long, and that means that you're going to have some jobs that are crappy jobs, and, rather than running away from them, a lot of those crappy jobs are incredibly important and meaningful. They're either the lessons you needed to learn, they're people you needed to know, or, in one case, it was a ticket I needed to punch. It was experience. I needed to get that next job, which was my goal, and so embrace the crappy jobs. They're going to happen the way of life.

Speaker 1: 37:07

The other thing I would say, though, from a career perspective, is know your brand and who you are. Know your why, know what is important to you. So let me give you an example. When I would meet with CEOs and I was doing job interviews for chief people officer roles, I would always say to them I believe the best human resources, I believe my job as the head of human resources is to help managers be the best managers they can be. Only people who work for me at HR is my team, the rest of the people who work for managers and how they feel about the organization is oftentimes how they feel about their managers. Do they feel like they're getting feedback and they're being coached and they're being developed? So I would say, if you don't agree with that, perfectly fine, but that means I'm not the right person for you, I'm not right for the role. Go hire somebody else. So that's just an example of a philosophy that I developed early on that stayed true for me throughout my career and I would use it as an evaluation tool as I was deciding where I was going to go next. And then the personal advice and this is not profound. Everybody on this who's listening to this has probably heard this, but it's a lesson that we don't always take to heart, and I can even give you a recent example that I did not, and I regret it. Make sure you tell the people in your life who have been meaningful to you, who you've learned from, what they've done and how they've helped you, and be specific.

Speaker 1: 38:36

When I was starting my career many years ago, I was at a large financial services company in Boston and as a very junior person, I had the opportunity to work with the CEO of that company, and it was remarkable that I had that opportunity because he was here and I was like and I got to know him and we worked on a few projects and I learned so much from him and I had so many great stories about this person as a human, as a leader. Two months ago he died at 98 years old and I wrote his wife a note and I said I want to tell you stories about your husband that come from a young professional. And I told her these stories. She wrote back to me and she said it was very profound for her to hear these and she said they were so jizzing with Jim.

Speaker 1: 39:22

The stories were so Jim and she said I wish he could have read this. And I'm like I wish I could have written it. I wish I had written it. So don't wait till that person's gone and you're telling their spouse. It's great to tell their spouse, but let them know when you have the opportunity.

Speaker 2: 39:37

What a gift to give someone to bring the spirit of their loved one back through the story. That's a really beautiful gift to give someone. Joan, it's been awesome to chat with you today. Tell us where people can find you.

Speaker 1: 39:51

I'm on LinkedIn Also. I'm part of the Chief People Officer Forum, so if there's anybody who is a Chief People Officer and wants to join a network, to build community and wants to quarter, have topics of interest and experts who are going to be able to talk about topics, we've got one coming up next week and it's all like AI. What is this going to mean for you people, officers?

Speaker 2: 40:10

We will link to your LinkedIn and the CPO forum. There's nothing stronger than community, so definitely check that out, joan. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you, joan.

Speaker 3: 40:19

It was great to be with you. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesco Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care friends. Bye friends. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends.