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 Beth Kaplan to talk about why the old advice to “just fit in” is outdated—and honestly, damaging.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.

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 Human Debt of Tech at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Human Debt with Duena Blomstrom

Humans aren’t just resources…

But we’ve been treating them like they are. We sat down with Duena Blomstrom, author and Human Debt expert, to unpack what happens when companies prioritize speed, systems, and output over emotional wellbeing—and how to fix it. If your workplace is running on burnout, blurred boundaries, and broken trust, this conversation is the reset you didn’t know you needed.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm wondering if you can explain it to our listeners like a five-year-old. What is human debt?

Speaker 2: 0:07

To five-year-olds it would be difficult because they would have to assume that the enterprise is an honest place where good things should have happened. So I can't do that, but I can explain it to a 35-year-old.

Speaker 1: 0:19

Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it. What's going on, mel, hey, hey, how's it going?

Speaker 3: 0:39

It's good. It's good. I cannot believe we are almost a month away from fall.

Speaker 1: 0:45

I know we are 40 days left of summer, though Plenty of time. Did you get your beach day in? Not a day.

Speaker 3: 0:53

I did get two hours, but Robbie and I are planning a trip to Block Island, which, for those of you who don't know, is off the coast of Rhode Island. It's gorgeous, and that will be our beach day, hopefully at the end of this month. How about you? Very nice, very nice.

Speaker 1: 1:09

We are taking a trip up to Mount Rainier, which, yeah, I don't know if anyone else does this. We've lived in Portland for about four years now and I looked at a map the other day and was like wow, mount St Helens is like an hour and a half away, never been. Was like wow, mount.

Speaker 1: 1:24

St Helens is like an hour and a half away. Never been right. Mount Rainier, super close like these, beautiful, you know experiences and we're just like we want to go to JCrew this weekend. So like, yeah, we are. So we rented like a cool cabin. The Airbnb market around Mountain Towns is just stunning. I mean funny. Also, you can you can rent someone's trailer, you can rent a yurt, you can rent, you know, a cabin that looks like it's totally set up to be instagrammable, that kind of stuff I've always wanted to stay in a yurt.

Speaker 3: 1:54

I don't know what it is, I'm like same such a fun tent I'm not a camping person.

Speaker 1: 2:00

I love to hike and be outdoors and I want to be in a room with a whack, yeah a yurt is the nice middle ground.

Speaker 3: 2:06

It's like a nice middle ground between a tent and a house.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Yeah, yeah. Do you think you could just buy a yurt on Amazon? You could buy anything on Amazon.

Speaker 3: 2:15

I know, like Timu, I've not ordered anything from Timu, have you?

Speaker 1: 2:19

No, but I really want to just to see what comes. I do too.

Speaker 3: 2:23

You know what it makes me wonder. I have the funniest story when my niece was going through this donut obsession for like ever, as you do, as you do, and I saw this donut chair on Amazon and I thought it was like a person-sized donut chair and then she got it for her birthday and it was a chair for her cell phone. So I imagine this shopping experience at Timo is kind of like me not paying attention to the dimensions of her donut chair.

Speaker 1: 2:51

That's why I want it. That's why I want it. Like, did you just spend $150 on a thing for yourself?

Speaker 3: 2:55

Yeah, it was like the dumbest thing ever, yeah, oh that's funny, god, I love shit like that. Yeah, I'm a big fan.

Speaker 1: 3:02

Mystery packages, mystery packages. Aren't you a big fan of, like the mystery bags, like $5, what's in the bag. It could be anything Like such a sucker for that Huge.

Speaker 3: 3:12

Where do people get those? You know like those mail bins, like unclaimed mail, and then they just buy an entire pallet.

Speaker 1: 3:25

I want to in on a palette with you Nordstrom returns, amazon returns. What do you get? What are you going to get? Yeah, oh, we got to do this. Yeah, when we make our first million, we'll get a palette.

Speaker 3: 3:31

We'll do a live unboxing.

Speaker 1: 3:35

It's irregular jeans. We have 45 packs of irregular jeans. These are our dreams $501 sunglasses. Yes, oh God, I love every minute of it. Well, no, we talked to someone super duper cool this summer.

Speaker 3: 3:53

Oh, yes, duena, I love her. Yeah, yeah, tell us about Duena doing things that don't take care of their people and their employees. And her whole discussion was on how to recognize if you have human debt. Every organization, just like tech debt, has human debt, and she was addressing ways that you can recognize it and ways that you can address it. It's a really interesting concept that we need to start talking about more. And she's done a million other things. She has a podcast called Mero Spicy at Work Tech, not People is a book that she's written. She's a keynote speaker. She's just an overall powerhouse.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Talk about a renaissance woman that's out there just doing good.

Speaker 3: 4:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:56

And has done good too. Right, human debt is one of those things where, if you don't know the term, when you have her explain what it is, what happened to me is like oh, I have felt this, I know exactly what this is, when you feel like the reciprocity and the relationship with your organization is off balance massively. I loved talking about what it looks like and feels like with her, but also, and probably most importantly, what can we do about it as organizations and, most importantly, as individuals? Because it starts with us one-on-one.

Speaker 3: 5:30

One-on-one we're humans at the end of the day, we're humans. I'm only human. Sorry for the woo-woo everyone. That's who we are. I love everything about this. She's just fantastic. So we hope that you get a lot out of this episode, folks, and let us know what you think. Here's to one-off Welcome friends.

Speaker 3: 6:14

We are super excited to welcome Dwayna Blomstrom. She is the author of Emotional Banking, people Before Tech, the Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age and an upcoming book called Tech-Led Culture. She is also an international keynote speaker, the co-founder of Tech-Led Culture People, not Tech companies that are really offering a human work platform, providing a framework to usher in a new tech-led culture of humanity in the workplace. She is one of the top voices on LinkedIn. She has an amazing newsletter that I follow the Future of Agile, as well as Chasing Psychological Safety. She's also a podcaster, like us. She's the co-host of NeuroSpicy at Work, which I'm excited to listen to.

Speaker 3: 6:58

The Secret Society of Human Work Advocates the People in Tech podcast, tech-led Culture and, married to Tech Duenna, that's a lot. So we just want to say wow, you've accomplished quite a great deal in influencing the working world in general in a very positive way. I love that you're calling out how we need to prioritize humanity in the workplace. Tell us, how did you get started in this space? What really inspired you to get started in this space?

Speaker 2: 7:29

Oh, only that. Let's see, that's an easy one to start with. We should have started with the harder ones. I don't think I've had any kind of inspiration. I didn't want to get started in this space at all. I don't know really many people that woke up going. I shall be in this space. So I think, like all of us, I just happened into it. I happened to see what looked to me like vast injustices and I had to do something about them.

Speaker 2: 7:56

I don't think I ever chose anything and I don't know if I might ask you what is this path we're talking about? What exactly have I chosen? Because if you ask me, none of the things have really been the ones that I've necessarily went after, but the things that have happened to me. I hear this a lot from other people that are AUADHD and have worked in the business world. I feel like careers have never been designed. We just fell where we fell and then we put all of our passion into something, learned all of the things, possibly got bored with that particular topic and moved on to the next.

Speaker 2: 8:32

Industry Happened to me a couple of times. I would say I started in psychology, obviously, but then I very quickly moved into business and did kind of technology and got excited when the internet boomed, when the financial technology side of things boomed, and learned everything there was to learn about it. But then the more I I put my head into it, the more I realized these are bigger human issues and I had to get my head out of the small holes. I was so pleased tinkering in, like every other autistic person that I have employed in my life not everybody else and yeah, I didn't choose anything. It's become a vocation, more than a day-to-day nine-to-five.

Speaker 3: 9:15

Yeah, that makes sense. I can totally relate. Francesca and I often talk about how we fell into our roles and then you just become the expert while you're doing it and quickly get bored and move on to the next. What's the next thing? So that makes total sense to me.

Speaker 2: 9:30

No one I don't believe wakes up at five and goes. I desperately want to be the uh back-end developer of apis. It's not a life-saving. It's very hard to attach the meaning to it, but we find other things at work that do that and I don't think there's anyone in the workplace that's not hundred thousand percent burning for something.

Speaker 1: 9:54

It's an interesting. People feel that. They feel that either that line between I'm not passionate about my work, but I'm doing this for the money and I'm doing this to bring home a paycheck, or they're burning out or they're feeling all of the impacts of the way that organizations are set up. And one of the concepts you talk about is human debt, and I love that. I'm wondering if you can explain it to our listeners like a five-year-old. What is human debt?

Speaker 2: 10:24

like a five-year-old. What is human debt To five-year-olds? It would be difficult because they would have to assume that the enterprise is an honest place where good things should have happened. So I can't do that, but I can explain it to a 35-year-old.

Speaker 2: 10:37

Let's do it, let's do it and there's probably different explanations to a 25-year-old, a 35-year-old, a 55-year-old and so on, but for everyone we should have done right. As employers, we should have done a set of things. As organizations, we should have come to the table in a certain fashion when we offer whatever it is that we offer in this contract of work, and those things haven't happened. So I'll expand in a second. It's every time that the organization hasn't done the things that they should have done and by those taking care of their employees in monetary and emotional fashion. So, for instance, all the things that most organizations will tell you they have but they don't really have. All of your failed dni programs. All of your stages of leadership with no explanation. All of the times when they should have been respectful to the conversation and the communication and never happened. All of the times when we promised our people a promotion and then we forgot, as if it never really was going to materialize anyways. All of the times when we presided over unpleasant and bullish behaviors, because think of a wrong in the workplace and think how it has never been addressed and think that will become your debt as an organization, because the more of these instances that you have as an organization where you have failed your people. Most of these are not going to be recorded anywhere, but they will exist in something like the, and I never thought about it until right now, but it's almost the antithesis of culture. It's an anti-culture vessel in the back of everyone's mind going. These motherfuckers have effed other people up. It may not have been me, but it has happened here. You know.

Speaker 2: 12:35

What happens is you then sit on an organization that has a debt and you can decide to pay it off and start treating your people better, figure out what they hate you for and when, and then make them love you again, or you can decide to ignore it, which is the case for a vast majority of most enterprises today. You can pretend it's not a problem. You can better your retention programs instead or put more money in position. I don't know what else we're doing than that, if I'm honest. So if you as an organization decide to not pay off this human debt, what happens eventually is that you become unviable. I believe that they will not be around. I'm not saying we should never get debt, right? If I'm talking to particularly your listeners must be Americans. You're fine with that. Question is when do we start paying this off?

Speaker 1: 13:23

Yeah, it was super fair. When I was growing up, my parents always talked about this idea of reciprocity and relationships. Right, Even on a one-to-one level. You are going to have moments where you're going to withdraw from the emotional bank account and you're going to have moments where you're going to have to deposit in the emotional bank account, and sometimes it's going to be uneven, but ideally, in the long arc, you have a balanced bank account. And this is one of these concepts where I feel like this happens on an individual level To your very good point. It happens on an organizational level and you feel it. You feel it, that's right.

Speaker 2: 13:57

Yeah, everyone knows it Exactly that I'm saying and what you said, that when you said you feel it. We know what we're all about, everyone knows. And it's that email we didn't answer. It's that person. We told them to have themselves in a corner because they weren't their fault, it was the bloody system or whatever. It's that time when we didn't keep a promise. It's that time when we didn't help a friend or we let them fall on a sword, becoming debts that you carry. As a human, workplace should care about those bits, because I'm not a different human, but outside of that, we're not entities that exist. Why would the workplace as well that claims it has regulated method in which it will not, if you over, do that to you is my question. So I'm on a work path with human debt in general, but the one at work is just shameful if you ask me I am curious about, on an organizational level, what are they supposed to do?

Speaker 2: 14:56

Fair question. It's massive. What is anyone supposed to do?

Speaker 1: 14:59

I don't know. Yeah, be cooler, be a nicer person. I don't know. Don't be a dick.

Speaker 2: 15:04

I'm a dick. That is the answer. But regulating against dickery is not the answer. Making people genuinely not biddicks is probably the answer. And if they genuinely wanted to do something, then there would be no employee that wasn't through a level of Communist Party from 1955, re-education camps of what the bloody hell an emotion is, because that's the level we need to get our leadership through before we will be able to engage with this very new generation that speaks emotions like that.

Speaker 2: 15:37

And if you are in a leadership position or you are engaged in teamwork and you haven't had it that to me doesn't recommend you to exist in the workplace at all, because what they're using, and what we're all using, is this lack of education to say I don't quite know, we don't quite engage like that at work. So, in between the armor of professionalism and this insanity of I don't know much about emotions I'm not a psychologist how am I supposed to engage any better? What happens is we cannot communicate and we cannot collaborate at work and we sure as fuck cannot lead anybody. That's the problem we have. If you're losing money anywhere the workplace you're losing on the fuckers you're keeping who are lying. You don't have emotions. If we're going to keep them. We can't just flush these people out.

Speaker 2: 16:22

I remember starting in the business world and everyone telling me to not worry in banking. We don't need to change all the systems In time, we'll just replace them with the people and everything. Come on, these guys only have one more board meeting. The amount of times I heard that you'd be surprised. That's not the way to be doing life. I am not supposed to wait anyone out to die because it's uncomfortable for me to speak about real things.

Speaker 1: 16:46

We hear it all the time, though All the time. He's not going anywhere. Blah, blah, blah, Like it happens all the time.

Speaker 2: 16:53

But people are using it as excuses.

Speaker 3: 16:56

Yeah, they absolutely are.

Speaker 1: 16:57

What's fascinating about this, though, is that, when you look at all of the research about great leadership, great team dynamics, innovation, engagement, it harkens on those things that people are emotionally intelligent, that they do make space for things like psychological safety, like that they understand their own limitations, and all of those things make for great performance, but it also means that you need to get your own shit together. Do you understand how you operate? Do you understand where your pitfalls are? Do you understand how you need to flex for your team? And vice versa? I think our leaders in organizations that grew up with my joke is, they grew up with this like Shackleton view of leadership, which is I'm strong, I have no emotions, I'm going to just push my way through, as opposed to really thinking about what works to lead people through what we're going through, what we're about to go through.

Speaker 2: 17:52

And.

Speaker 1: 17:52

I know Mel's probably so sick of hearing me say this, but there is not a person on the planet that has led through what we're going through and what we're about to go through. When you think about the speed of business, when you think about AI the amount of wars happening cultural and on the ground. When you think about AI, the amount of wars happening cultural and on the ground it's too much for a lot of people and to deny your humanity in that versus to lean into it, is not the right move.

Speaker 2: 18:15

But we have done it in the workplace for the last X amount of years. We need such a blank slate reset. You asked me earlier what needs to happen. What needs to happen is everyone needs to shut down, come back with a new plan. That's what needs to happen.

Speaker 3: 18:29

In addition to blowing up the workplace, people need to blow up the concept of what work means in their life. Right, there's a reset that needs to happen on a personal level as well as the organizational level.

Speaker 2: 18:43

You hit the nail on the head Disconnect between what work can and is and should be. It's not even a genuine, open conversation. Big concepts are up in the air. Who am I? What is work? What is the point of me as a human? What if your worth as a human is never about how much money you make?

Speaker 2: 19:01

What if we start remunerating people on being emotionally intelligent or remunerating people on being kind intelligent or remunerating people on being kind or taking up someone else's work for a second instead, because we haven't taught them the right things, in particular men, the same men that we are upset at.

Speaker 2: 19:17

How very dare they be a shithead and whatever shit. We put them there and we said all you need to do is tell me what to do and then I will execute on it. And no, that isn't, isn't the ask? The ask is that you check yourself, that you sit with being uncomfortable, that you understand your emotions, that you communicate efficiently, that you care about me. Those are the asks. With that said, there are companies out there, there are enterprises out there, there are combinations of people out there and groups that have gathered in a way that allow them to see each other, that allow them to get psychological safety to be real teams to go real fast, and those are the people that will get us out of the workplace if we don't want to also match them, not AI or anybody else. So literally, being a human is the only USB we're going to be asked to bring.

Speaker 3: 20:07

Yeah, we don't have anything if we don't have our humanity. We just talked about AI, and one thing we do know is that maintaining our humanity and bringing our full human selves is going to be more important than anything. So you talk a lot about tech debt. What is tech debt?

Speaker 2: 20:34

That's easier when you write code, when you're heart of heart as a programmer. That you could have potentially written it a little bit better is the only way to put it. You could have tested it more or you could have double checked something. But what has been prized in the software development world has always been speed of delivery. So the first answer you get off of Google is the one you get in. I'm joking, it's not quite that easy, but it takes a little bit more than that to be a programmer, but not a whole lot more, let me tell you.

Speaker 2: 21:01

That said, it's a natural thing to incur technical debt as you write, because if you write code fast, some of it won't work, some of it will get old, some of it will need a rewrite. What happens when you have a lot of this code that's not brilliant accumulating, is that you have to do a full rewrite of your code base, and anyone in technology knows that's the kiss of death for any CTO or any team attempting to exist. So you don't want to get to a place where you have to throw away everything you've written. When it comes to tech debt, it comes to bite you and your system stops working if you don't start fixing it. So the same way that they're supposed to be going back and fixing bits and pieces of that tech debt where it will make sense, so that the entire thing doesn't crash, that is how I'm saying we should be doing it in terms of human debt in the enterprise and let's start in the emotional intelligence, because it is an emergency. I I was desperately afraid of this in the ending of all my books. If we are to take a leaflet from the tech industry, we'll have to change culture everywhere else, because in the tech industry, by hook or by crook, we've invented this crap called agile, and this crap called agile means many things to many people, but what it essentially means is that you have some autonomy and you have some goodwill. That's what it means, and when you have those two things, you do things with other people. That's literally all that it means.

Speaker 2: 22:20

And because you cannot make technology as an individual contributor anymore, they have had to produce the thing. Let me tell you where else it didn't wasn't needed. Everywhere else, because the workplace is still made of a hundred billion individual contributors. So in the technology side, if you don't collaborate, you don't end up with any code. If you don't do the pair programming. You don't have the thing that's being paired properly On the other side. If your workplace is horrible and your workmate is an asshole, you still do it. You still show up to not take any blame for anything and to be the hero and to deliver the project. We have workplaces that are carried by millions of desperate, adulting individual contributors. The workplace doesn't exist. The workplace and the business place is a lie. We don't have that. We just have some conventions that we are happy to avail ourselves of for different reasons. So those are the ones we need to get to, because they are not something to be proud of to leave the next generation.

Speaker 2: 23:24

You feel it in the ether, what we hear from folks who are still in corporate, consistently it's just like I know that the people that are blessed and still in and for a long while it was they're going to be out, weren't they? But now I'm telling you that the out is out. These people are the outliners now, the people that are convinced that what existed come back. The same exact structure, the same exact. The same exact structure, the same exact conversation, the same exact fears of being authentic. No one's going to notice I don't quite understand anything. No one's going to notice I'm not quite engaging humanly properly. That's not happening anymore and I am genuinely worried for anyone who thinks we're wrong and we'll all calm down.

Speaker 3: 24:03

It won't. It feels like it's just going to amp up. I'd love to hear, especially with all this talk of AI. I'm wondering what your point of view is on how employers and employees, during this change, can get ahead of the human debt side of things. What can they do? Because we know the tech change is here and increasing. How can they get ahead of that human debt when it does start?

Speaker 2: 24:26

happening. I want to believe that, as society, we'll be at the place that we can go. Not everybody needs to show up to work, and not everyone needs to have a nine to five job. Everyone else can go read or make paintings. There is no need for jobs to be created. We don't need to fear AI. If AI shows up and AI takes all our jobs, that's brilliant. Then we all can lazy about. That's not going to, unfortunately, happen in our lifetime. It would be nice, it would be great, but not going to happen. So what will happen is, though no one will be employable if you don't bring yourself to work every day.

Speaker 2: 25:05

I remember when I was in college, I wrote a thesis on always being on, and I was like, so proud of myself. All you need to do is always being on, and I was like, so proud of myself. All you need to do is always be on, and then you'll be so focused and so in flow. Everything will be fine, literally. I remember my professor going God, this is not. This is not going to work. You're going to have to go back to the drawing board because you're describing ADHD. Can you go back home and calm down? But so I'm not saying that everyone's going to like me, right, not everyone can be on, but you're like don't mask a hundred percent, you can't mask forever exactly that.

Speaker 2: 25:40

Yeah, so when we say mask, we mean in the workplace in particular. When we say it in in a private fashion, we just mean that those of us that are not neurotypical spend our entire lives attempting to be like the neurotypicals. Possibly, if you ask me, we should just ask for the neurotypicals to try more to be like us. But that's just me. But we do that. We attempt to pretend we are neurotypical.

Speaker 2: 26:05

But that happens at work as well, when people mask their true emotion and they employ a process called impression management, which is essentially attempting to appear in a certain fashion in front of your peers. But when you do that, you are not authentic, you are not genuinely giving your opinion. You are are attempting to control the narrative in a fashion that will not help a team function, so it's not a desirable behavior. When you're attempting to create a team dynamic, it's really not a desirable behavior in any fashion other than when people want to wear pink. It's the only impression management I'm fine with is for pretty. Anything else is not for pretty and it's for hiding. Should not exist either in personal or workplaces, simply because it makes our lives harder and it makes other people suffer.

Speaker 3: 26:58

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I'm so happy to hear the discussions had started around bringing your authentic self to work and workplaces trying to really create spaces where that's okay. No one's getting it 100%, but the fact that some workplaces are even trying to do that and foster that is so incredibly important.

Speaker 2: 27:22

So it's good to see, I say this a lot the organizations that do have psychological safety are not the organizations that are chasing it. They're the organizations that have built it to begin with and then have guarded it. Guarding it is an everyday work. Let's be honest. The work that is needed of humans at work is the same work that's needed of us every day, with our spouses, with our children, with our parents, with our friends. The same work. Be honest, be kind, be always putting yourself into somebody else's shoes. Same way. Does anyone want to do it, even at home? No, we're equals to our own family. Why would we extend that kind of kindness to strangers at work? So, the more that the world implodes, the more that we are afraid we're dying, the more that we are in defense mode, the less psychological, the less a team, the less a workplace the less there's any point to this conversation.

Speaker 1: 28:19

I think about this a lot. I've been on a journey the last several months around how do I want to reimagine my life and how I live my life? One of the North Stars is am I doing this out of love and to be a better version of myself for other people, for myself? Or am I doing this out of ego? And this idea of this constant pull of? Is this out of love or is this out of ego? And sometimes you want to do things out of ego. I get that. But for the most part I'm trying really hard to have a very simple vision of do it out of love, even if it doesn't make sense, even if it's not good for my career. It's out of love Because at this point I don't know what else to do, and as I'm listening to you when I'm feeling like, is that kind of the mantra that we all need to be? Not that I, that's all.

Speaker 2: 29:00

That's all. That's all and it's. They should have started with what you started and they should end with what you're ending now, which is what when you started, you explained you there's reciprocity in there's a rupture and repair and there's a reciprocity, and when you fuck people up, you then have to come back up and put more in that. That's how you do repair. You put more that coin from bloody dr phil's jar, if no one knows any other reference, you would remember dr phil's love jar, if nothing else. Or some people might remember vick's from the Orange County Housewives they all had the love jar like that. Have a fucking love jar and stop taking shit out of it instead of putting crap into it, because you'll fuck up your life and your work life.

Speaker 2: 29:42

I think it's the easiest advice, but we all know that it reduces all the way to don't be a dick, the method to not be a dick, I think, and to minimize those instances when you go for the ego instead of the love. I don't know if it's any good, but it's an intense daily pressure. I will tell you that these days I just have to go. What do I think is the right thing to do? What do I genuinely believe is the right thing to do and, like you say, you won't always do it. Sometimes you'll be like, fuck, the right thing to do. I've been doing the right thing continuously. My significant statement is the right thing to do.

Speaker 3: 30:17

Okay, go fuck it up, but some days and most days you would have tried, and it's a handful of questions, some are yet. They can be yes or no, but the hope is it's your. Whatever your immediate reaction is to this question or your immediate answer, I will tell you that you're giving palpitations to people who are AUADHD.

Speaker 2: 30:55

No, I'm joking, I'll be fine.

Speaker 3: 30:56

I'm sorry, I'm joking, I'll be 100% fine, I'm curious now Go ahead In terms of human debt, because you've seen examples of who's really fucking it up and who's doing it really well. Who do you feel is getting this right?

Speaker 2: 31:15

It's getting it right. Google started by doing it right. That's why they came up with the idea. They sort of found it at the same time that Amy has repopularized it. It's not something that Amy Edmondson has come up with, it's not something that Google has come up with, but psychological safety will forever be intrinsically connected to Google. That doesn't make Google a psychologically safe company today, necessarily. They have pockets of amazingness and pockets of absolute shit, like everyone else, but, with that said, they are an absolute good company to look at.

Speaker 2: 31:44

The second example I have and it's surprising to most people is fucking Amazon, and it's Amazon corporate. It's Amazon corporate working practices. Let's put it that way. I look at what they're doing in terms of collaboration internally, where we make software, and it's insanely smart. It's probably the only place where you have good acknowledgement of the fact that work doesn't happen like we thought it does. A famous example is the fact that they use written memos that they all bloody read first before the conversation starts. So we all have the same bloody context Very, very basic.

Speaker 2: 32:22

And then, lastly, and most interestingly so, somewhere around March, jeff Bezos came out after eight billion years where we thought he died or something. He was busy being in love. Some of us used to be back in the day, and so he came back saying we are doing no structured meetings anymore. I'm sorry, what we know when we show up, we know what we show up for. And then I remind everyone that they have to do mind wandering, which, yes, I can just see all the wondering which, yes, I can just see all the um, various developers going oh my god, now what mind wandering. They want my feelings to wander somewhere as well.

Speaker 2: 33:01

So completely get it why. It's woohoo for some people, but it's a hundred percent the truth. You only come in to get an answer when you've had five minutes of mind wandering, and what most work meetings manage to do, which is insane, is attempt to fit a little bit of mind wandering in the. And what most work meetings manage to do, which is insane, is attempt to fit a little bit of mind-wandering in the middle of an insane work meeting. And because he doesn't have an exact end time, it allows people to actually be creative and try to apply themselves to a problem. These are execs at Amazon, so maybe we get people treated like execs at Amazon and then we let their minds wander. How about that?

Speaker 3: 33:34

Can companies afford to ignore this human debt?

Speaker 2: 33:39

Companies are non-existent. There is a real of a concept organizations and companies are just as serious as Santa Claus has been saying this for 10,000 years. They cannot afford it, but they don't care because they can't care or afford or do anything. They don't exist as a thing. I I keep saying this to the child anytime he gets up in arms about corporations there isn't this thing. This thing doesn't exist. The thing you're upset against does not exist. There's no five people that have sat down and decided this and are gonna do this.

Speaker 2: 34:10

Things happen in the business world in virtue of inertia and in virtue of the taxation episode. We're in a movie that's not being ran by a company. So no, they can't afford it, but they don't care that they can't afford it, and more and more companies are going to drop off and the ones that won't. At the end of the day, we all know which we started talking about. The bloat companies are practically an extended social service. These days. They know they've not audited which of their teams is doing anything after a certain size right? Big organizations know that they are half paying the state by keeping these people that are useless. It's an insane model. Hopefully we'll walk away from it one day. If we don't't, they will simply stop being viable. I think when they are up against companies that are doing whatever they can to do better yeah, this is more moving to a personal side of things.

Speaker 3: 35:06

What are you reading and or listening to right now that you're really excited about?

Speaker 2: 35:12

I I'm really excited about brushing up on my Spanish, which has been a lot better than I thought it was. I am surprised every day when one of my team doesn't know something and I'm like that means X and they're like, can you stop just flaunting your Spanish? So I do need to learn some proper grammar. So that's what I'm reading continuously. I'm trying to catch up on Spanish. Proper grammar. So that's what I'm reading continuously.

Speaker 2: 35:34

I'm trying to catch up on spanish and, if I'm also honest, I'm reading the most I can about the effect of being a leader and a neurodivergent leader in the workplace who has teenagers and children who are alphabet mafia.

Speaker 2: 35:51

It's a really important bit that I think we have completely neglected. We've just started a new podcast called tears of dopamine, and it's literally just us talking to other parents of trans and gay kids who have had to themselves go through major and horrendous things. I can't begin to tell you and I won't because I let them tell their story Most of them will have their voices covered because they have exact jobs that they are desperate to keep, but some of them have been willing to give us their courage and use their voice and their professional standards. So you'll hear professional standing. So you'll hear of a few names, but the rest of us, the rest of us that have these kids that we are just trying to keep alive and happy, and have never talked to each other about it, shame on us, and shame on us for not opening the conversation from here on. So we have to start working on it. Let us know if you need any.

Speaker 3: 36:49

I love that. It's so important to have that community just to start the conversation and to support one another through it. What are you most excited about for this next year?

Speaker 2: 37:15

about and I'm not taking that in any trivial fashion after having been acquiring some ptsd last year and after having seen my child go through horrible things, it's a big deal for us and we've worked really hard at re-establishing our mental stability, like I say, and our therapist would be very proud if we could just uh, be happy for a minute.

Speaker 3: 37:31

Yeah, yeah, it's important. We appreciate you and all the work you're doing Duana.

Speaker 2: 37:36

Thank you so much, you guys. It's been an amazing opportunity. You guys Both beautiful, beautiful humans and souls Really appreciate you. I don't know if you're a hugger, but I'm hugging you.

Speaker 1: 37:44

I'm so excited.

Speaker 2: 37:45

I can't wait to actually genuinely hug you guys, because I cannot wait to hug you.

Speaker 1: 37:50

Truly, I I cannot wait to play a game. I look forward to it. I will look forward to it. 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.

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.