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Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
What Is Some Practical Psychology For The Workplace?
In this episode, we explore some psychological concepts and principles that can help us better understand both those we work with and ourselves.
Coby walks us through these 3 concepts:
- The real meaning of Introversion and Extroversion
- The Curse of Knowledge
- The impact of living in Prolonged Survival Mode
Our prescription for this episode is to take a step back, look at challenges and behaviors from others and ourselves, and gain a little perspective on their cause. Compassion, reflection, and patience are how we can better understand those whom we work with and ourselves.
Past Episode Referneced:
S2 E17 - What Is Some Practical Psychology That Can Improve How I Lead And Work With Others?
You can reach out to us to talk more about successfully working with others, just contact us at info@roman3.ca or through our LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/roman3
Don't forget to sign up for our New Quarterly Newsletter that launched this fall!
About Our Hosts!
James is an experienced business coach with a specialization in HR management and talent attraction and retention.
Coby is a skilled educator and has an extensive background in building workforce and organizational capacity.
For a little more on our ideas and concepts, check out our Knowledge Suite or our YouTube Channel, Solutions Explained by Roman 3.
Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.
[COBY]:Did we lose a patient?
[JAMES]:No, that's just my lunch.
[COBY]:Hey, thanks for joining us. I'm Coby, he's James. And let's get started with a question. What is some practical psychology for the workplace?
[JAMES]:Yeah, so we did one of these back in season two, where we looked at a few pieces of, psychology that impact our workplaces. And really understanding some of these practical psychology, principles can make a huge difference in how we interact with our teams, our peers, and our employees. And so, because this is really more of Kobe's domain of expertise, I'm going to be asking him to explain three different psychological theories or principles. so, Coby, you're on the hot seat. Ah, the first one that I want to ask you about is the actual definition and differences between introversion and extroversion. just as a little bit of a preface, Although I think the vast majority of people are going to be familiar with the actual terms, I think there's a lot of misinformation about what they actually are. So can you walk us through what extroversion and introversion are?
[COBY]:When it comes to introversion and extroversion, I see this all the time. People misunderstanding what it actually means. Most people think of introversion and extroversion as what we call, social preferences. People that are introverted are shy. They prefer not to be out in crowds. They prefer not to be around a lot of people. It's more of a. It's choosing to not, you know, be overly social to and to kind of be overly active in their social life. Where extraversion is obviously the opposite, where people think that it's about this desire to be the life of the party, the big attention grabber that super outgoing and super charismatic and just like, you know, anywhere there's something going on, they will to be there. It's a preference to kind of be in the mix of it all the time. And, you know, just being you, this huge social butterfly. And the thing is, is that if that's what people. If that's what you listening to this thinks, you're wrong. That's not what it is at all. What introversion and extroversion are actually all about. It's actually about your kind of energy source. It's like your social battery charging point. Because introversion is about what gives you social energy and what gives you kind of mental energy and what takes it away. Because if you're an introvert, then Being alone or having. Or being with kind of a small group of trusted people that don't require a lot of almost like social use charges your battery. You're, you know, being alone, kind of having some solitude, not requiring a lot out of your, you know, out of you and you kind of in the use of your social muscles is what fill your battery up. But then when you're in situations where it does require you to be, you know, using your social muscles and kind of being involved in more people and they re trying to balance social interactions and all the kind of complexities to kind of go with interpersonal communications and connections that drains your battery. M Whereas extroversion is the opposite. It's when being with others is what charges you up. You're feeding off the social energy of others and you know, being around them, is what gives you that extra boost of energy and you feel more alive and you feel more charged and it becomes very kind of like, know, like sustaining that sense of energy and kind of just that social muscle presence. Whereas being alone, feeling more isolated, feeling kind of more apart from people, it's kind of like that the battery starts to drain because it's not you being recharged. You're not using your social muscles enough. That ends up kind of kind of drying you out and you end up feeling like, you know, you just, you are under stimulated and so you start to dwindle a bit. And that's really kind of stimulation piece is kind of a good way to understand it. Between, you know, overstimulation with introverts can drain their batteries where under stimulation for extroverts can drain their batteries. And most people really don't think of it as energy sources. They really do think of it as a preference with social behavior. And that misconception, can create a lot of unfair judgment and unfair. Kind of like putting people implying people are breaking social.
[JAMES]:It ends up pigeonholing people into or putting people into a box that they don't actually fit in. so it's funny anybody with how introversion and extroversion is commonly thought of, anybody meeting me randomly would probably just assume I'm an extrovert. I am loud, I am a fairly outgoing. I like to talk. All three of those things are huge revelations, I'm sure. But what's funny is I've done a lot of like over the years I've taken a lot of different self, assessments, Myers Briggs assessments. And every time I land right on the line of hovering between introversion and extroversion. Because I personally I enjoy being out and around people for a limited amount of time. And at first that will jazz me up. I'll be out, I'll be talking to people, I'll be energetic. But if I'm doing that too long, it's exhausting. And the same is true for like. So I kind of. And I think a lot of people are probably this way where it's an element of both that gives them energy. And maybe it's more one than the other for some. But I think the common understanding and I think the reason why I wanted to ask about this in terms of how does this relate to the workplace? is because if we are thinking about it in terms, if we're not thinking about it in terms of people's energy sources about if we're not taking into consideration how people recharge their batteries or don't, then we can put people in a situation where they're not able to perform at their best. If you put a person who is actually introverted, who needs a bit of solitude or you know, less stimulation, in a very overstimulating environment, they're going to not be able to perform in this necessarily in the same way that they could if the environment was tailored to how they actually need that to happen.
[COBY]:Yeah, well. And I mean one of the things that was most, not enough people were really talking about in the right way when working for home became the norm for many, many people was introverts who in a lot of ways are a bit at a disadvantage in very busy active workplaces because just being at work, kind of the bare minimum of work is draining their batteries. So when they are, were allowed to kind of work more from home and removing that again the use of their social muscles, it did amazing things for a lot of people. Their productivity skyrocketed, their, their sustained productivity, their performance and all that kind of stuff what's great. But at the same time it also was a, a big switch for people when a lot of the extroverts who thrived in those highly kind of like not necessarily chaotic but very involved, very active workplaces were kind of put into isolation. A lot of their performance really dropped because they were craving that again the use of those social muscles in that stimulation piece. And it was one of those things where kind of the problem that kind of comes up when we don't view introversion and extroversion as energy sources, review them as social preferences is that we don't realize, like you say, that we're putting people at disadvantages by expecting everyone to thrive in the same environment. And that is a big piece of like you know, when we are saying that, you know, when we give people the idea of flexible working locations. So for industries and businesses that you can provide, you know, more flexibility in when and where people work. Allowing people to kind of build a schedule that not just works with their like, you know, their commitments and their responsibilities, but also kind of works with their energy levels or their energy sources can be a more a better way to give people what they need to get the most out of them. And I mean, and like I said, you're right. When you kind of say a lot of people are kind of in the middle, there is kind of a middle term. I don't really love it. It's called like an ambivert. It's not, I don't know if I'm going toa mention it, but I'm not really confident to kind of say or say that it's a legit thing that people, you know, is kind of that middle road. Because in reality it's that you know, very few people are 100% extroverts. Right. And very few 100% introvert. That there is that blend and some situations can, you know, you know, they, they're introvert place might be the one driving the bus and other times it might be their extrovert. And again it is kind of that balance. But realizing that sometimes your social muscles fuel themselves by being around people and other times it drains you and kind of getting to know yourself. And even if you think about this, you know, we're not. The intent of this episode is for kind of, for you listening to have a bit of better understanding of those around you and not necessarily about helping you better understand yourself but if you are someone that is hearing this for the first time, that it is about your energy levels, knowing when and where you feel more charged and when and where you feel more depleted is helpful to kind of know about your optimization of what environments are going to give you the best opportunities for performance.
[JAMES]:And more about yourself is always a good thing.
[COBY]:Absolutely.
[JAMES]:Yeah. and as important, yeah I really want to focus more on the leader or the manage like as a leader, how does knowing this actually make a difference for somebody in a leadership or in a management position?
[COBY]:Well, because again we equating things like shyness or outgoingness to people to being the all you need to know about somebody's kind of like performance or what environments that they're going to work in is a bit, I don't know, it's limiting. You're not, you're really not getting the whole picture because, I mean, you may. Because you just have to be aware of kind of. Of the assumptions you're probably making about those that you work with. Because like, you, there are some very outgoing, very, you know, like, you know, like, charismatic and very like, you know, like involved life of a party. People that are still having their batteries drained by being that person. So expecting that just because somebody is good, you know, in some situations or for a short amount of time, that they're gonna thrive all the time in that kind of environment is a bit of an assumption that you might be making about people. Or assuming that this. Because someone might be a little bit more reserved, a little bit more kind of laid back and not necessarily any kind of step in front of a group doesn't mean that they're still not really being a good or really would not thrive in a more active environment. Because again, a good example of a outgoing introvert is you. So you know that you can carry that life of a party for a set amount of time, but then you're going to need to kind of like know, call it early and then go recharge your batteries. Whereas there are some who might not want to be in front of the group, but are just so jazzed up by being involved in the group that they could do it forever because it is totally filling their batteries. They're just not the one that you're looking at. Right. They're not the one that's drawing your.
[JAMES]:They're not the center of her attention.
[COBY]:Exactly. So when we talk about sustained environments or environments that allow people to kind of have their best performance, the assumption that just because someone's outgoing or, or someone is reserved doesn't mean that you can totally get what their environment is. Part of it is asking them, you know, the question, talking to them, you know, not just giving people opportunities or putting them in a situation based on your assumptions, but actually making sure that you get to know the people around you so you're actually optimizing, what they feel is the best environments for them, but also when it comes to things like you, when you have opportunities to kind of assign work locations or work tasks, again, try and tailor it to what they actually do need, not what you're assuming based on behavior that they've shown you.
[JAMES]:Just because somebody's outgoing doesn't mean that they will necessarily thrive. Dealing with customers all day, every day, that could be draining them and actually causing them to their performance to suffer if they aren't given a chance to recharge. So not looking at the behavior of somebody's loud, so they're outgoing and they're extrovert. Just recognizing that people need different. I mean we talk about this in a lot of different ways that we really need to tailor our workplaces as much as we can to allow individuals to thrive. Right. And so the more we understand the individuals who make up our teams, I think the better we will be able as leaders to actually get the performance out of them that we need.
[COBY]:Absolutely. and what's great is that if you don't have a mechanism for assessing people's energy levels, even though Myers Briggs does have some cool toys out there and some cool assessment pieces that can actually help you kind of get to the heart of it. If you're into doing those kinds of assessment pieces, if you are into that, that might not be a bad way to go. But even just kind of, you know, if you're in a workplace, let's say you're in a retail environment and you're, and you've got a fairly large team and you've always kind of been putting like you say, the most outgoing people in the most customer service positions and the most, the most quiet or shy people in the most, you know, like solo things or solo positions that might work, but it might not hurt to talk to the team and kind of say let's start moving people around and trying different people out in different roles to kind of see. Because again, who's great the first couple hours is not necessarily who's great for the whole day.
[JAMES]:Well, and if you can have somebody who's great for a couple hours, then give them a chance to recharge and allow them to be great again later. Right? Yeah, exactly. Rather than a diminishing return on their productivity.
[COBY]:And that's just it is trying to realize that there's a complexity to people and just because it might appear that there's an obvious no brainer fit for somebody that obvious no brainer fit, whether it's a solitary job for someone that's shy or a, kind of a social job for someone that's very outgoing, might have a diminishing return if you're not fully realizing that, you know, maybe they're really good for a short amount of time, but in prolonged experiences it's going to Dwindle. So switching things up or trying things out in different roles, again're if you're actively trying to get the best of your people, not acting on assumptions is probably going to be the best.
[JAMES]:To know your people.
[COBY]:Yeah, it's going toa be the best way to optimize them and try and figure out and let them work with you for how you can get the best work out of them.
[JAMES]:All right, so anything else you want to say on introversion versus Extroversion?
[COBY]:No. I do hope that people are, this is helpful for folks because again, if you're just learning about hearing about this for the first time for yourself, it might give you you a bit of an aha moment. But I really do hope that just realizing that it's about energy and stimulation.
[JAMES]:Cool. All right, so the next one that I want to ask you about is actually the curse of knowledge, which sounds really cool. or so sometimes referred to as the curse of expertise as well. So Coby, what is the curse of knowledge? And is knowledge a bad thing?
[COBY]:Okay, so. So this is a cool one. It's a cognitive bias. It's a bias where we incorrectly assume that everybody knows as much as we do on kind of a given topic that when we know something, it can be hard to imagine what it would be like not knowing that piece of information. So in our engagements and communication with other people, we kind of start from where we think the most natural introduction to an idea is, which may be levels above where someone actually is or knowing or stuff that we assume is common knowledge is a much higher threshold than what the average person would feel common knowledge is.
[JAMES]:This sounds like every other, university professor I had. Not going to lie.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah, there's a bit of that. yeah, the curse of knowledge can be a detriment in the education sector for sure when you've got highly skilled, highly educated, specialized experts who are responsible to educate entry level or even remedial level, kind of, knowledge bases. and.yeah'ugh. And I'm gonna get on my little soapbox here. So in the Last episode or, episode two ago we talked about, Yeah, I kind of went off on the post secondary institutions.
[JAMES]:Oh yeah. I should have kept my mouth shut.
[COBY]:Yeah. So I'll just say this and then I promise I'll move on.
[JAMES]:All right. I'll shut you down.
[COBY]:Okay, good. It is something that this is abundant, in universities and colleges because what we try and do is we kind of try and take an expert and then try to very ineffectively make them an educator. An educator is a specific specialization that you can't just weekend course your way into. So a lot of, there's a lot of awful adult education practices out there where experts who ah, are living with the curse of knowledge are just blowing it as educators because that's not what they're specializing in. So realizing that you know, you can't just make anybody an educator. The educators is a special calling that you and just becoming because you're an expert and something doesn't mean that information will pass through. Osmosis does have to be this effective knowledge transfer which can only really come for someone skilled and trained as an educator. So there is a bit that curse of knowledge does live there.
[JAMES]:Yeah. So let's pull it back to the workplace because I do unfortunately I see this and I've seen it like I see it with clients. I see it with when we deliver training. I see it when we work with companies to help them kind of improve their operational efficiency. This happen, this seems to me to happen frequently when we have like a deep technical understanding or knowledge of the job which ends up getting us promoted into a leadership or management position because we've done the job really, really well. So obviously we want to put that person in a position of leadership to help other people do the job really, really well. Logical. But I think there's some logical fallacies in there as well. And so can you talk about the curse of knowledge from kind of that leadership perspective?
[COBY]:Absolutely, yes. This is probably outside of the post secondary little soapbox that I would go back on in a moment's not as I could. they went resist. Right. in the role of management and leadership it's probably the second most abundant situation for curse of knowledge because again technical expertise is where a lot of the curse of knowledge bias really kind of has the greatest impact because it is this idea of I know this so well I can't remember what it's like to not have this high level of expertise. so the fact that you, my employee or my trainee or my apprentice or whatever it is can't function at the same level that I'm on is frustrating us both and making this a terrible mentoring situation, a terrible management situation, or just a terrible employment situation sometimes because 'there is this inability for the person who has the curse of knowledge to just relate to the growing pains, to the uncomfortable you know, awkward getting know like transformation piece from you know, from beginner to Intermediate. Right. So there's often a lack of patience. There's also a lack of how can they not get this? Or there's just skipping steps that are vital to learning but are always over, you know, but are always kind of like jumped over when someone has it had experience, mastery of something. And again, it's the idea of preping people for how do you educate? How do you transfer knowledge? How do you bring somebody up from a place that is that you have a hard time relating to into a place where you need them to be? And like, as much as I'm. And you and I are both the big supporters of mentoring, but we're supportive of strategic mentoring. And strategic mentoring is a about at recognizing that the curse of knowledge is one of your biggest barriers to effective, training, onboarding, skill development. When you don't have someone that can almost like critically reflect or critically think about the stages and steps involved in upskilling somebody, so they just assume that everybody's, is at their level and you're again, kind of like you're asking someone to become an educator without giving them any training, support, resources in order to actually do that effectively.
[JAMES]:Yeah, I'm glad that you talked about mentorship specifically, because I was going to ask, about that if you hadn't, because as you said, mentoring is a great, there's so many benefits that come from a mentorship relationship. There's direct benefits to the organization, there's direct benefits to the mentor and to the mentee. It can be a net positive win across the board for everybody when it's done well. And I think this is one of the issues with where mentoring fails is when you assume that anyone with a depth of knowledge can become, can be a good mentor. Just like when you assume that anyone with a depth of knowledge can be a good educator. It'that to understand that the transfer of knowledge requires a different skill set. It is a skill that can be taught. So if you have people who, if you have a M mentorship program and you have people with a deep depth of, understanding of how your workplace operates and you want to use them and leverage them to help new employees along or to, mentor the growth of employees that you have targeted for, succession planning, wonderful. Do it. But provide your mentors with some skill development around. How do you actually train people? How do you, what are those adult education principles that they can use to actually be able to train, transfer that, knowledge effectively? Because then everything's going to get so much better for you.
[COBY]:It does. And I mean again, when we are working with companies and we're looking at their onboarding and their training and their mentoring programs, again we have the luxury of being able to assess their adult learning principles processes. Are they using it effectively or are they missing, are they stepping over stuff? Are they missing core pieces? Because m. Most people in this realm don't have that depth of understanding about how adults learn or are about effectively educating and transferring knowledge. So it's one of those things where we tend to kind of like get. I try not to be too uppity about it. I try to be a little bit, I try to kind of be very like understanding of the situation, the your. With the people that you have around you and with your experiences so far you've done it, how far you've come, which is usually you don't want to.
[JAMES]:Fall into the curse of knowledge yourself and be un to.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah, I won't lie. I think remind myself this all the time. Like you know, because again this is so obvious to me when we're doing this kind of stuff. But to realizing, you know, that this is how this kind of organically came to here is usually a really helpful practice for us to remember this.
[JAMES]:Yah.
[COBY]:Remember while we're doing this we actually help them where they're at, not try and jump over steps. But we've run into this too when we've done some of our programs around recognition or around motivation and purpose where this is stuff that we've researched and we've implemented and we've worked with leadership coaches and we work with other consultants that specialize in business performance and we kind of go into these companies to try and help them resolve major organizational culture, challenges and improve performance productivity. And we always, we're always surprised and that the stuff that we think they need to reach optimal performance is, you know, we're always kind of saying we think they're probably going toa want to be at you know, level two but usually they're at like level point one because like you kind of forget, right? This is the curse of knowledge. This is us assuming they know all about these, you know, forms of recognition and all about these, you know, connecting purpose and meaningful work to kind of the everyday and the communication practices that kind of go around them. We assume all this stuff is just everyone else knows it too. Like all the other, all the HR professionals, all the leadership team does that. They get this and we remember, right, this is us flung into the curse of knowledge. We have to take a step back and help them get, and meet them where they're at, not meet them where we think we would be if we were in that role. And that's big. The big critical reflection piece you have to go into is remember, you got to meet the, the audience where they're at, not where you expect them to be if it was you.
[JAMES]:When you've never done these programs before, when you've never done a self, exploration, a self discovery, program to help to understand yourself better and how you work, then yeah, of course we need to start with the baseline information that we can then build upon to get you to level 2, 3, 4, 18, whatever.
[COBY]:Well, and it's. What's funny is in, you know, we gotten really good at really trying to understand where people are at when we work with, with new clients. Because some clients we go into and they've done a lot of the stuff before, like, you know, they've done self assessments. They're used to kind of like, you know, personality elements and traits, psychology, something that they've done, you know, stuff with. So we're like, okay, cool. We can kind of meet them, you know, at a bit, at a bit of a higher level if you really want to hit that optimal performance. But then other companies we've come into and like no one's ever taken a self assessment thing before.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:So like. Or like, wow, okay. So like we need to really, you know, take a few steps back because we don't want to assume, we don't want to fall into the curse of knowledge and have, you know, and be expecting them to be, you know, so much further along than where we are. We need to really go back to those fundamental pieces. But we also know what's kind of cool about those environments is that if we can get the adoption in there, the impact is astronomical.
[JAMES]:Oh, it's huge.
[COBY]:Small efforts make huge gains in those environments. And it's so cool when we do that. So avoiding the curse of knowledge and meeting people where they're at can just be transcended because it's so cool to see people come along when you know how firm that process should be and you know, the steps. Watching the journey can be pretty cool.
[JAMES]:Nice. All right, so before we move on, is there anything else you want to say on the curse of knowledge end?
[COBY]:I think just again, to reiterate the fact that it's about not assuming that people are where you're at and it's jumping into critical reflection and critical thinking, especially when come to things like how you onboard and how you train people to meet them, where they're at and taking almost like your own biases and your own assumptions out of the equation.
[JAMES]:Excellent. All right, so one more. and so I want to ask you about living in prolonged survival mode. There has been a lot of stuff happened in the last year and a lot of stuff happened in the year before that. And let's face it, every year we are bombarded by a lot of stressors, a lot of different factors that influence our personal and professional well being. And we end up. So what is the impact of people living in a prolonged survival mode?
[COBY]:Yeah, so let's just kind of talk a little bit about survival mode in general first. So again, I'm sure it's something that everybody's probably heard in some aspect the term. But survival mode really is a. About people who are in such either traumatic or highly stressful or uncomfortable situations that they're almost operating at a more basic cognitive function than they would be when, when not dealing with the trauma or the discomfort or whatever it is. So survival mode in a lot of ways it's about a much more like core, I'm gonna say primitive but like, I mean that in more of like an standpoint, kind of like brain function, it's not about thinking about all of the kind of all the social complexities, all, all the different levels of like three steps ahead is really about thinking about moment by moment is really kind of what survival mode is like. We. And you're right man, 2024 for so many people has been just an absolute nightmare. And we're hearing it kind of this kind of growing involvement. All of us have a lot of optimism for now, for 2025, but it's this idea of people have been in this sustained level of almost like, like more basic, more you safety focused cognitive functioning because they're trying to live moment by moment. And I mean I always tie survival mode back to malsow's hierarchy of needs. Right, right. Because knowing the hierarchy of needs, you know, to just refresh folks the basic, you know, the bottom foundation that you have to kind of, kind of build and work through is bas your basic needs like you know, shelter, food, water, that type of stuff. Then you move up to safety and about safety of self, safety of family, safety of kind of situation, safety of income. And then you go on to belonging and then self esteem and then self actualization. And it is such a great way to kind of really understand survival mode because so many of us have been kind of like rocked to our core with traumatic situations in our personal lives or in our professional lives or kind of just you know, or even kind of like seeing kind of the institutional betrayal of our systems or our governments or our like, you know, just. Or kind of the institutions that we rely on are, you know, we feel betrayed or we feel that are failing us. So a lot of us are, to protect ourselves, are stepping back into survival mode.
[JAMES]:And the add added stress that comes like with the continuing rise in, inflation and the cost of living and the stress that comes from not knowing whether or not you're going to be able to make ends meet and where does this stop and where does this go? And all of these factors really play into. I love that you tie it into Maslow because if you can't the basics of maslow, if you don't have those basic needs of, food, shelter and security, nothing else matters. That's where your focus is. I see this prolonged survival mode in that same way of if, if we have all of these external factors that are forcing us to narrow our vision and only focus on, you know, am I going to be able to pay my bills, Am I going to be able to keep my family, keep a roof over my family's head, am I going to be. Whatever those stressors may be, it has a direct impact on our ability to perform in our jobs. Right. Let's make sure that we are making this relevant to the workplace because as important as it is individually and as impactful as it is to that individual, this does impact our businesses as well. Which is why I think it's really important for us to make that connection. Because as a business owner, as a business leader, you may not be able to control all of those external forces that your employees are experiencing, but it's going to impact your workplace regardless.
[COBY]:Well, and I think one of the things that I think most business owners, leaders, managers need to also even coworkers be aware of is that most the people or there's a good portion of people that your working with, seeing and interacting with every day that are operating in a prolonged survival mode. And so the question the asked never really got to the answer of is kind of what is the effect of the prolonged survival mode? And a lot of it is, again it's the inability to kind of maintain the level of executive functioning, to effectively manage social situations optimally, to effectively think two or three steps ahead, weeks ahead, months ahead. It's really about almost like just trying to keep yourself protected moment to moment, day to day. Is kind of often the high end of the forward thinking. So people are more impulsive. People are really kind of sacrificing their long term, success for short term gain because they can't see beyond the short term gain. there is this kind of idea of people having a bit of hopelessness in stuff that's a little bit too far removed from them or a little bit too far down the road for them to really conceptualize. There's you know, it's fun last episode and I'll make sure I put identifying the show notes to the last psychology kind of practical psychology of the workplace episode that we did last season. Talk talked about self sabotage. Self sabotage is kind of a common scene of prolonged survival mode. Just because again we're too focused on the short term, that we can't see beyond the short term to have any kind of future in the long term.
[JAMES]:It's hard to make good long term decisions when you are faced with very immediate pressing concerns.
[COBY]:Well so I mean I see this in the workplaces with the companies that we work with and if they like that too. But I probably had the most extreme exposure to it in the years I worked in community education. So when I was working in community education and I ran some workforce programs, kind of some of the stuff that I did involved working with people who were like in dire straits, trying to kind of help lift them out of the situation that they were in, to help them reengage into the workforce. Whether that was dealing with addictions, whether that was dealing with homelessness, whether that was dealing with multi barriered situations, me as part of a team trying to kind of help take people that were in a really tough spot and try and help them get to a place of stability so they could reader the workforce and have some sustainable success. And the thing that was always very pressing, I was always very aware of and I saw all the time was the lack of use of a full executive functioning of their, their minds. Because like we've talked, I'm not sure if anyone studied biology or anything like that. When you are talking about kind of like who can survive, who's robust enough or what's robust enough to survive. You know, like an apocalyptic situation. We talk about like, you know, like you know, if there was a nuclear explosion, humans and all the complex animals, apes and you know, monkeys and dogs wouldn't survive. But like the hardy ones are cockroaches and microbes and really simple, basic, kind of evolutionary creatures are Robust enough to survive, the less complex, the easier it is to survive. And that's kind of how our minds work when we're talking about executive functioning in survival mode that when we get into that you our complexity talking about social situations and kind of all the things that we need to manage kind of our long term future, you and those around us is too complex for us to live with in the, in survival mode. It's almost like we retract to use more primitive parts of our brain like what's going to refer to in psychology as the lizard brain which is that very core, you know, when we are coming out of the primordial soup kind of functioning. That's what is calling the shots. Because we can't. The complex executive functioning are.
[JAMES]:We need to focus on just getting through the day.
[COBY]:That's just it. Because executive functionings are too complex to survive in that environment. So it's the more robust, more simpler short term solutions thinking that is what is calling the shots. Because that's who can perform there. And this is the reality that we have to understand. Again, most of us maybe are not at that deep level that I talked about kind of with the kind of experiences that I saw in community education. A lot of them are probably not at that level in the workplaces but some of them are, let's be serious. But realizing that you are probably managing working beside people who are working in prolonged survival modes. They're not making the best decisions, they're not thinking long term. They're really just trying to get through the moment, maybe the day. Ah, at the long part you're seeing impulsiveness, you're seeing a bit of a self sabotaging behavior. You're seeing people who want to not be in this mode but can't envision what it's like to come out of it. And here's the thing, when they do there's a bit of a retraction. So it's funny, we had a client that lost their building due to fire m and their staff managed to work through this temporary working.
[JAMES]:They rallied, they came together as a team.
[COBY]:They were being moved around and they dealt with every day was where are we going to be and what's go going toa happen like. But they kept their business was a core community function. It was an essential service. They were a lifeline to many people in their community. But they kept the lights on and the wheels on the road sort of thing. And when they kind of took a breath they were like hu okay. We actually have stability. We actually, you know, we all this work, we've now gotten to a place where we in a more permanent spot. We have desks again. We actually have computers again like you all this kind of stuff. There was a bit of a retraction almost like a bit of a rebelling against kind of the stability. And people were complaining about, you know, minor little issues that were so inconsequential compared to what they had gone through. But there almost was a bit of a like just that retracting or that rebelling against kind of there being a future. They're being something else coming. They're being that requiring to use more executive functioning because they'd gotten used to prolong survival mode. M so there was this weird reaction from the leadership team. They're like, after all they've gone through, why are they complaining about this stuff now? Well, a lot of it was that bit of that self sabotage just trying to shake off the survival mode. That norm can be a tough thing on its own. There's a weird transition period over survival mode that most people, hopefully are going to be moving into in this year, in 2025. But expect there to be a bit of a one step forward, two steps back in some ways or you know, because there is going to be that bit of that almost like rebelling against coming a survival mode because it's scary to.
[JAMES]:So I mean, it would be remiss of us not to ask the question what can a manager, a leader, a business owner do if they think that they have if this is a problem in their workplace?
[COBY]:Well, if you have a lot of employees working in prolonged survival mode, a lot of it is trying to kind of realize that you, you need to support the whole person. You can to support employees as their work. You can't support their job. You have to support the whole person. So you know, when you re. If you're in a workplace that has this very transactional relationship between employees where people just come do their job and pay them, they go home and there's nothing else provided to them, it's gonna impossible to really deal with anything. If you know, with prolonged survival mode, you're going to see dips in productivity, you're going to see all kinds of major red flags. But if you're in a situation where you can actually do something to help people, part of it is just realizing that this is kind of a basic core function and try to understand enough about the person situation that you can actually give them little Opportunities, little ways to kind of help them see that there is going to be a path beyond survival mode. So you can't get them out of it, but you can support them while they try to move beyond it. And patience is going to be the most important.
[JAMES]:Patience is important. But I think there's also what comes up for me is understanding the factors of the workplace that may influence that would have an impact or an influence on survival mode. Burn whatever is causing that. Right. Because if they're entering survival mode because of they can't afford to live, then compensation has a direct impact on survival mode. If it's wellness, if it's job security, if it's consistency, the factors, I think the factors of the workplace is certainly an area where businesses can take a bit of that self reflection, to if this is a problem for you and you want to actually achieve some level of productivity, then there are things that you can evaluate and that you can do within the scope of being an employer.
[COBY]:You're right. A massive thing that you have to know is what are the contributing factors to people having to live in prolonged survival mode. And again, you have to know how much the workplace is contributing to that and the factors are where that contribution is going to come from. So again you may not be able to fix all aspects of what's causing them in survival mode if so much of it is beyond the workplace. But knowing how your workplace is contributing through to the factors, the seven factors that we've talked about kind of job satisfaction before is an absolute ideal place to start.
[JAMES]:So I think we've had a really good conversation. I have a much better understanding of some of these things. Hopefully people, if you're listening to this, you have a bit of an idea of what these practical pieces of psychology are, how they impact the workplace and hopefully what you can do about it. But also recognize that you don't have to go it alone. if you like this format, if there's more of these pieces that you'd like to hear us talk about, reach out to us any time. We love talking to people who listen
[COBY]:All right, so that about does it for us. For a full archive of the podcast and access the video version hosted on our YouTube channel, visit Roman3ca/podcast. Thanks for joining us.
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