Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Join James and Coby from Roman 3 as they diagnose issues and prescribe solutions to today's most important workplace challenges.
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
How Do You Create Psychological Safety In Trauma Infused Workplaces?
This episode touches on the themes of Strengthen Culture and Practical Psychology.
In this episode, we explore what infuses trauma and toxic stress into our workplaces, and examine the 3 steps to address them. This is also the first episode of our newest season (Season 4!) so thank you to everyone who as supported us on this journey.
Our prescription for this episode is accept that issues like trauma and toxic stress and something that your workplace needs to address, and it is completely possible for workplaces and teams who are toxic and live with a broken culture can rebound, it just takes dedication and hard work.
Past Episode Referenced:
S3 E3: How Can We Prevent Psychological Injury In Our Workplace?
To talk more about Psychological Safety, reach out to 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 in the fall of 2024!
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 m My lunch.
[COBY]:Hey, thanks for joining us. I'm Coby, he's James. And let's get started by acknowledging we are in our fourth season. How cool is that?
[JAMES]:Yeah, it's, kind amazing that people are actually listening to us for now into our fourth year or starting our fourth year of the podcast. So that's pretty cool. So thank you for actually tracking with us. It's been, a lot of fun creating this content. But not only are we in a new season, we also have some new branding. Thanks to our amazing partners at Cato Creative, Becky has outdone herself once again. So, anyways, check out the new podcast art. First of all, I'm in love with it. I think it's great. and then go check out CatoCreative.Ca. they've done this work for us. we are really appreciative.
[COBY]:Oh, it's just so cool how we, like, met Becky and started working with Cato Creative because, I mean, like, Becky was just a fan. Becky is the owner, of Cato Creative, and she was just a fan of this podcast. And it's like one day, like, randomly kind of reached out to us and we responded back and we and started chatting with her. And then, you know, and then we were like, hey, you know, you got some cool skill sets that we don't have. Why don't we, you know, just kind of cool if we just pick your brain on stuff. And she's like, great, m mind if I pick your brain on stuff. And then, you know, kind of like fast forward, like, you know, a year and a half later. And now we're, like, partnering with her on this really cool initiative to support, like, corporate clients and stuff like that. Like, it just, it's, it's, it's awesome. And Becky is just the best.
[JAMES]:Yeah. So thank you, Becky. so also, a new season means we get to try some new stuff out. So what I'm really excited about for season four is that we're goingna be a bit more intentional and focused, with our podcast topics because we've done. We've gone broad on a lot of different, topics, which has been great. It's given us a lot of really interesting, pieces to talk about. But really where we want to focus, our efforts this year is on three kind of buckets. So you'renna hear episodes and content that's focused on strengthening workplace culture, developing leaders, and some practical psychology for the workplace, though, that's really going to be the theme for this year. And everything that we do, all of the, questions that are asked, all of the content is really going to be focused on one or more of those three categories.
[COBY]:Yeah. So the episodes won't really seem any different. We're still going to start off with the question, we're still going to kind of try and dig into it and then provide some, insight. And then ideally some how do I fix this kind of pie is that part is not going to change. It's really more that we've gone broad on a lot of topics because there's a lot of things that fall under the umbrella of trying to figure out whats s going on in your workplace. So, we thought that having a little bit more focus would allow us to go a little bit deeper and hopefully get some more practical ideas, on solutions or a more richer understanding of the underlying causes of some of these things. so we really do hope that this works for folks. But also we want to remind people that, you can easily, message us, like right now, like, if you're provider, you're not driving your car or go for a run or cleaning, you can text us right from, a link in the show notes and just be like, hey, guys, you know, what about this topic? Or how about this? Or, you know, those kinds of things too. That way if, you know, if these topics are, you want deeper on. On the three topics that you mentioned. Three buckets we're going to talk about throughout the season, or if you're just like, well, this is. Maybe it doesn't fall into it, but what about this? I mean, we love, the listener feedback. So again, we should. We're bad about reminding people, to actually go in and message us, you know, because you can easily do that right now. but, yeah, but it's something that we're hoping that this new structure, this new format will give us a chance to provide more practical pieces because we'll be more focused, like you said, or. Yeah. Strengthening culture, improving leaders, and making sure that we're giving you some psychological insights to kind of help you better understand your. The workplace and the people in it. So I'm pumped for this season. Think it's going to be great, especially with our shiny new branding and everything. So, yeah, I'm excited.
[JAMES]:All right, enough of a preamble. Let's, let's jump in so.
[COBY]:All right, so I ask you. Go ahead. I wasnna say, I'll ask the question. That's my thing. I asked a question. That's my job. Right.
[JAMES]:Well then ask the question.
[COBY]:All right, so here's the question. How do you create psychological safet in trauma infused workplaces?
[JAMES]:Yeah. So this is what's funny. This is a topic that we've actually been kicking around for a while. u. It's something that has come up time and time again in our work, in our conversations with partners, in our conversations with clients. Existing perspective, like it. I think we need to do a little bit of defining terms in a moment. But really to answer the question, which is, I know, a bit of a change for me, how do you create psychological safety when there is just so much trauma that people have experienced, are experiencing. It's created this toxic environment. Really what you need to do. There's a few things that you need to do. And it starts with identifying where these problems are, identifying the causes of the. Whether it's toxic stress or institutional betrayal, whether it is existing like a lack of management and leadership skill that is causing, you know, micromanagement, you know, the deaths of leadership that we've talked about many times. Whatever is caus, the root cause needs to be identified. We need to understand what's happening, how it came about and then we need to work to resolve it. And that mantra of identify, understand and resolve really is going to play through everything that we do. When we're talking about how do you create psychological safety in a workplace that just is rife with toxicity, trauma, stress, whatever label we want to put on it.
[COBY]:Yeah, the idea of what we mean by trauma infused is something that is not necessarily a hard term, that people might be expecting. That is what we mostly mean by it is that within teams or within individuals, there is trauma that is blocking progress, there is trauma that has created triggers for you behavior that's going to be unproductive. There's trauma that is chipping away at people's wellness, their mental health, their ability to bring their best selves to work. And part of the idea is, is that this happens in a lot of our workplaces. And I think this has been accelerated since 2020. I think that we all live with this a whole lot more now than maybe we did in 2019 and previous years. But this idea that, you know, often when you're hearing about cultural improvements or this and that there's almost like an expectation that everything is sunshine Roses. People are happy, people are content. No one's carrying, you know, underlying, you know, stress or mental health. And so these solutions we were going to provide you are based on that scenario, which is no workplaces.
[JAMES]:That'a fairy tale.
[COBY]:It is. And so its important for us to be recognizing that we need to accept the fact that there is trauma infused in our people, infused in our teams and infused in our workplaces and that when we try and create a psychologically safe environment, we try and create better interactions and camaraderie with leaders and their teams and amongst coworkers that we have to navigate that trauma. That trauma could come from challenges caused by the workplace. The trauma could come from a past employer that people had that caus them triggers and has readjusted what is normal for them. and they're bringing that to their new teams. it could come from kind of the nature of the work and how stressful the job could be and the everyday. So it's important when we're talking about identify your standard resolve. Identify where trauma is coming from, whether that's something that the organization does or whether that's something that that person is bringing to the job separate from the workplace itself, from a past job or from their, their own baggage. But it's important for us to identify where the causes of trauma might be coming from if we're going to move forward with, understand and resolve.
[JAMES]:Well and this is, I mean it's to the heart of a lot of the work that we do. Right. this podcast is called Diagnosing the Workplace. Our work really resolves around investigative diagnostic tools that help us to kind of get to these root causes and where one of the, the big, big contributors that I've seen to institutional trauma to u, just when there is significant restructuring or significant transition. So whether that we see it with mass layoffs, right. When a lot of people, when there's big layoffs, notices the people there. Yes, it is hugely impactful and negative for those who lose their jobs. But those who survive that very traumatic experience also have effects from it that can create institutional betrayal. This idea that the company, that the organization doesn't care about its employees and really they're carrying that sense of betrayal forward. These are things that often aren't caused by any one particular event. It's usually a culmination of events. And so like I can remember working with an organization that had gone through significant restructuring. Right. they're part of a you know, there were a lot of sites. There were And there was a big effort many years ago to restructure how that entire organization was funded and supported and organized. And you know, it included mass layoffs, it included a lot of really bad change management practices with no communication going to staff. So know, people started creating their own narratives of what was happening and why. And rumors started spreading and like just absolute disaster. And it's been nearly 10 years since that restructuring and people still reference that event as a major disruption as we went through hell at that time. Right. These are. There are a lot of things that can contribute to this. And so if you're looking at trying to identify the issues, don't only look at what's happening in necessarily the last six months.
[COBY]:Right. Yeah. And you're right because, I mean it's the kind of stuff that, you know, we're talking about things like institutionalal betrayal, which we should il'define in a second. But the idea of when any kind of betrayal can almost singe that experience in your mind and can be something that maybe a very long time to get over just because of how difficult the traumatic experience can be.
[JAMES]:well, look at any relationship though, right? Like any relationship that we have, whether it's a personal relationship, a professional relationship, employee employerhip relationships have to work with some level of trust. And when there's a feeling of betrayal in a relationship, regardless of the setting, that is incredibly difficult to come back from, it's not going to happen just by accident. You need to put some effort into acknowledging the wrongs that have happened and working towards correcting that.
[COBY]:No, you're right. All right, so I'm going to define institutional betrayal. we'for this in a previous episode. So, I'll make sure I cite what that episode is if someone wants to learn more about that specifically. But institutional betrayal is about. Is ref. To refers to wrongdoing perpetrated by an institution upon an individual or person that is dependent on that institution. So like an employee employer, this includes failure to prevent or respond supportively, to something that's happened to them by wrongdoing. It's it's an idea that it can absolutely kind of like cut their legs from underneath them and realize that, you know, they do feel a sense of absolute betrayal because this has been something that is supposed to be almost a guaranteed safe point. And they. And they let. Let them down. I think that layoffs are a great example of that and I think particularly how layoff is seen as institution betrayal. It will probably change a little bit by generation. So older generations that rely on expected this employer is going to look out for me.
[JAMES]:If I show loyalty and show up every day and work hard, then my loyalty will be rewarded which that we have seen that betrayal happen time and time again.
[COBY]:Well that relationship, it doesn't really exist anymore in the broader workforce. So older generations will hold on to that being a much larger institution of betrayal than say young generations that grew up knowing that's not a thing you so don't even plan for that. The nature of the work is you're going to be gone at any point. So don't necessarily worry about setting up roots because they can lay you off for no reason. and that's just life now. So there is you know even the way that you know one instances might actually be processed differently by different demographics too. Right. So that's kind of the complexity of institutional betrayal.
[JAMES]:Well and as big as institutional betrayal can be with like mass layoffs, it can also be in the regular interactions that you have between an employee and a manager. Right. If an employee is constantly is asking for support or feedback or help and they're being dismissed or they're being especially like we've unfortunately we've heard the first hand accounts from as we've been doing, you know, investigations in different areas of employees who feel like they've been thrown under the bus, right. Or employees who you know, they try to share their ideas with the leadership with managers and then somebody, you know, their manager takes their idea, takes credit for it and runs with it. Right. And gets the credit. These, all of these interactions that you have on a daily basis when you as a leader or a manager, we've said many times before that your role, your primary responsibility is no longer to do the like the day to day, the tasks that your employees that your staff are doing. Your job really is to empower your team to give them what they need to be successful to do the work. You're managing that performance. You're not necessarily doing all of the activities yourself. And when you aren't supporting your staff, when they feel like you become more of a hindrance than a ally or more of a hindrance than a support, it can cause the resentment. Then the resentment can turn into anger and the anger can turn into feelings of betrayal. And these things build, they don't always happen in like a ah, mass layoff is a single event that can be incredibly traumatic. But institutional betrayal can also come from the culmination of small things that it's the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Right. And ye as many times as I said, say it again, perception shapes reality. So you may not agree that these things are happening, but if the perception of your staff is that this is how things have played out and you are not managing those expectations and that communication, then perception, what we see, what we feel is the reality for us.
[COBY]:Yeah, no, and that, and that is a really good point and I think that that is also kind of fair. Kind of going back to what you said, that sometimes the institution isn't necessarily like I say, the company. Sometimes the institution is almost like the role of like, like a leader or a manager. Someone whose job it is to be almost like an institution for that, someone that's supposed to be someone that you can trust, someone that's supposed to be your gud, someone's supposed to protect you. And so that idea of that betrayal from that person who, who's an institution can be incredibly damaging and like I say, can be ongoing. Like one of the things we talked about in kind of, I think in an episode, we talked about leadership. at the end of last season we were re talking about the three deaths. And one of the things that I've seen a lot because again I've got a lot of experience working with int trauma infused workplaces and trying to turn them around and increase psychologal safety both for my past and let's be honest, very recently I've been involved working with that. and one of the things that I see a lot is when those three deaths exist and this remind people the three deaths are self, preservation, self sabotage and micromanagement. When those three things exist, especially self preservation, one of the ways self preservation looks is throwing people under the bus or it'pitting people against each other. In order for your role to be clear, I'm the peacemaker here. But you're the peacemaker because you pitted people against each other and you caused this environment, this competitive cutthroat environment just so you had a role of being the peacemaker. Yeah, so, yeah. So there are these types of things where sometimes the again, it's not like people are planning to create trauma, but it's often bad practices. things like self preservation and self sabotage and micromanagement and putting. Using humans as resources, not providing resources to humans. These are the things that tend to be the causes of a lot of institutional betrayal and a lot of trauma. And sometimes thats again people bring that in from past jobs I know, Ive got people that have worked for me that they feel safe with me, with their team. But they are so like programmed by their past bad experiences or the past bad employers that they're constant trying to remind themselves. Right. I don't have to be on garage. I don't have to be stressing about having this conversation because you're not going to rip my head off. You're gon toa help me solve it. You know, figure, figure, we'll figure together and that kind of stuff. Right?
[JAMES]:Yeah. It's the feeling that even after you leave the environment that caused the trauma, you still feel the need to walk on eggshells. Righte. Tiptoe around to like it's, it's a emotional trigger and a response and.
[COBY]:When or just that's what normal is. It's normal to tripoe around and not be able to have strai conversation with your boss or to always be on regard because that's just how work is and that's something was times what that trauma creates in us is it changes our set point for normal.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And it's, I mean this is why I even going back years and you know, when I was doing more one on one business development, and coaching with small businesses, I'hear things around. Well, I just, I just want somebody who, you know, they need to leave their baggage at the door. Right. what happens on their own time doesn't matter. When they come to work, everything else needs to be pushed aside and I just want them to work. Yeah, of course that's what you want. But we're talking about human beings. Right. We are complex creatures and you cannot separate a person from their experiences and what the experiences that somebody has had in the past shaped their behaviors in the future. So if you want to change those behaviors, you need to work with somebody to identify what the triggers were. Right? Yeah. Like there'there's. A lot of complexity that can go into this, but creating like one thing that I think we need to say and I don't. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably this isn't going to come to as a big shock to you, but it's worth it to actually make these changes. from a business perspective, from a management perspective, from an HR perspective, from a cost analysis, risk mitigation perspective, addressing the realities of the workplace has a direct benefit to your productivity, to performance, to retention, to attraction, to your ability to grow and scale and reach new markets and expand like it affects everything. And you can't expect that people are going to just turn off parts of themselves and leave it behind and it's never going to influence your workplace. It would be nice from a business perspective to never have to deal with these things. But if you are dealing with human beings, you are dealing with the mess that human beings bring with them.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah. So, and I think that's just the reality when we're talking about identier. Identify what is it that is the institution, whether thats the company or the leaders are doing to cause betrayal and to cause trauma. What is stuff that people are bringing to work from past jobs and what is stuff maybe thats influencing from them outside of work that is again causing the trauma and having triggers that you need to be aware of. Because again, saying stop having trauma doesn't work. So the best thing you can do is identify, okay, where are the sources, where is it coming from? So you can know what is stuff that we need to fix? What is stuff that we need to help you sort of on your own? And what is stuff that maybe is more of a larger wellness support than actual, you know, kind of like professional support and training? Right. So knowing the where it comes from and identifying what it looks like, everything like that and what those triggers are, that's really the first step. But I think that from there we can probably move on to talking more about the understand side.
[JAMES]:Okay.
[COBY]:because I, because again the understand that when people have this kind of trauma, when they have this kind of betrayal, when they kind of have these types of pieces that they're bringing to the workplace, it causes, it causes people to be burned out, it causes people to become jaded, it causes people to be always in like attack mode or always coming out swinging whenever you kind of come to the master default setting. Because largely you have to understand that its about them never feeling safe enough to be vulnerable or to not be on the attack or to not assume everything is an attack against them. Because that is just kind of what the outcome of living with this ongoing trauma looks like. And when our workplaces are infused with it, that just becomes what is normal, it becomes the culture and that becomes just how to expect it. But you have to understand that why people are that way is because they've been made that way. When a one off in person on your team, that might be something that maybe is external, that's been brought in from a past job, but when it's everybody, there's something that is being caused by that in the workplace.
[JAMES]:We also need to Understand that if we could even just snap our fingers and remove the event that caus. That is causing the trauma. Let's assume that it's happening in the workplace currently, that there's some trigger, there's some, consistent event or series of events that is causing, this emotional, like this emotional toll, this toxicity. If we could snap our fingers and remove those, events, and just fix everything and everything's. Now there's no more, traumatic events happening. We need to understand that the effects still persist. Right. Remov. We need to address and mitigate and ideally remove these, very traumatic events or these toxic event. Whatever, is causing it. We need to resolve that. But just removing the event doesn't by default fix the effects that the event has had already.
[COBY]:Absolutely. Because the whole idea is that you're right is that part of the thing about trauma is that it's, you know, it's the idea that traumatic event has shaped you. It has burrowed into how your brain has been rewired. Right. So it's something that is now you. It is now part of your base set point. It's your default now. It's like you've been conditioned into this. So just being so like I said by. By not understanding that, it's a matter of saying, well, the. It's like Covid's over, you know, to stop being traumatized by. It doesn't actually, you know, do anything.
[JAMES]:Right.
[COBY]:I mean, it's. It.
[JAMES]:So yeah, the event. I mean, let's be serious. Ah, the scariness. The, the big traumatic events related to Covid. Yes, it's still happening. It. People are still getting sick, unfortunately. People are still, dying from COVID But the. The new m tremeute trigger or the big event is largely cover. Covid's largely as a pandemic, as a, This craz event that we all went through, it's over.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:It still exists. It's still around. Blah, blah, blah. Right. just because we are now in a quote unquote post Covid era doesn't mean that the effects from it have magically gone away. Unless we have taken specific steps to identify, understand, and then resolve what has happened. The effects that it is having on people.
[COBY]:Right. Because, I mean, we had a client that, you know, a, a year or so ago, their building caught on fire and burned down. It caught on fire and was actually on fire while they were in their. In the building.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:Right. A very scary, very traumatic, very traumatic event. And it. Something that. But what's great. Was the leader of the organization, the executive director wasn't like, okay everybody, the fire is over, get back to work. They were not like that. They were okay. We're going to be dealing with the side effects of this, the aftermath of this for a long time. So let's just accept that and realize that this is going to be something that we're all going to carry for a while. Right. And that's, and that is the right attitude is that you know that this stuff is going to cause there's going to be triggers. It's. You're going to have things like, you know, impacting your mental health. There's going to be again, toxic stress is going to be something that's now going to be part of your normal.
[JAMES]:And I think it's important to also understand that logic isn't your best tool when trying to address somebody who is experiencing trauma. trauma tends to be a very emotional response to previous events and you can't logic your way out of emotions. It just doesn't work. At any. If you've ever been in a relationship and you try to logic your way out of an emotional response with your partner, you know how badly it tends to go. Yes I do.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:Like we all make that mistake though. Right. Like let's like this, this. But these are just things to keep in mind as you kind of go through and nobody's going to get it right all of the time. We all are going to fall short of the standards that we set for ourselves.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:But how we respond to that, how we react to that shows our character and our leadership capacity and how we care for others and empower others shows the character of ourselves.
[COBY]:Right. So one of the things that I think I also want to kind of attach to in the section where we are trying to understand, about the trauma infused workplaces. Everything like that too is again often a big cause of trauma in workplaces. Again, beyond the institutional betrayal where it's a matter of the organization doing layoffs, it's often caused by individuals. And toxic employees are one that is a massive, massive cause of trauma in workplaces. And again, I don't think we've gone into an organization that's been struggling that we identified. There needs to be massive changes in order for orientation to become stable and sustainable and not had to deal with the reality of toxic employees.Now one thing that when we say understand people want a toxic employee to be simple. They're just an awful person, villain, cartoon, supervillain. There are Mr. Burns from the Simpsons. They're just evil incarnate. But that's rarely ever the case.
[JAMES]:People are rarely just one thing. Right. Ah, somebody who is a. Who we would classify as being a toxic employee. That's not the totality of who they are. And it'the way that they are behaving is usually stemming from some kind of past series of events or trauma that is informing, their behaviors currently. And not that we're not saying that this is an excuse and that, you know, we suddenly have to accept these toxic behaviors. But what we are trying to. I think that the main point that we want to get across is that it's easier if we classify people as being toxic and discard them.
[COBY]:Yeah, you're right. So I remember we had a client years ago, and, there was a, manager that got that left, you know, and like that. And their team was one of the most toxic teams. And there was one person on their team that everyone was like, this person is the problem. This person is the cause of all my stress. This person is a toxic employee. And soon after we showed up, that person went on, like, Iended a vacation. They. They were gone for a while. It was pre book like that.
[JAMES]:And everybody was warning us, yeah, yeah, yeah, careful.
[COBY]:When this person comes back, they'just there's evil incarnate. They'just They'out to get. They're out to get us and everything like that. And then so when this person came back, we were kind of like preparing ourselves to deal with this toxic ogre.
[JAMES]:Let's get ready for this fight.
[COBY]:Yeah. And when the person came back, they kind of acknowledged that, yeah, things have been hard for them and they don't have good relationships with their coworkers. And that by, again and then by kind of like slowly working with us and the rest of the leadership team that we were supporting and the new movements that were happening, they were like, you know what? I think that I felt like our manager was pitting us against each other or that our manager was telling us different things. and I've always feel like I had to defend myself and come out swinging every time we were in a meeting or every time some slight happened that I assumed that it was people were coming after me. So I went after them first because I didn't want to feel like a.
[JAMES]:Victim defense is a strong offense.
[COBY]:Yeah. And again, like, like, you know, it was over the course of a few months and again, real, real conversations with people and trying to, again, like, putting in things that will help things be more stable and more consistent and documenting pieces and stuff like that. They were just like they, you know, they realized that, that they hadn't been bringing their best, they hadn't had good relationships. And other people kind of realized that a bit about themselves too and that they were all almost like on attack mode for each other. And some of them had like identified this person and they attributed more to their behavior collectively. I was like, they all chose this is the person that we don't like. And so there was this case of the person wasn't a cartoon supervilllain. They weren't Mr. Burns, they weren't this ogre. They were just in a bad situation. And the way that they had been led, they felt betrayed. So they were kind of in attack mode, you know, just like everyone else was. And then upon fixing those pieces, upon putting more processes into place and
[JAMES]:And you know, and workingi with people and developing and create more transparency and.
[COBY]:Yeah, helping the leadership team be more consistent and the people could almost like let their guard down. The team was able to recover from that and the team ended up working a lot stronger after the fact.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:And this person ended up becoming like you're taking on a higher leadership role with. Within the team. That used to hate them. And now the team liked, was excited that they were in this higher leadership role. Like there was. They were able to bounce back from what was seen as an absolute never will be able to come back from environment. It is just so toxic.
[JAMES]:Yeah. There's a few things that I want to highlight, that I think are really important, pieces to pull out from your story. One is that the behaviors need to be identified and they need to be like, they need to be identified to the person. Right. We need to give people an opportunity to correct the behaviors. Right. Identify them, share the concerns with somebody. Because a lot of our conversation so far really has focused on what the organization needs to do. How do you need to like, how do you identify these things? What do you need to understand about these things? But we also need to recognize that you can't help people who refuse to help themselves and the employee, you know, your staff member, your leadership team, whomever is showing these types of toxic behaviors, they have a responsibility to try to resolve these things. Right. They have a role to play and a critical role to play. And it's your responsibility as the organization to help them to identify the behaviors, to clarify the expectations of what needs to happen and then provide supports to them to make sure that they can change those behaviors and reach the clarified expectations. But ultimately they need to choose to do the work themselves. If they don't. Well, now we are in a situation of. Well, I've identified behaviors, I've identified my expectations and you've continually refused to change. Now we're in a performance management conversation, right?[COBY]: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things that we found helpful when we go into organizations that are our trauma infused and we're trying to. Because people say, you know, these problems are so complex. How do we deal with this employee or the situation or this team or this kind of backstabbing. And one of the things that we often kind of say is we say this isn't actually that difficult. If we take a simple approach of workplace Inc. Civility. is a performance issue Y and if we have a performance management process we can resolve all these issues. Performance issues. Ye and I think we've actually moved into resolve. But that's really kind of how some of these things can be approached. When it is toxic, toxic managers, toxic employees. When it's about you know like you know the. The workplace is. Is creating this and it's not necessarily, you know like the policies aren't weaponized in a sense and causing the betrayal. It's more like it's more people driven. One of the ways that we can resolve that is through processes like making things like workplace and civility. Having inivil interactions in your workplace to be dealt with as a performance issue gives you a process performance management for handling these types of trauma infused in toxic environments. Yeah. It requires having difficult conversations with people.
[COBY]:Absolutely.
[JAMES]:There is a. So in we've now I guess we've fully moved into resolve. So there are. There's a role for the organization and there's a responsibility for the organization to resolve. If this is why it's so important to identify. Right. You can't resolve something that you haven't identified. so if you. If it comes from. Well, We have managers who are acting out of self preservation which is causing employees to feel that they can't trust and that they're betrayed and that they're pitted against each other. Now it's the organization's responsibility that once you've identified that to begin to resolve it. To put some To clarify the expectations with managers to put some supports in place to make sure that they understand what they need to be doing. How what they're currently doing is having a negative effect on the performance and outcomes of their team. And then put again, we have a responsibility once we can't just identify a problem and say change it M. You can but you shouldn't. What you should do is identify the problem, help try to work with the individual to identify potential solutions and then support them with regular check ins. And maybe it's going to be some skill, maybe it's from a lack of confidence. Right. Maybe they don't feel confident in their role and they need some additional training. Right. Offering that, not making them ask for it because depending on the culture, if they're acting under self preservation, they may be scared to ask for help because they feel like they're going to be penalized for it. Which again goes back to kind of the counter to psychological safety. Right. so all of these pieces, we haven't mentioned psychological safety since like the very beginning. But you cannot have psychological safety when you have active and pervasive toxicity. self preservation, institutional betrayal, these things you will never be able to build a psychologically safe environment in until you identify, understand and resolve them.
[COBY]:Absolutely no. And it is a good point. We did kind of not talk about it, but we're building up to this.
[JAMES]:Sect, we're getting to it.
[COBY]:Yeah. That really is about it. Because the key to actually create psychological safety and trauma infused workplaces, the answer, the answer to the question broadly is you have to identify and understand and resolve the challenges they are re causing it. But how you resolve them is through stability. Creating stability in the organization to allow for people to feel like their feet are not going to get cut from underneath them. Or they can stand on facts, they can stand on processes, they can stand on something with secure footing so they don't feel like at any moment the floor is going to fall beneath them. You need to provide clarity, you need to be clear on what is expected of you. What is the process for this, what are the things that I need to do in order to be successful in my job? You need to create transparency, make sure that we're not judging you behind the scenes about things you don't know about. We're not evaluating you on stuff that we're never going to tell you about. We're not going to keep rules or resources from you. I take you to figure it out. If you don't ask for it, you don't get it because it's all about knowing the secret password. But most importantly, the most important way to create psychological safety and trauma infused workplaces is consistency. It's about we're going to do this and then we do it. We'renn. You know, this is the rule today. It's also the rule tomorrow. It's also the rule next week. I, as your manager am going to expect this of you today, tomorrow and going forward. And that idea of we are consistent in how we treat people, we're consistent in what we expect people. The rules are consistent, the processes are consistent, the steps are consistent. That is going to be the fundamental piece. And usually that's where most of the breakdown, most of the institutional betrayal, most of the toxicity all kind of comes from is a lack of consistency.
[JAMES]:And honestly one of the first steps, That you're going to have to take if you are a manager and you and this talk is resonating with you and you're identifying, you know what, I've probably been part of the problem. and I want to change that. You're going to have to acknowledge it with your team. it's uncomfortable. It honestly it takes a lot of courage to stand up in front of especially staff members who who you are responsible for and say, you know what, I'm sorry, I have messed up. Here are the things that, here are the problems that I've identified. Here's how I would like to resolve them and move forward together.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:Acknowledging there is incredible power in acknowledging past wrongs. and it's not about making excuses and it's not about glossing over the facts. Let's acknowledge it and move on. All right. This has happened in the past and I don't. And it wasn't right. So we're going to do something to make sure this doesn't happen in the future.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:Acknowledgement is an incredibly powerful relationship rebuilding tool. And this is really if there is trauma in your workplace, if there's an institutional betrayal, toxic stress or any of the other pieces that we've talked about. You're acknowledging this will build your credibility with your team, with those who are experiencing the effects of it. Right. But it needs to be acknowledged. And then exactly what you said, Coby. Consistency. If you say you're going to do something differently, do it or else you're just contributing to more betrayal.
[COBY]:Yeah. And I think what you're again, how I would word or the idea of the acknowledgement is really more. But accepting responsibility.
[JAMES]:Yes. That's a good way to frame it.
[COBY]:Yeah. And that is how you start mending fences with institutional betrayal. If it's organizational wide we have organization have potentially been using policies as weapons against employees Based on just, we had a series of thefts in th during this year. So we reacted harshly and penalized employees, unfairly. And you know what, we're accepting responsibilities for our actions and we're going to.
[JAMES]:Learn'What led to our decision. But you know what, the decision that we made actually turned out to be not the right decision. So now we're going to correct that.
[COBY]:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
[JAMES]:That's a wonderful chain of events to a, message to share.
[COBY]:Yeah. And that's the same thing that managers have to do is if they feel like, you know, they have contributed to, you know, bad management practices or they realize like, you know what, maybe I wasn't consistent with this person or I do treat this person better than other people or so that if they again identify and understand why they made decisions that they've made, they can start to resolve the problems. And one of the first steps is going to be accepting responsibility for what they've done. Ah, There is something powerful about somebody that accepts responsibility, wears past mistakes, is upront about it, transparent, is transparent about it and then learns from it and moves forward with that learning. That is a powerful person, that is a powerful organization and it's a powerful step to creating psychological safety.
[JAMES]:I mean, essentially what we're talking about is how do you rebuild trust first? Yeah, and it's really hard to rebuild trust if you don't accept responsibility for past mistakes. And we, you're right. The power that and the reputation and the like if you are authentic about this, I mean if people can see through facades pretty quickly like it'but if you are authentic about this and you as a leader acknowledge that you've made mistakes, that in and of itself is going to set you apart from 95% of the bosses that people have worked for in the past. Right. Just acknowledging that you're not perfect is powerful. It, shouldn't be so uncommon. but it can be a really powerful way to start to rebuild some of the trust that it's been lost.
[COBY]:I mean, some of the work that you and I do'not all the work we do, but a big, a recent portion of the work that you and I do is we go in to chaotic and complex environments usually that are just like, you know, the verge of blowing up and try. And we try to resolve the issues in trauma infused workplaces. And we do it very successfully and partially because the secret sauce is stability, clarity, transparency and consistency. And it's really not harder than that. We create processes and standardized things so there's stability and transparency and how things will be handled. We provide clarity what we expect and we provide kind of again we make sure that there's upro expectations and then we consistently administer those new processes, policies and we own the difficulties and we acknowledge the realities. It's not much more complex than that. But holy cow, did these organizations do a 180 when that stuff is implemented?
[JAMES]:Well, when you have the structure like the structural component is I really enjoy obviously ob and that's a huge piece of it. But we also need to like what a large, large part of what we do is not just aligning the operational and human capital structures to make sure that they are consistent and aligned and working together to actually achieve the goals. We then have to provide training and mentorship and support to those who are going to be using the new system. Problem, using the new structures, using the new policies to how do you actually use this consistently with your team? What does that look like on a day to day basis? Because you giving somebody a brand new shiny tool is good, but if they've never used it before, how are they supposed to use it effectively?
[COBY]:Right, Absolutely. Okay, I think that's, this is a great conversation. I think I'll just jump into a quick summary. but again before I do, I think it's just great to say this. You know, I'm so excited for season four. I'm excited that you know, because I feel like this conversation we really touched on strengthening culture and some practical psychology to kind of help again understand these issues and path going forward. I hope you as a listener works enjoy this conversation too. please share any feedback that you have with us through the texting thing or send us an email we always love.
[JAMES]:I'm really excited to hear people's thoughts on the new branding. Let us know what you think of the new podcast art because I think it's fantastic.
[COBY]:Yes, absolutely. And yeah, so again thank you very much for if you've been joining us on this journey for the last three seasons and I really hope en you're going to enjoy season four because we're very excited about it. Okay, so the question was how do you create psychological safety and trauma infused workplaces? Well, largely first the things you need to do, the steps you need to take are to identify, understand and resolve. Part of identify is to know where this stuff coming from. And often it's things like institutional betrayal. It's people having being triggered by past workplaces where they have been dealing with toxic stress or they've been dealing with other kind of mental health, mental health related issues that may be, may be bring it to the workplace or some of them might be coming from outside of in their personal life and it see be into the workplace. But all but knowing where the causes are or knowing where they're coming from. It's a first step towards kind of moving towards resolution. Then we need to understand what does it look like, what does it mean to people, what are the realities that are impacting this. Like if it is toxic employees, we have to understand that just a toxic employee is just. We can't write them off as a terrible person or'a cartoon supervillain that they are something that there may be more complexity to it. And we have to try and understand where these pieces are coming from so we can better understand our resolution. But then we move towards resolving them. It's about, providing stability, clarity, consistency and transparency. We want to be able to make sure that we're building structures and systems and training people that we can handle. What are the best practices for the workplace, how can we consistently apply these pieces with clarity and transparency going forward? And that's how we can turn around organizations that are currently trauma infused and you actually turn them into organizations that are brimming with psychological safety. All right, so That about does it for us. For a full archive of the podcast and access to video versions hosted on our YouTube channel, visit Roman3.ca/podcast. Thanks for joining us.
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