Challenging the Narrative of Service Before Self with Guest Dimple Dhabalia | HR 73

I welcome to the podcast HR inside out. I'm your

host, Susan A. And I would like to extend a warm welcome to

today's guest dimple dibala. Welcome to anvil.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a

pleasure to be here.

Well, I'm thrilled that you said yes. And if I may,

I'd first like to just provide a bit of your background and some

of the incredible work that you're doing before we get into

questions and delving deeper. Sure. So let me just take a

moment. So dimple is the founder of roots and the clouds and a

human centered leadership with over 20 years of government and

public sector experience. She partners with leaders across

mission driven sectors to address root issues, and to

design inclusive, human centered workplace cultures where

emerging and seasoned leaders can learn how to preserve their

own humanity as they work to preserve it for others. Say

after two decades working on the frontlines of the government and

humanitarian sectors, dimpled, experienced the carrier's

trauma, compassion, fatigue, moral injury, burnout and

anxiety. Like so many others. She worked in an organization

that celebrated the resilience of the human spirit in the

refugees and the displaced persons they served. While

failing to extend that same ethos to those working within

their own organizations, determined to educate and

support heart centered leaders, she developed and launched the

daring leaders project. The first mindful mindfulness based

leadership development program is kind within the agency. Now

that vision and leadership earned her directors awards for

the Innovator of the Year and the pillar of leadership.

Congratulations. In 2021, dimple launched roots in the clouds

with a personal mission of putting the human back into

humanitarian and making service sustainable across mission

driven sectors. Today, dimples cutting edge work explores the

intersection of generational trauma and moral injury, and

supports a holistic approach to addressing individual and

organizational trauma using principles of mindful

performance, positive psychology, and human centered

leadership. Her new book, we'll be talking a lot about this

beautiful book, tell me my story challenging the narrative of

service before self with Ambika media, was recently excerpt in

the Stanford Social Innovation Review and her work has also

been featured in Fast Company CEO World Magazine, and Federal

News Network. Demco recently debuted a limited series

companion podcast to tell me my story called service without

sacrifice, and is also creator and co host of the popular

podcast. What would Ted lasso do lots of fun, I've listened. You

can find dimple dip story across all social media platforms and

dear human human it terrarium on substack. And I'll make sure

that those contacts and that information is in the show notes

to the podcast for our listeners. Wow. Um, what an

incredible and exciting background and career you've

had. And I just love what you're you're doing with with that

experience. you've woven both your own story and that of

others that you've known and worked with over your years,

through the insights and the truths in your book. And we're

gonna dive deeper into those you tell of absolutely horrific

stories faced by many refugees and those seeking asylum,

stories of persecution, but also of courage and perseverance, is

I dove into the pages, I was struck that these stories often

remain hidden behind the faces of those that we work with,

unless we take the time to trust to build trust, to want to know

deeper, and to see our colleagues beyond those work

relationships and those positions. And yet, as other

podcast guests have shared with me, this is not often people's

experiences, new Canadians, and we really need to change this.

So I love how your book actually helps us understand those

experiences for many of those individuals.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's definitely the

experiences of the people that I was serving. You know, and I

think that those are often documented in a lot of different

places. But for me, I just it's so important for me to recognize

the sacrifices and the the work being done by the people who are

working in service of other human beings. And I do think we

need to change this because it's such a great room. I wonder that

we make so many assumptions throughout our day. But the fact

is that we often don't know what others are going through in a

given moment. And, you know, so especially in the workplace, I

think it's so important that we're all operating with

curiosity and empathy as often as possible. And that's what I

love about human centered workplaces is because there's a

lot I mean, it's what it's grounded in, right is that

connection, the curiosity, the compassion, the empathy, because

at the end of the day, we are all human, like human beings,

and not just these robots coming to work. And so it's about

reconnecting to our humanity again.

And that certainly warms my heart with the work

that you're doing. And that's the focus that we're going to

spend on our time together today is is that latter piece about

the impact that it's having on the people that are providing

the service. I found interesting than that, although a lot of

your work involves working with refugees and asylum seekers. You

share that those of us who have chosen service focused jobs in

sectors, we who choose to serve because and I'll take a quote

from your book, caring for others is inherent to who we

are, and to do anything different, will leave us feeling

unfulfilled and restless. That we face the same kinds of

challenges in the work that we're doing as those who are

working, doing humanitarian work do which I found quite

fascinating. You and I'm going to take another another quote

from your incredible book. But these factors are like wounds to

the heart of the organization that they need to be recognized

and dealt with as they're contributing to sickness and to

toxic work environments. You also talk about how they these

factors eventually result in burnout. And you define that as

prolonged physical and psychological exhaustion related

to the person's work. And one example that you use, and then I

want you to talk about all of this the emphasis on meeting

organizational metrics above all else, that this can be part of

the perfectionism, the martyrdom, that is often the

makeup of individuals who are called due to this kind of work.

Can you take it from here, please? Sure.

So there's a lot of different things you said

here that actually go to different aspects of this. So

first of all, you know, this idea that of what a humanitarian

is, so in the book, I defined the humanitarian as anyone

working to alleviate pain and suffering for others. And so

this applies to a really broad range of people. So in my case,

it happened to be that I was working in government service,

and I was working with asylum seekers and refugees, so kind of

in that humanitarian arena, or what's more traditionally known

as the humanitarian arena. But you know, it's been, I mean, I

talked about in the book that whether you're a medical

professional, whether you're an aid worker, or whether you're a

member of the clergy, you know, a journalist in kind of high

risk areas, like there's so many different places where this

applies. So. So I think about this in terms of mission driven

work, where we have a mission of serving others. But really, what

I'm learning, as this book goes out, is it's applying across

sectors regardless, and so. So I just wanted to clarify that, but

But yeah, you know, this idea of, of metrics driven versus

human centered is, it's something I've thought about for

a really long time. And it's fascinating to me, because with

COVID, you know, I had high hopes, is terrible as COVID was,

and there was such an intense, you know, loss and grief, and so

many people were left kind of reevaluating, re evaluating

what's important in life. And so, you know, we had a lot we

had, we saw things like the great resignation, where a lot

of people decided to walk away, because it just started to feel

like what am I doing, you know, this, the work I do is not, it's

not me, like, it's not, it doesn't define me. And there's

so many other things that are a lot more important besides just

the work and so, you know, what's interesting, though, so I

really thought that, as a result, organizations would

shift a bit and kind of factor that in, but what I've seen is

so many organizations kind of doubling down on bringing people

back into the workplace and, you know, and even during COVID,

focusing on you know, profit metrics and productivity

metrics, rather than stopping to say, Hey, are you okay? Like,

what do you need. And so I just that, to me was really

interesting to watch. But, you know, I often say, metrics, like

I understand I'm not out here in the world advocating for no

metrics, because I understand that metrics are important. And

in and of themselves, they aren't bad necessarily. But

again, they become problematic when everything else, like

bringing apathy, empathy and compassion into the workplace,

or fostering a culture that leads to healthy and happy

employees, is viewed as kind of an added bonus or a nice to

have. And the reality is that the more that we actually start

putting people at the center of our organizations, and focusing

on their needs, the reality is that people, then number one,

that it fosters loyalty, it creates trust, it creates

psychological safety, and those are all the kinetic creates

connection. And so those are all the factors that go into making

us feel safe. And so if we feel safe in our workplace, we're

more likely to be able to show up, do the work. And we will

actually, you know, organizations will see that

they'll actually end up hitting their benchmarks, with greater

ease and actually be able to meet their mission with greater

ease. And, you know, unfortunately, that's just kind

of the opposite of what we're taught to do. Because we tend to

even the terminology we use, right human resources, or humans

are not resources, they're human beings. But we accept this,

because we're just really, you know, we're stretched in the

workplace, and we don't have the time or energy to, or we think

we don't have the time or energy to deal with the emotional side

of being human. And so we're, we're discouraged from bringing

that side to the work. And a lot of this I talked about in the

book is kind of the legacy of the Industrial Revolution. So

the Industrial Revolution was all about creating efficiency in

our workplaces, and the thing that people often forget is that

this was in kind of a factory setting where people were

making, you know, the same thing over and over. And so we wanted

to create efficiency around that. But that model was then

applied across the board. And that doesn't work when you think

about what it takes to serve other human beings. And so I

talk a lot about how being human is messy, but serving humanity

is messier. And so, you know, we need to acknowledge that we

don't like I said, we don't have a bunch of robots coming into

work, but we actually have human beings who are showing up every

day. And so metrics alone can't be the driving force. And we

need to start bringing in questions about how the

decisions that we're making are going to impact the workforce.

So, you know, even as we start to look at metrics for, you

know, workload or other things, that that workforce health and

well being should be a factor that's taken into consideration

at the same time. So both of those are working together, to

then create our policies for our staff.

And there's so much research that supports

everything that you've said, you know, it's like the leadership

books talk about that need to make sure that all of those

variables are considered in decision making and productivity

and, and how when they are, it's always a positive outcome. Yeah,

it's, it's really quite simple, but it's still not well applied

within our organizations. You talked a lot in your book about

trauma and the impact of trauma. And you define that as trauma

being an event or an experience that affects our ability to cope

and function. And that there are actual several types of traumas

faced by those that are engaged in particular service,

particularly service work, and we are going to go through each

one of those, but could you start with the term, the Carius

trauma, and you define that as the experience of trauma

symptoms that can result from repeated exposure to other

people's trauma? And there's their stories of traumatic

events linked start there? Sure.

Yeah. So all of these I talk about is

occupational traumas. And these are common for people who are

working in high stress, trauma exposed fields. And so with

vicarious trauma, and I usually talk about vicarious trauma and

secondary traumatic stress together because they're very

similar, and often they're used interchangeably, and so

vicarious trauma again, as you just mentioned, it's the

experience of where we're basically taking on another

person's trauma. So if you're in a profession where you are

regularly exposed to other people's trauma, we can very

easily start taking that in and we don't realize we're doing

that but and you know, What's interesting to me is, as I was

kind of writing my story, what I realized was that, you know,

when I was interviewing asylum seekers and refugees, I thought

I was putting up this wall of professionalism that I could sit

down, I could have this conversation, it was fine. What

I didn't realize was that a lot of the stories that they were

telling me, were a mirror to things I had experienced in my

own life. So every time I sat face to face with someone in

their trauma, I was actually revisiting my own trauma without

recognizing it. And I think a lot of us go through that

without realizing it. And so if I carry us trauma, though, is

where we're exposed to other people's trauma. And over time,

it builds up and we start to experience symptoms, similar to

post traumatic stress disorder. secondary traumatic stress is

almost exactly the same thing. But the difference is that it

can happen after just a single incident. So So whereas you

know, vicarious trauma is something where we're in this

profession day after day, we're experiencing things. Vicarious,

I mean, secondary traumatic stress is I can go be in a

situation one time, or even we saw this during COVID, or, you

know, other like 911, for example, you'd have a single

incident, where you see something that's that traumatic,

that it has that impact on you. And so, so again, those are

often used interchangeably, though, they're a bit different.

And so this is very, again, very common in the kinds of work

where, you know, whether it's like social work, medical work,

even, you know, I've been doing a lot of work with attorneys and

judges lately. Because they're often interviewing people or

working with people. So it again, it can be across sectors,

but it's just where you have that trauma exposure.

Okay, and just being aware that that's a possibility

of something that you may be experiencing, and then

recognizing that that may be impacting your energy level, how

you're feeling. Okay. You also use the term compassion fatigue

is that different? You said, it's a combination of physical,

emotional and spiritual depletion associated with caring

with for others who are in significant pain and physical

distress. So this one's more a physical one. No, it can

be both. So compassion. Fatigue also goes

hand in hand with vicarious trauma quite often, but they are

a bit different. So vicarious trauma has symptoms that mimic

mimic PTSD, so things like nightmares, the inability to

regulate emotions, your heart racing, maybe your shallow

breathing, and really just unable to disconnect from the

work like you can't stop thinking about it. Compassion,

fatigue is kind of the other end of the spectrum, right. So it's

been described as the cost of caring for others and emotional

pain. And what we've seen is, especially in helping

professions, that this is start, like, they've started to

recognize that employees are deeply affected by the work that

they do. So I've been doing a lot of work with palliative care

professionals lately. And so compassion fatigue is a big

topic of discussion. And so whether it's by direct exposure

to the traumatic events, so like first responders, emergency

workers, things like that, or secondary exposure, so again,

hearing about clients or people you're in communication with

talking about trauma that they've experienced, we can

start to start taking that in. And so the difference here

though, is that with, with compassion, fatigue, we actually

start to disengage, and we have a hard time. It's exactly what

it says, we have a hard time feeling that sense of

compassion, because it's just so overwhelming. And we've taken so

much of it in, it's like, we just can't take anymore. And so

that's when we start to experience some of these

symptoms.

Sounds like you start to numb yourself. Yeah, to sort

of put some some walls up, perhaps.

Definitely.

You know, it's interesting, because we talk

about and it's not a surprise when you think about first

responders or, you know, people are having to take a look at,

like a lawyer, you know, the evidence that it might be

pretty, pretty awful. And it wasn't till a number of years

back that I read Peter frost books, both toxic emotions at

work, how compassionate managers handle pain and conflict, and

the toxic handler, organizational hero and cow

casualty. As an HR practitioner, I've never considered myself as

a toxic handler, but I shared it after reading his book Because

the role of making nice for ever being the peacemaker, you know,

hearing some of the stories and sometimes not being able to do

anything to help. I know I had a very difficult time I continue

to have leaving that at the office and not having it

continue to impact me. So, given this, this podcast is for people

who have oversight, people oversight responsibilities, I

think it's really important to be hearing that in your people,

oversight roles. You know, many of these traumas, many of these

challenges are ones that you could be facing, and maybe

contributing to, you know, not feeling quite as energetic or as

excited as perhaps, you know, you were before taking on some

of the responsibilities. I was going to ask more about

dramatics, the secondary traumatic stress stress, but I

think we've probably covered that. And you mentioned post

traumatic stress. And I know that we're seeing a lot more of

that. And again, I think it's really important to be

recognizing that our work situations could be creating

those with within us anything further before we move on to

some of the other areas in your book. Yeah,

I will say this, this area of occupational

PTSD is actually starting to gain some momentum. And it's,

you know, there's no, like single set of triggers for PTSD

and PTSD is really, it's unprocessed trauma resulting

from traditionally, it's been resulting from exposure to life

threatening or highly distressing events. And it

typically lasts more than a month, and it starts to impact

our daily functioning. But occupational PTSD is really a

it's it's more generally characterized by different

emotional, cognitive and physical challenges that people

experience when they have difficulty coping with negative

abusive or traumatic aspects of their jobs. And so we see this

every day in so many places, right? So a lot of times, it's

it's, again, like managers who don't necessarily recognize the

importance of acknowledging things like grief, or when

people are experiencing a tough time. And so occupational PTSD

is often this a symptom of organizational culture. And so

ongoing things like exposure to emotional abuse, threatening

behaviors, sexual or racial harassment, bullying, these can

result in occupational PTSD when staff are exposed to it. And it

can even be prompted by less kind of overtly egregious

things. You know, things like chronic overwork, unrealistic

performance expectations, not being given the resources to

really succeed in your job. undelivered promises by

management, boundary violations, not allowing people to actually

take leave when they need it. So all of these things creates

organizations that are not psychologically safe. And and so

you know, just about every one of us has probably experienced

one or more of these things in our workplaces. And that doesn't

necessarily mean that people will experience occupational

PTSD. And even with all of these occupational traumas, just

because you're exposed to things doesn't mean you're necessarily

experienced them. But a lot of it has to do with our own kind

of window of tolerance to stress. And part of that is

based on things that have happened to us in our lifetimes.

And, you know, and that determines how likely it is that

we will actually experience these things.

To an interesting point, yeah. And an important

one moral injury, you talked about in the book, and you

define that as perpetuating perpetrating, sorry, failing to

prevent bearing witness to or learning about acts that

transgress one's deeply held beliefs and expectations, that

it can be the whiplash that we've experienced from

constantly changing policies and procedures that conflict with

our personal morals. Now, I know several examples came to mind

from my work in local government, things like a city

clerk being directed to, to do something that would have been a

violation of our the laws governing local government, or a

city manager facing off with Count So, again over something

that would have been a legal violation. No tax, we've had to

bring a lawyer in to tell the the Board counsel, the same

things that we've been talking to them about, but they just

wouldn't believe us. They had to hear from an external. I

remember how frustrating how costly and how disengaging that

was. And I think those probably would be kind of along the lines

of moral injury of just, you know, the the potential

violation and things that you held very strongly but adhering

to the law, or, yeah,

I'm sorry, good.

You're just Yes, sir. I didn't mean to drop. Yeah,

that is totally got that. Right. Absolutely.

You know, it's interesting, because I often get

frustrated, sorry, because I hear a lot of discussion about

burnout, like everything is lumped under burnout. And I

think especially right now, more people are actually facing moral

injury, and they don't realize it, and especially in government

service. So you know, what's interesting about government

services, when you're a civil servant, you are expected to

uphold the laws and policies of regardless of what

administration is in power. And so I think, you know, so moral

injury actually started out it was a term that was coined for

soldiers coming back from the frontlines of war, when they had

been asked to, you know, do things in the midst of war that,

that violated their own deeply held morals. And when they were

coming back, they were struggling with these kinds of

PTSD like symptoms, but people couldn't understand like what

the issue was. And so they finally figured out that it was,

it was as a result of being asked to do these things that

that were deeply troubling to them. And so when we think about

it, like, I really think we need to be talking about moral injury

in the government space, a lot more it's being it's starting to

have more discussion in the medical professions, especially

post COVID. But in the government space, you know, we

will if if we are a government, civil servant for like our

lifetime career, we will inevitably work for people with

whom we just simply don't agree, like, we don't agree with the

policies. And you know, a lot of times people say, Oh, well, if

you don't agree, just quit. But that's, that's actually a

statement that comes out of a lot of privilege, right? To be

able to say, like, Oh, I'm gonna walk away on principle, that's

great. Like, if you have the means and the capacity to do so

fantastic. But most of us don't have that option, like we have

to keep working. And so part of this is recognizing that, you

know, when we are asking people to do things, it may be

impacting them in this way. And then that does impact how they

show up, it impacts their mental health, which in turn impacts

their physical health and their relational health. Like when you

think about relationships, whether they're at work, or

whether they're, you know, in your personal life, all of those

get impacted. And I always talk about, you know, with all of

this, I talk about how we are whole human beings, and we do

not leave a piece of ourselves at the door when we come into

work. And even though we are expected to compartmentalize

ourselves in ways that just don't work, and is as much as we

think we may be compartmentalizing, we're not.

And so, at any given moment, if something is really, you know,

painful is happening at home, it's going to bleed into how

we're showing up outside of our homes, right. And vice versa, if

something's happening at work, or in other parts of our lives,

it's going to impact how we show up in our personal relationships

and, and lives. So it's just important to keep that in mind

and with moral injury. You know, it's, it's, it's challenging,

because our morals are so personal to who we are as

individuals. And so part of this is, you know, starting to create

space for people to kind of work through that. So that they can

keep showing up to do the work, which isn't always easy.

And also, I think, people taking time individually,

to really get to know themselves, and what are what

are the values and the morals that are important and are kind

of the non negotiables. And then, you know, seeking out

organizations, if that's possible, that align with sort

of the like, choosing to work in service and some of the earlier

common interests and needs of the individuals that are drawn

to working in service. That's actually a really good segue to

talking about the lack of training that is provided for

people who have people oversight roles. And I can't agree with

you more. I've seen too many training budgets, that the

training is the first thing to be axed recruitment processes

where there's not even a consideration that the

individual might need people skills, when their primary

responsibility is going to be overseeing people. And then also

insufficient knowledge of for the people in these roles. But

how to deal with the situations that we're talking about today?

You know, this isn't easy, you know, what are the symptoms?

What are what, when you're overseeing your work team are

the signs that somebody might be starting to experience that and,

and then, you know, how, in our role, are we able to help them?

And I think the first step is just by saying, you, okay, you

know that just that that wonderful, simple, caring? That?

Are you okay, like, I'm noticing me, you're just not quite the

bubbly self that you usually are? I Yeah. And I don't know

that I'll go into the details. But it certainly brings me back

to a situation that I dealt with early in my career where I

followed direction, my gut was just screaming at me, this is

not the time. I did it anyway, I was not coached on how to handle

this difficult phone call. I know it didn't go well. I just

ended and it's left a mark with me. I learned from it, you know,

I but I wasn't coached. I wasn't no one checked in with me

afterwards to say, how did that go? No one did sort of an after

action review. And I think it's important that we learned from

things that we know that we could do better. But oh my

goodness, wouldn't it be better if we had the training ahead of

time? Or someone you could go to? Yeah, your thoughts on that

before we move to other areas?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of

all, I'm so sorry that you went through that because it sounds

awful. And yeah, you know, I think we tend to promote people

based on technical or subject matter expertise. And then we

tend to train supervisors in kind of the punitive aspects of

supervising, right, so how to write people up how to document

issues of poor performance, and you know, and things like that.

And, but we don't teach people how to lead. And there's a

distinction between leading and supervising. And it's funny,

because when I created the leadership program that I did, I

specifically, even though we were the program was for mid

level managers. So first and second line supervisors, I kept

using the word leader. And when I kind of pitched the program to

our senior executive team, they kept saying, Why are you calling

of lead? And I said, because they are leaders. And we have to

start using that term. Because they are leaders. They're not

just supervisors. And I don't mean to say just but like, you

know, supervising is about managing resources. And our

people are not resources. Again, they're human beings. And

supervising is about like, those little technical details along

the way. But leading is about guiding and motivating and

coaching people to be the best versions of themselves with, you

know, with the ultimate goal of meeting the collective mission.

Right. And so I think, you know, if it is any consolation, I

think we've all as new leaders had experiences like yours. I

know for me, when I when I first became a senior manager or a

junior manager. Boy, I walked onto this team, it was a team

that was already there full of people. And I walked in with an

agenda. And this is how we're going to do it. And this is, you

know, in one year, these are all the benchmarks we're going to

hit. And if you don't like it, that's fine. You can leave and I

burned so many bridges. And I, you know, created such a

terrible environment for people who had been there for a while.

And I did end up having three people leave the team. And it

was just such a humbling experience. And the other part

of this was I was working so hard to prove myself. And I

think this is often what happens, that my standards were

so unrealistically high for myself, which in turn, bled over

into the team and so I was expecting things of them that

that weren't fair. And it to this day is one of my biggest

regrets because I look back on how I handled that. And I think

about how much more we could have done had I gone in with a

different approach right and I didn't give people an

opportunity to share their thoughts or their their

knowledge or wisdom which might have led to even better ideas,

you know. So part of this is understanding that this is this

is part of the learning process. It's part of the learning curve

of leading. But, you know, I think we also have to when I

talk about human centered leadership, Human Centered

Leadership is grounded in empathy and connection. And it

really requires leaders to have strong self awareness, and also

to be able to practice self compassion. And all these things

together, the awareness and the compassion is what allows us to

regulate our nervous systems in real time. And that's what all

of this is about. Because when we are faced with conflict, or

other challenges, or even, you know, crisis or trauma in our

workplace, we are often operating from a place of fear

and survival. And in that space, we can only react. And so we

react. And what we want to learn to do is to actually tune in to

what's happening in our minds and our bodies so that we can,

you know, reactivate our parasympathetic nervous system

and calm ourselves so that we can actually respond with

intention, especially during those moments of stress crisis

and trauma. And so self compassion is so important.

Because it's what allows us to recognize our own humanity, even

as leaders to say, you know, I'm not perfect, and I'm gonna make

mistakes, and that's okay. But you know, a lot and a lot of

leaders think, oh, self compassion is soft, and there's

but self compassion is one of the hardest things to practice.

And there's two facets to it, there's the the kindness piece

of it, which is important. But there's the other side, which is

kind of a tough love component. And that tough love component is

what gets us to stand back up and say, okay, you know, what,

I'm going to try this again, and maybe do things differently this

time. And so, especially for new leaders, I can't say this

enough, you know, I, I hope that new leaders will start to

cultivate more self compassion, so that they can actually lead

from this place of authenticity, and, and showing up as their

full selves, because that's what people really need in order to

connect. So, and oh, and the other piece of this also is, is

the compassion allows us to hopefully take responsibility

and accountability for our actions, so that when we do

something that harms another person, whether it's, it's

hopefully, you know, not on purpose, that we can take

responsibility for that and, and be able to learn from our

mistakes rather than just, you know, getting defensive and

doubling down and things like that.

And those very cherished apologies, from our

former leaders, or anybody who's in a people oversight role, of

saying, I messed up, I too am learning that vulnerability

models that others can make mistakes and be forgiven for

them. You know, as long as there's an interest in doing

better and differently next time. So yeah, so important. I'm

gonna go to an area of your book where you did talk about more of

the organizational trauma, but you reference the book,

organizational trauma and healing by Pat Vivian and Shana

Hormann, where there's three points made, I think these are

really important points. So I'm going to take us there first

being a lack of transparency in organizational communication and

decision making, which leaves staff speculating or gossiping

about leadership motives and choices as they relate to

fulfilling the mission as a factor. Second, being top down

issues that don't take into account and we've talked about

this earlier, of workforce, health, well being another

needs. And the last point being perceptions of or actual racial,

social or other inequities or unfairness in the workplace,

being factors that organizations really need to be paying

attention to any any Kenyatta and any more meat around those

for us.

Yeah, so, you know, a lot of times people

don't realize that just as we as individuals can be wounded in

harm, so to get the systems within which we work, and it

makes a lot, you know, so a lot of times I hear people saying,

oh, you know, the system systems are broken systems are broken,

but I always say, the systems are not broken, they are doing

exactly what they were created to do. And what we need to

recognize is that all of our systems are created by

individuals and individuals are bringing their own lens, you

know, that has been created through their own experiences.

And so part of this is recognizing that you You know,

so organizational trauma, I always describe it as the water

that we're swimming in. And so there's a great little story

about these two fishes swimming along. And this older fish kind

of swims by and says, Oh, well, hey, boys, how's the water

today? And they kind of keep swimming. And then the one fish

looks at the other and says, Well, what the heck is water.

And so, so organizational trauma is kind of, it's the thing that

happens over time, because of all these different factors. And

it just gets to the point where we stop noticing anymore, and it

just becomes the norm, and we accept it. And yet, it continues

to harm the people within the space. And so, you know, we just

want to, but as you noted, I mean, the good news is that we

actually can, we can kind of re build our cultures, and create

these more human self centered cultures. But to do that, we

have to be able to actually acknowledge and address the root

issues of a lot of the trauma that's happening in the

workplace. Before we can move on, so I'm actually working with

a client right now. And that's one of the discussions were

having, because they've had, you know, a team in particular,

that's had a lot of a lot of organizational trauma related

issues. And so, you know, now we're getting into the meat of

well, how do we sit down and actually start looking at some

of these root causes, and getting the team together to

talk about them, and to address them, so that we can then move

past them and build something together that actually reflects

what is needed for the collective rather than through

the lens of one, you know, a single person or a single group

of people.

And I want, I want to actually talk more about that

ability to reset and to redesign what you call once traumatized

cultures. And yeah, thank you, because it really is about

addressing the root causes that can't remain unacknowledged and

unresolved. First of all, some of the not to do's and then I

want to get into the we want to end this on a big high. One

about toxic positive positivity, which I found interesting. And

then you define that as quickly reframing the situation with

platitudes, like, everything happens for a reason, or this

too shall pass. And I know I use the this too, shall pass in a

really challenging round in negotiations, but it probably

kept me sane was just one who was personally for me. But

you're right, that those kinds of platitudes do make light of

situations that are quite serious. And, again, that that

often is used to not address the roots.

Yeah, you know, the thing is, with, with toxic

positivity, I mean, it's a fine line, right? We, we encourage

people to cultivate positive emotions, because we know that

the more that we cultivate positive emotions, we broaden

our perspective, we tend to see more in our surroundings that

cultivate more positive emotions of gratitude. And so we want to

kind of build those upward spirals of positivity. When we

talk about toxic positivity, it's when we are facing a

challenge, or a difficult circumstance, and we quickly,

you know, use these platitudes or we, you know, try to just

sugarcoat coat what's happening rather than acknowledging like,

hey, you know, this is this is tough. And so it's, and I think

it's, it's, it's a comfort thing, right? We, it's hard to

say like, oh, especially in the workplace, if you're a leader,

it's hard to say, well, you know, this really sucks, like,

this thing that we're experiencing is terrible. But

you have to, you know, if we say, well, you know, what, it's,

it's fine. And the thing is these platitudes, there's wisdom

in them, there's wisdom in them, and they are useful when they're

used in the right way. But when they're used as a way to, like

kind of go around and not acknowledge what people are

actually facing, it becomes problematic and so we want to

actually create space where people can feel seen and feel

heard and feel valued. And and feel like their leaders

especially see like hey, you know what, I'm really

struggling. So COVID was another again, a great example because

especially in those early days, where there was so much

uncertainty and so much fear, and then again, so much grief,

because so many people had family members who had died. And

I remember in My workplace, you know, the the leaders I was

working with, because we were working on these things around

empathy and whatnot, their teams were actually doing great, like

they were supporting each other, they were taking care of each

other. But the teams that had other leaders who, you know,

didn't know how to have these conversations, and what I often

tell people is, you know, this is this is just again, trying to

commute, like, connect on a human to human level. So empathy

is not empathy does not have to be anything extraordinary. When

we talk about empathy, we talk about creating a good friend of

mine talks about creating a ministry of presence. And so

it's, it's being present to the people who are there and, and

what they're experiencing. And we have these mirror neurons in

our brain, that allow us to, to experience to a degree what the

other person is experiencing, it doesn't mean so a lot of times

leaders are like, you know, I don't want to take on another

person's stuff. But that's not what's happening. But you can

that's, that's how we show empathy is by being with the

person to say, you know, what I see you, I see what you're going

through. You don't have to fix it. In fact, you should not try

to fix it. That's the other thing, we often want to try to

fix what's happening. That's not your job, your job is just to be

present to what what they're they're sharing and what they

need. Sometimes that's just sitting in silence, you know,

but it's nothing extraordinary. But it's just recognizing this

is a human being sitting in front of me, and they're

hurting. So what can I do to connect on that level?

Thank you. And just really quickly, you also talk

about spiritual bypassing, which is an attempt to find a silver

lining and every negative experience. Similarly, just to

be careful of that, for the same reasons, yeah, I think I think

it's time for us to go to some of the ideas that you share. The

first thing, radical responsibility, which is a

commitment to ourselves, as we've talked about in the

podcast, and the people around us to take ownership and

responsibility for our own thoughts, behaviors, resulting

outcomes, some of that self awareness that we've talked

about. And we have to make changes for ourselves before we

can actually make them as organizations, that the healing

process that organizations and individuals have to go through,

do require vulnerability and vulnerability does require

courage. Take off the mask of perfectionism, and the need for

martyrdom, recognize that that's part of who you might be. And do

you still need to be that? And then maybe the duty of care if

you could talk a little bit about that as well, to take so

yeah, to think, why don't you? Why don't we talk a little bit

about some of this radical responsibility, and the duty of

care?

Sure. So, you know, I, I, I really do believe

that before we can work on our organizations, we have to work

on ourselves. And so and I also know from personal experience,

that our organizations aren't going to save us and, and that's

okay. But hopefully, my I am very hopeful that in the future,

organizations will be more mindful of, again, of the human

beings that are in their space. But so, because we know this, we

are now free to kind of make choices that are going to allow

ourselves to flourish and support our own health and, and

start to heal some of our own trauma. So even during times of

adversity and challenge when we think about radical

responsibility. It's not radical responsibility doesn't let

organizations off the hook. But it acknowledges that as

individuals, we have to make those changes for ourselves

first before we make them as an organization. And there's three

kind of key components, which is accountability, well being and

mindset. And when we take these three things together, we start

to create a state of being where we show up with intentionality

and awareness, and we start to check in with ourselves more

often to ask, you know, like, what's kind of What's my

motivation behind this? Why am I being you know, why am I saying

this? Or why am I feeling this? And we start to get more curious

about our reactions. And this is also the space radical

responsibility helps us to break a lot of those outdated patterns

that are no longer serving us that we tend to default to

because that's just how our brains work. And so, radical

responsibility is about being accountable for the way that we

personally show up during times of adversity and To the way that

we make ourselves part of the solution. It also serves as a

foundation for every other thing that we do. Because, you know,

in cultures where blame and shame and judgment are the norm

when we start to practice radical responsibility and own

our own mistakes, and then apologize and make amends, if

we've you know, harmed somebody else, it can feel challenging,

but the ripple effects are incredibly powerful. And so the

more that we practice this, the easier it becomes to embody this

way of being. And so duty of care. So that's kind of on the

individual side duty of care is what we look at for the

organization. And so duty of care, it started out in tort

law, and it refers to kind of this obligation that this legal

obligation that organizations have to kind of protect us from

predictable harm. And what that means really is it focuses

primarily on our physical health and safety historically. And so,

you know, this is where we think about like, creating a safe

environment for staff ensuring that staff don't work, you know,

extremely long hours, or where staff roles are defined, where

we provide sufficient training, especially for kind of high risk

situations, things like that. And this is where, hopefully,

we're protecting staff from things like bullying and

harassment, discrimination, things like that. And so the

duty of care practice in so many mission driven organizations has

primarily focused on this physical health and safety. But

for organizations with like, especially human centered

missions, where we're serving other human beings, I really

think that we have to create a more holistic, human centered

duty of care, that goes beyond just the physical health and

safety, but actually starts to look at and acknowledge our

mental, physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual health

and well being as well. And so in the book, I created a

framework that consists of four commitments. And so the first

commitment is normalizing and address addressing occupational

mental health challenges and trauma. And so again, this is

becoming a trauma informed organization, this is where we

start to recognize, oh, yeah, we're serving other humans,

there's probably going to be some impact on our staff. And

we're going to start to recognize that we're gonna

start, you know, helping our leaders learn how to recognize

that, how to handle it, how to manage it, and how to create

spaces of empathy, and connection. And then commitment

to is evolving from metrics driven cultures into human

centered one. So we've talked a little bit about this already.

But it's really where we start to bring other things in besides

metrics when we're creating our policies and frameworks within

our organizations. And then commitment, three is supporting

rest and recovery, and who the amount of people that I talked

to that continue in this day and age to where stress and

exhaustion, as a badge of honor is just mind blowing to me. And

so we want to start normalizing the idea of rest, you know, rest

is a badge of honor, because we know that, you know, with like

lack of sleep and things, there are so many studies that have

been done now about how this impacts our cognitive

functioning. And so when we're thinking about big decisions

that need to be made, and especially for leaders, the

decisions that you have to make, if you're operating on not

enough sleep, and you're exhausted all the time, it has

these ripple effects. And so we want to start not only educating

our workforce on the importance of rest, but actually building

in time for recovery throughout the day, so that people can

function at their best. Rather than expecting that, hey, this

is on your own time you figure it out. We want to actually

build that into the day. And then commitment for as fostered

shared purpose and commitment. And so again, you know, I think

in a lot of mission driven spaces, that shared purpose and

commitment is kind of factored in to a degree because we've got

this mission we're all working towards, but part of this is

also recognizing, like, Hey, these are all individuals

bringing these unique gifts into our workplace. How do we create

this space that's, you know, that's grounded in trust, and

that we've created that psychologically safe, and that

everybody understands what we're working towards, and why we're

working towards it, so that we're doing this together in a

way that's sustainable, and that makes sense for all of us. And

so these commitments, these four commitments actually allow

leaders in organizations to start addressing both the

occupational traumas as well as the organizational trauma by

creating conditions in the workplace that help people feel

seen, heard and valued. And in all of this comes through in

these human centered cultures that are grounded in connection

and compassion and empathy. And this is important because

without this, it's incredibly challenging to build trust, and

psychological safety. You know, a lot of times I have, you know,

organizations that will contact me to say, Oh, we want to do

like this, this to our team building thing. And when I

started digging into why, you know, I have to really help

people understand that a to our team building when your team is

experiencing organizational trauma or occupational trauma is

like putting a BandAid on a broken arm, and it's not going

to actually heal anything or make things better. And so trust

and psychological safety are built over time. And so that's

what we want to do is we want to help leaders learn how to

cultivate that over time through authentic connection and through

building spaces of empathy. So that all of this can lead to

building you know, robust and healthy workplaces that actually

end up fostering innovation and growth and help to mitigate

things like attrition and, and organizational trauma. So yeah,

so those are kind of the four commitments that are part of the

duty of care that I'm advocating for through this book.

You also, they're wonderful, and you also really

emphasize the pricing of social connections, through everyday

moments of engagement, grounded in gratitude, kindness, respect,

and empathy is critical. And I've certainly seen that have a

very positive impact. Just looking at some of the questions

I was going to ask you, and I think we've probably covered

them.

know, one thing I'll say about social connection

is just that, as human beings, we're hardwired for connection

and belonging. And so the more we can foster social connection

in our workspaces, and again, that doesn't mean you know,

having to take three hours to have a conversation or, you

know, these are little moments of, of genuinely connecting with

another person, which requires us to be present, which requires

us to actually, you know, be a part of that conversation. But

the more we build this social connection, and again, it suits

our nervous system, it makes us feel safe, it makes us feel like

we're a part of something. And this is part of our very like,

this is our evolutionary survival mechanism. This is what

helps us keep moving forward. So that's another reason why social

connection in the workplace is so fundamental, towards creating

healthy happy workplaces.

Thank you. Now you also talk about and I'm going to

jump to how we tend to numb the pain of work through alcohol and

staying busy all the time. And I've certainly been there and

staying busy all the time, as my friends ever reminded me. It's

become a habit, I think it's important. You know, part of

that self awareness, part of the symptoms that may be presenting

or, or the way you may be using coping mechanisms, that

sometimes it's other people that can identify those for you.

Other symptoms before we we move to closing the podcast that

people might be just paying a little more attention to

Sure. So in the book, I actually talk about five

survival reactions. So we've all heard of fight or flight. I

talked about fight, flight, freeze, fix and fake. And so the

numbing behaviors are talking about our flight response. And

so flight is really where we are. We just want to get away

from the situation and or the emotions tied to the situation.

And so this is where we do see a lot of addictions show up. This

is where we see the alcoholism, the workaholism, all the isms

that are out there. But this is also where we saw things like

during COVID We saw a lot of binge watching of television,

right? So to get away from what what was happening. What's

interesting with flight, though, is in sometimes it's just

getting up and walking out of the space, right? But the thing

with flight is in that space, we have a real challenge connecting

with other people. And so flight manifests within ourselves as

isolation like this is where we start to isolate ourselves from

other others. And so fight shows up as blame. It shows up as

criticism, it shows up as judgment and it can show up as

violence and all of these things can be directed towards

ourselves or towards others. Freeze is that paralysis by

analysis. This is where we're overthinking everything. We're

stuck. We can't make a decision. We can't move forward. Fix is a,

it's kind of an if then scenario. So we play this game

with ourselves where we'll say, Well, you know, if I could just

be more productive, then my organization will finally

recognize my value. And the thing with fix is it's rooted in

feelings of unworthiness. And so we start to do things to change

ourselves to try to please others around us. And then fake

is where we, we don't want to show any vulnerability. This is

where we show up and we put on this mask of, you know, like,

Yeah, I'm fine. I know, there's nothing wrong. Also, you know,

most leaders do not like saying the words I don't know. But

again, we're human beings, we don't know everything. And this

is why we surround ourselves with a team of people who bring

out the best in us to write and so part of this is, is letting

down that that mask, and otherwise, it turns into often

it turns into perfectionism, where we just want to show the

world that we can do everything ourselves, we know everything.

And it's not sustainable over the course of our career. And so

I highlight these because all five of these reactions, when we

are in genuine harm, harm's way, they can be helpful, but And so

and they can also be helpful if we are intentionally choosing

them for a reason. So for example, when my mom passed away

unexpectedly, in 2019, I really struggled, I was really

struggling. And so flight was flight has always been my go to

reaction for most things when I'm stressed. But in that case,

I really turned to my work, to not deal with my emotions. But I

did so with intention, I knew like in that moment, I wasn't

ready. But that I would get to the point where I'd finally be

able to deal with my grief. And so if we can have awareness

around it, it's a different thing. But when we're defaulting

to these, and that's what we do, because we live a good chunk of

our life on autopilot. And so it's important for us to notice

what reactions we have, and under what circumstances because

we all have patterns that have been created since childhood

that have created these deeply etched neural pathways in our in

our brains. And so when we are faced with a similar situation,

we default to one of these, these patterns that we know. And

the good news is that we actually know that we can rewire

our brains, there's something called neuroplasticity, which

allows us to create new neural pathways. But that requires that

we first create awareness around what our patterns are. And we

start making new choices. And we have to repeat those new choices

over and over and over again, before we can actually have new

neural pathways that are going to better serve us in those

situations.

Wow. Thank you. And I'm sorry about the loss of your

mom. Thank ya, I watch the end of the book, you ask? What if

the path is giving us powerful opportunities to reveal and heal

our own wounds? And we just don't realize it, that our

personal experiences of pain and trauma are not only scars that

we bear, but also the source of our superpower. And I know that

we're we're longer than we expected. But I think it's

really important for us to be talking about this before we

close.

Yeah, yeah, you know, I think so often we

associated trauma with weakness and with, you know, feeling like

we're less than because we have experienced these things. But I

really think that all these hardships many of us have

experienced in our lives like i It's interesting to me, as I

talk to other people who have chosen similar career paths,

that almost all of us have gone through some kind of trauma in

our childhood, that often leads us to these paths of wanting to

serve others, because there were people who helped us and so we

feel this inherent need to want to give back in some way and

protect others. And so, I really think that had I not gone

through the things that I had, I wouldn't necessarily have the

empathy and compassion that I have. And so to me, that's a

superpower that came out of something that was really tragic

and challenging. And so it's about having that perspective of

looking at, you know, these hardships that I've gone

through, how are they serving me, but more? And more

importantly, how are they allowing me to serve others? And

I think that that's a really beautiful thing that not

everybody can claim. And so I just really want to help people

in these lines of work recognize that there's probably a reason

you ended up here doing this kind of work. You know, and by

this kind, I mean, you know, mission driven service of, you

know, others or the environment or whatever it is, and so

stopping to recognize, well, what is that? What is it within

me? That's looking to get healed that's leading me down this