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Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe, yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost for the C-suite. It’s a real topic of daily focus. This is the Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now.

Hi, and welcome to the Safety Crew. Today, I’m very excited to have back with me, Beverly Beuermann-King. She’s a corporate culture and resiliency expert previously on this show. And today we’re going to talk about topics that are related to World Mental Health Day. World Mental Health Day is celebrated every year on October 10th. The day is about coming together to talk about mental health and show everyone that mental health does matter. Today we’re going to talk about two distinct interrelated topics, I think, that are quite interesting. The first one is about toxicity in the organization. The second one is really about leader self-care, work colleagues and leaders and the impact on burnout. Obviously, both have a direct impact on safety. But let’s start talking a little bit about toxicity in the organization.

Yeah, it’s interesting because you look at a definition for the word toxic. It’s harsh, malicious, harmful. Aren’t they great words? They have an impact. We can actually see them. We can see where both toxic workplaces breed toxic employees, and toxic employees breed toxic workplaces. So, they’re back and forth. We’re impacted and affected by the people around us.

In many cases, I’ve seen in organizations where this can occur, even in a great culture, it can occur in pockets. Small pockets, parts of the Certain locations, if you’re thinking in construction company, could be one site. You’re talking about a utility, could be one region or district. Tell me a little bit about what drives that toxicity and why is it allowed to take root?

We could probably spend an entire day talking about this part, but there are certainly some themes that I’m seeing right now in workplaces, and entitlement being one of them. And so, entitlement isn’t one generation over another, but it can be because of my position, my years of service, my academic background, whatever that looks like. It’s that this is what I deserve, right? And so, it’s that myopia of looking at situations. So that can cause toxicity, right? Everything is about me. Everything is about what I can gain. There’s also in our organizations right now this us versus them mentality. It could be management up against frontline. It could be inside sales, outside sales, whatever it looks like. But it’s that high school mentality of you’re in or you’re out. Again, when we have cliques, when we have groups like that, it creates this sense of negativity and difficult attitudes and behaviors that take place. Then we also have passive-aggressive types of behaviors such as gossiping. It could be things like harassment and bullying that add into this toxicity.

That toxicity could be a leader; it could be a team member or a group of team members. You mentioned it could even be customers.

Yeah. I mean, that toxicity can come from a number of different places. Like I said, it’s impacting the organization. When it has this detrimental effect, and that effect can be on the team as a whole, it could be on a particular person, it could be on the leader, it could be on the customer, but it’s having an impact on the way that we deal with the people around us. Again, that toxicity, it grows, it permeates other areas. It’s really important that we find ways of being able to address that within our organizations.

What are some of the ways that leaders can, one, notice and identify? I’m thinking potentially a senior leader, you may have pockets of the organization. It could be just a few areas where this is occurring. How can they deal with it? Because this toxic environment breeds a very unhealthy workplace.

It does, and it can lead to all kinds of safety issues because we’re not paying attention. Sometimes I talk about leadership attentiveness as being a real key to this, because for many leaders, we have far too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Sometimes the people issues take the back burner, which allows that toxicity to fester and grow. Really good leaders, they start to pay attention to this because they know that it’s not just somebody being rude, somebody being negative. They know that the whole team is impacted by this toxicity. Really good leaders, they’re willing to do the hard stuff. They’re willing to step into these really difficult conversations in order to address the negativity so that it doesn’t impact everybody else.

In some cases, this can be very exhausting even for a leader. I remember recently, I was in a session and the leader was talking about how there is this… He didn’t use the word toxicity, but there was this toxicity, a sense of entitlement, unacceptable behaviors occurring. It was exhausting for him to interact with a group on a regular basis. Some days he just said, I just need some time out. It’s a lot to deal with.

It is a lot to deal with. On top of all of the other layer upon layer of unpredictable ability that we’re dealing with, then you have this toxicity. We’re not taught how to have these conversations, how to address it effectively. We look at different ways and different actions that can be taken. Some of them are dealing with the conversation that needs to be had and stepping into those conversations. Others are looking at what’s contributing to the negativity and the toxicity. In a lot of cases, it is this stress. It is pervasive. It is across the organization. It is causing burnout. When we understand maybe the factors behind the toxicity in the first place, as a leader, not only do you need to address the corporate culture, things like workloads and control and recognition and support and fairness, but it’s also about being able to step into the conversation and communicate in a way that’s effective so that it doesn’t keep coming back. I had one organization where the leader said, this person has been this way for 20 years. I’m like, First of all, what has allowed that person to be this way for 20 years?

We There’s been things that have allowed that to become the norm. As leaders, we need to be able to, are we creating the culture that we desire? As a team, are we stepping up and saying, this is not the culture that we want, and doing the hard work to create a positive culture?

You brought an interesting point that we’ve never really been trained or prepared on how to deal with these conversations. What are some of the tactics that leaders can use to have those challenging, difficult conversations that may be required?

I would say, first, be intentional. Tune into this. Understand that you need to address it. My number one is prepare ahead of time. What I mean by that is don’t get caught up that there’s been a blow up or there’s been a situation in a meeting and you’re reacting from a gut level. You just fire all barrel’s thing. Sure. You need to plan What is the goal of this conversation? And that’s a really big piece. What am I trying to address and what’s the goal? And then when’s the right time? When’s the right place? How is this person typically going to respond? Are they going to cry? Are they going to stomp, scream and shout? Are they going to point fingers? Are they going to start swearing and slamming doors? Whatever that looks like. And then if they do that, how am I going to respond to that situation so that I’m not just responding, I’m acting rather than reacting?

Excellent. Because I’ve seen in some cases, I’ve had people that I worked with where they would start banging on the table and screaming. And your point is really good. If you get hooked into it, then your conversation is going to derail. But if you know that’s going to come, then you can better prepare for it.

Yeah, you play those situations in your mind. How am I going to maintain my composure, my professionalism? How am I going to get to the goal of the conversation and address it appropriately? I talk about starting the conversation by listening, which is not what most leaders do. We need to say… One of the questions I ask is, what has been going well and what has not been going so well? I want to get their perspective on both of those because that could feed into some of the information that maybe I haven’t been privy to. It gives me an idea of where they’re coming from, their starting point is. Maybe for the first time, they finally feel like they’re being listened to, which can get rid of some of the toxicity in the conversation right from the get-go. Listen to what they have to say and then start to give some feedback as to how these fits with the culture that you’re creating or how it doesn’t fit with the culture that they’re creating. We often make the mistake of thinking that a really good employee, a customer, a co-leader would know that their behavior is out of alignment.

For the most part, people don’t. You need to bring it to attention of how that behavior doesn’t feed into the culture that we’re trying to create.

Interesting because you’re right, we assume that they No. But in the example, you shared just a few seconds ago about somebody who’s been doing this for 20 years, it now becomes an accepted norm.

It does. Where is it out of alignment? One of the things that I talk in my presentations to leaders is we need to start with what are our values? For me, values are our rules of engagement, and they’re not created top down. They’re created within the team. A team may have a set of values that may be different than the organizational set of values because it’s the rules of engagement. How are we going to treat each other? How are we going to get stuff done? How are we going to connect with each other? These are our rules of engagement. When we have been very clear about what it looks like when we’re living them and what it looks like when we’re not living them, then you can start to hold people accountable to the behaviors that you want to see within the team. Until you’ve got that playing field of really being clear about those definitions, it’s really hard to hold people accountable. And so that’s my first step in many cases.

You touched on the topic of accountability. How do you drive that accountability? Because there’s the first conversation, but how do you follow through to make sure that that accountability actually sets in drive change.

When I talk about these steps, the follow through is often the one that leaders miss. It’s like, we’ve had the conversation, and we will never talk about this again. It’s like a one and done. It is never a one and done. We talk about what is it that we’ve agreed to? What does that look like? How are we going to measure that? How am I going to know that that’s been happening? Is it going to be a one-on-one? Is it going to be reports from your colleagues? What does that look like? Then if this person is able to do that, great. We jump all over that. We reward that and recognize it. If they’re not, we continually go back to holding that person accountable. At some point, maybe we need to make one of those hard decisions where this person may not be the right fit for this team. Sure.

You touched on the person who’s been around 20 years, and this is how they’ve been the whole time. I’ve seen this many organizations where there’s an acceptance of certain people that may be shouldn’t belong there, individuals that cause a lot of grief, toxicity in the workplace where it’s been allowed for a long time. Leaders start accepting that this is the cards I’ve been dealt with. This is the individuals I have, and this is how they will be, and I can’t change this person. That can be this barrier where it creates even stress to have those conversations where I avoid it. I’ve seen this in more present in some organizations than others. What are some of the ways to remove some of the stress and how to convince people to address with some of these things that may be 20 years in the making?

I think as an organization and as teams, we have a responsibility to make sure that we’re creating the culture that we desire, that we work the best in, that we can bring our very best selves in. And so when it’s creating stress, when people are absent, when they don’t want to come, when there’s not that enthusiasm, when I don’t want to tell you something because I don’t know how it’s be used against me, when people are showing signs of burnout and lack of engagement, that’s why we address this stuff, because it does have an impact. It has an impact on who we are, what we can achieve, how we treat our customers, our safety, our overall health. And so, when we know and we take note of the importance, it’s a whole lot easier to make the time to deal with this stuff because we know that it’s not just, like I said earlier, it’s not just somebody being rude. It’s not just somebody who is, that’s just who they are. No, it’s having an impact on everybody and the way that we do the job. We’re losing really good people because of it.

I love the simplicity of how you present it around toxicity in the organization. Very similar as well to some of the themes I’m hearing more and more in the safety space, safety arena, around psychosocial risks. Just these pockets in the organization where it’s causing a negative impact on the people working it. Just very simple ways to address it, but you’re really bring in the importance of bringing that to the forefront. I appreciate that.

We talk a lot about the factors that make for a good workplace, and respect and appreciation is one of those. Are we working in a situation where there’s respect for my time, my energy, my education, my contribution, Am I being appreciated for that contribution as well? What does that look like? It’s not necessarily financial either. It’s how am I being acknowledged? When we allow that toxicity to take place, it’s taking away from everything that’s core to who we are.

Absolutely. That’s a great topic. The other one I wanted to touch on as we celebrate World Mental Health Day is the topic of leader burnout. We You talked about workaholic, but also the element of leader self-care. When you first joined me on the first episode, you talked a lot about the impact on team members around some of the elements of burnout and so forth. I love the research you’re doing recently around workaholic, and you identified different types of drivers for being a workaholic. Can you share a little bit more about those drivers, but also why it really matters to understand which one is driving that behavior?

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It’s hard because a strong work ethic is absolutely admirable. It’s what we’re looking for. But there’s a difference because a stronger work ethic helps us to progress. It helps us to achieve our goals. It helps us to do the things that we need to do. But when it moves into being a workaholism, it’s not about choosing to work hard. It’s about being unable to stop. It’s about not having the balance. And so, it does have an impact on who we are. We become more anxious. We have difficulty separating ourselves. We’re not involved in We’re not present in our personal lives, right? Because we’re continually thinking about what needs to be done. And sometimes we equate that with who we are. That’s just who I am, right?

That’s my self-worth. I do this because… But it’s because I can’t stop. That’s where the line is. I can’t separate myself.

Can you touch on the different types of workaholics? Because I think that’s also interesting to understand what’s driving that inability to stop.

When I do my program on dealing with difficult people, I have these eight animals that I use for the personalities, right? And so, when I was looking at this, I’m like, well, you know what? People remember the animal. So, I did the animals for the different types of workaholics as well. And I think that gives them a sense of who they are. It puts it into a bit of a perspective. So, the over committing beaver, right? It’s that person who is always building it. They’re always trying to take on more than they can manage. And so, they’re the people that are involved in every project. They’re accepting all of these extra committees. Their plate’s already full, but they’re taking on more. So, they get overwhelmed. They don’t have balance. There’s no time for recovery. So, we see the downside. So, we see the good side, right? They’re getting all this stuff done, busy like fever, but it’s having that impact of there’s no space, there’s no time for recovery. So, when there’s an emergency, what do you do? You don’t have any of the reserves. So that’s one. The attention seeking moth. They’re drawn to the light of recognition.

They’re looking for approval. They want people to notice what are they doing. So, they’re going to stay late. They’re going to show that they’re putting all of this time and energy. They don’t take their vacations because they’re just so busy. So, they’re always looking for recognition. And their self-worth really relies on that recognition, which leads them only to being exhausted. Sure. The light goes away. Let’s see. Who else is an interesting one? The shark. They can’t stop moving. With a shark, if they stop moving, they can’t breathe. It’s that same thing that they’re always moving, they’re always… They can’t stop. There’s never a celebration of the project that they’ve just completed. They’re already into the next one. There’s never this recognition. There are never these pauses. There’s never this outward-looking to the team and saying, Hey, good job, because we’re already into the next one, which it’s compulsive. They’re working through the night. There are never-ending tasks in front of them. I love this because there’s so many different types. There’s the lone wolf who just won’t delegate because nobody can do it like they do. It’s that they have to check every detail, which if you’re working for that person, it’s like, well, why did I do this if you’re going to do it anyways?

It demotivates the people around, and then things fall apart. If we don’t see some of the other things that could be causing hazards, when we talk about safety, they may not be noticing the things that they should have their eye on because they’re so busy checking other people’s work.

Sure. I love the connection with the animals. It makes it very memorable in terms of the analogies, and those are really good comparisons. It’s also something that we tend to reward and recognize in businesses. If I look at many senior leaders I’ve worked with over the years, they tend to work really hard, and that’s something that’s appreciated. They work through the night to get things done. Through storms, through whatever may happen, they’re doing good work. How do we balance this as you talked about before, the value of somebody who’s productive, who’s efficient, and recognizing those pieces with making sure we don’t create or encourage workaholics?

We talk about Functional and nonfunctional, right? So, for many work colleagues, they appear very functional. They’re productive, they’re reliable. And like you said, their drive is elevated. It’s admired, right? They’re praised for their persistence and their loyalty. But we can only keep that pace up for a while without it. And then it’s going to have these impacts. And so, we see, then it moves into the nonfunctional, where there’s chaos and you have to become even more controlling. And it undermines other people and other people’s performance because you can’t keep into that level. Often, we think of there’s this productivity paradox where more doesn’t equal better. It does have an impact on the team. People don’t want to work for somebody like that. If we’re talking about leaders, we see more absenteeism, more turnover, more disengagement. Then as that disengagement, that becomes burnout, it becomes safety issues, it becomes mental health issues. It does have a negative impact.

How would an organization balance the desire? Because it’s often that person who’s always getting things done is desirable versus a person who gets nothing done or who is a slacker at the other end of the extreme. We can send the wrong signals as well in terms of encouraging that behavior inadvertently.

Yeah, I think we go back to looking at making it acceptable to say no. Sure. Because we want to please, we want to do a good job? What does success look like? And so, we’re going to try harder. But we need to make it acceptable to say, no, I can’t do it right now or no, I have too many things on my plate. It’s about as a leader, making make sure that you’re setting realistic workloads. And one of the things I talk about right now is what does realistic look like right now? Because what it looked like five years ago may not be realistic today. And so, is that How does that play out? Then also, do people have the right resources to do the job? Do you have enough people on your team to do what you need to do? Do you have the right technology? The other piece with that, I talked about respect and appreciation, but are we rewarding effectiveness? Are we rewarding collaboration? Are we rewarding sustainability in getting things done? Like sustainability It’s a valuable effort. So, burning out, that’s not what we’re looking for, right? And so, are we rewarding in our organizations the right things?

So, it’s not necessarily about hours. The hour that you’re logged on or the hours that you’re working, but hey, it’s completing a project. How did we complete it? Did we complete it in a way where there was innovation and collaboration and quality? Was there effective problem solving and communication? If we’re looking at the right things, then people can still be successful. They can still work hard, but we’re not burning them out.

If you’re a leader and you recognize yourself as a as a shark, as a busy beaver, as, I think, the moth. I can’t remember the other animal, but if you recognize yourself in one of these animals, what can you do? The good old expression around put your own oxygen on mask first, that we hear in every safety demonstration. Tell me a little bit more about what that leader can do.

Recognize what’s driving the behavior in the first place. Are you afraid that you’re not good enough? Are you avoiding something in your personal life so it’s easier to be at work? Why are you doing the things that you’re doing? And then start to set some boundaries, those boundaries for yourself. It may be something as simple as making sure you’re taking your full lunch break. It may be something as simple as making sure that you’re not checking your work emails after whatever specific time, after It’s a set a boundary, eight o’clock. After eight o’clock, I am completely disconnected. And so, start small with those boundaries. It’s going to feel uncomfortable. It’s going to feel like I need to be doing this stuff. It’s odd to have time on your hands. Sure. But then look at how can I then, with that time, do something for myself in self-care? It might be rest, it might be recharging, it might be doing something that brings you joy that maybe you’ve stepped away from. Maybe it’s simply having time to reflect and to think about what the future might be like. So then once we’ve got that and then look at ways of redefining who you are.

It can’t solely be on your productivity. It can’t solely be about your achievements. Who are you at your core? What makes you valuable? What makes you worthy? And it doesn’t necessarily need to be about how much accomplish in a day, which for me, that’s a big one. My worth is, how many things did I get off my to-do list? What projects did I get done? And not who am I at the core? And so, for me, that’s one of my hardest ones. We’re not perfect. And so, embracing that imperfection again, which is really hard to do when you’re when you’re stuck in that workaholic mode.

And I had an executive coach who shared that Those boundaries can be set in the day and should be set in the day but also should be set over long periods of time. You talked about not taking your vacations as an example. But his point was also, even if you work very hard, at least then counterbalance it with extended vacations. So, more time off, more time to recharge. Any truth, thoughts around that?

Absolutely. There are rejuvenation periods that you can take an extra day on a long weekend, make it a long weekend. But then there needs to be more chunked periods of time. I think the easiest thing to do is to plan those out far in advance, because if we wait for the perfect time to take our vacation, it will never come. I’m in that mode right now, too. We were hit very hard with the ice storms here on our property, and so we’ve been working very hard to put things back together. We’re looking, here’s the whole summer has been spent, and We haven’t gone on our vacation because… And so now we’re looking at the fall saying, okay, we can’t keep this up. What are we doing to connect? What are we doing to get together? And I’m craving it now, whereas before, I was like, we just got to get through this stuff.

But you bring an interesting point because in some cases, workaholic substitute workaholic in the work environment to workaholic at home, where you check in, what did you do on vacation? And I worked hard to build something or do something at home, and you’re actually never really disconnecting. You’re just changing the work.

Yeah. If you’re feeling pushed or… When I talk about vacations, it’s what’s the purpose of your vacation? Sure. Of your vacation. Some vacations are to get projects done at home, but other times it needs to be for relaxation or rejuvenation or reconnection. And so, are you planning the to meet your purpose? Often people will say, I want to get reconnected to my family, but then they book 15 side trips and you’re running and everybody’s in a hurry and we never had time to actually really connect. And then people come back saying, I need a vacation from my vacation. It didn’t fit the purpose. And so, are we planning our life in a way that is purposeful? At the beginning, I said, are we acting rather than reacting? And I think that’s a good theme for how we live or are we acting in a way that is congruent to who we want to be? Are we acting in a way that allows us to be engaged and be involved and achieve the things that we want to achieve in a healthy way so that We’re not burning ourselves out so that we’re not experiencing extreme anxiety or depression or this guilt that takes us away from everything.

Your example just makes me think that one can bring their workaholic state to their vacation and say, how do I have an efficient vacation where I maximize every second and just bring in that same temperament ideas into your opportunity to disconnect?

I love when I see there’s… Generally, in family vacations, there’s always somebody in the family or in the friend group who has everything planned down to the nanosecond. And then there’s other people that are in the group who are like, where are we going? Okay, great. What do I need to pack? Okay, I’ve got one of those. It’s interesting because they may not be that way in the workplace, or they may be exactly that way in the workplace. I always find it really interesting where the person who at work has everything completely planned, but where they can completely let go in their vacation. That’s the best of both. Where you’re able to let things flow and happen, and you don’t get upset and anxious when you don’t know every moment of every detail.

Beverley, it’s such a pleasure to have you back on the show. I think we touched on two really critical topics as we cover World Mental Health Day. One is the element of toxicity in the organization. How do you recognize it? How do you deal with it? And some of the strategies to have those difficult conversations and hold people accountable around it. I think that’s a really, really critical topic around workplace health, but also ultimately safety, as you mentioned. Then the second part is the leader self-care. How do I make sure that as a leader, I don’t burn out? Because if I’m burning out, I’m not going to be a great leader for my team as you touched on. I’m not going to be a great safety leader. I’m not going to be looking out for the signs or symptoms that something’s going to be maybe off. I’m not going to be interacting with my teams the way I should. Two really critical topics. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?

You can reach me through my website at [email protected], where the website is worksmartlivesmart.com. There’s all kinds of articles on toxicity and dealing with difficult people and burnout and mental health. I think there’s over 500 articles there. If you’re looking for more, that’s a great place to go and grab more information, especially as we celebrate World Mental Health Day, Healthy Workplaces Month, Mental Illness Awareness Week. October is so rich for all of these celebrations that really focus on how we take care of ourselves.

You run a whole breadth of workshops, help a lot of organizations in this corporate culture, the resiliency space, such a critical topic these days. I appreciate you having me back. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me here.

Thank you for listening to The Safety Guru on C-suite Radio. Leave a legacy. Distinguish yourself from the past. Grow your success. Capture the hearts and minds of your teams. Elevate your safety. Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their safety leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance. Begin your journey at execsafetycoach.com. Come back in two weeks for the next episode with your host, Eric Michrowski. This podcast is powered by Propulo Consulting.