Civility, Respect and Engagement in the Workplace: Learn More about the Naifeh Center's New Training

Catch up with the Naifeh Center for Effective Leadership with the center's Executive Director Kim Harmon.  Harmon discusses the agency's newest training offering Civility, Respect and Engagement in the Workplace (CREW).

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Kim Harmon edit_mixdown.mp3

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

Hii and welcome to In Touch with Tennessee, a podcast of the University of Tennessee Institute for Public Service.

00:00:14 Speaker 1

I'm here today with Kim Harmon, executive director of the Naifeh Center for Effective Leadership, to talk about.

00:00:20 Speaker 1

Everything going on with the Naifeh Center welcome, Kim.

00:00:23 Speaker 2

You for having me Susan.

00:00:25 Speaker 1

So tell us a little bit about the Naifeh Center.

00:00:28 Speaker 2

The Naifeh Center provides leadership training for primarily government agencies, but we also do private as well.

00:00:36 Speaker 2

OK, right now you came on board in February.

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How are things going?

00:00:41 Speaker 2

They're going great.

00:00:42 Speaker 2

It's a strong team and we're excited about what we already do, but we're excited about some new.

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Courses we have some new ideas we have, so it's.

00:00:51 Speaker 1

Very exciting, good and one of those new ideas is your new training, Civility, Respect, and Engagement in the Workplace or CREW

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So tell us a little bit about that.

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So we thought that CREW was.

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Very much needed by I was having conversations.

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And with peers and former coworkers and hearing conversation about how so many agencies wanted to have some type of diversity training.

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But then at the same time I was hearing that some people were kind of afraid of the term diversity because they felt like then the training became mandatory and.

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It meant that a lot of people would come together and talk about some maybe.

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Potentially volatile subjects that we would walk away singing Kumbaya and and that's not what we wanted to develop the Naifeh Center for Effective leadership is great at what they do.

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They are very good at not just the training and the curriculum, but the decorum and attacked.

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And the process and the respect and all that goes.

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With that and handling, sometimes some difficult conversations, so the United States Veterans Affairs had a program named CREW, and so they discontinued that program in 2013 and we signed some paperwork, so we officially have it. As long as we refer to the United States.

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Department of Veteran Affairs.

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We can use their acronym, but we developed the curriculum ourselves, but we liked the acronym because it specifically talked about civility, respect, and engagement in the workplace.

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And as we talked about it, more and more, we felt like a lot of people talk about engagement.

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They want engagement for their teams.

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A lot of people ask for team building exercises and so we felt like civility is.

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I compared that to.

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I go to a barista and order a coffee and we have a very common.

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Polite conversation not very engaging because I'm just going to get my coffee the way I want it to pay for it.

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We'll have some polite conversation and that's it.

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Respect is more about having lunch with someone and you're spending more time with them.

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You still or use it.

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You may be still somewhat reserved and more cautious about topics that you discuss, but by the time you get to engagement, it's more of a 50-50 dialogue, and so there's a couple of points that I think.

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That make the CREW training specifically or very beneficial for teams.

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By the time you get to the day of training on respect.

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There's a term that we will use and it's called being a generous listener.

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And a lot of people think that they are generous listeners, but generous listeners have to pace themselves.

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They have to be very.

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Mindful of listening very often, most of us get excited and we want to jump in back into the conversation and provide our own thoughts, and so respect is learning to be a generous listener.

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And another key point we talk about there is being able to be a generous listener without.

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Conveying your own thoughts about a subject because you're just listening.

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And also without a conversion mentality of thinking I need this person to think my way.

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So the day of training on respect is just that is that it allows you to stop and think about what does that really mean.

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Because by the time you get to the day of training on engagement, then you're learning to both have been through the generous listener, respectful training, but you can have 5050 dialogue and conversation, but because you're not trying to win the conversation or convert the person, you're able to actually.

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Listen to what they're saying and get their viewpoints.

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From a very judge not a non judgmental perspective another.

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Point that I love about.

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Crew training is that it also knows that.

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Trust and relationships are key to this training being beneficial.

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I think too often what happens when we try to engage with people we've not taken time to build the trust and the relationship that goes with the engagement, and so we're wanting to have a conversation that's very engaging.

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But it's easy to judge people that we've not taken time to build that trust in relationship with.

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The more that I trust you, the more that I have a relationship with you.

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Then more than I'm going to give you grace when you may say something that maybe caused me to pause.

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And so, being able to take a team through six months of training so there's one day of training.

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On civility and then they have some teamwork assignments in between month three they come back for a day of training on respect.

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And then they have some teamwork assignments and then they come back for the on the 6th month to have a day of training on engagement.

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What that looks like, so it's not just coming to training and hearing it.

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It's being able to actually put that into practice and learning again.

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What does it mean to be a generous listener?

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What does it mean to actually get someone?

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Viewpoint, and to ask open-ended questions to get to know how they feel on certain subjects, if that makes sense.

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So that's why we think this is such a good training is to help people get to civility, respect, and engagement.

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But also building their trust and relationships at the same time.

00:06:41 Speaker 1

Right, so it is a six month program.

00:06:43 Speaker 2

It is a six month program, yes.

00:06:46 Speaker 1

Great, so there's a lot of practical hands on exercises.

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It sounds like.

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It is, we ask that the teams meet at least monthly for an hour.

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To discuss topics that we can help them decide.

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But you know, there's there's options out there for what to discuss, but that the topics be something that is.

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Non work related.

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It's more about it's about having causing asking teams to actually stop and be purposeful about having those conversations that we had years ago when we were passing each other in the break room.

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Or, you know, deciding where to have lunch or you know who's going to make the coffee today and and those.

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Top things right right which is even more important now.

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In the day of remote workplaces.

00:07:27 Speaker 2

Absolutely it is and and so again, I think we come together and we think about checking the list off of what we need to do next.

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And we know that with teams great team.

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Teams people want to feel valued and included in those teams, so this actually allows A-Team to stop and pause and say, how do we allow everyone to feel valued? How do we allow everyone to feel included and the training allows teams to even define their own.

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Terms for civility, respect, and engagement.

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One of the examples I use is that I could go to Chattanooga with some former coworkers and they were in law enforcement and I could have a conversation about anything and no one would be offended about in.

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Anything but again, those guys had a very strong, tightly woven trust relationship across the top of work they're in, and the.

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Things that they do.

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But I could step into another room of people that I've known for a long time, and the trust and relationship may be different, but also it may be because we trust that we're not going to use foul language or certain terms.

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That would be, you know, that causes us to pause.

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So that is what's good about this.

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Training too, is that each team defines their own rules and that way we're not having.

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A different team tell us how we ought to engage in our workplace.

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You know, as outsiders, we make up our own rules.

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As we go right right?

00:08:57 Speaker 1

OK, great So what types of organizations is this training for?

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Is it?

00:09:03 Speaker 2

Any organization that wants it now the training is best for teams that actually work together.

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Routinely so you do not want to bring people together that never see each other.

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It's not for you know 50 people from 50 different agencies.

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It's for agencies to take 5 to 35 now we have been asked to go up to even 45 or so.

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We're going to bring in extra staff to cover that, but it needs to be team members that are needing stronger, cohesive team dynamics because maybe they do work across.

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The state remotely.

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We ask that those teams already be good teams.

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This training is not to fix the toxic employee that may be present.

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It is to take a good team that's already got some good dynamics that help them dig deeper and actually be more tightly woven.

00:09:54 Speaker 2

So I compare civility as a thread respect as a yarn and then engagement as a tightly woven sweater.

00:10:03 Speaker 2

But if you get to that point at the end of the six months, and you feel like you are very valued by the team, very included by the team, then you have a much stronger dynamic, and it allows people to be.

00:10:14 Speaker 2

Much more productive and they feel like they have basically a psychologically safe workspace right to where they can go right?

00:10:22 Speaker 1

So for anybody who is interested in crew, any organization or any of the other Naifeh center training, how can they find out more information about it?

00:10:31 Speaker 2

It is on our website, the Naifeh Center for Effective Leadership which is also under UT Institute for Public Service.

00:10:38 Speaker 2

They can also e-mail me at kim.harmon@tennessee.edu

00:10:44 Speaker 2

 also Will Porter at william.porter@tennessee.edu

00:10:54 Speaker 2

and he's also on our website so if I give you the wrong e-mail address, he's also on our website and you can contact.

00:11:03 Speaker 2

Him through the website as well.

00:11:04 Speaker 1

OK, great, well this is a very valuable.

00:11:06 Speaker 3

OK.

00:11:08 Speaker 1

Information and I thank you for joining us today.

00:11:11 Speaker 1

Kim and thank you listeners.

00:11:13 Speaker 1

Be sure to subscribe to in touch.

00:11:15 Speaker 1

With Tennessee